Reverenda Rosa

She's Back

At noon we got a call we had a hard time understanding.  A lovely Chinese lady managed to communicate that she thought she had our dog.  This was the 4th time we'd had our hopes raised and we knew better than to get to hepped up.  But we drove off anyway and there was that silly dog of ours, just being her happy, waggy, funny self.  She's lying out next to Light of My Life while LoML gets her last bit of fishing in for the year.  Such ups and downs this year, full of fears and unexpected joys and new beginnings.  How fortunate I feel to say today, "it's a good life, well worth living."

In the new year, may you and yours be called out to those places where heaven and earth aren't so far away from each other, and the work to be done means something. In the words of Juanes,

"la vida es un ratico, un ratico nada mas"   

Damn it Boo...

Spouseman is the chief decider of dog names.  He has one criterion--you ought to be able to curse well with it--like "G*&^ D&^% Boo.

This evening I don't have the energy to curse well.  I am very sad.  Day before yesterday, the Directv folks were here working in our back yard.  They didn't close the back gate properly.  Sometime in the afternoon, despite our best efforts, Boo took advantage of the situation and slipped out.  We have spent two anguished days putting up signs, calling her name, looking for her up and down the neighborhood. Earlier today we were out running an errand when we got a phone call from someone who thought they'd found her.  We flew back home, only to slam into new sadness.  It was someone else's black lab, not ours. 

At lunch Light of My Life wondered if we could have a funeral and flowers.  Last night at the Centro Eucharist, she asked us all to pray for Boo.  She fell asleep weeping.  Damn it, Boo.  We miss you.  We miss you  desperately, dear sweet, silly, lovely Boo.  Won't you please come home...

Friday Five: Auld Lang Syne

Revgal Singing Owl reminds us that "2007 is about to be history, and this is our last Friday Five of the year. With that in mind, share five memorable moments of 2007. These can be happy or sad, profound or silly, good or bad but things that you will remember."

1. Starting this blog.  A small and hugely significant risk on my part with the writing.  A joyful way to meet new friends and live in a bigger world.   A totally unexpected part of the gift has been getting to read brilliant sermons almost weekly, shared so generously by othe revgalblogpals.  Sweet!

2. The night we sang.  Ministering at the Centro Hispano de Todos los Santos is simply astounding, still.  This evening captured the sheer grace and goodness of our small, marginalized community. 

3. Getting a new hip.  I am surprised how frequently I still replay in my mind the drive to Holy Cross Hospital in the dark on May 25th, the first few seconds of consciousness after the surgery, even the darkness and pain of the first night, not to punish myself, but to marvel that after a lifetime of being defined by a limitation, I found my way through to a different way of being me.  I have beautiful red high heels now, I walk without a limp unless I am really, really tired.  And mainly, I live without out the deep, energy-draining pain of a hip bones that had collapsed in on themselves.  What a miracle.

4. Ricardo's death.  Ricardo and Ligia helped raise me--he was our driver, she first my nanny and then our cook.  He is struggled with the bottle for years and years and years, and it finally got him.  I am so very sad that I did not get to say good bye. 

5. Light of my life goes mainstream.  In the last week before school let out for holiday break, LoML was invited to try attending her school's aftercare program.  This is the first mainstream program she's gotten to participate in and a hugely different experience than the aftercare program she'd been attending before for children with sever developmental and behavioral disabilities.  On Thursday, she came home chattering a mile a minute.  She said that on Friday they were going to to take out all the chairs from the "cacateria, and a jj is coming with rock and roll and me and the boys are going to dance."  And boy did she boogie down, from what I understand.  The happiness on her face when we picked her up at school was indescribable.  Joyful, joyful, joyful. 

Bonus points for telling us of a "God sighting":  Too many to count--this has truly been a year of grace in my life.  But if I had to choose only one, it would be praying with my friends J and B during communion after they found out that J, their beloved son and brother, has metastasized melanoma.  It felt like God, and they and I were one in grief and hope and love.

Oh Christmas Joy...

   

Still Sick

It's official.  I have bronchitis.  Getting through the past 5 days has been pretty miserable.  I couldn't quite regain traction, but kept thinking that surely, I could just push myself through to the other side.  That just didn't work.  So today the body has just stopped, and put itself to bed.  I'm on a z-pack and strong cough stuff.  Time to heal...

Friday Five: Prepared

My RevGalPal Sally has had a tough week.  She says: "This has been a difficult week for me, the death of a little six year old has overshadowed our advent preparations, and made many of us here in Downham Market look differently at Christmas. With that in mind I ask whether you are the kind of person that likes everything prepared well in advance, are you a last minute crammer, or a bit of a mixture.....

Here then is this weeks Friday 5:

1. You have a busy week, pushing out all time for preparing worship/ Sunday School lessons/ being ready for an important meeting ( or whatever equivalent your profession demands)- how do you cope?

My week had its own element of challenge.  My mother-in-law who is 91 fell and injured herself quite badly; she is having surgery to repair a shattered wrist today.  Spouseman left on Monday to be with her.  Last time he had to leave for an extended amount of time, LoML spun so far out of control that I ended up having to call the cops.  It was a devastating moment.  Therefore, this time I was determined to find a better way through the days.  It involved asking for extra help/support from my community.  I also pared down my "to do" list to a minimum.  LoML and I scheduled some really fun things to do along the way, rewards for getting done what needs to be done.  She's been in bed by 7:00 each night, and I by 9.  That has allowed me to get up by 5 or 5:30 each morning for some time of quiet and solitude.  So far, this has been a simply wonderful time for LoML and me.  And when Spouseman gets back tomorrow, he will not find a harpy of a resentful wife.  I'll be glad to see him, and life is not quite so dramatic as it used to be around times like this...

2. You have unexpected visitors, and need to provide them with a meal- what do you do?

Oh, this is a cool question!  IKEA opened a store some 10 minutes away from my house last month.  Recently, I stocked up on many of the frozen foods they sell, foods that helped define my childhood.   I've already had people drop in unexpectedly since then and with a minimum of fuss, I've been able to put out Swedish feasts.  Makes my little Swedish self happy!!!

Three discussion topics:

3. Thinking along the lines of this weeks advent theme; repentance is an important but often neglected aspect of advent preparations.....

I still miss living in a place with clearly defined seasons in many ways.  I always appreciated this time of drabness and dark, when the trees, stripped of all foliage seemed to confront me with life at its starkest and most essential.  I came to value the opportunity for introspection that seemed almost inevitably to lead to a call for change and repentance.  I find that getting up to write while it is still dark has some of the same effect for me.  I love the wisdom of these liturgical ebbs and flows.

4. Some of the best experiences in life occur when you simply go with the flow.....
That does not quite hold true for my life these days.  As the mother of a child with special needs, I have learned by the hardest that there is an element of ongoing planning and preparation that I simply must be faithful to or we all pay a very high cost.  I liken it to sailing, where you set a point of sail as a way to help you keep on course.  The thing is, when I am doing that kind of work well, I am far less reactive and far more responsive to life.  For me, that is what "going with the flow" means now.  Sometimes I miss the spontaneity that was possible before LoML--until she throws her arms around my neck and hugs me, or wants me to see some wonderful new accomplishment she's proud of.

5. Details are everything, attention to the small things enables a plan to roll forward smoothly...
Yup.  And I am not so good at that.  Then you add the "senior moments" that seem to be an inescapable reality when you reach my "certain age" and good googly woog, you get yourself in bad binds sometimes.  Lists, lists, lists.  That's all that works for me...

Bonus if you dare- how well prepared are you for Christmas this year?

• I finished all my Christmas shopping on the 3oth of November
• I am mailing the last of my out of town gifts today
• I am putting up Christmas decorations (except the tree) today
• I have roughed out my Christmas Eve sermon and ordered the materials I need for it
• I have made the plans/preparations for Christmas dinner--guests invited, menu planned, table dressing planned for, flowers ordered
• I have been able to make an entry every day on my Advent Blog
• I absorbed major unexpected change this week

I am better prepared for Christmas this year than I have been in a long time.  Sweet!