10 Thoughts

1. This Valentine’s felt awfully similar to the one we had two years ago; husband away with the army, Grandpa filling in.  But, everyone is two years older and there’s an extra kid.

2. Wrinkled tablecloths are acceptable for cheery Valentine’s breakfasts.  So are dirty dog-jumps-on-windows windows.  Right?

3. Oklahoma City is beginning to feel like a Big City, ya’ll; I can’t hold my own in the rush hour crowd!

4. I’m pining after this for our next driving machine.  I think that means I’ve crossed over into total dorky I’m-a-homeschooler motherhood.  And it’s so ugly!

5. This is what convinced me that there is hope beyond Suburbans and white 10-passenger vans for families of seven or more.  It’s a tight squeeze in our Odyssey now, and we’ll have to upgrade sometime!  A team of horses and a wagon would appeal more to my earth-loving senses; alas.

6. I gave Grandpa four of the kids and a science museum, and I hit up Whole Foods this afternoon.  Whole Foods is the only grocery store in the world that makes me feel like I could eat well and live forever, if only I could afford to pay the price.

7. Next to Whole Foods is Anthropologie; my favorite 7 month old and I whittled away half an hour staring at fabrics and patterns and textures and china cups.  I almost felt I could live forever, too, if I only dressed well and paid another price.

8. Anthropologie was new for me.  My sister-in-law would be ashamed at the lateness of my discovery.  I almost, almost felt as if I wasn’t in a trendy well-lighted warehouse in the middle of the Great Plains after all, but rather was hanging out at the Portland Saturday Market.  Only, if I had been in Portland I would have been fingering hand-made goods from pipe-holding, fuzzy-capped, furry-bearded guys, and, well, it’s just hard to mount that image upon the background of Oklahoma, so Anthropologie it remained.

9. A plotted school stabbing/shooting in Washington was thwarted today.  Arrested? Two boys, ten and twelve years old.  The ten year old was upset over a dating relationship gone awry, and wanted to do away with the former lover who now annoyed him. I… I so wish I could hide my children away from the world.  I wanted to pray that they would be kept safe, my children.  Then I tried to pray that they would be Dangerous, “So dangerous that demons would flee when they entered a room.”  But I thought of the feet shod with the gospel of peace, and recoiling at the violent nature of a word like Dangerous, I had to pray they’d be Mighty instead.

10. In the Bible, at least so far as I understand, the Hebrew and Greek words for Spirit are the same as the words for Breath, and as the words for Wind.  So the “Spirit of God hovering over the waters” is the “Breath of God hovering” and the “Wind of God hovering”; etc. etc.

When, in John 3, Jesus says those born again are born of the Spirit, I last week read it this way: “Born of the Wind.”

We’re Born of the Wind, ya’ll.  That sounds mighty indeed.