Jairus' Daughter

Hello, Dali!

My latest appalling, time-wasting endeavor is to make portraits online of myself and others.  Here's me:

Here's everybody else:

If you see yourself and you like it, it's yours.  If you would like to have one done, you may commission the artist.  She always welcomes new business.

My Funny Thanksgiving Story

My mom was talking to some folks at the table about how my dad had a beard at their wedding.  Only I heard "beer."

Well, it's funny if you know my dad, the Southern Baptist preacher.

Beyond Repair

The accident happened three years ago today.

Mom didn't want me to go.  She had a bad feeling.  I dismissed it as her usual overprotective clucking.

I drove out to see him the day after Thanksgiving.  It was a peaceful drive.  Overcast.  I brought leftovers.

The weekend was long and short at the same time.  Only three days, yet when I assemble the episodes in my memory, they seem to exceed that.

We started back Sunday afternoon.  He wanted to bypass the interstate traffic by taking backroads.  I followed him.

We watched a lot of movies that weekend.  At the video store, he wanted to get Rush Hour 2; he hadn't seen it.  He forgot that we saw it together a month earlier.

He had promised some freshman a ride back to school, so we drove to the kid's house to pick him up.  It was way out in the woods somewhere.  I wondered how long before we would get back on the highway.

I met his best friend for the first time.  We went to their old hangout and they told me stories of growing up together.  I wished I was dating his friend.  I felt really guilty.

The sunset was beautiful.  It started raining, just enough to dot the windshield.  We had been on the same winding road for half an hour.  I was getting carsick.

He taught me how to drive stick.  My first lesson.  I was getting the hang of it, but it was tiring and I wanted to quit.  He could finish teaching me later.

It was a two-lane road, no turn-offs that I could see; still I was afraid to lose sight of him.  He disappeared over a hill.  I sped up to catch him.

It's hard for me to reconcile who I am now with the person I was then.  So confident.  So blind.  How is it that I was so unafraid to be close to someone?  I am none of those now.

The speed limit posted on the curve was 15mph.  I remember thinking that was a silly number as I crested the hill.  The next moment I was on a carnival ride.  Floating.  Laughing to myself as I thought, It looks like I'm going into that ditch, and not believing it until the violent triple landing jarred me out of denial.

I don't remember screaming.  Yet every time I replay the event in my mind, I hear a scream.

I had stopped.  The airbags lay flaccid on the dash and there was smoke inside the car.  Every movie image I had ever seen of automobile explosions flashed before my eyes.  I tried to get out, but my door wouldn't open; it was pinned against the bank of the ditch.  I crawled to the back seat and got out there.  Then I ran.

He knew something was wrong when he didn't see me in his rearview.  He had already turned around when I caught up with him. 

The car never exploded.  The smoke was leftover from the airbags deploying; same with the symmetrical abrasions on both my hands.  The ditch was part of someone's front yard.  They let us use their phone, since we had no cell coverage.  Their children took flashlights and directed traffic.  They were practiced.

I felt terrible for inconveniencing everyone.  The police.  The tow truck driver.  The homeowners.  Every motorist who screeched to a halt at the sight of kids with flashlights and a ditch full of car.  I felt especially bad for the guy trying to bum a ride to school.  He didn't know me at all, and now he was several hours delayed and relegated to the back seat.

We made it to campus late that night.  The next day I took a train home.  We broke up two weeks later.

And I bought a new car.

FYI:

In an attempt to thwart the spammongers attacking my archives, I have closed the comments option for posts older than one year.  On the off chance that it took you over a year to formulate a comment and you're just now ready to post it, you can email me and we'll work something out.

We now return to regularly scheduled programming.

Where were you at 8:30 this morning?

I was trapped in an elevator.  For a whole 20 minutes.  It was all very Speed (only without the pyrotechnics... or the falling...).  Fortunately, I had my camera with me and could therefore take advantage of the situation.  It yielded some wicked Mirror Project shots.

This is me trapped in the elevator.

This is me trapped in the elevator without my nose.

This the view from the elevator that trapped me.  (It all looks very calm and serene, doesn't it?  Sure, UNTIL THE DOORS WON'T OPEN!!)

Here you can see the ground below.  Thankfully, it never got any closer until I escaped.

The Hard Way

I would like to be able to say that I live my life with no regrets.  If there were such a thing as nearly true, or almost true, it would apply here.  I don't regret most of my mistakes, even the big ones.  Others, however, are riddled with rue.  Like this one:

I regret ditching my freshman roommate.

She and I got along relatively well.  I liked her a lot.  But I knew someone with a better number for the sophomore room lottery, and I wanted to stay on campus.  She was really hurt when I told her, which surprised me.  I didn't know she liked me that much.  But the decision was already made.  And I got a great room.

She, however, got to keep the friends.  And we had an amazing group of them.  Phenomenal and rare.  I didn't realize just how rare until it was too late.  They all went off campus with her, and as easy as I thought it would be to hang out, it wasn't.  I had lost them.

Meanwhile, the group I tried to join never quite accepted me.  Despite the Christian connection, I didn't have nearly as much in common with them as I had with my other friends.  My new friends never understood me.  Plus, I was the only one without the shared history of that formative freshman year.

Now, six years later, I keep in regular contact with the latter group.  It is always awkward for me, and a little painful.  My second roommate became my best friend through the rest of college, and probably still would be, if she would ever return my calls.  The friendships I long to have kept--Ladan, Hilary, Erika, Nick, Erin--are unmistakably out of reach.

One Interesting Trip

Things that happen when I'm dreaming that don't normally happen any other time:

My finding myself in one of the I-states of the midwest, having to get home to Virginia without the benefit of a car;

The discovery of an express train from said state to Norfolk, VA;

My waving to someone I barely knew in college, now wearing a suit and riding a bicycle (less Mormon, more 19th century), and the fact that we both recognized each other;

Scooby Doo putting the moves on me;

Jennifer Connelly talking to me as though we had been best friends forever;

My riding a school bus with the two aforementioned celebrities.

Carpe Virum

Someday I will summon the courage to go up and talk to the guy sitting alone at Starbucks with his Bible out.  But not today.

Birthday Wishes (four, to be exact)

Happy birthday to Pat,
Happy birthday to Pat,
Happy birthday to Patrick,
Happy birthday to Pat!

Another Thought

If Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified, demonstrating that the shedding of blood was necessary to obtain peace, how could He have been a pacifist?

Do you see what I see?

Usually I try to write, in the grand tradition of Seinfeld, about nothing.  However, in the next few paragraphs, I will wander into the realm of something.

I have noticed things.  Things taking place in our world.  Things out of the ordinary.  I have noticed things, and perhaps you have, too.

A lot of people in America hate President Bush.  And when I say "hate," it is not because I am too lazy to find a better synonym.  They hate him.  Viscerally.  Irrationally.  They don't merely disagree with his policies or disapprove of his actions while in office; they hate him as a person.  With all the thinking people in America (and I consider most of the Bush-detractors to be thinking people) I would expect arguments against the president to be more logical and less emotion-driven.  This, to me, is strange.  Along with the most outspoken segment of America, the Rest-of-the-World seems to hate Bush, too.  This is also strange, and yet makes perfect sense, as I will attempt to demonstrate in a moment.

Intersecting anti-Bush sentiment in the fabric of history is the simultaneous surfacing of a number of life-or-death issues:  abortion; terrorism; cloning; war in the Middle East; embrionic stem cell research; gay marriage (as for why I consider gay marriage a life-or-death issue, that is a subject for another post).  Some of these came to the forefront years ago and are still with us.  Others are more recent developments, brought about by the courses that technology and our cultural sensibilities have followed.  Some I never expected to see in my lifetime.

These issues, among others, have contributed to the political polarization of our country.  The conflict has been heated, as evident in this most recent election.  Much was at stake, and everyone felt it.  It was as if events were coming to a boil around us, accelerating toward a focal point.  But it was not the election.  The anticipated focal point is on a much grander scale. 

What is obvious to me, and yet remains hidden from the general populus, is that the conflict raging around us is predominantly spiritual.  We perceive echoes and outgrowths of it in the physical realm, but the corpus of it lies entirely in the spiritual dimension.

The reason so many are at odds with President Bush is that he and they are on opposite sides of God's law.  Romans 8:5-7 elucidates this principle (emphasis mine):

Those without the Spirit are hostile to God and therefore hostile to God's people, who are indwelled by His Spirit.  Jesus foretold the world's attitude toward Christians when he spoke about the end times:  "You will be hated by all nations because of me" (Matthew 24:9b).  How very accurate.

We, dear readers, are living in the end times.  I can't say exactly where in the end times timetable we find ourselves, but we are assuredly here.  And if I know it, then it is certain that satan knows it.  Hence the mad rush to negate as much life as possible; he knows his time is short.  If he can keep abortion legal, establish terrorism as an accepted negotiation tool, and devalue human life to the point of its being created for spare parts, he will have erected a system of evil capable of perpetuating itself.  The reelection of a godly president over a world superpower is just a minor setback.  The return of the Kings of Kings will put him decidedly out of business.

"Who are you supposed to be, anyway?"

Growing up with reddish hair and fair skin, there are certain characters who become a part of your pop culture matrix.  Anne of Green Gables.  Pippi Longstocking.  Strawberry Shortcake.  I had always thought these archetypal characters were universally known and understood.  However, it appears that in their passing through the human throng that is our society (or at least my immediate social circle), these entities have adhered to my person alone.  This will I remember the next time I consider busting out the gravity-defying pigtails and striped stockings.