My dad bought me an iPhone. (Thanks, Dad!) and I absolutely love the thing.

Since jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, my blog has kind of died off. I post occasionally. But not with the same frequency as before.

One reason for the Twitter-induced coma that my blog has fallen into is the simple fact that I could tweet from ANYWHERE, updating my status from my phone. It was far easier to tweet than to blog. (Not to mention, the 140-character limitation made the constant updates fit quite easily into my busy schedule.)

Well… Now that I have my iPhone, I can also blog from anywhere. I can’t make any promises… But it seems likely that I might begin blogging more frequently.

If this does happen, my posts will probably be shorter than usual. (Probably to the betterment of my blog.) And… They will probably be riddled with typing errors. My grammar may even suffer due to the change of pace and weird changes that I might make without really paying attention to what I have done. (Probably to the betterment of my condition as a grammar snob and recovering perfectionist.)

We shall see…

I haven’t forgotten that my blog exists. Well… maybe I kind of did.

In any case, I still think of myself as “one who blogs”. And I will eventually do the blogging to back that up. I think.

FIRST, though, in writing ventures… the overdue newsletter. Oh-so-overdue.

I wanted to write a post about the things that are on my mind. I was going to call it “Grateful” because I am full of gratitude right now.

Then I realized that a lot of what was on my mind was really intimidating and I was scared. Change of plans: I was going to call it “Grateful & Scared”.

Then I realized that a lot of what was on my mind was…

I could keep going like this for a while. We’ll just stop there and sum it up with this: I am feeling A LOT of emotions right now. (I’m feeling. Let’s just pause for a moment to thank the Lord for that one. My heart is alive. So very alive. That wasn’t always true.)

When I said that I would stop there and sum it up, I didn’t mean to stop the entire post. At least I didn’t think that I did.

I started to write about the things that are on my mind.

I realized that this wasn’t stuff to blog about. Not yet.

I highlighted and deleted huge chunks of text.

I stopped and realized that there was nothing left but a play-by-play skeletal description of an event that was never allowed to… happen. Happening is to events as living is to organisms. It seems that there was no event after all.

The post could not bear witness, itself, to the fact that it nearly existed. It could not bear witness because it did not exist. Nonexistent anythings are nothing at all. Something must exist to truly be or do anything.

I judged it as right to leave this. I saw it fitting to leavesome evidence of a thing that nearly existed but was never allowed.

Here this is. And here that isn’t.

Or is it?

This is a continuation of the thought I began to develop in my last post. As I have already said in that post:

I tend to be a fairly transparent and open person. … I somehow simultaneously manage to be fairly quiet and reserved in the midst of that transparency.

The last post discussed the quiet end of this supposed duality. This post explores the excessively honest end.

Sometimes, I am shamefully honest. Like those times when someone asks, “How are you?” expecting a nice, “Great! how are you?” in return. Instead, they get, “I’m having a rough day.” Or, worse, “Ummm… I’ve had a few worse days.” Or, even worse, I may give them a 30-second summary of the pain and hurt in my life that I am feeling that particular day.

You see, if I really am feeling especially great, we don’t have a problem. But the reality of pre-Day-of-the-Lord existence is that there is PLENTY of pain to be felt, if my heart is open to feeling it. The main problem with this is that it catches people off guard and can make them extremely uncomfortable.

Like I said in the last post, I figure I don’t have anything to lose if people know the truth. God knows the truth. He’s still sticking around. I know that people don’t always respond in the same way. But if they don’t stick around, it’s not going to cost me that much… because they can’t convince Him to reject me with them. If my affirmation is coming from men, it will be costly… but there’s already a problem if my affirmation is coming from men.

The reality is, when it comes to relationships with people, I have many friends who have seen some of the darkest places in my heart and are intimately acquainted with my weakness…. and are still loving me in the midst of it. (Let’s face it, if they are really my friends in the first place, they are going to see and experience all of that stuff, because I don’t really know how to rightly shut the truth off.) I’m pretty phenomenally blessed, when it comes to good/true friends.

Since I usually perceive little cost in my honesty, and because I am learning to be a lover of truth, that means that me talking equals me talking pretty openly. Really, the things that I am most interested in talking about are the deep things of the heart. (I am, after all, a girl.)

Thus, if I am having an emotionally challenging week (day), that reality is almost guaranteed to show up on my blog (or at least my facebook status updates) in one form or another. The only way that it won’t show up is if I am not blogging (and this is often the reason that I am not blogging).

I know my level of honesty can sometimes make people uncomfortable. Sometimes this may be the result of me communicating something that was inappropriate to communicate. But I am convinced that this is not always the case. Sometimes honestly is uncomfortable because we aren’t used to it. And sometimes the truth is just… awkward. But that does not always mean that there is no value in the truth being expressed. As my friendship with a couple of Bryson brothers has taught me, awkward isn’t exactly the worst thing in the world (a valuable lesson indeed). I used to be terrified of it. But… enduring the discomfort of awkwardness has brought significant good to my life, on my occasions.

I blog because I want to communicate something. (When it comes to needing to process, I have three far more favorable outlets: prayer, a journal, and good friends.) The necessity of being a little bit vague and the reality of exposing my heart and my emotions are not too high a cost for what I want to express when I choose to express it.

People often remark on my vulnerability and transparency. I view it as primarily operating as a strength in my life. Yes, there is a weakness dimension to this. But most things about the way we work have dimensions of strength and weakness. I know, however, that my choice to live openly before others (to the extent that my heart is open to the Lord and alive) can be of benefit to those around me.

So… there you have it. I am reservedly transparent. Or something like that.

I tend to be a fairly transparent and open person. I guess I usually figure that I don’t have much to lose if people know the truth. I somehow simultaneously manage to be fairly quiet and reserved in the midst of that transparency.

? – I’m not quite sure how that works.

When I am quiet, it’s usually for one of two reasons: 1. What is on my mind and in my heart cannot appropriately be expressed. 2. I don’t have anything to say.

Because I am so naturally transparent, a lot will come out if I do talk. Sometimes that means I shouldn’t talk because it would be out of place. Why bother saying something less than the truth? Why bother speaking if I have nothing that can be appropriately said?

In group settings I am especially quiet. I could come up with things to say, but if other people are talking and I don’t have something to say, I’ll leave the air-space open. I don’t feel the need to be constantly heard. I don’t see this as a problem. The problem is when I do have something to say and choose not to say it for the wrong reasons (fear, insecurity, etc.) And this definitely happens on occasion. But I would not say that this is the primary reason that I frequently sit in silence when I am in a group. People like to be heard. You put a bunch of them together and there are a lot of voices trying to get into the conversation. I don’t like pushing my way into that if I don’t have a reason to speak.

I am still learning to bridle my speech. But I have learned that bridled speech frequently requires silence. And I am still learning to exercise the necessary level of restraint.

There are aspects of guarding my heart that demand silence in some matters. And I also do not have the freedom to publicly reveal more about a person than he or she has chosen to reveal. I have little against exposing myself. But I am not OK with exposing others. (Which is not to say that it has not happened… this is still an area where I have recently learned some very difficult lessons.)

That is a significant reason why my blog can tend to be rather vague. Sometimes wisdom says, “Don’t write that… you need to guard your heart.” And sometimes there are other people involved who I cannot expose. But I still want to articulate and express the emotional realities and the truths about God that are moving around those stories and events and relationships that I need to be so vague about.

Actually, I am rarely vague without meaning to be. Few things bother me more than failure to communicate and poor articulation. It happens, but it frustrates me and I work hard to communicate well. However, I frequently choose to be unclear because it is necessary. Or, on occasion, I am unclear because it is simply more fun. (E.g., when I get up in urgent need of ANOTHER bathroom break and declare that I am going to go “not pee my pants again.”)

I may aim to be unclear, but I never desire to be confusing. (Confusion should only enter the equation if you are trying to figure out what you don’t need to know.) Unfortunately… these two overlap quite a bit. I’m still working on it.

I will adress the other side of this in my next post.

I just jumped on here to write a really quick I’m-still-alive post when I saw something that looked like a happy red frisbee in the media menue above the post text box.

Naturally, I was quite excited to see something that looked like a frisbee. I thought, “Wow… can I add a frisby to my post now?” So I decided to scroll over the pretty little red disk to see what it really was.

“Add Poll”

Yeah… that was disappointing.

As much as it falls short of the glories of a blog frisbee, I thought I would still give the poll thing a try. I don’t really have any brilliant ideas for the poll. (Believe me… I would have put a frisbee to much better use.)

So… here it is… my new poll:

OK, so the blog I am about to write about isn’t actually mine. But I kind of treat it like my own.

Earlier today, I told Amanda, “I think I write more on _______’s blog than I do my own.”

Of course, we quickly established that this is not true. I blog more than that. However… it may be true that I write on his blog more than he does. I mean… my comments frequently surpass the length of the posts that provoked them. Fortunately, his follow-up comments do as well. Which is a good thing. Or the world might think that I was trying to take over his blog.

Anyway, there is a reason that I write so much in response to those posts. They’re basically brilliant. (Though frequently wrong. Can you be wrong and brilliant at the same time? I would like to think so. I do it all the time. I mean, I’m not wrong all the time. But… well, I’m just going to stop right there, before further contradicting or incriminating myself in wrongness.)

(Oh wait. I’m not done being parenthetical… When I say that his posts are frequently wrong, I mostly have in mind his conclusions about celery.)

Basically, this is one of the most brilliant blogs I have ever read. He doesn’t write often enough. But what he does write is absolutely worth reading. So go read a bit.

I proudly introduce you to my friend, S. Hamley Bildebrandt.

There are some things that I may never understand. Like my blog stats.

Take, for example, the downward-sloping zig-zag action of the last week:

It certainly baffles me.

I jumped on wordpress to skim a few blogs today. I have neither the time nor the mental capacity to actually read them. And certainly not to read to the point where I felt even remotely “caught up” in the blog world. But I could at least skim so that I had an idea of what I was missing.

OK… back to the point. The first two posts to appear at the top of my reader said something about a return to the land of blogs. “I’m back online.” “… back to the web-writing-world” (or something along those lines).

And it made me sad.

I’m not back. I’m not even close to being back. But, oh, how I long to be back. How I miss my little home in blogland. Where I write… and my ideas get out of my head and into some semi-tangible form that possesses the quality of greater permanence. When… all of those good things are happening… all those good things that blogging does for me. Whatever they are.

I’ll be back someday, I’m sure. I think. I hope. I… wonder.

My life has been a little too hectic lately to sit down and blog. It is a fact that makes me sad (for more reasons than one). But, being fact and all… it is what it is.

Here is a rough outline of what I have been up to.

June 14-15 –> Switch to days by staying up all night
June 16 –> Get the store ready for me to be gone for 5 days
June 17-18 –> Warehouse inventory; continue prepping store for absence; rush packing 
June 19-23 –> In Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee with Eddie James (long and tiring trip)
June 24-25 –> Manager meeting; catch up from absence from store; prepare for inventory; schedule adjustments
June 26-28 –> Fascinate ‘08 Conference that my boss is letting me take off to recover… praise the Lord.
June 29-July 2 –> INVENTORY (long days… one of the two major bookstore events of the year)
July 2-July 9 –> Texas and Alabama with Eddie James

So… when all is said and done, I will have been on days for almost a month. And, if Kristen had not let me take myself off of the conference schedule, I wouldn’t have had a single day off for that entire stretch.

Now, the Eddie James trip itself (the 19th through 23rd) was one of the most absurd and horrendous things I have ever been forced to do. (I have done worse… but always by choice. I didn’t even have the opportunity to say yes to this one.)

I haven’t complained this much since I was in junior high. But that’s all we did for those five days. Prop ourselves up against the wall to remain in a sitting position, groan about how tired we were, and whine about how absurd and impossible the whole trip was.

We were gone for a total of 114 hours. 75.5 of those hours were spent working. For the entire trip, we had 12.5 hours of free time (including our time for meals). We got a total of 22 hours of sleep (which would have needed to be 28 if we were to get 7 hours of sleep each night). And we had about 4 hours in the entire trip to attend to hygiene needs… showers and all of that. And both of our hotels were just short of an hour away from the church or conference, so we spent ridiculous amounts of time in the car.

If you break that down into daily averages, it looked like this:
15 hours/day working
2.5 hours/day free time
1 hour/day of hygiene stuff
5.5 hours/night sleeping

Every day… for 5 days.

Needless to say, it was exhausting.

The worst part of the trip came on day three of the conference. Once the last session began, we took advantage of the free time to go and eat dinner. (Some days, we only had enough time for one meal.) We then packed everything up and left it for Eddie’s guys to put on their bus when the session ended. And then we hit the road.

I had slept in that day in order to switch back to nights. Yes… I had to switch to a night schedule in the middle of a trip for which I had switched to days. I then proceeded to drive for 6.5 hours, through the night, to Tennessee.

When we arrived, we were quite tired. The girls were able to catch short naps in the car, but sleeping in the car is never as restful as sleeping in a bed. And our handy little navigation system (Betsy) was talking to me all night, which can have a tendency to disturb someone from their slumber.

When we got to Tennessee, we had lost an hour due to time zone changes. This meant that we had one hour to sleep before we needed to get up, shower, and get on the road so that we could set up in time for the church service that Eddie’s team would be ministering at that morning and evening.

We were completely spent.

Somehow, though, it was all worthwhile by the time Sunday night had ended. As Eddie shared on Sunday and as we learned some of the guys’ testimonies, we began to understand why we were there. We began to get a glimpse of Eddie’s ministry and see the great value of what he does. We began to fall in love with all of these amazing young men and women who praise the Lord with all that is in them and daily make huge sacrifices to see others come into the same freedom and hope that they have found in God.

Sunday morning was the morning we’d had about an hour of sleep. Which is just enough time to make you realize how badly your entire body hurts and how desperately you need real sleep. But somehow, that morning, I found myself jumping up and down while Eddie led worship. I sang with all of my heart… and a great deal more energy than it seemed possible for me to have at that time.

I cried a lot that morning. I was on the verge of tears (or crying) for most of the trip, though. But I cried a lot that morning because I finally got it. I finally began to understand what I was doing and what the whole thing was all about.

So… my time in Alabama and Tennessee (our hotel was the thing in Mississippi) with Eddie James and his team was awful… but amazing.

I’m going back out with Eddie James Ministries in a week. This time, I’ll be in Texas and Alabama. I guess we’ll be in the Dallas area July 2nd through 4th. Which means that, if we have more free time than on this last trip, I should get to see my dad. And I’m pretty excited about that. And I’m going with Alicia. And Alicia and I have been trying to get together to do lunch for a long time. Now we get to do lunch AND dinner AND coffee with each other for several consecutive days.

So… if I continue to neglect the blog for a while, hopefully you can see why.

I’ve finally reached a point where I am beginning to reevaluate some things in my life. I can’t be THIS busy all the time. So, I’ll keep you posted. But I will hopefully find a way to be more consistent about keeping everyone updated on what I am doing in Kansas City.

Please be praying for me as the summer of chaos continues!