If Insomnia Was a Casserole.

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Full mind, empty stomach, and the AC's too high. Cue insomnia.

My little bouts of insomnia have never been predictable, but I like to pretend they are. Usually I require a good 9 hours of knocked-out sleep to function like a below-average human being, but sometimes (like now) my brain shouts, "Go swab decks, you lackey! No rest for you!"
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Tonight is a momentous night. I've changed my coping-mechanism. Instead of wallowing in my own sleepy frustration for three hours or more, I allowed myself a 45-minute test run. When those 45 minutes passed and I remained nowhere near the Sandman's residence, I leaped into action.

I flipped on the light (burned my eyes), made a large mug of malted milk (drool), turned on some Natasha Bedingfield  (her clean songs), and cooked up a 10-minute tuna casserole (my new favorite, quickest, and cleanest meal).
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In my past insomnia hours, I used to think, "What if I just got up and did something productive instead of trying to sleep and failing?"

Tonight is the night. It's a quarter past 1am and I plan to write like an inspired madwoman until my eyelids mutiny.

Cheers, mate.

The Beginning: "ALONE"

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"You're never alone."
This common Christian 'feel-good' phrase is often heard when someone, in an act of honest vulnerability, dares to express that they feel alone.
The generic, watered-down response of, "You're never alone," rarely provides comfort or reassurance; instead, this vulnerable person now feels like a failure.
If God is always there, why do I feel alone? Is it because I'm not seeking Him enough?
Good question. Many would say, "Yup, it's your fault. Better step up those morning devos."

The term "alone" has fallen into the sin pool. I view the sin pool as a pot of words the Christian culture has thrown together and labeled as "sin" or "evil" when these words/feelings/actions aren't really sin unless in occasional contexts.

Epiphany: God created the feeling of being "alone" before sin even entered the world. Take a look:

"And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him."

-Genesis 2:18

God labeled Adam as "alone" during a time when Adam spoke with, walked with, and spent every second in God's presence. Still, God deemed him in need of a helper. A supporter. What does this mean? Can we be alone even when we're with God?

Recently, God's impressed upon me the importance of a Christian support system. He's showing me it's okay to need someone. This doesn't mean that I doubt Him. He designed His body as a support system, not as a red pen divvying out judgment.
When I first moved to Missouri last autumn, I had no one. During that time, God chose to fill every role I needed. He was my support system, but then He trickled some of His children into my life and allowed them to fill some of the needed roles, all the while remaining the Leader.

My support system was absent this week, depriving me of the two people I turn to most for encouragement and Godward-pointed binoculars. The enemy (not necessarily just Satan, but doubts, fears, questions, worries, etc.) stood on my doorstep with me, waving farewell as my support system departed their separate ways for the next week. Then he invited himself into my apartment with a confident step and set up camp. I tripped over his tent the first two mornings and wondered aloud to God why my joy, smiles, and reassurance seemed to be super-glued to the carpet.

"Support system," He whispered.
"But they're gone!" I whined.
God didn't buy it. He's a fan of modern technology. It only took one large swallow of pride and a couple texts to contact my support system and ask for prayer. The responses were instantaneous and uplifting...lifting my enemy's tent right off its pegs and out the window.

Thousands of years later, God is still whispering to us, "It is not good for you to be alone."
Are we turning to our support systems? Friends? Family? Spouses? Church? Are we establishing support systems in our lives? Equally as important, are we being a support system to those close friends, family, spouses, etc? Or are we uncapping the red Sharpie and scribbling, "You're never alone. You're just not focusing on your morning devotions enough."
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Genesis Recipe

On occasion, a theme will take hold of my musings and cling to them like a vine-swinging monkey. Thanks to a fine mixture of finals, relationships, questions, and life over the past several weeks, a recipe has emerged from my mind and I'm cooking it up over the course of the next three blog posts. This recipe is entitled, "The Beginning".

Only this morning did I realize that my recent mental self-lectures all link back to Genesis. This surprises me because I've always been a little bored with Genesis, due to growing up in the church and enduring the repetitive Sunday school classes that often water down the more weighty points of the Bible. But recently I've been seeing several "Genesis-Events" with a blinking light-bulb over my head, so starting next Friday, the three-course meal begins:

The Beginning: "ALONE"
(Some Ingredients: Why do we tend to assume that feeling "lonely" means you're far from God? Is feeling "alone" wrong?)

The Beginning: "FIRST WEDDING"
(Main Ingredient: What if marriage was still so simple as that first one?)

The Beginning: "OPENED EYES & DARKENED HEARTS"
(A Garnish: What really opened and what really closed when they took that first bite?)

Hopefully all dishes will emerge unburned and cooked to perfection. You're the judges and I'm the chef. I hope you're hungry.

Softball SLPs

Somehow, all things I currently love I once hated for a time. Speech therapy was one. Softball was another. On Tuesday night I united the two with double-sided tape. The result? A really smart, all girls, just-for-fun-but-we're-really-competitive-on-the-inside softball team that knows exactly what to do if someone gets pegged in the head mid-game and receives a traumatic brain injury (bonus: we do follow up speech evaluations! All for a small fee and a free softball).
Yes, my speech-therapy graduate department has put together a softball team. I couldn't be more pumped. My name was close to first on the sign-up list and my glove was already in my trunk. Our first double header was Tuesday.

I pulled out the hair-ties, extra-powerful deodorant, and athletic shorts (they're new. I'm branching out from Wyoming-garb and now own two pairs of shorts). As catcher, I've bonded with softballs in the face, the ankle, the head, and the knees. Bats aren't as friendly to meet, but they've knocked their overbearing personalities into my skull before.

Naturally, my head was more prepared than my body for the physical exertion. I took a few practice swings in front of the mirror (vain? Yes.) and popped-out my shoulder (not in a good way). My back already hurt (what am I, a grandma?), but at least I looked good. In fact, I looked ready to run four marathons with weights on my ankles and no water bottle without growing tired. A jog to my car and back (about eight yards total) trampled that delusion.

The games were exhilarating...until we started playing. We all matched. We were ready to have fun. We even had a new bat.
We lost 20-0.
Game two went better. We played four innings instead of three, but still lost 23-0. Not a single run. Not even a player past second base. I consoled myself with Relient K and grapes. Still, you'd be hard-pressed to see another graduate speech-therapist softball team do better in a double header before the night before an 8am exam. Hard-pressed, indeed.