How Dare He

I am an emotional person. I know it. Call me sensitive, passionate, easily moved, whatever I know it. I cry a lot. When I'm happy it's always "the best day of my life," I get excited and giddy easily. Silly stuff like pictures, gifts, songs and commercials make me tear up.

If there is one thing that enrages me, it's when someone dares to lay a hand on one of my girls.

Sunday afternoon my youngest sister was at the Vikings game. She'd been planning her first game with her boyfriend and his family for weeks. Something happened towards the end of the game when everyone had had one to many beers. Someone in her party accidently knocked a beer onto the purse of a woman in front of them. The woman threw a beer back at my sister and the rest of her party that had not gotten up to go to the bathroom.

I know my sister (and all our family for that matter) and she will admit she ran off at the mouth. We all do, it's one of the unfortunate habits we gained for our mother and her side of the family. Both my birth father and my step dad are quiet passive aggressive types. Us girls let our mouths go and try to pick up the refuge afterwards. Abbi is the typical baby of the family and has always been a small kid but what she lacks in size she has always made up for in spunk and sass. She admits that it quickly became a verbal spar with plenty of expletives that was able to burn itself out within a few moments. Also being a life long tender heart (another trait all three of us girls gained from out Mom) she tapped on the womans shoulder to apologize. The man the woman was with turned around and told her to stop patronizing the woman, and then proceeded to push my sister in front of both the woman he was with and two young teenage girls that we part of his party. (This infuriated the man Abbi was sitting with and the man who had pushed her was eventually asked to leave by police).

She was telling me the story this evening and I tried not to let my own expletives sneak out while I held Izaboo on my lap. But I know what I would've done had I been next to my sister at the game. I would've dropped an f-bomb or two before breaking my knuckles in a punch I think I know how to lay because I've seen a lot of movies but have probably long since forgotten how to actually deliver from the Karate days. I would've gotten kicked out, ruined the guys face or whatever part of his body I could reach first and completely ruined any witness to the glory of Christ that I may have carried into the place with me. My sister still would've been pushed, I still would've watched her be hurt, I would not have proven anything, other than I am given to anger.

It angers me that a man with his own teenage daughters could have the audacity to push a woman, a young and little woman like Abbi. (Regardless of the fact that she had previously been a tipsy little brat...which she will admit to). What witness did you just display for your own little girls, that given enough alcohol if they smart off you'd push them in public?

But my problem is not with this man. My problem is with myself. I want to work in full time ministry and missions in the near future. And I will admit that I would've at least attempted to smash this guy in the face. I will admit that I can't even in my mind think of anything beautiful or redeeming about him. I don't want to pray for him, and in my mind I don't believe the Jesus loves him the way he loves Abbi, the way he loves me.

But I know that's not true. I know that me being short tempered with my kids is just as bad as this man pushing my little sister. I know that swearing under my breath when I heard the story is as bad as the words he called her. I know better than that! I know that Jesus loves this man just as much as he loves me. And sometimes I really don't think that's fair. I don't think it's fair that Jesus loves my Dad like he loves me, I don't think it's fair that God loves my best friends ex husband the way he loves her. I don't think it's fair that Jesus cares for my best friends relative the way he cares for her.

Sometimes I don't only think its' not fair. It makes me mad! It makes me mad that this life is not fair. That I cry and sweat and bleed and he walks away free. That my sister had those thoughts in the back of her mind the last 24 hours. And he holds us all in the palm of his hands. He loves us all the same. He has every hair on every hair counted.

He is a good God. And his glory and the truth of who He is just exemplifies how broken I am but makes me so, so glad that He does chose me.

Daily.

Even when I've screwed up, when I'm mad, when I'm jealous, when I just don't get it.

I sit here to avoid school work once again. (Don't tell anyone but I'm going to squeeze in a quick nap to avoid it some more). I promise I will get a fair amount done this week. I have to.

4 days until "Christmas vacation." I'm heading down to Chicago Friday morning with Jen for the opening night of Cirque de Solie. I bought Jenny and Bitsy tickets for Christmas. So I got a hotel down town, packed cute little outfits and plan on having a girls weekend to remember with my best friends.

This Is Ten Years

Addison Road "Sticking With You."

Come on, it's me you're talking to
there's something going on inside of you
don't have to say it, but I wish you would
cause it would be much easier

You always hide behind yourself
you walk a lonely road with no one's help
I hate to break the news
you're headed for a fall

And if I have to jump
then I'll jump
and I won't look down
you can cry, you can fight,
we can scream and shout
I'll push and pull
until your walls come down
and you understand

I'm gonna be around
I'm sticking with you
I'm sticking with you

Even if you try and shut me out
I'm staying here 'cause thats what love's about
I might let you down, but I won't let you go

So lean into me, I want to know
Everything about the fear you hold inside
'cause you and I are better than just one so

If I have to jump
then I'll jump
and I wont look down
you can cry, you can fight, we can scream and shout
I'll push and pull
until your walls come down
and you understand I'm gonna be around
I'm sticking with...

If that's what it means to love you
If that's what it means to have your back
If that what it takes to show you
Then I'm in, I'm in

If I have to jump
then I'll jump
and I wont look down
you can cry, you can fight, we can scream and shout
I'll push and pull
until your walls come down
and you understand I'm gonna be around

And if I have to jump
then I'll jump
and I wont look down
you can cry, you can fight, we can scream and shout
I'll push and pull
until your walls come down
and you understand I'm gonna be around
I'm sticking with you
I'm sticking with you
I'm sticking with you

Gosh, blogging. Sometimes I wonder why I can never quite give it up. Maybe this one just holds my N-Zed memories, but I'm guessing it's really because sometimes I quite like to journal and in my world it's a lot easier to type than it is to write with a pen and paper. (I do enough of that trying to keep up with two full time undergrad loads...what a joke).

Today was my first day back full time since my bout with H1N1. I went to both shifts at work, took my Bio Lab mid-term, got my scheduled Northwestern school work load done, met with my hiking teacher, had an interesting, semi dis-heartening email conversation with a friend and went back to my second shift at work this afternoon.

There was an event I was supposed to be a part of this evening. I guess I put a lot more stock into it then I should have. I was excited. I have not been around people much since being sick and after my email conversation with previously mentioned friend I just wanted to be outside myself for a while.

Well the event fell through. So I came home, slammed in the ear buds and started up work on a fiction thing I've been batting around for the last couple years in different mediums. I frustrated myself to the point of tears and spent the next two and a half hours working on a poem!.... I know right???

I'm not ready to post it because I realize it was a lot more of a reality than I thought but I'm some how still a little glad I wrote it. Someone has seen it. Someone has read it even...or will within the next couple days and that's all it needed to be. A part of my past, a part of my heart, my present, my future, on screen for myself, for someone else, for tonight.

And now it's done.

My stomach hurts.