merry christmas.

Does it feel like Christmas? I’m not sure I know what Christmas feels like. It changes by the year. This year I live in my own house with my own tree and my own nativity. It feels strange. Mark, Sidney and I are in Pittsburgh this year for Christmas, which is something I have never done, been away from the five Fickers and a golden retriever on Christmas morning. It is all very different, but it is Christmas. It is December twenty-fourth. I think maybe the hard part of growing up is figuring out where you fit.

But I have been pondering this “feeling of Christmas,” and it’s coming together.

In college, when I studied abroad, we backpacked in France, Switzerland and Austria. I wore flip flops—leather Rainbows—the whole time. This idiocy resulted in a stress fracture in the lower bone of my second toe on the right foot. It still hurts, especially in the winter. And the toe that I broke kicking the foot of my bed last year also hurts. They flare up in the winter when it’s cold. Our new house is the perfect house. It is old, though, and the floors are this beautiful railway station wood with staple marks. The floors are so cold that my feet are usually white by bed time. Well Mark and I celebrated Christmas with one gift apiece, our dog, and some Christmas music in the background the other night at the foot of our tree. And you know what he did? He got me these unbelievable Eskimo slippers from L.L. Bean. The suede moccasin type, with fur spilling out on the sides and through the stitching at the toe. For the first time, my toes don’t ache in the cold, because they’re warm and the faux fir cushions them. I forget about the little slivers in the bones when I’m wearing the slippers. I think this is the spirit of Christmas.



And we got this dog--as, if you read 2 posts ago, you know was a small step for humanity and a GIANT leap for Ginny--who has surprised me by being perhaps the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. I didn't realize how much I would love the never being alone, even when I'm writing at home in the afternoon and it is so quiet in the house because the heat is resting. Before, I would become so isolated in being alone in the silence of writing that I would have this unbelievable urge to SCREAM. Seriously, I would just want to yell to hear a sound in the house. Ever since Sidney came home, I don't have that because I talk to her periodically. I run ideas by her, tell her about my word choices for dialogue and narrative. She usually looks at me and sort of tilts her little head. She is an active listener and I am never alone now. I think this is the spirit of Christmas.



My iPod got stolen out of my car in October, which is obviously terrible, but my mom loaned me hers so I could listen to Christmas music all December. We had a dinner party on Monday and there was a leftover bottle of Cabernet. My sister got to go see Amy Grant in concert, singing the songs we grew up listening to all our lives for the entire month of December. We got a gorgeous 9-foot Fraser Fir from Food Lion for $29.99. Gift cards to restaurants in Winston-Salem so we can go out to eat! The recent remission of my awful case of post-novel writers block and the return of my muse, who is a small Irish man in my head. Three inches tall--material for another post another day. These are all the spirit of Christmas.

And Immanuel, God with us. That, chiefly, is the spirit of Christmas. Merry Christmas, and may the increase of His peace be with you this Christmas.

i thought i would never see these grades again...

I am terrible at math. TERRIBLE. And science. And anything left brain oriented, really. Math and science teachers in high school liked me because I was polite, but were generally irritated by my inability to understand concepts. Pre-Calculus was a nightmare and even Nutrition Science, a blow-off Senior year elective, required lab experiments and reports that effected more academic stress than Advanced Placement English Literature with T.B.

It is exam week at the school where I tutor and teach, and last week I tried to help one of my students study for her Pre-Calculus mid-term. She had this big packet with graphs, equations, logarithms, strange runes and cuneiform I swear I have never seen before. We sort of plodded through, consulting Google for help several times, all the while me spouting out fragments of apologies for my great inability to be any help AT ALL.

"Do you have to take math in college?" she asked me suddenly. She wants to be a writer. That's my girl.

I frowned. "Yes. Well, I did. One course. I took Elementary Statistics with S.G. It was a requirement to take one Math course, and Elem. Stat. was reported to be the easiest."

I continued to tell her how I not only took this course, but I came darn close to failing. I used to drag my butt out of bed freshman year, when I still thought I should major in Communications (BAH! That's a laugh) to traipse up the hill by the lake and over to the math building, where I would stop at the vending machine for strawberry pop tarts and then rest my head in my hands, elbows on the desk, and LITERALLY hold my eyelids open with my fingers. Shamelessly.

It is a gift of grace that I passed that course, and in relating this story to C. I decided to e-mail S.G., five years later.

Here is the e-mail I sent:


Dear Mr. G., (Insert: I obviously started out wrong by not referring to him as "Professor Extrordinaire")

You won't remember me, but I took your 8 am Tuesday/Thursday Elementary Statistics course my sophomore year at JMU, in 2005. I struggled MASSIVELY in that course, recieved test scores of 27% and 48% or something awful like that. I was an English Literature major with a concentration in Creative Writing and it was such a struggle for me to understand math.

You passed me in that course with a "C," a grade that I probably (or most definitely) did not deserve. I wanted to say THANK YOU for having grace on me. I am a writer now, working on my second fictional novel, and I most certainly NEVER use math. I also work at a high school teaching and tutoring mostly English and Writing, but occasionally a student will ask for help studying for a Pre-Calc test or something, and I tell them about you and your class and how I bawled when I got that 27%.

It's all in the past, but I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated you, what a great teacher you are in spite of my idiocy, and that I'll never forget you-

Have a great holiday,

Ginny Evans. (used to be Ginny Ficker)




Later, I recieved this reply:




Hi Ginny,
Thanks for your kind message. Using ecampus I was able to find your photo, although this service for showing photos was not available back in 2004. I almost vaguely recognize you, after seeing your photo. I retrieved your old grades, and your final score was a 72.2%. You had only one absence (9/23/2004), and I slightly bumped your grade up to a 72.5%, which rounds to a 73%, a "C"! Below are your grades, which may remind you of "auto-grade," which I still use in addition to "auto-attendance" and (my new one) "auto-cell-phone" (for keeping records of students who brandish a cell phone during class).


HW1 Ex1 HW2 Ex2 HW3 HW4 Ex3 HW5 HW6 FEx
Maximum 10 100 10 100 10 10 100 10 10 100
Ficker Ginny 7 80 9 80 10 9 46 10 10 69


I looks as though your one bad grade was a 46, but I've seen much worse, and I'm sure you have too. It was good hearing from you, and I hope everything is going well for you.


Best wishes,
S.G.

It made my day. First of all, the fact that he found my entire profile in his gradebook catacombs is historic. Furthermore, the fact that he RECOGNIZED the fuzzy picture is even more hilarious. Yes, probably because I was the kook holding my eyes open. (Sorry, S.G.) Then, add on this sweet, encouraging word. Made me want to e-mail every teacher I have ever known and tell them to follow my blog! Look me up on facebook! LET'S BE FRIENDS NOW THAT I'M AN "ADULT!"


If you have a similar story, I recommend e-mailing. You never know what you're gonna get....

i wouldn't say i'm a 'dog person.'

Historically, Mark is the most difficult person to shop for at birthdays and Christmastime because he doesn't want anything. I've tried suggesting things, new clothes, new technology, new music. He is always polite, sort of shrugs and smiles and says, "That's fine." I think maybe the only thing he has ever actually asked for specifically, besides a new pair of football cleats, is a dog. So you can imagine my frustration, being someone who thought I might get away with a dog-free existence when I moved out of my parents' house. I am EASY to shop for and Mark has given me incredible gifts--trips, jewelry, devices and clothes to keep me warm in winter most commonly--so I wanted to be able to do the same.

But I did not want a dog.

Fast forward a year and a half. And meet Sidney.









It had become an issue as much of my not wanting the inconvenience/mess/no sleep effect/DOG HAIR/massive warm body in the little house that could weigh as much as me (God forbid), as an issue of resistance. I realize this now. How juvenile. About three months ago, as I sat on the white rocker on the front porch with my feet tucked up under me, drinking coffee and reading my Bible, it occurred to me that Mark doesn't just want a dog. He needs a dog. A pal to train and take care of, to own and love. He needs a friend to come home to who wants to play, throw a ball, run around the house. This will NEVER be me, thus, the dog. Furthermore, it occurred to me how my introverted husband would be blessed to be loved unconditionally by one who wouldn't ask him details of his day, what he's thinking when he isn't talking, or if he would mind deep cleaning the bathroom, pretty please. The dog doesn't care if there is toothpaste splatter on the mirror.

I wanted an English Golden. He wanted a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog. We went with the Swissy, considering all of the above. The dog would be for him. I specifically remember saying to someone, "I'm sure the dog will hate me and love Mark. I'll probably be so hard on her."

Well, well, well. Not so. I submit to the fact that I was wrong. I have fallen in love.



Wouldn't you? I mean, OH.MY.GOSH. look at that dog. Little Sidney Evans is this incredible, tiny, floppy, clumsy, easy-going foot heater with massive paws that makes me laugh just by looking at her, and I've transformed into a gushy care bear of a human when I'm around her. I promise that I will not become a person who discusses her pet as if she is a child prodigy, nor will my blog become a platform for Sidney worship, but let me take this post to say

THIS DOG MAKES ME SIMPLY BLISSFUL.

(except when she pees on my favorite rug.)

the same.

"The love of our neighbor is the only door out of the dugeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescences out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe."

[#49] George MacDonald: An Anthology of 365 Readings by C.S. Lewis

an excerpt from draft two of the novel.

Siena is Italy’s forgotten treasure, the trove of rubies and crowns that American tourists overlooked when calendars and post cards glamorized the Ponte Vecchio in Firenze and the charming pressed together row houses sinking into the canals by fractions of millimeters each year in Venezia. The bolded city names on a map of Italy include others, like Roma and Milano, but never Siena. On the map, the medieval city appears to be a mere skosh of a town. But it is not.

The approach to the walled fortress is uphill from all angles. Outside the walls for kilometers small suburbs full of pizzerias and Laundromats blanket the gently rising terrain. There are bus stops along the way, sitting places for small women wearing wool skirts that fall to mid-shin and scarves to cover their short hair. It is dusty in August, hot and dry, and as you approach one of the city gates there is less and less green and more stone. The gates, palatial in their day no doubt, are now simple arched entryways into the wide stone stronghold.

Crossing underneath one of these archways, you are starkly transported to a very “other” place, if you can imagine such a thing. Suddenly medieval, the view is stone on stone on sky, rich, blue sky like the Mediterranean, often cloudless. Stone streets wind inscrutably around corners, connecting to other avenues, invariably stone, all similarly bent and uneven. At once it is a maze of mystery and appeal. Structures, the veins and muscle of the city, rise up from the narrow streets, one continuous system that houses apartments for singles or families, trattorias, small restaurants and markets, churches, hotels, panty shops, stocking shops, wine shops, cigar shops, boutiques, patisseries, tailor shops, ancient meeting places, butchers, pottery stores, gift shops and, more than any other thing, cafés. At just the right time of day, usually late afternoon, every door is swung wide open and the city dwellers bustle in and out like ants on an anthill. Small cars move slowly through the streets, avoiding the surge of pedestrians, with drivers often honking and shouting, “Va!” through the window, crossly pumping their fists in frustration at the traffic caused by careless foot people who believe in walking. A car larger than a shrunken utility truck is an anamolie, and is usually met with dirty looks from grandmothers on foot. The breezeless city streets, blockaded from any sideways air flow, are hot and the sun is bright off of the stone. Women move from shop to shop, filling their baskets with bread and prociutto, while school children play with balls around statues of the wolves Romulus and Remus seven hundred years old.

Everything points toward the city center: The Piazza del Campo. The “Campo,” as everyone refers to it, is one of the most distinguished, beautiful and unique piazzas in the country. Exquisite in it’s grandiose shell shape, the entire floor structure points casually down and inward for the most perfectly-erected drainage system built to service the entire city. Incredibly, the architects of the city created a center for both the practical functioning of the city itself, as well as a center for socialization. There is no place as busy as the Campo at any time of day.

In the evening, the nocturnal old men come to the streets to socialize. Posses of men in caps and slacks stand on corners and against stone walls, speaking with gross animation and waving hands. They smoke pipes and cigarettes, laughing and buzzing in low tones of quick Italian. Oh how they laugh with such an easy delight! It is hard to imagine they have ever seen sorrow, that they were ever anything other than simply content in work, family, city and life. They mingle for a few hours, until at least nine or ten o’clock in the evening. Then they mosey away, bidding each other, “Ciao,” in a nonpartisan tone, until we meet again. Tomorrow. Then they go home, up into apartments above a street where Signora is busy cooking a dinner of at least four impeccable courses.

Though the city appears blithe and placid, the tension of pride and the honor of generations underlies the rhythm of the Sienese in a way that circumvents the eyes of tourists and foreigners. Seventeen contrade constitute the corners of the city, marking Siena with invisible lines of unspeakable allegiance. Each citizen of the city belongs to one: Tower, Caterpillar, Unicorn, Ram, Porcupine, Eagle, Snail, Little Owl, Dragon, Giraffe, Seashell, Goose, Wave, Panther, Forest, Tortoise or She Wolf. Colorful coats of arms are the insignias of each pocket sub-community and one recognizes the street he treads by the flags that hang from sconces, windows and doors...

To Light a Thousand Windows

...is the title of the book for now. That's progress, folks.

signing back in.

I've probably clicked the little "blog" tab on my browser favorites bar three times in the last two and a half months, and every time I sit there waiting for the page to load I have this irritated little upper-lip smile because I know I should post, but I just.don't.want.to. Ah! True confessions of a writer. Reprehensibly, next to something huge has sat untouched since August twelfth--and it isn't that I think I have some massive following, but I have this sort of anxiousness about it, because if there is one thing I never want to slack on, it is writing. If I call myself a writer, I should write. And I am. Writing, that is.

From mid-July to mid-October I wrote the first draft of my second manuscript. This is big for me, as the first one took 10.5 months and is still in this massive compression chamber of editing/work/hacking/sewing it back together. But this second book has truly captivated me, as evidenced by the speed at which the first draft was drafted. Inspired by Stephen King's memoir On Writing, I disciplined myself to write almost every single day during that time period, no matter what, to fly hastily on the wings of inspiration, or to stare blankly at what amounted sometimes to a single paragraph in two hours. That's what I did, and the book is now in the editing phase. THE POINT IS, please understand (self, I am speaking primarily to you) that my absence in the blogosphere has been in the name of passionate novel creation. The tragedy is that the book is yet untitled. When I have the title, I'll post it.

But a lot has happened in the world! Jonathan Adams, the worlds most fabulous nephew, turned two and threw down. My best friends and housemates from college had a reunion for the first time since graduation in May of 2008. We threw an epic birthday cocktail party for Mark's 26th in September and had folks in the home until Sunday began to dawn. We celebrated the first era of our marriage, having read the entire Harry Potter series aloud, by spending a weekend in Universal Studios (FL) visiting the very Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We took a couple hundred kids to Young Life's Windy Gap, watched UNC beat Clemson live, stood by Erin Rawley as she became Erin Boyd, and went back to our Alma Mater, James Madison University, this weekend. Instead of stories, I bring you pictures.

1. Jonathan turns 2.


2. Brick House Reunion 2k10.


3. Epic Mad Men themed cocktail birthday party.


4. Wizarding World of Harry Potter




5. Beautiful October wedding: Erin Rawley and Adam Boyd!






5. Back to JMU...

wanted: taste tester for doughnuts.

Living the dream is called being paid thirty dollars in cash to be a famous local doughnut corporation that shall remain nameless taste-tester for one hour.

Last week I heard from a temp in the doc’s office where I work part-time that the doughnut brand we'll call Crinkly Custard was hiring ‘townspeople’ to test their newest potential line of doughnuts. I called the hotline, spoke to a nice little woman who shall remain nameless and was, in fact, assured that I would be paid cash to taste five doughnuts. Immediately I agreed and signed up for 3:00 Wednesday.

Today I drove fifteen minutes to the middle of nowhere/High Point, NC region and arrived at the CC Factory location. Went inside to find a few of my friends (who I turned onto this coveted wage labor) and was ushered into a board room of comfortable black leather swivel chairs, mini water bottles and small piles of saltine crackers.



The woman in charge entered the room once the test group was all seated and informed us that we were participating in a “market research study” to determine which of the potential doughnuts would take flight if introduced to the general doughnut-consuming public. She used very official language, which made me laugh because we were tasting doughnuts.

Instructions such as “We suggest you take bites or a bite of each doughnut so that you don’t get so uncomfortably full that you don’t enjoy the last samples” and “We suggest that after each sample you sip the water, eat a cracker, and sip the water once more in order to cleanse your palate.” Meanwhile, I’m staring at the bajillion CC posters from years and years of epic fried dough advertising. I swear this is all true.

Next, this chick in a very short hot pink dress comes out with a tray hoisted above her shoulder of individual doughnuts on doilies, delivering them like a 1920s waitress on skates. My three friends and I couldn’t stop laughing, which apparently aggravated the woman in the row ahead of us because she kept turning to look over her shoulder and give us the eye. Anyway, this very adorable girl delivers the most ornate, enormous doughnuts I've seen in a long time, along with forks and knives, for tasting. This occurred five times over the course of the hour.



Near the end, my cell phone alarm (which I did not set, thank you) went off, probably botching the whole study because it disturbed the taste-testing zen, and to which my friend hissed, “they told us to turn those off!”

How’d I get the pictures? You’ll be glad to know, bloggies, that I snuck my camera into the taste test because it was just too good to be true. I needed to prove it. Thanks local doughnut mecca that shall remain nameless!

Lessons learned:
-Don't judge a doughnut by its frosting.
-Sometimes life does get handed to you on a silver platter.
-We weren't wrong. Getting paid to taste yummy food really is the best job on earth.

weekend in beaufort, sc.

June 2008: Evans meet Pratts in Israel.

May 2009: Evans see Pratts at Evans wedding.

August 2010: Evans visit Pratts at beautiful, waterside home in Beaufort, SC. (see below)

6/08


5/09


8/10










Thanks, Pete and Nancy! We love you like family :)

this post doesn't make sense unless you read the last one.

I decided to take a risk. I shut Dora (my incredibly perfect, brilliant, internet savvy MacBook) and shoved her white little self in my bag, got up and left Starbucks without purchasing a darned thing.

Started walking around the corner of the city block, and just as I did, MY CELL PHONE RANG. Did my husband secretly stick it in my shoulder bag as I exited the Jetta? Probably. Anyway, it was a text message from my brother asking me if the initials R.A.B. in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince stand for Regulus A. Black.

Feeling much better about leaving my pick-up point, I continued the CFA search. Truth: I looked up from my cell phone and found myself staring through the Chick-fil-a window!

OH.MY.GOSH.

Walked inside.

They were out of Lemonade.

irony - i am laughing.

On one of those unbearably long road trips from Fort Myers, FL, to JMU after a summer of driving no more than twenty miles to hit the beach at Sanibel Island, my mom said something totally uncharacteristic that I will never forget. "On road trips, I live to eat."

Mark and I are, as I type, in the thick of a road trip. I sit in a Starbucks on Trade Street in Charlotte, NC with incredible natural lighting as a result of the number of windows. This Starbucks has great ambiance and I have just been sitting in a green velvet chair reading Stephen King's memoir, On Writing. We are headed to Beaufort, South Carolina for the weekend to visit dear friends we met traveling in Israel. They are precious, in their fifties, just moved from New York state to the shore in Beaufort because they wanted to. They're delightful and happy and the last time we saw them was at our wedding 2 Mays ago.

We got to leave early today because Mark has an appointment for work here in Charlotte. Here is where all of these facts come together.

I really want a large Lemonade from Chick-fil-a. I have been craving these lately, but I can't justify spending $2.22 any old day. But a road trip justifies a nonconventional drink purchase, right? When the GPS system said we were 15 minutes from our destination, the place Mark was headed for this appointment, we started looking for a Chick-fil-a where I could be dropped off to purchase a Lemonade, hang out, refill said Lemonade, hit the bathroom, until he returned to get me.

We scoured the GPS to find the closest CFA, but there wasn't one, hence I sit in Starbucks, but I do not want coffee.

Just a second ago I was sitting here and looked up out of these incredible windows, and there was a man, sauntering past, holding a Chick-fil-a cup! No. It cannot be.

Turns out, there is a Chick-fil-a somewhere around here... internet says it is within 0.1 miles. Here's the catch... I didn't bring my cell. Mark said he'd just come back for me.

Do I go get the Lemonade and search for a pay phone?

simon and garfunkel and movies.

Simon and Garfunkel stimulates such aching nostalgia for me about growing up it takes my breath away. Literally. Last night Mark and I were watching the movie ("moomie" as Jonathan, my nephew would say) Bobby, a 2006 flick nominated for a couple of Golden Globes and Academy Awards about the day that Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, a watching which carried on until entirely too late an hour considering our alarms would sound at 5:45 this morning. We have trouble conceptualizing cause and effect relationships: i.e. if you stay up til midnight, you will be tired at 5:45. Nevertheless, we continue to pretend we're at college and that watching late night movies during the week is a good idea. I digress.

The movie is brilliant - one of those surprisingly entrancing performances with a stacked cast of five star actors and actresses that makes you proud to be an American because even though we live in a young country, we've got some pretty massive history. Senator Kennedy's death at the end of the movie is obviously no surprise, so you sort of anticipate it the whole time you're watching, which gives the whole story a grave poignancy, though when the gunshot is delivered in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel it is still shocking. My head had been on Mark's knee, and I sat bolt upright as the images flashed between the real 1968 footage and the movie footage from 38 years later in Hollywood, amazingly grafted together.

"The Sounds of Silence," a song that sails me to six years old in West Chester riding in my dad's car on a summertime Saturday morning to the hardware store, watching dust and lint particles glisten against the windshield and the feel of the polyester fabric against my skinny little legs. Simon and Garfunkel, Billy Joel, James Taylor, the Oldies FM station... the first entries in my musical memories. And although I still love that music, truly, it stirs me up so much to hear it now - makes me want to be there again - small and spindly and young, unaware and mostly happy. No shoes, wild hair, playing with my big sister in the creeks and muddy woods. Perfectly, the haunting song plays behind a speech of Robert Kennedy, which plays overtop scenes from the news that day.

This is just to say that I haven't seen a really good movie in a while (except Inception) and Bobby is a really good movie.

the end of an era.

Two weeks after we got married, Mark and I started at the beginning. It wasn’t new for me, but for Mark! Can you imagine? Do you remember the way it felt to enter in, not knowing the ending?

I’m sorry, let me clarify: Harry Potter, the book series. I had read the series three times by the time we got married, but Mark had never read the books. Furthermore, he’d only seen one or two of the movies.

Inspired by a friend who had read the series aloud to her husband and two teenage daughters on a long road trip out west, I offered it to Mark. What do you think about me reading Harry Potter to you, all seven books, out loud? Though perplexed, Mark is the monarch of all things fun and childlike and he agreed. It was May of 2009.

Last night we read the final pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. After fifteen months of seven books, hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours, three times I had to stop and cry, many many nights sitting up late in bed when work mornings waited just a few hours around the corner, the first season of our marriage! Oddly, last night felt more like a milestone than our one year anniversary.

Two young adults, newlywed, reading a children’s book series aloud is kind of strange admittedly. But it’s kind of the way we are.

I begged Mark to let me photograph the moment:




To top it all off, Mark purchased two tickets to the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Universal Studios, FL) and we will be road-tripping down to Orlando in September for two nights and one day at Hogwarts.

weeds and thorns.

So many things I never understood that now make sense, so many things that have crystallized as I've gotten older. For instance: weeds and thorns.

Jesus talked about how there are many ways a person could receive (or fail to receive) understanding of the kingdom of God. He tells the parable of the soil - how many seeds were sown, but the result of the laying of seed was varied: some of the seeds never took root, some of the baby plants were scorched under the hot sun, some plants got wrapped up in the thorns, which choked them to death, and only a small group actually sunk into the soil, began to grow roots, sprouted out of the earth, and grew to produce a crop.

I have heard that parable many times and over the course of my short life, I have related to every one of those seeds.

This morning I went out to my herb garden. I have an unhealthy affection for this garden that produces copious basil and flat leaf parsley, beautiful rosemary, mint and chives. The sage plant never really did well - guess it was a lemon. The cilantro was the tallest one for a while until the ground temperature got (and stayed) to high, which killed it. The mint is not looking too good these days and I haven't been able to figure out why. Anyway, some of the losses are disappointing, but for my first herb garden I've been pleased with the fruits of my labor.

Anyway, I've been noticing some weeds growing in and around the bed, which is enclosed in a wooden rectangle frame built by my father in law. I decided, as I was already sweaty, that I'd pull up some of the weeds. They grow all around the beds surrounding the house, and even into the yard, but I've sort of let them go because they're not so bad. In fact, they look more healthy and lush than my grass, so why bother?

When I started pulling up this very grass-like weed, I found that underneath the grassyness was this long snake-like vine. Very thin, but strong and a little bit sharp at points. This "vine" or whatever it is (green thumbs, feel free to comment) was growing in one long stretch around my garden with fingers and legs extending down and around. I pulled it up, following it into another bed and out toward the grass. I was shocked! This little devil is choking my plants by the neck and I've been walking by for the past month letting it grow, thinking that the weeds weren't "so bad."

As I was sweating in the 90-degree pulsing sun, hunched over my exquisite little patch yanking weeds up and replacing the dirt, I suddenly thought of the parable and had abrupt comprehension. The sneaky way of that sharp vine, traveling underneath the benign green, choking my plants before my very eyes, suddenly registered. I started to think about two things: fear and jealousy. The way they choke and strangle me, and how oblivious I am. And the occasional combination of the two? Have mercy. I need to be weeded. Big time.

Surprised at the perfection of the analogy for a minute, I thought about how precisely accurate Jesus was when he tried to get his disciples to understand this principle of the kingdom and its movement, how universal were his explanations. But why should I be surprised?

siena.

Having just begun proceedings on my next book project, I have been somewhat burrowed down into the cushions of planning and thinking. Although this kind of works makes me feel more free and more excited, I think that to any outside onlooker I have become a little bit loony and hermit-like. Example: Last week I spent four hours researching Siena, Italy in the stacks of the Wake Forest Library, an invaluable resource, especially in summer.

Circling back, I emphasize that this book does, in fact, take place in Siena, Italy. It was in this fair city that Kaili and I studied abroad for four glorious months in the fall of my Junior year of college. It is the city of stacking buildings atop eachother, Ricciarelli, the Campo and Due Porte (a hole-in-the-wall pizza place that changed my life forever). Planning this book sets me right back down in the middle of those memories. Sitting here, surveying the storehouse, I see thousands of images...

envelopes.

Having just returned from a week at Young Life's Sharp Top Cove week summer camp, my body is screaming: "YOU ARE NO LONGER IN HIGH SCHOOL!" Thank you, body, for your blunt reminder. Bruised, sore, exhausted and hoarse, I'm having trouble bringing my mind back to Winston-Salem, NC. I keep waking up thinking I should be on the top bunk in a room with 15 sleeping girls.

It is a great privilege to be a Young Life leader; moreover, a Young Life leader in Forsyth County. A great bond exists between the leaders in this city, enough that sometimes it seems to be nothing more than a gift and a joy. Taking kids to camp is one of the single greatest challenges I've ever met, in part due to the physicality of a week of running, jumping, screaming, biking, hiking, blobbing, swimming, competing and staying up late and getting up early. In terms of emotions, the week is also exhausting relating to kids, leaders, and people 24-7. I found that even in sleep I dreamed very vivid dreams of experiences I had had that day or would have later. During the week I confess there were times I counted down to returning home, but now that I am here, comfortable in Winston, a large part of me only wants to return.

The magic of camp lies here: that kids get to be kids for a week and, in that week, they get to hear that life really does hold something for them - that the God of creation loves them, one-to-one, with a great and everlasting love. Watching a high school kid grasp that truth for the first time, and the strange, otherworldly peace it brings, is like the rising sun on the ocean.

A favorite moment was when, on the last morning of camp, all of the high schoolers from Forsyth County, along with leaders, gathered together in a big room on camp. Each kid was given a piece of paper and an envelope so each one could write himself a letter that would be mailed to him or her six months later. We promised that nobody would read it, that they could write anything they wanted. A silent room inhaled and exhaled for fifteen writing minutes. I noticed kids finishing and began walking about the room to pick up the letters. The first person I came to, a very formidable African-American football player, sat there staring at the envelope.

"You need to address it to yourself," I whispered.

"I don't know how."

Suddenly I realized that this kid, and a ton of others, had never been taught to address an envelope. Disappointing though I was in the school systems of America, I sidled up next to this kid and helped him write his name and address in the center of the space. When he had finished, he smiled up at me, handed over the letter, and said, "Thanks, ma'am."

I smiled and moved around the room, squatting down to help ten more girls and guys from all over Winston-Salem address their envelopes; kids from privileged schools and kids from the worst schools in town. For some reason those moments of quiet were such a joy and reminded me of the invaluable childlikeness I keep trying to hold on to.

evans clan in butler, june.

An evening at the world's greatest Ice Cream place: King Cones Castle. Dining on the back porch. Playing in the pool and hanging out at the cabin...