it’s not about you

I just noticed that a few posts down I spelled the word “funny” as “fummy.” Now that’s fummy.

Joshua and I were invited to a surprise party for my friend Beth’s 30th birthday. I lived with Beth, her husband Kenny, and their amazing baby, Sara(h) for about five months before I married Joshua. Sarah’s now 4 years old and has lots of hair. The Broom’s moved to Kentucky and back to the Dallas area, had another baby who just turned 2 in September, and are moving to Flower Mound tomorrow. They had the surprise party at their new house.

In the e-mail invitation, Kenny listed his house address as 4909. I google-mapped it, and we showed up at the appropriate time, except that it wasn’t his house. The people who live there, who pulled up while we were parked in front of their house, were looking at as warily, so I got out and asked them if if the Brooms lived there. The owners were surprised to learn that their house belonged to someone else.

They recommended other streets in the neighborhood with the eerily similar names. We drove around to all the like-named streets we could find, but none of the house numbers matched. We even put in a phone call to another possible partygoer with no answer. We were about to give up and decided to give the first street one last try. When we did, we saw people we know obviously on their way to the party. They walked up to a house that wasn’t the right one. They were given the same address we were. At least we were on the same page.

The wonderfully nice people at the second wrong house let us use their computer to try to look up the address again. We told them about how we haven’t seen the Brooms in forever and how we were trying to get to a surprise party. They said, “well we’ve got ice cream and Cokes. We could just have a party here, then.” It was very sweet, as they were a bit of an older couple.

Jon, one of our friends, tried to call our mutual possible partygoer friend and got ahold of her. She gave us Kenny’s number and we called and got ahold of him. Their house was two doors down, number 4904. So we finally made it, and boy was Beth ever surprised to see us.

It was really good to see them. When I first met Kenny, we really butted heads. He was the new college minister at my church when I was in college, and he thought I was heretical. Told me so to my face in a room full of people. He really hurt my feelings when that happened. It hurt because I love Jesus more than anything, and was going through some hard things and was trying to be honest about where I was at. I wasn’t trying to justify it, ot rationalize it away, I was just trying to share what I was going through. I didn’t really like him much shortly afterward.

Kenny didn’t know how much he had hurt my feelings. We’re a lot alike in many ways — and he had just said what he though without thinking of the effect (sound like anyone you know, hmm?). I told him, i think that next Sunday, that he had really hurt me, and explained how I felt and we talked about it for a minute.

Now I’m not going to say on my blog that Kenny Broom cried, but his eyes got red and they did water just ever so slightly. I will say I cried.

We continued to butt heads throughout the rest of my college career and his ensuing tenure as the college minister, but after that initial incident, we had a better understanding of each other. I think one of the reasons we butted heads so much is because we are so much alike (a fact we both vehemently and loudly cried foul about whenever anyone would mention it to either one of us). We are also wildly different, but that’s another blog post. Once Kenny learned I played soccer in high school, he liked me much better. Who knew what it takes? If anyone had told us back then that after a year, we’d be housemates… well, I just don’t know.

Happy Birthday, Beth. We’ll have to get our munchkins together.

I get the Dallas Morning News Breaking News Alert e-mail from dallasnews.com. Apparently a bus heading from Houston to Dallas carrying ill and eldery Hurricane Rita evacuees exploded on I-45 near WIlmer. 20 people died.

I cannot imagine what to feel right now. That is awful. To die in a bus explosion while trying to responsibly leave a possibly dangerous situation. The irony is not funny. I pray that God would be with their families as they go through the shock and as they grieve, that the Comforter would comfort them and the emergency response people who had to respond to such a ghastly thing.

Yesterday, Judah pulled all my journals off the bookcase and was piling them up everywhere. I collected them and set them ont he futon for a moment, and then got inspired to read them. I read them ALL, from June of 1997 to the last entry I put in there in February of 2005. I think there are eight journals. They chronicle the depression I went through after my mom died, the dysfunctional ensuing relationship and breakup with my boyfriend, my struggle with learning to live without my mom, getting through all those monthly markers, the way God shaped me through that, and my first summer doing summer missions. They chronicle the meeting and dating relationship of a man I loved and would have married, had he asked, and also all my doubts about whether he was the One, and then the devastating breakup and lack of direction my life took afterward. They chronicle the continued agony of more days between having my mom alive, of learning that I truly loved Joshua and the surety of that love, our pre-engagement period (we never really dated), engagement, and how the journaling dissipated once I got married.

It’s pretty amazing to go back through and relive 8 years of my life in one afternoon and evening. i’m journaling again. I wrote one entry today.

okay, this is FUNNY.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the futon while Judah was happily playing on the floor, whe I noticed a fummy smell — kind of like mist intermingled with sweet flowers. I think it was the freon giving out on our window unit in the apartment. i didn’t know this at the time, until a few minutes later, when the A/C cut out completely.

I called Dawn and told her the A/C just died, after I chatted with Joshua, who suggested the first thing I do was check the plug. Totally dead, that thing.

A new A/C unit was brought over this morning by Dawn. She and Joshua apparently had a hell of a time getting the old monstrosity out of the window. Dawn had to go, so my manly, manly, husband figured out the new one (with no instructions - they weren’t provided!) and we now have new A/C. Thank God, cuz it’s supposed to be 101 degrees today. ONE HUNDRED AND ONE. This is so reason to get outta Texas, right there. It’s freaking the end of September, for cryin’ out loud.

Let’s hear it for refrigerated air!

I went to a thinkstorm meeting for Damaris Project’s National Gathering last night. I walked away very excited about the gathering and inspired to do and be MORE.

If you are a woman and remotely interested in spirituality and/or social change, you need to go to this thing. Shit, if you’re a man and you’re intersted in helping empower women in your life to make a difference in their worlds, you need to be at this thing too. They’ll even have an “underground men’s table.”

Naomi Wolf will be a speaker. Registration is $155 and includes meals for the all-day conference. I spoke with Lilian, Damaris Project’s founder, and if money is a problem and people are willing to sponsor your fee or part of your fee, they can send checks to Damaris with your name in the memo. You’d have to keep track of it yourself, though, I think.

I will try to get something cool-looking up on here soon. I’ll have to talk to my webmaster about that though.

i was slightly fussed at for not having blogged recently enough, and then my blog went blank, due to the fact that I haven’t posted in seven days, the default for my template. My webmaster has fixed the problem, however.

Judah’s favorite thing to do these days is play in our wardrobe. She climbs in, closes the doors, then opens one, leans out and says either “hi,mommy,” or “‘night, mommy.” I’m gettting a little tired of constantly telling her to get out of the closet.

I picked up Rob Pepper from DFW yesterday. I love it when your friends’ friends quickly become your friends. I taught Judah how to say, “Howdy, Rob!” as a greeting for when we met him at the international arrival area, but she dissolved into shyness immediately upon introductions. Rob is a cool guy. We were hoping to go to the Grassy Knoll, so he could draw, but it it was hot, muggy, he wanted a shower, and I had to get dinner started. Rob, you’ll just have to come back through so we can go.

I really like Rob’s premise for creating art — he values the experience of creation over the finished product itself. I very much like that, as it’s very much about BEING, and he’s very good at what he does, including the finished products. I’m hoping we can go to Houston for the Doxology opening, if our budget will allow.

And we got to see SHANNON!! AND Derek and Amy! We haven’t seen them in forever. It was good to be surrounded by people with whom your soul connects. And Derek had some encouraging words for me as well, which were, well, encouraging.

So I’m feeling a little inspired today. Not sure to do with it, but I am feeling it.