AH, SWEET CONTENTMENT, I LOVE YOU.

It's 75 degrees and sunny in Florida today, low humidity, breeze coming in through the windows and the ceiling fans swirling lazily. I'm feeling good because it's Friday, which means I have two solid days with my husband coming up. This weekend is even better because he is taking me away for one night for a birthday surprise! I have tried to figure out what we're doing but am out of guesses, and I'm so excited I could burst.

I've been feeling hugely blessed lately. A couple goals that I had set seem to be materializing: We have finally reached a point where our apartment is almost 100 percent unpacked; and I feel like I'm falling into good sync with work. I am down to working one or two days a week at Barnes & Noble, which seems to leave me just the right amount of time to tackle my editing and writing at home on the other days.

It struck me the other day that freelance copyediting is an awesome job - I get paid good money to sit and read interesting books. (This should have seemed obvious, but it has taken me a while to feel this way.) I finally seem to be striking the right balance between teamwork at Barnes and better pay/use of my skill set/freedom at my "home office." First I was getting bored and lonely at home, and then I was being overwhelmed with too many hours at Barnes; but now it's seems to be just right (kind of like Goldielocks and the three bears, come to think of it). This is such a huge relief, because I was beginning to wonder if I was one of those people who could never be happy no matter what.

So it feels wonderful to be enjoying work and marriage and spring in Florida.

I also realize, though, that many people in my life, both family and friends, are going through rough times - marriage problems, unexpected pregnancies, broken friendships, career fears, and so on - and I want to be available for them, not getting so wrapped up in my contentment that I neglect to take care of people who need taking care of. Now that I seem to have reached a place of balance and order in life, I want my marriage, home, and self to be a haven and a pillar of support for those who I know to take refuge in and lean on. And I also want to find more ways to take all the good things I've been given and pass them on to people who aren't enjoying so many good things.

(*Note: This weekend, however, I will be thoroughly preoccupied with my own recreational pursuit with my husband and will be entirely unavailable for anyone's spiritual or emotional needs.)

UGH.

2500 miles is so far. I hate it.

REVENGE OF THE NERD

Out of curiousity, I visited the website of my old job today. It has been well over a year since I moved on from there, but I confess, after looking around at what's new, I lapsed into a fantasy that I had written a book that was getting a ton of buzz. I imagined that my old boss was at first reluctant to cover it in his magazine since I was an ex-employee, but eventually had to cave because my book had become so big. There I would be in the magazine I wasn't fit to be the managing editor of, my face filling a whole page. My success would make my old boss feel crazy with regret, that he didn't try harder to make me feel valued and adequate.

I don't like that I have fantasies like this. It indicates that in my heart are some leftover feelings of bitterness. If I was over it, it doesn't seem like I would have any "so there!" kind of sentiments. Now that so much time has passed, the specific grievances I experienced at that job have begun to significantly fade in my memory. I guess what's left is still this wound that hasn't fully healed, this lingering feeling of not being good enough.

Feelings are a tough thing to deal with. You can't just will them to go away. I have tried to control my actions with regard to my old job by not bad-mouthing it all the time and discouraging people from reading any of its publications. I haven't defaced any of the magazine issues that still arrive at our apartment from an ancient two-year subscription; in fact, I've read several articles. I even considered buying a book post-resignation.

But feelings are another thing altogether. Thankfully, I believe God has the capability of changing hearts and thought processes. I saw this the other day when I had the opportunity to sing in church. It used to be that when I sang, I felt very disappointed and insecure if people didn't come up to me afterward and tell me how well I did, even though supposedly my "audience" was made up of God alone. After I sang this past weekened, I found that I was actually surprised when someone congratulated me for doing a good job. I hadn't even thought about seeking that kind of approval. So over time, God has begun to right that wrong attitude in me. I pray that he is doing the same with regard to my career.

DYING TO SELF?

I just finished reading Searching for God Knows What by Don Miller tonight. I feel like I shouldn't pick up a new book now, but read Searching again, because I probably missed half of what he said. And I was finding that every time I went back to reading after leaving the pages for a couple days (or hours), I would have this thought: "Oh yeah, these are really profound ideas that, if I could remember and apply them in my day-to-day living and thinking, would really make a difference. But I forget them as soon as I put down the book. What is wrong with me?"

If I had to summarize what I "got out of*" the book (*this phrase is one of the more obnoxious phrases Christians use), it would be that when I set out on this relational journey with Jesus, I died to myself and began to live in him. Obviously, I haven't died to me, and in fact, I much more often feel like I'm living my ways than his. But, in one of the paradoxes that Jesus seems to like so much, I both have died to me and yet am still in the process of dying. This may sound masochistic, which is a word Miller uses in the book, but maybe it will make more sense when I explain more specifically what it is I am aiming toward dying from:

I want to die from worrying all the time about how I am being received...
from guarding myself so carefully that I miss out on intimacy with people...
from allowing my insecurities to stop me completely from doing things that I love and could help others...
from responding with such quick irritation or/and anger when I am slightly inconvenienced or wounded...
from classifying people so easily into categories of "cool" and "weird" (craving the attention of the former and dismissing the latter)...
from being too lazy to let people know I care about them...
from saying my life is about love, when it is really only about me being comfortable...

Perhaps when Jesus says we die to ourselves, it's not so much about letting go of the things we love (though sometimes that kind of sacrifice is asked of us), but about letting go of the things that smother our souls, in order to make room for the good things of Jesus, like an affection for others, a boldness to love, a freedom and boldness to use our gifts and talents to bless the people around us, and a sense of complete and overflowing acceptance and belonging and validation coming straight from the greatest Lover in all the universe.

Basically, all these ideas are in the book. I wanted to put them down before I forgot them all. Again.