New ink.

Thanks James!

Oregon....

...was amazing.

I'm quite sure my life won't be the same.

Warm, fuzzy quote of the week.

"Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks... A good night sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace." --Frederick Buechner

Tiffy.

It would've been your birthday today, sweet girl. I miss you.

Happy vegetarian birthday to me.

This month marks my sixth year of being a vegetarian. I'm happy about that.

Just thought you should know.

Yay for health.

:)

Observations.

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." --Anne Lamott
I heard this quote two times yesterday, at two completely different occasions, and it's stuck with me. I think it's because I have grown tired of this "us vs. them" mentality in our little Christian circles. Everything has become this giant culture war, segregating our lives and this world into either "secular" or "Christian" categories. We demean and most often challenge those who share opposing views like it's our right to do so. Meanwhile, the marginalized and broken people of this world are benefiting from this....how? What is all of our rhetoric and judging accomplishing?


Just a few thoughts.



In other news, I met a rather terrific boy from Oregon last week. :) Although it looks firmly attached in the photo below, my face has been blessed off.

Benjamin-brother-bear.

Home.

I still miss Colorado. I'm still antsy. Some things never change.

But,

In a couple short weeks, we will be celebrating the two year anniversary of Ben punching death in the face. Tonight we had a little family discussion about his recovery and some of his current concerns, something we try to do often but doesn't happen nearly enough.

I was so overwhelmed with...
joy.

I'm such a nerd, I know.

Really, though, I stood there in our little house packed with all seven us, beaming because I certainly don't deserve them at all.

I looked at the brother that doctors said may never walk again, may never be independent, probably never function as a normal human being, so on and so forth. Of all the circumstances in my life that proves God's ridiculous faithfulness, this one takes the cake. It defies human logic--falling four stories and surviving to tell about it. It still dumbfounds me at times.
The past week I've glanced back over these past two years, over the never-ending hospital scene, the therapies, the doctors, the shock, the grief, the screaming at God.
But looking back, I realized for the first time I don't feel the distant heaviness that set itself into my bones. Being here, this house, the memories, the constant reminder of God's radical love for us that manifests through Ben every day...
it has been bringing this toothy grin to my face.

To be able to laugh until I practically choke, with the brother who by human reasoning should be dead...I can't believe I get to live this life.

Thank you to all who've put up with me through this; whether you prayed for my family and Ben, let me bawl my eyes out, listened patiently while I rambled my confusion, looked past my fickle attitude and loved me anyway...this journey would've sucked without you.