Phillip Yancey, keeping things, and Christmas

I keep things. This can be a problem, especially if you haven't *really* moved for ten years. Alas. I pity the fool that marries me and my stuff--oh, but I'm so cute!

This is one of the things I've kept, forever. It usually hangs out on my fridge; it is a quote from a book by Phillip Yancey, a writer who is always asking questions about Christianity. I trust him because he keeps asking questions and he sometimes answers them...anyways, he also writes like a dream.

"I have the sensation of stepping off a ledge in the darkness with no idea where I might land. That is up to God." --Richard, from the book Disappointment with God, by Phillip Yancey.

The other half of the sheet of paper is a letter from a college friend, who was responding to a lesson I had given at Bible Study that week. From alumni news, I know he has gone on to do missions, get married, and probably has bundles of kids. (One child is a child, two or more are bundles, just like you would have a gaggle of geese.) (See, you learn things from this blog that you never knew before!)

He was two years behind me, and I pined after him. Alas. I try to keep this blog upbeat but darn it, today I was playing playdough with a girl who said her mom was 31. The girl was about 5. My friend Lilly and I (she's the one who got the second job and yes, she has my blessing, and no I won't go into it, but I understand her reasoning now.) spent the evening together. She is 47 and a divorcee (do they use that word anymore?) and a real blessing to me. She has family in town--her mother and her brothers, both of whom are married and have kids. She does a lot of babysitting.

We talked for hours, about the Emerging Church (we both have misgivings about the movement, but she allows that if I'm growing at the OD, that's what counts); about the Bible (that woman has more Bibles than I do--and I have a collection of at least six. She showed me her Thompson Chain Bible, which takes a topic all the way through the Bible using these four digit code numbers in the margin. She has software that allows her to do word studies and is doing a word study right now on the word "gospel." She prays fervently--every day!! I could only hope that one day I could come near to the devotion she has for Christ--I love spending time with her 'cause I hope maybe some of it will rub off. Laughter--she laughs at work when it gets to the high stress level. We laugh together--and we cry. (I don't understand people that don't have a Kleenex box in every room--and I only buy, you guessed it, pink.)

And gorgeous--usually when we get together, she's in her casual clothes, but tonight she was wearing her work clothes, and when she put on her fur hat (probably faux, since she bought it for $5 at K-mart), I swear she looked like a model. She's tall enough too, that she probably could grace the runways.

Not sure where I'm going with this post, but I just wanted to share. It is lonely, being a single woman at Christmas, and this week is the worst, everybody is going somewhere or already gone. I'm in town until Saturday, so Lilly and I plan to catch up on Friday (she works Weds night, I work Thurs.) I have so many friends, but I guess I wish that sometimes it wasn't someone else's child whose diaper I'm changing, or someone else's child I'm playing play dough with. Like bobbie, I guess I'm feeling a litte melon-collie.

In March, I am going to Boston to the Public Library Assoc. Conference and I'll get to see my dear friend Susan Fry--who will be famous one day, just you watch. She is my oldest friend (we've known each other since the second day of eleventh grade when her niece Kelly was born) and I'm so glad that I'll see her soon. I've never met her daughter Sarah, who is four, and who will be getting an Easy Bake Oven in a few months (we both agreed it would be silly to mail it since taking it on the plane is free!).

So thanks for being out there in the blogosphere, dear reader. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and all that jazz. Hug your honey real tight--time on this earth is too short to keep a distance between those we love.