Monday, October 23, 2006

Homesick Blues

It's just some blues, nothing worth raising a squawk about.

Things come in cycles. I had a whopping busy few weeks before I left for California, so not too much sad had a chance to take hold. I got a tummy-full of it on the Sunday before I went to California, while I was sitting in church with one of my favorite MAF families. Just came on all of a sudden. The last several days, by contrast, have been like a little ongoing homesick song playing in the background.

You know it's silly when you are throwing laundry into the washer and as you toss in your denim shirt, worn last at Sea World, you miss everyone.

Then I made the mistake of watching "Babe". I popped in the video last night, but only got as far as Babe getting to Hoggett Farm and sleeping his first night alone and spluttering out, "I want my mom." Had to turn it off. Made me cry.

Tonight I turned on the rest of it while I ate dinner. Got all sad when Hoggett gave away the sheepdog pups and Fly was missing them and Babe asked if he could call her Mom. Bummer. More homesick.

And I'm not embarrassed to want my mommy! I have a wonderful one! And a wonderful family. It doesn't mean they don't make the inside of my eyeballs itch sometimes, but they are my favorite people in the world. I miss having them around the corner. Life felt a little easier, and a little sweeter, that way. That's all.

I still wouldn't make a different decision about coming to Idaho, because it would have meant leaving MAF, saying "no" to Jesus, and missing all kinds of neat opportunities. It just turns out my tears aren't all done yet.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Shopping with Sluss

I spent my Friday evening shopping. Want to know what it was like? Let's just say I am not completely over my homesickness yet. Here's a summary of the night out in the Sluss brain:
  • I miss Joanna--I was in Family Christian Store buying my Christmas cards, using my coupon from the mailer. We did that together last year.
  • I miss Holly--I see all the teacher presents in Family Christian and think of her.
  • I miss Mom--Family Christian Store is next to a Paper Cottage scrapbooking store.
  • I miss Michael--I pass an REI on my way to Target.
  • I miss Dad--As I pump gas next to the REI, I smell the Macaroni Grill, Olive Garden and other restaurants up and down the road. Daddy would take me out to dinner.
  • I miss Liann--She would be going into Target with me, saying, "Sluss, do we really need to stop here? Can't we just go home?"
  • I miss Denver, Poncho and Born Dancin'--there's Halloween candy all over Target, and I'll miss Halloween with them this year.
Fill in the remainder of the evening with many other "misses" and you pretty much have it. So, big fun for Sluss on a Friday night out. It was actually fine. It's just that, for me, even running errands and buying stuff is more fun with someone or if you are going home to someone.

Church today was good. This was church number four or five I have tried, and I really enjoyed the teaching. I wish the worship time would have been a little more serious, but I hack on people all the time for being hung up about worship styles, so I think I will pipe down and take me own advice. I sat with a family from MAF that I only know moderately well, so that was fun.

The pastor spoke about the kind of leadership outlined by Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:7-18. It led into a bit about comparison, and what a waste it is to compare any of our abilities or habits or skills or disciplines horizontally, one person to another. We should only be comparing ourselves vertically, to Jesus. I was thinking about us as a crowd of friends, because we seem to do a fair amount of horizontal comparison, in the nice way of course, by saying things like, "I so wish I had as much energy as Holly," or, "Why can't I write like Elizabeth?" or, "If only I were as patient as Joanna."

The only comparison should be vertical, to Jesus, and we will always come up short. Isnt that the best news? I am totally serious--that brings the most amazing peace to my soul and puts my striving to rest in a way that makes no logical sense, and is absolutely not self-defeatist. It blows me away that the one who made me knows I can never in this fallen form live up to all I dream of, but He says I am wothy of running after Him and He will give me the strength to do it. I love it.

And an interesting tidbit for the day: If you have a Fat Tire Ale with dinner and then take an Ambien, you are pretty tired. Not so tired to forget to do things like blow out any lit candles, but perhaps too tired to remember to turn off your electric mattress pad warmer that gets your bed all nice and toasty before you slide in. You wake up in the middle of the night a couple of times trying to figure out why you are boiling alive from the feet up. Eventually you figure out that something other than your own body temperature is at work and you slam the controls to off.

Roll over, drool some more.

Life is good.

Monday, October 16, 2006

There's a New Kid in Town

I love when people do what I say...

I had a little visit home to the mountain this week, which was lovely, of course. One of the perks was pestering Holly into starting a blog. She wanted to argue that she isn't "super brainy" enough to have one. That's a crock, but I spent my time instead pointing out that it's really become a means for a little bunch of us to stay in touch with one another's lives.

And she's got quite the rockin' life going on right now! So, you'll see a new link to the right, and you can even click right here to visit Mrs. Preston's cool new site, Happy Teachers Come From California.

So, those of us who were pestered into blogging by a friend, make a quick show of hands, please.

Yeah, that's mine waving in the air, too.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Daddy, I Have News

I just got home from your Mecca.

Well, maybe not your Mecca. It's likely a little lesser than that. Maybe your Mecca-Bitty.

This afternoon, I set foot in Cabela's. Boise is the home of their newest location, and it opened, sadly, after Mom and Dad went back to So Cal. I hadn't been in there until today.

I ordered some Life Is Good stuff for mom from Cabela's last year, online. I had no idea who I was dealing with. When the grand opening happened here about a month ago, the fact that people were lined up at 3:30 A.M. on the first day started to give me a clue. And that they were busing people in because there was not enough parking.

It's a hunting/outdoors/recreation store. Or Mecca. I walked past more camouflage stuff than I have ever seen, including several mannequins covered head-to-toe with Ghillie coveralls or some of their other leafy stuff (I had to look it up to know what it was--you gotta look at 'em). I thought Big Foot was after me. And I kept apologizing to the mannequin where I was looking at clothes--dang, they dress those things in hats, and you forget they aren't real.

Also, I had to walk past the HUGE center display, what they call Conservation Mountain. It's a mountain (think Disneyland--it looks real), covered with museum-quality taxidermed animals, from bunnies to bears. Even musk ox. And a polar bear. And a nice deer in the pose of licking a little something off its back. Yep, I saw tongue.

There are "ducks" flying in one area of the store, home and cabin furnishings, a general store with candy to keep you company on the hunt or fish, and a tremendous, Sea World-size freshwater aquarium featuring the trout and fish found in Idaho rivers and lakes. In fact, the guy ringing me out apologized for not folding my clothes terribly neatly. When I told him they were going home with someone who would not be too precise about it either, he said he normally works the aquarium but they had called him to the registers to help out.

So we chatted. Turns out he has given dozens of tours in the last three weeks, including 20 Boy Scout troops, busloads of kids on school field trips, and even 94-year-old women who have been part of the one day out a year that their little senior home takes. They wheeled their walkers through Cabela's, God love 'em.

But the real moment I knew I was in a different kind of store? I was in the dressing room, and as I pulled a sweatshirt over my head I heard from the PA system, "Customer assistance to the meat grinding department, please."

And though I smiled, I did NOT laugh. They have a Gun Library and a Bargain Cave. I don't want to be on the business end of either.

It's been a big day. And, Daddy--your St. Nicholas gift came home in my Cabela's bag. You lucky dog :)

Friday, October 06, 2006

It's Just a Thought

Christina got me thinking. I started to comment to her, but it got long enough, I thought I better stick it over here.

I was dropping in to her blog to say I have been reading and thanking God for the coolness of some of the stuff going on with her, with her and Andy, and with her and Andy's kids.

And I wanted to tell her, on the asking for help front -- dive in there, sister! If you don't, He might send you to Idaho where you get to ask a bunch of NEW people for help, rather than all the old friends who already love you and hang around waiting to bless you and be useful to you ;)

The weird thing, in my brain and heart, is realizing that I actually don't deserve anyone being helpful or kind, but I don't deserve any of that anyway, even from the One who made me. And this very Friday morning on the way to work, I thought about how I lived a long time in "the pinnacle of my life's achievement will be to be totally self-sufficient because that's what real grown-ups do and if they are responsible they have their act together and don't pester other people with things they should take care of themselves".

Hmmm. Then I look at the Bible. Hmmm. Christian community doesn't really seem to look like that, I guess. And this mission-community thing totally doesn't look like one that does not ask for help. I remember being stunned the first time I saw an email go out to MAF staff from someone asking to borrow a four-man tent for a camping trip. People borrow stuff? What? Don't you just BUY things? Borrowing means people KNOW you needed something--and you weren't in the condition to get it yourself.

Yep, an email about a tent got my mind whirring.

And those guys who followed Jesus. They were never total go-it-alone men. And Jesus wasn't even here doing his own thing, without needing from others. He went to his Dad all the time. I love that about Him. He said he wasn't doing anything here that His Father did not direct Him to do, or give Him authority to do. He was not on His own--though He certainly had the ability to do all things in His own strength.

And His example has to be my example. Ask. Let those around you feed you. Let them experience the same joy you have when you are privileged to love someone through a physical provision.

Even down to the non-physical bearing of one another's burdens. I had the same thought Michael had at the same time he was posting about all the shadowy places a number of us seem to be in at the moment. We are meant to share our lives together as brothers and sisters--not live in perpetual comparision about who actually has it worse and who has it better, so who has the right of way in talking about their struggles. Fact is, I think we are all plenty noisy enough to tell one another when we are complaining about something stupid--the rising cost of candy corn, for example :)

Otherwise, I think we really have no business to refrain from sharing, or asking for support, based on our own comparison of our situation to others. Any phrase that starts, "What I am going through is just..." is probably being phrased wrong. The sentence is, rather, "Dear friend, can we talk? What I am going through is..." It's all about grace.

When I am in a tough place, wrestling with emotions and struggles, the word just, when used to mean only or simply, has really never brought comfort. "My heart is broken, but it's just..." "I so much want to talk to the Lord about this, but it's just..."

It brings comparison, and leads me away from dealing with what the Lord would have me face and walk through with Him. And that often means he wants to use those who love me to talk to me.

So Christina was right on when she commented to Michael that we really should share and not feel guilty about it. I am learning that talking as He leads, and not as I discern for myself what I should say, allows for a lot more serendipity in conversation. And nothing blesses and warms and thrills like God-coordinated moments :)


Tuesday, October 03, 2006

A 2:30 PM Perk in the Day

Okay--so, like, three people may find this funny. But those three will thank me for making them laugh.

Thusly, I post the chat that Michael and I had today when I interrupted his perfectly focused grading time.

Michael = my sweet brother
me = moi, The Sluss

Michael: The bounce has gone out of me bungee
(This is Michael quietly minding his own business...)
me: I may well be interrupting...
(The Sluss pounces!)
Michael: Kathie Slusser!
me: but I had to tell someone that I am having a problem with Candy Corn this season
Michael: Well, not anything important.
me: and it can't be someone here--they might make me stop
Michael: That's just to keep away the riff-raff.
Candy corn problem?
me: I LOVE IT!
Michael: Uh huh...
I don't think that's illegal yet...
me: I want to buy pounds and pounds
and eat it ALLLLLL!
Michael: Hrmmm...
me: It has been very soothing
Michael: That could be a problem.
me: When I worked on a PowerPoint a few weeks ago for Richard I had to warn him when I dropped it off..
I was pretty hooped up on candy corn when I did it
I couldn't guarantee the quality
Michael: That's funny.
And a little sad.
But funny.
me: hopped up, actually
now that I look
I am hardly ever hooped up
Michael: The boys just got their first candy corn of the season. They've been enjoying it as well, so maybe you can share when you come down next week!
me: YEAH!!!!
Auntie Candy Corn!!!
Michael: I'm so excited that's coming up. We were just prepping the boys for your visit last night. They're pretty excited, too.
And I liked "hooped up."
me: See? I'm a little hopped up right now :)
Are you excited? That's so cute!
You make me happy :)
How, exactly, are you prepping the boys? Like for nuclear holocaust?
Like for Sunday School?
Michael: Yes. We're all quite pleased, and I was pretty excited to realize it was happening sooner than I had expected.
me: Like for a dentist appointment?
More candy corn, please!!!
Michael: We're prepping them by letting them know you're coming. It does no good to tell them too early, or they either (a) get overexcited and then disappointed, or (b) forget. So it's close enough to tell them about it and have them be excited, too.
You are a bit hooped at the moment, aren't you?
me: So cute!
I think so...I am giggling maniacly all to myself in my cubby...
I have people on either side, so I must be quiet!
My face hurts from not laughing :(
Michael: That's the kind of hushed excitement one hears from mental patients with a special new pet.
me: Must...control...laughter...OW!
Absorootentutley
Michael: "Lenny! I have a new pet! His name is Mop! Shhhh! Don't let the nurse know!"
me: You are SOO not helping me!
I have now lost it
I hate you.
It all escaped--crap.
Michael: Heh.
me: ah, the release of the tears of laughter
so sweet
Michael: Wow. A lot of vitriol hidden in there.
me: face feels better
Michael: Feel free to blame my startling wit.
me: even if a big snarfing sound came out at the same time
mostly I blame the candy corn
Michael: Heh.
me: I sound like a nut job in here
Michael: It sounds like you ought to. You could probably sue the manufacturers.
Joanna was complaining that she couldn't find Brach's candy corn and had to buy an off-brand.
me: People have begun asking questions...
Michael: For those of us not too attached to candy corn, it seems a pretty minor point.
me: Off-brand!
Unacceptable!
Michael: How much brand loyalty do you need for dollops of corn syrup with added dyes?
me: That's like saying it's okay to buy generic Peeps!
hardly!
Philistine!
Does that have two "l's"?
I think not.
I see no tag!
Michael: Ah, but with Peeps, you're paying for the love.
Hee hee.
me: and their little candy eyeballs
I feel much better now that I have confessed my secret shame
I think I will capture this whole chat and make it a blog post for tonight
Michael: Off-brand peeps are made only with bitter hatred and disgust for the consumer. It's a disrespect that you can taste.
Oh, dear.
I can't tell if my thoughts are better or worse off the cuff.
me: Always better! Especially with candy corn!

You can't tell me that's not just snarfing hilarious stuff. Have a good night, kids!