headline

"Prince Harry Falls Off A Horse While Playing Polo, Still Manages To Look Fantastic"

Book Review: "Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology," by Leah Remini

Very interesting and a super fast read. Moral of the story? In case you didn't already think Scientology is crazy, this will 137% convince you it is.

thanksgiving break

i don't know that it's good that i have five days off right now. changes at work have me all upset (way more than they should), and now i'm just sitting at home for a few of these days with it at the back of my mind non-stop. it's already been weighing on me for six days; i need to move on and experience the new normal. i worked from home last night and today just to keep my brain occupied. not quite sure if that made it better or worse, because i just want to commiserate with my co-workers, and of course they haven't been working, except angie some last night which made me both feel better and feel more isolated.
all this to say that prayers would be appreciated. the big change is that our best administrator left as of yesterday (thus the attempt at a giant farewell cookie), which makes us all nervous about our school, as we've already dropped 100 students a year since my old boss/pastor's wife left. i'm not dwelling on the if i'll have a job part too much - this same administrator told thing 5 and me awhile ago as a friend that he figured the school has less than five years, so that's not a new thought (though a more real one when your best guy is gone) - however it is going to change the atmosphere. he's such a nice and funny guy and such a good leader. the day he told us he was leaving, one of the teachers told me that she was the first one at work that day and when she saw the email and was all alone she just wanted to walk out and say she was sick. we all thought we deserved a bereavement day. they should've just given it to us. none of us did anything that day anyway.
i think another reason it's getting to me so much is that he and game of thrones sword guy are good friends and shared an office last year (with thing 5) and he was gotsg's supervisor and they worked together a lot, and him leaving is like the final nail in gotsg's leaving coffin. and i miss gotsg so often. and now this is making that that much worse. it feels like the only people i have left are my boom boom girls, who are most important and who i think will stick with the school til the end, but that just means that if one more person i care about leaves, it all will be over. (wow - i hadn't thought of that last thought until just now - another instance of a blog being therapy.)
and so i guess that sums up my thoughts this thanksgiving break.

pray for the peace of jerusalem

listening to that book on the holocaust, those dreams i had, i don't know what, but i'm feeling very uneasy for jews right now. with all that's going on everywhere else, you'd think i'd be uneasy for people in those places and situations, but the jews are weighing very heavily on my heart these last two days. i feel like something's coming, not necessarily in jerusalem, but somewhere, and it's going to be ugly. hopefully i'm wrong, and it is just due to the book, but i don't know. i really hope i'm proven wrong.

the other dream - which was before the other, but slightly better, so i'm ending on this note instead

i was on a walk with a very intelligent, jeff goldblumesque, atheist jew talking about faith. we were discussing evidences of God and the Old Testament. it was very academic-type conversation. i loved it, and was hoping it was having an impact on him.
we went on a walk again the next night, discussing the same thing, but also including how the New Testament fulfills the Old. such great conversation. the type of conversation i've been looking for. the kind of conversation he'd been looking for. i think it hit both of us at the same time. crap. here we are on a walk around a lake under a starlit sky, enjoying stimulating company, but crap. we can't fall in love. i can't fall in love with an atheist, and he refused to fall in love with a Christian.
and then all of a sudden it was daylight and there was a huge, tornado-like storm, and he had to cling to the metal pole that was holding up a park shelter, and i had to cling to his arm because i couldn't pull myself far enough up to get to the pole, and in the back of my mind i couldn't help but hope that our making it through this would show to him that there is a God.

yes, another dream - two actually

don't listen to a book about nazis at the same time that isis is bombing france. that's my advice.
because last night i was in an isis concentration camp. i'll spare you the details, but we were liberated, so at least that was good. also, they hadn't hurt the baby who was in my barracks (and slept in a casserole dish), though her mother who wasn't in the camp with us was upset that she didn't have her monkey booties on. really, psycho lady? your baby is alive and unharmed and healthy and not starving. and you're going to b*&%^ about her not having her booties?

so last night....

i was pregnant and my baby's adoptive parents backed out, so i had to keep her.
it was terrifying.

reuters photo

i love this picture of the pope and this jean valjean

thing i've noticed

in an effort to not go to bed, i'm once again looking at old blog posts. i see how random it is, how i've grown up over the last nine (yes, nine!) years, all that's gone on. and then i see one glaring change. in the last two years, since being healed from depression, the really deep, spiritually searching posts have faded away. i find this to be both good and bad. good in that i'm not asking God things like why do i have to live when i have no purpose and needing to seek in that way, but bad in that why am i not seeking Him now in a deep enough way to have something worth sharing with all of you. i may throw a good quote at you once in awhile, but there aren't things that provoke good, solid conversations. 
my time under the cloud of depression was not a spiritual wasteland. God was there through every step of it. it drew me close to Him in a way that nothing else could. father neuner, mother teresa's confessor, once said about her life of darkness, "The sure sign of God's hidden presence in this darkness is the thirst for God, the craving for at least a ray of His light." that was there. desperate and hanging on by a thread, but looking back now, i see that that made it more palpable.
so now my challenge is to get back to that state of desperation for God. not through depression, but through thankfulness. not through a feeling of desolation, but through a feeling of joyful desire to be with and serve the One who has freed me. i cannot take this healing for granted. it needs to be used to draw me closer to Him than i ever have been before.

being a girl is stupid, or, tmi

there. i was a good girl and got a physical for the first time in at least five years. (it's been so long that it's not in their computer records, so the doctor doesn't know how long it's actually been.)
and now i remember why i don't do it. frickin' ow, man.