crispy crusts and melted butter

sleeping with bread

The crust of French bread – so deliciously crispy – is completely foreign when compared to the soft warmth inside. People can be like that too. While all appearances from the outside show a cohesive and firm resolve, the center is tender and vulnerable. The butter of experience soaks into the pores of the innermost being.

From the outside, I am the least like myself. The way circumstances lead me to act is often contrary to my basic nature. Parenting is a good example of this. Over the last week, I have had several whiny children. Mild sickness tends to bring that aspect forth. The firm and decisive crust I exhibit when faced with the tantrums of a three or five year old does not come naturally to me. I am basically non-confrontational. I look at all sides of a coin and understand the motivations behind certain unacceptable behaviors. If I weren’t in the role of disciplinarian, I would likely reach out and be a shoulder to cry upon. As it stands, I know I must be firm, and somehow, God grants me the strength to do it. Sometimes, I choose not to rely on that strength, and I come to regret it. Sometimes, I resort to using the strength of anger to fuel my discipline, and that, while it reflects a side of who I am, is not who I want to be.

Perhaps the times I feel most myself, then, are pretty evident. When the discipline is over, when the crying has stopped, my children come to me for comfort. It is in those quiet teaching moments that I touch base with the doughy interior - that I soak up their love, their cares, their insecurities, and reciprocate with warm, gooey goodness. It is in the seconds of explaining the whys that I become most truly myself. Touch – it’s who I am, who God made me to be.

don't you hate it when:

...you are wearing laced shoes and you get an itch on your foot that you can't reach even with the aid of a really long pencil?

...it rains really hard Friday night into Saturday and your rec football game is rescheduled for 7 PM on a very windy and chilly Sunday evening?

...all of the toy companies start airing their Christmas commercials?

...a little person asks for a drink the minute you sit down, and you know the container is too full for them to get it without your help?

...you think you are finally about to catch up on laundry only to discover another full hamper hiding behind the bedroom door?

...a drink spills in the refrigerator, and it just happens to be sitting on the same shelf as the lettuce, celery, and carrots?

...your five year old suddenly decides to start chewing on his shirts?

...your husband kindly volunteers to announce for a youth cheerleading competition leaving you alone to make sure several kids get to different places at approximately the same time?

...you go to put laundry away and realize that everything is not going to fit until you purge those things which are no longer in season/no longer fit?

...you start a blog entry that never gets very interesting, but you can't seem to end it?

the cone of silence

DH: How old is your mother?

Me: 66

DH: How long have you known me?

Me: 22 years.

DH: Which made your mother how old when you met me?

Me: Duh, 44.

DH:

Me:

DH:

Me: Oh my goodness, that's how old you are now!

There's just something wild about that fact.

the page is still blank

Sometimes it is so frustrating that no matter how long you stare at a blank page waiting for the ideas to come, nothing magically appears there. When I was in college, we would have writing assignments for poetry. This would be part of the reason I dropped out of college. I always accomplished the task at hand. I always did a relatively passable job of it, but something was lost in the process. I felt sort of like many bi-polar people must feel when they are medicated. It was all technique and not much of that deeper part of me which felt driven to write.

Since that time, I have never been able to fully recapture the drive I had before college. I write much less often. Granted, most of what I wrote before that time was drivel, with a few gems hiding in the rot pile. Now, if I don’t seem to be putting my finger on what I am trying to say in a way that I deem worthy, I am much more likely to abandon the project. The up side to this whole thing is that there are less horrible poems lying around that I cannot throw away. There is a down side though. The writing itself was therapeutic. Getting the emotions out through my words helped me not to tuck them into deep pockets of my mind where they would subtly affect every aspect of my life. Then again, I was a pretty depressed creature back then. Perhaps the writing just kept me from going over the edge of depressed into the realm of suicidal.

Now I sit and look at the page and wish that I could be a storyteller today. Things have happened which, at the time, gave me comic or angst-ridden inspiration, but I don’t seem able to hold onto the thoughts long enough to set them in print. I would suspect that I accidentally swept them away while cleaning, except that I haven’t managed to do much of that either. In fact, I still have the same darn load of clothes in the washer that I put there on Tuesday. I guess I should go wash them again.

oh cruel irony

So, I put that dang word verification thingie back on, and what does it do to me to repay the favor? I get nine letters to enter in order to comment on my own blog. I ask you, did I really deserve such a fate? :)

thought

In the still hours of nighttime,
I look into the depth of myself
and see so many thoughts and feelings
that I can never express aloud.

Hurtful things live
in the corners of darker shadow.
Hurting things hide deeper still.

I walked outside and saw stars in the city sky –
a rare thing indeed.

The illumination in my soul
is no brighter than those stars –
casting only slight touches of
less than dark
about each introspective glance.

Knowing the thoughts sets me free from them,
perhaps,
and allows me to walk closer to the one
who sees the deepest shadows.