Made for Eternity

After work today, I was browsing the books at my school’s library when I spotted the Nancy Drew series. Like many girls growing up in yesteryear, I’d done my share of perusing that young “sleuth’s” adventures. Feeling a bit nostalgic, I picked one of the oldies (i.e. the originals, not that modern day garbage) off the shelf and skimmed through the pages. 

I must say I got a good chuckle out of  the heroine’s stilted speech mannerisms. At one point, I read something along the lines of, “‘I must report this incident to the authorities,’ Nancy said to herself”. In another place she describes a certain man to her friends  as being “unscrupulous”. Seriously, when was the last time you heard an adult use that word in normal conversation, much less a teenage girl?   Strangely enough, these books were written for young adolescents and pre-adolescents. I’m trying hard to imagine my kids being able to wade through this kind of children’s literature from several decades ago. It’s not working too well, and part of me is sad for that. 

The weird thing is, although I know most of the odd words went over my head, I realize now that learned a lot of vocabulary from books like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Or at least I was exposed to a lot of good vocab. Today’s kids books seem to be so dumbed down or smart-alecky. They just don’t write books like Freckles, Rifles for Watie, Stuart Little, or, well . . . even Nancy Drew’s adventures for children anymore.

Makes you want a little more “unscrupulous” writing, doesn’t it?

“I’m gonna die, you’re gonna die, and it’s gonna be sweet, dawg!”

That’s what my friend Brian said (or rather, exuberantly declared) while we were on our way to church,and I know that out of context, it  seems  . . . odd. But we were discussing the inevitability of death and how we believers can talk about it candidly and without fear.

We are quite literally immortal until the Lord calls us home. David states in Psalm 31:14-15a, “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God. My times are in your hand.'”  At the “time” of his choosing, we’ll walk through that door called death into his presence, where we will remain for all eternity.

And yes, Brian, it’ll be very sweet.

for as long as I can remember. It’s been long out of print and the only reason I know it is because of my Grandpa’s nickname for me. All my life he’s called me Katrina van Ost after the title character in the 1934 novel, Katrina van Ost and the Silver Rose. I know little else about the book, but that name has always been a special bond between the two of us. 

Last week, I finally looked it up and found it on Amazon for the reasonable price of $10. So I bought it. 

Today, the package arrived in my mailbox from Virginia. When I opened it and pulled out that weathered book with the silver rose on the cover, I thought how nice it was to meet the “original” Katrina after all these years.

Thought you’d like to know too, Grandpa.

I took a nap. I like to take a nap when I get home from work on this day because it keeps me alert for church at night. I knew I was dead tired when I was startled from my deep sleep by my alarm an hour and half into lala-land. Only 12 days of work left before Christmas (pardon, winter [you know how it is]) break. 

As of last week, I’m just three months in, but I’m weary. Weary of seeing little ones with big problems I can’t understand or handle. Weary of not being able to share with them the one thing that matters in eternity. I’m not downcast or discouraged; just plain weary.

That is why this is so like a drink of cool water on a hot day:

Isaiah 40:28-29

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.

Onward . . . in his strength.

2 Corinthians 12: 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a calamity is “an event that brings terrible loss, lasting distress, or severe affliction; a disaster”.

I haven’t had much experence with calamities. But I do know in the face of one, I’d feel very weak. Good thing that in verse nine we have this promise from the Strong, Sovereign One:

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

I took the month of November off from blogging, if only because the rest of my life was so “on”. That, and the juices had run dry. Or something.

Anyway . . .

It snowed today. It seems like the weather in Milwaukee switches to winter on 1 December, as if it’s saying, “Oh, it’s December? That means SNOW!” 2 years ago today, we got a blizzard. Last year today, we got a bunch of snow. This year today, it was a few inches along with 30mph northwest winds. 

Batten down the hatches, troops. Winter’s back again!

(Me too.)

On 2 April 2007, I wrote a post about baseball’s opening day:

Besides the first day of spring, this is probably my favorite “lesser” holiday. On this day, the games count. On this day, I am always certain the Phillies will begin their march to their first World Series championship since they won it three weeks before I was born back in ‘80. On this day, “next year” is finally here.

Unbelieveably, “next year” happened yesterday. I was sitting in church as Pastor wrapped up the evening message, and my phone started buzzing. The caller ID told me my friend Abigail was calling. And I knew. There was only one reason she’d be calling her die-hard Phillies fan friend on this night.

The first person I called after church was Dad. He and Mom and Daniel had gotten up at 3 AM to watch the game in Kenya. “We won the World Series, Dad!” “I know!” he said. “Dad, we won the World Series!” The conversation went on for a couple more minutes. I think those were the only 6 words I said. Over and over. It just didn’t seem real and I was trying to convince myself.

My calls to Pete and Luke and my grandparents went pretty much the same way. We were all deliriously incredulous. After all, we’re the Fightin’ Phillies. We grind out seasons in mediocrity, in near-contention. We lose 10,000 games. We don’t go around winning World Series every year or two. We win it all maybe once a century.

I thought it might be happening for the first time when Brett Myers worked that walk and Shane Victorino hit that grand slam against CC Sabathia. Then Shane and Matt Stairs hit their homers to silence L.A. And when even Joe the Pitcher hit a home run in the Game 4 of the Series, I really thought this was the year.

It was. We waited 28 years for October 29th, and despite Game 5’s historic 46 hour rain delay, the Boys of Philly’s Summer pulled it off at 9:58PM.

And like I keep saying, we won the World Series.

the Phillies decided to go to the World Series. And with their hard work and the assistance of the Brewers and the Dodgers, they made it.

I’m a little happy right now.

I was born in November of 1980, 3 weeks after the Phillies won their only World Series. Due to my dad and extended family, I’ve been a die-hard Phillies fan all my life, on both sides of the world. I bleed white and blue with red pinstripes.

I became a Brewers fan in April 2007 on the first day of the season. I sat down by my radio and turned it on as the Brew Crew kicked off their year. I missed baseball and the Phillies were far away and Milwaukee was convenient, so I literally decided on Opening Day to root for the Brewers, come what may.  And I’ve kept up the cheering over the past 2 seasons, with one small caveat. I’d be a Brewers backer unless they interfere with Philadelphia. The arrangement has worked out well on both sides. I got a new team, they suddenly got good (not that I’m claiming any credit). This year, they made the playoffs for the 1st time since ’82.

And who do the Brewers play in the first postseason series? Yup. The Fightin’ Phils.

I didn’t even blink. Let’s go Phillies!

One of the nice things I’ve discovered about getting up at 5:17 is that at 5:29, the radio station I wake up to plays the national anthem – a different version every day. I love The Star Spangled Banner. It never fails to give me goosebumps, even before I can see anything “by the dawn’s early light”.

Wow, what I have missed by sleeping in ’til 7 all those years in grad school!

That’s my mom. It’s her birthday today . . . or it was. She lives in Africa where it’s already the 20th. But for the sake of my time zone, we’ll call it today.

Slight issue: I’m 27, too. But that’s ok, ’cause every year since I was little Mom turned 27 again (amazingly enough).

I’m thinking of carrying on that particular family traditon.

Happy Birthday Mom – I love you!

That’s what’s written on a post-it note by my desk at work to remind me that before I can have right relationships and interactions with those around me (x = the horizontal axis), I need to be in right relationship with my heavenly Father (y = the vertical axis).

It’s a good thing to have brought back to mind as a sinner dealing with sinner – first things first!

When I was last home, my sister Emily and I were listening (in the presence of our brother Daniel) to Ingrid Michaelson’s song “Far Away” which starts out like this:

I will live my life as a lobsterman’s wife on an island in the blue bay.
He will take care of me, he will smell like the sea,
And close to my heart he’ll always stay.

Being a girl, my first thought was “that’s really sweet”.

Daniel’s first thought (or at least what popped out of his mouth): “Yeah, he’ll smell like dead fish.”

Oh, brother.

If you haven’t noticed, I generally stay away from the political arena on this blog. I have my opinions and I do enjoy politics to an extent, but I know they are devisive, and there are far more important things that I’d like to use my confrontative/persuasve blog post quota for (i.e. the Gospel).

But a new development in the political world has caught my eye . . . or ear. As a wannabe linguist and someone who does speech/language stuff (I’m having word-finding issues) for a living, I have a certain fascination with accents. I can’t “do” accents like some, but I enjoy a little analysis and/or playful mockery (at least when it comes to my mid-Western friends).

That’s why, when I first heard Governor Sarah Palin speak, I could hardly listen to what she was saying – I was focused on how she was saying it. Her accent isn’t typical in that it’s not exactly Standard American English or Southern English or anything that’s easy to place (there apparently is not a true, identifiable Alaskan dialect).

On the Mr. Verb blog, there’s been a discussion going on about the Mrs. Palin’s accent – it appears to be a benign non-poiltical conversation, which I appreciate. I particularly liked the following analysis by poster “Wishydig” (warning: you are entering the land of linguist-speak – reader beware):

. . . some of the features I’ve noticed are the chicago onglide of æ: a slight tensing and perhaps raising of the ‘bit’ vowel. I thought I heard some pen/pin merging too so maybe just a general raising of front vowels. slightly simplified /o/ but not quite as simplified as the Minne-Kota /o/. Also what sounds like (occasional) Canadian raising on the /aI/ diphthong even before a 0-coda or before voiced consonants in a word like “supplies”. And the easiest feature for SNL to mock: dark rhoticity and shorter pre-R vowels in words like “here”. . . not that SNL should mock it of course . . .

Next on Political Accents with Katie: The Influence of  the Mid-Atlantic dialect on Senator Biden’s Production of Plosives (um, kidding)

See how fun politics can be?

Job 23:8-10 “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him; on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”

I’ve started carrying around Bible verses in my pocket on an index card as I have found that in new (read: scary) situations, it helps to have the Word at the ready to get my focus back on the Lord. The above passage was one of my verses from last week, and was particularly encouraging as I recognized that it’s not important for me to know all the ins-and-outs of God’s workings. He doesn’t have to answer to me, after all. What is crucial (and oh, so comforting), is that he knows my path . . . and he controls it.

Yesterday, Kenya earned its FIRST ever Olympic gold medal in the marathon, courtesy of Samuel Kamau Wanjiru.

Hongera, Bwana!

I must say, it was very cool to hear the Kenyan National Anthem during the closing ceremonies.

I used to think of educators in the typical way kids do. Teachers acted mature, they were proper, responsible, and polite, they weren’t awkward in the way I always was (am).

This week, I became one of “them”. And as I did so, I realized that these math and 1st grade and special ed and English teachers and my fellow SLPs weren’t all that different from our students. In the classrooms during orientation and training sessions, there were the chatty girls, the back seat slouchers, the clowning guys, the know-it-all devil’s advocate types, and people who left their time cards at home. It felt . . . well, like high school.

I think it’d be an eye-opener for our students to see us like this. I guess in some ways, we really don’t change. We are who we are. We just get more responsibilities, more education, more experience, and then someone hires us, and we start getting paid to be on the other side of the desk.

And that just feels really weird right now.

So, life is moving through it’s phases. My brother Pete is now married to Melissa. The fam (4/9 of it, anyway) returned to Kenya last Tuesday. The rest of us are scattered across North America, and we have resumed using email & Skype as our international communication tools. I keep starting to call Mom’s cell phone, then remember that our normal has changed again, and that she and Dad and the boys are 8000 miles away. Sigh.

Speaking of new normals, I started work today. Real work. As in I’m not a student worker anymore. These first days are orientation, of course, but I am getting paid and that is a definite improvement over the last couple months.

I’m terrified about the day after Labor Day when school starts while at the same time chomping at the bit to meet my kids. I guess most first days feel that way.

Ain’t this life a wonderful adventure?

The Very Symmetrical Day of this year – I love it.

Also, Happy Olympics . . . Go Kenya! Go USA!

I’m currently in PA, getting ready for my brother’s wedding after being in a wedding last weekend in MN. My oh my – ’tis the season for babies & weddings galore.

On an entirely different note, a quote from Dennis Rokser, found in the current issue of the Grace Family Journal:

It is important, and interesting to note that there is not even one passage in the entire Word of God that specifically states that a sinner must “repent from his sins” to be saved or redeemed. Why is this? It is because Jesus Christ has already “died for our sins” (an integral part of the Gospel). His propitiatory sacrifice has forever satisfied the righteous demands of a thrice, holy God.

Thus, the real issue today is not the SIN issue, but the SON issue, namely, “what do you think and believe about Jesus Christ?”

He who believes in Him is not condemned but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18 )

Oh, I do love the clarity and simplicity of the gospel!

“Freedom is living within God’s guidelines.” – Chet McCalley (from a message on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood – http://www.wordoftruth.net/subject.htm ) Wow, does that fly in the face of the world’s definition of freedom!

Romans 6:18 “and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

In essence, we believers are free slaves.