wishing for a wall to pin some photos to.

some things i've thought about recently:

1) i miss taking pictures of things that i think are beautiful, and i miss discussing these pictures with other people who have different ideas about beauty. i should take pictures again, so i don't miss it anymore.
2) people can get really worked up over something as trivial as a parking spot. really, world? REALLY?

AND

3) the only appropriate uses of the expression "mmmmm" is about food and sex. and if you're not talking about food and you use this expression, everyone is assuming that you're trying to charge your words with sexual energy. example: "mmmmm crayons...." or "mmmmm i love watching bill o'reilly...."

that's really all for me today, as far as words go. here's some pictures from this evening.





ps. i hope everyone has noticed that i didn't once mention knitting in this entire post. except for now, but this doesn't count, because it's a ps.

so much yarn, as usual.

my brother came to visit and i have three things to say (or at least, i think i do, but we'll see how many i end up with):

1) that photo is a shot of daniel and andrew playing farmville together, in a family tradition of one person playing a computer game and another person watching. yes, it's a real tradition.

2) we visited a birmingham icon today, and i always marvel at the majesty of the exposed cheeks. (search vulcan, birmingham alabama on google images, and see what i mean.)

3) we just saw "up in the air", and despite my political differences with george clooney, i remain a strong believer in his ability to carry a movie. just his hair might be enough for me. but seriously, the movie was a bit depressing, but unlike most depressing movies, it ends with a hopeful air, and that's what i liked about it, because that's life. hope never dies, even when you wake up and realize you've been doing it wrong all this time.

well, that's all for now. i bought so much yarn today, and i love that my etsy store financed all of it.

sparrows and snow days and my family emergency.

i had a breakdown of huge proportions the other day. it was at night, so of course, the next morning, i woke up looking like a family emergency had happened to me (basically, i looked like someone took my face, turned it into old playdough, and then put in the microwave for a few minutes). thankfully, it was a snow day; god's gift to me, on one of the worse days in my life. it's not like anything truly terrible happened to me, i had just sobbed for an hour or so the night before, wiping my snotty nose on my loving husband's shirt, and trying not to get too hysterical. i was sobbing because i was coming to the realization that i had walked so far from god, and had just sat down on a lonely street corner, refusing to look for a way back home.

it was a self-imposed misery. it was brought on by laziness, selfishness, stupidity, and bad time-management. or, as could be summed up so succinctly by jesus: "oh you of little faith! why did you doubt?" i have this verse written on a post-it note beside my bed, so i see it every day, and yet, it is a concept that always escapes me, every few years.

a lot of times, i find myself sitting in church thinking to myself, "i wonder if they know i'm an imposter." and, shamefully, "what am i doing here? what is the point of all this?" i know it's not a waste of time, but i'm just not sure why not.

i am a woman of little faith. sometimes, i don't remember why i am a christian. i go through my life not acknowledging god's work in me - god's work in everything around me! that is my confession to you. i struggled to admit it to myself, but once i did, i realized that i had to go public with it, because it's not real till other people know. i can always pretend it never happened if no one else ever knew.

life for me right now is not the future i imagined for myself when i was still in college. things turned out differently, and while i do love some things about how things are, i am struggling to accept the things that i wish were different. being at this point in my life has forced me to realize that i really can't handle things without god's help, though. here's a short list of things i love about my life, because making lists helps me cope.

- andrew, my loving husband
- leah, my best friend since we were 11.
- my parents
- my cute, tiny apartment, with the wall of windows
- knitting, and teaching others how to knit
- making new friends in my new home.

i don't know what i'm doing with myself. i feel so weird about this whole thing because i've been a christian for so long, but i just feel like i'm back at square one. i don't know a damn thing. fasting? what's that? praying? oh, i do that sometimes when i'm about to cry.

but, you know, the truth of the matter is that i do know, deep down inside of me, that all hope is not lost. i have to dig real deep in there, but i can find it, and when i do find it, i know things will be okay. i'm not a lost cause, and i do know what jesus said about how he leads his people. "i will never leave you.... as the father knows when a sparrow falls, how much more do you think he watches over you, his children?"

so, where, from here?