Ten things for which I am thankful...on my 29th Birthday

Thanks for the idea Jessie!!!


10) I am thankful that I woke up this morning and there was snow on the ground. The white covering is a beautiful reminder that God, even in barren times, makes all things beautiful.

9) I am thankful for my family and the way that God, time and experience has allowed us to be a cohesive unit once more. Our season of purgatory is over.

8) I am thankful to have spent four years in the most beautiful, magical and overwhelming place I have ever known, Washington, DC. And for all the lessons that time and place brought with it.

7) I am thankful for girlfriends. I am thankful for Karyn, Kate, Connie, Julie, Shelley, Jessie, Amie, and Francie; for what they have taught me about being a woman, a woman of God, a chocolate lover, a race car driver, a red neck, a professional, a lover of pink and Tiffany’s blue and of course Little Debbie.

6) I am thankful for my health and for my renewed commitment to staying healthy so that I can accomplish in this lifetime whatever it is God has for me to do without fear or resignation, rather with resilience and exuberance.

5) I am thankful for The New Originals. I am thankful for the fun, love, laughter, quietude, struggle, and camaraderie I have discovered within their niche. For the renewed sense of expertise rejuvenated and no longer lying fallow. For the courage not to let a resource go untapped simply because I am afraid to use it at all. Thank you for exercising my demon!

4) I am thankful for the Thouret Family and their entire network of wonderful family and friends. Through my time with each and every member I have learned well-timed bombast, wisdom in the pursuit of knowledge, faith, patience, and most importantly for the lesson I have learned in how to receive and accept grace and caring from others. I am so entirely humbled by their benevolence that no words approach sufficiency.

3) I am thankful for the Crossroads youth group which, upon the moment of my return, opened its arms, pulled me in and put me straight back to work for Him with the young people I love more than my own life. This is my legacy, my treasure trove, the thing of which I am most proud and inspired by and the thing to which I commit my heart of hearts.

2) I am thankful for Travis, Julie, Joshua and Victoria. I am only half a person when I am not serving with you, laughing with you, praying with you and “doing life” with you. Thank you thank you thank you for loving me and letting me love you in return.

1) I am thankful for having the courage and good sense God gave me to know that I was braver than most when I chose to leave home and braver still to return when God opened the door knowing full well I had nothing left to prove other than that I know my Shepard’s voice and trust it fully.

Don't look now...

Auto-pilot.......

So many parts of my life feel as though some other person, force (God) has the reins and I can do little but remain a spectator. I don't suspect that I am complaining entirely but it is, to say the least, highly intriguing.

My life has been an experiment in failure, railing against impossible odds and social climbing for most of the last seven years. But in the last few months since I abandoned my pursuit of a life and career in Washington, DC, my life has taken on a whole new feel. I have friends everywhere. I have men friends...lots and lots of 'em! In Virginia I had one male friend in whose company I could find myself on a semi-regular basis. But here...well, for lack of a less crass terminology, I have my very own man-harem. Now, certainly that title is not meant to encompass a lewd connotation in any way. But I am, for sure, surrounded by 'my boys' once again.

Romance has worked its way back into my life despite my best efforts to block it out, ignore or avoid it. And for the first time in my life it is effortless. Completely effortless...

Today is February 13, 2007. Tomorrow is, for many people I know, a completely hateful "holiday." Valentine's day marrs the senses with a feeling of inequity if you find yourself without a paramour and for those who do, by and large the prom-night pressure of the thing usually spoils it.

But for those who, somehow, are wise enough to hold to the idea that spontanaety and an unrehearsed observance of the holiday is wisest, something really terriffic has the chance to transpire.

Allan and I sat on the couch last night as we do most Monday nights these days. We are fans of the show 24, but for different reasons. He for the explosions and plot twists, and I for the fact that I view the plotline from the point of view of a former Washington, DC insider. Either way, we are both enraptured by and ensconced in the thing for the whole hour, or two as the case was last night.

I had come over early because I wanted to cook Allan dinner. I really miss cooking since I'm no longer in my home in Virginia and well...you know what they say about the way to a man's heart. :0)

Allan has become a strange and beautiful blessing in my life. We have such a normal and easygoing relationship with one another. I offered to cook him dinner, honestly, forgetting the whole proximity that last night's date had to Valentine's Day. My birthday is Friday, the 16th, so every year, I usually just ignore the Valentine's thing and skip straight to my little day. Convenient and effective!

I arrived with two bags of groceries and set straight about my task after borrowing adequate pots and pans from his neighbor Toni. In truth I was pretty impressed with how well I pulled off Tuscan Chicken Rollatini with asparagus and red bliss potatoes in his little under-stocked galley kitchen. In between chopping and cutting, Allan asked me if he could help in anyway. I asked that he pound the cutlets flat. He watched quizzically as I combined ingredients, heated pots, and searing pans in my now bare feet in his little kitchen. We sipped light beer and he snacked on pita and hummus while we waited for the meal to finish.

Now that our program was coming on, we settled in, in front of the entertainment center and clinked our forks. I nibbled an asparagus stalk as he cut into his chicken. He spoke easily until he put the food in his mouth when he stopped, chewed, looked at me, and in his very Allan way praised my cooking. Oh my gosh, this is bangin! I chuckled and thanked him, myself, cutting into my chicken. He was right, I outdid myself. In my own thoughts I congratulated myself and merely nodded my agreement.

After we finished our plates, I went to powder my nose during a commercial break. When I got back to the couch, snatched up the pillow I'd been cuddling with and went to sit back down. Allan whooped like I was about to kill something so I leaped back up, spun around a half dozen times looking like "what the heck's goin on here" and when I finally settled back into my skin, there he sat, with a sheepish expression on his face, in his hand he held a velvet heart-shaped-box of chocolate truffles he'd rescued from being sat upon.

My mind took a moment to registere exactly what was goin on. In truth my gut check reaction was that the scenario was so precious I nearly could have died. Bound and determined to keep my cool comportment I acted appropriately surprised and grateful. We shared one of the Dove truffles and I thanked him with a kiss, maybe two. So here I am, 28 (for the next 3 days) and I have a Valentine for the first time in so long I honestly cannot imagine.

I guess it is true, things like this come 'round when you are in no way expecting or looking for them. I'm a cliche and a statistic. Ha. But in truth... this easy-breezy valentine of mine has been the nicest by far. Who knew that not over processing, orchestrating and analyzing could be so nice. (yeh....I know)

OhYe Men of Corinth!

I recently lay watching TV in the company of a gentleman with whom I have an ongoing flirtation. I enjoy his company. He's handsome, funny, actually likes to have good conversation and is even brave enough to let me pick the wine. During our evening, it struck me that perhaps the disconnect between men and boys is that they simply don't know they are men. In truth, if a man does not know he has become a man, versus the boy version of himself, how can he truly be a man?

The word "guy" bothers me. It has all the appeal and polish of Betty Rizzo or Frenchy from Grease calling their paramours "fellas." Well any male can act the part of a guy or a fella. But a real man...who can find him?

As I reclined with this gentleman, I remarked that I enjoyed his company because, though I knew a lot of guys, it was nice to be in the company of a man for a change. Bemused, he mulled the thought over in his head. When I asked him about his quizzical countenance, he remarked that he looked the way he did because, in truth he'd didn't know if anyone had ever referred to him as a man before. It was rather precious, I must say, in one respect. His comportment looked a little like a young boy with a superman cape on in front of a mirror, posturing to admire his new-found manly stature. But on the other hand, it was disconcerting in the extreme to believe that a twenty-eight year old man could not recollect ever having been called a MAN before that moment.

When do we become adults anyway....??? I suppose that in practice we become adults when we move out of mummy and dadums' nest, get a job, buy a car, pay taxes...all that rot. But to be honest, I have friends and acquaintances in their forties doing all that who act like teenagers, are unmarried, and some, sadly, still live with mum and dad.

I suppose because my generation has been made to pack so much "have-to" responsibility into 23 years or less, we just assume we're doing what all the other kids on the block are doing and we lose track of time altogether. Meanwhile, we get to my age...late twenties...and suddenly we want to have some fun. We've earned degrees, won and lost at love and work, moved out and in and out of different place. It's all so "normal." We're young people, young adults. But men? Women?

Anne Shirley, a character I quote often, arrived at her first big job far from home, better than prepared professionally to succeed. But upon meeting her mentor Miss Stacey at the train station she confessed that had Miss Stacey not been there she'd have sat right down and cried because she felt completely green, provincial and only ten-years-old. Now, Anne's character was only 17 at the time, but in the 1910's, 17 was an age by which time a lady was already a career woman or married and keeping house. Certainly I'm not suggesting I'd rather have married my high school sweetheart and been saddled with a half dozen offspring by now, but I think that the heart of the matter is that people in that time were compelled to be adults, women and men, at a much earlier age and given much less leeway to meander about aimlessly under the guise of "finding themselves."

As a Christian woman, there are a lot of expectations that I and my cultural niche have of me. As such, there are certain expectations I have of any potentially serious beau. Chatting with my former roommate Francie of late, I confessed I was all for being the traditional Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 woman, as per what the Bible says a good, godly-wife and woman should be. The problem I have with our present society is that, if it mandates, in my case, for we females to be women who live up to lofty and good ideals such as what is in Proverbs and the book of Titus, then, for the love of GOD (literally) we're gonna need some 1 Corinthians men.

Men need to know they are men. We want you rugged, reserved, wild at heart, your eyes on God, and fully aware that you are MEN MEN MEN not guys, fellas and heaven forbid, boys. We want you to know that we women are not here to "tie you down," burden you, nag you or strangle your dreams. As I said to my Aunt Maria only yesterday, "Heck if he wants to run around the world ten times a year, I'll run with him!"

I suppose our culture has painted the portrait of monogamy, marriage and relationships as that which suffocates dreams. And as such, it must be difficult to, as a male, see yourself as a man versus a young man, fella or guy. I say this for two reasons. The first it that, at times, it is no picnic being someones spouse unless you are a committed, go-getter, goal-orientated person with a marathon mind frame. This reality just smacks of a necessary level of maturity. Second, the Bible says it is not good for a MAN to be alone. If a man doesn't know he is a man, how can he know he ought to have a wife?

My man, should I find him, should know he is a wild stallion I'm in no way trying to tame. My spirit is as adventurous as anyone else's. But he has to know I need him to be strong enough to lead me, not be lead by the nose. No woman, who wants to be with a man for the right reasons, wants a pet or a surrogate child.

It's an awesome thing, to see a real man. As a woman I have to be honest. And yes, I have my green and provincial moments even-still, but for the man who would be there to be just that and protect me, not coddle me, wow is that attractive, alluring and desirable. Go be men, gentlemen. Trust and believe that no amount of toys, awards, bragging, notches in your belt or other status measurement will make up for the lack of it in your own heart.

How could I, a woman, possibly know that? The young man whom I called a man, presumably for the first remember-able time in his life just last week, we'll use his example. I've heard him talk about his work in architecture, his car, his women of yore, and his recent totally braggable business trip to London. None of those stories have ever carried the kind of countenance, posture and aura that my calling him a man in that fleeting moment did so richly deliver.

Don't leave us gals wondering where the men like our fathers have gone. As we women are beseeched by you men to embrace our qualities, our feminine wiles if you will, we ask the same in reverse. Not so much the "Me Tarzan, you Jane, " archetype, rather a real man. Simply a real man who knows he is a man, and seeks to use all the best parts of what he learned in his life as a boy, young man, fellow, and guy to be the best version of himself. Words don't do justice how magnificent it is to see and be in the company of men such as these.