Red Hills Market

I stole my friend Jaynie out on Saturday for a date. We drove all the way out of Newberg, to the next town over (2 miles). Excluding cousin visits, leaving Newberg happens for me about once a month, so it was a big deal.

We went to Red Hills Market, which is everything you love about Oregon stereotypes: local food and wine, wood and natural light everywhere, homegrown-herbs flavoring everything.

And it's super cute. Basically the entire restaurant belongs on Pinterest:

(Wine and decorative birds! How Portland.)    

Our appetizer. I was so happy that our roasted hazelnuts came with a little pine tree in them. (Also known as rosemary, but hey.)

I love this girl. We sat and talked for a long time... it was so good for my heart.

Yay for dates, and cute quirky pretty decorative accents, and friendship.

Views bookending my Saturday.

Morning walk with a friend.

Bedtime with cousins.

Almighty and everlasting God, You are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve.

"O Divine Master

grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love."

-St. Francis of Assisi

Pondering.

You know you're in the right program when the first day of classes feels like Christmas morning.

I don't even know what to title this.

I set down my backpack full of PGRE study books on the couch and walked through the back of the coffee shop, the part full of bookshelves, with notes from the owners marking their favorite stories. I went over to say hi to the group of kids, the owners' grandkids and some other regulars, who were playing hide and seek among the tables piled with books by Buechner, Nouwen, and Lewis.

Aiden, age 8, told me, "I'm freezing you!". He held his arms out straight in front of him, frowning in concentration, clearly zapping magical freezing powers my way. I froze in place, my leg picked up in the air mid-step, my mouth half-open.

Mariza, age 7, told me, "You're invisible!". She waved her arms hazily in my direction, and I crouched below the table nearest me: invisible.

Bridget, age 5, pointed at me but wavered, thinking hard. "You... you..." she smiled with satisfaction as it came to her. "Now you love everybody in the world!".

Without hesitation they all ran to me and gave me hugs.

Hannah Coulter.

I spent the last two days (and all of the ink in a brand-new gel pen) devouring this novel.

I understand that it's highly improbable Wendell Berry wrote this book

for the sole purpose of making me happy;

but it accomplished that task so well it's hard for me to completely accept the fact.

"The living can't quit living because the world has turned terrible and the people they love and need are killed. They can't because they don't. The light that shines in darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into that great room. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones."

"And so an old woman, sitting by the fire, waiting for sleep, makes her reckoning, naming over the names of the dead and the living, which are the names of her gratitude. What will be remembered, Andy Catlett, when we are gone? What will finally become of this lineage of people who have been members one of another? I don't know. And yet their names and their faces, what they did and said, are not gone, are not 'the past,' but still are present to me, and I give thanks."

"Life without expectations was still life, and life was still good. The light that had lighted us into this world was lighting us through it. We loved each other and lived right on. We sat down to the food we had grown and ate it and praised it and were thankful for it. We suffered the thoughts of the nights and at dawn woke up and went back to work. The world that so often had disappointed us and made us sorrowful sometimes made us happy by surprise."

"Sometimes, a haunted old woman, I wander about in this house that Nathan and I renewed, that is now aged and worn by our life in it. How many steps, wearing the thresholds? I look at it all again. Sometimes it fills to the brim with sorrow, which signifies the joy that has been here, and the love. It is entirely a gift."

Finishing it up flying over patchwork farms and pine trees,

heading back into my quiet and joyful Oregon life,

was pretty perfect.

Reflection Questions.

Been journaling/praying through some of these this week: for posterity, and in hope of growth.

Questions gleaned over the last couple of years, from HNGR, Sarah's birthday project, other friends, Celtic Daily Prayer, Mary Oliver, and things I know I need to work through. (And I would welcome any others you think of!)

As I enter 2012... 
How is prayer changing in my life? Am I comfortable with the direction it's going?
What is the most important thing I have learned about myself in the past year?
What helps me feel God's presence?
What are my biggest fears?
What are my greatest temptations?
What do I desire (honest) and desire (godly)?
What have been the times I've felt most alive this year?
What has become more important to me over the last year? What has become less important?
What do I most want to be able to look back on this year and say?
What are the struggles, fears, temptations, burdens of the people I love? Am I going the 2nd mile in understanding them and caring for them? How can I do this better? 
How am I using my gifts to bless, strengthen, and encourage others? How can I do this better?

This was the crazy freakin' sunset I drove past tonight.

I screamed bloody murder about it to Kym on my cell phone, pulled over, and spent fifteen minutes staring and taking pictures.

 

 

  

The fact that there was a huge beautiful farmhouse with a porch and Christmas lights made me even happier (if it was possible).

Nine years...

And the scene hasn't changed.

.Our Companion.

  

"This is the great mystery of Christmas 

that continues to give us comfort and consolation:

we are not alone on our journey.

The God of love who gave us life

sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places,

so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles

but always can trust that He walks with us.

Christmas is the renewed invitation

not to be afraid and to let Him-

whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend-

be our companion."

-Nouwen

How to sanitize a Christmas present for your 13-year-old sister.

 

Yes, those would be the bodies of snowmen glued on top of her Hollister gift card.

Let it be known throughout the North Pole that I am no prude, but seriously?!! Someone please explain to me the purpose of a clothing store advertising with pictures of people not wearing any clothes. (...Actually, please don't.) It may be the current store of choice for all the coolest girls in her class (or so I've been informed), but thanks, I am not giving that to an 8th grader.

After some thought, I decided the snowmen were too boring.

Festive as well as decent. Much better. Feliz navidad!

.why Christmas means more to me as an adult.

After HNGR, and cancer, and after a year and a half of post-grad life, and after, I think, a little bit more understanding that, no matter how filled with joy and love my life is (and oh is it!),
this world is not my home and the point of life is not to be happy and without pain.

"The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul,
who know themselves to be poor and imperfect,
who look forward to something greater to come. 
...the Holy One himself comes down to us,
God in the child in the manger.
God comes.
The Lord Jesus comes.
Christmas comes.
Christians rejoice!...

We are no longer alone. God is with us."

-Bonhoeffer, Christmas Sermons

Such comfort and joy in heartache or fear:

with Christmas everywhere around me, I'm reminded...

not that things are easy or painless, but that in all things:

incarnation, He walked our earth, Emmanuel, God-with-us,

He abides in us.

(HT for Bonhoeffer quote)

Watch this.

Please.

I haven't seen something that moved me so much in a long time.

For more back story on this new family, click here.

Christmas Run with the Ramsings.

The parental units of my lovely second family and I headed to Baltimore at a crazy early hour yesterday for the annual Celtic Solstice five mile race.
(So, if you kind of cut corners on training because you're studying for finals, and then getting to and from the car adds a total of four miles, and you do a five mile run... your knees hurt the next day.
Just fyi.)

It was a really, really, really fun day.

I wanted to make sure I was taken seriously, so I dressed for the part.

(Everyone around me was probably intimidated, right?)

 If I could just get these two to lighten up every once in awhile...

Yay us!!

Love Christmas, love running, love making memories, love them.

First day home for break.

"I went in your room and just stared at you this morning for a long time while you slept...

it was really fun."

-My mother.

I'm glad she loves me so much.

(...Pretty sure that's the only person I ever want to hear that particular phrase from, though.)

I love:

Instrumental Christmas music.

Christmas lights.

Professors who care about me as a person.

My cohort all laughing together (even when it's at me...wow what a new group dynamic for me.)

The fact that I have a cuddly cohort. Thank God.

Text from Mere: "Happy Friendaversary!"- it was the annual Rez volunteer breakfast, where last year we sat and talked for two hours.

Email from Josh: "Hi friend! Just wanted to send some encouragement your way this morning..."

Watching movies with my roommate in her bed at night.

Bugging Chet on gchat.

Night runs under starry Oregon skies (I take a buddy when it's afte dark, Mom, don't worry).

My assigned upper-class mentor- she's the best.

Text from Christine Will: "I had a dream that the three of us met at a Panera somewhere in the middle of the US. There happened to be a chalkboard, so we drew friendship maps and talked about how different people have blessed and influenced our lives this year."

Telling a professor who just had her first baby, "He's so beautiful!", and her excited reply, "I know, isn't he?!"

Brilliant sunrise sky shining over a low layer of fog over the vineyards.

Little girls running to hug me when I walk in the coffee shop.

Raspberry syrup in my coffee.

Psalm 139.

Girls' night with cohort friends, and an afternoon with all of us lying talking on my bed.

Cuddling and reading Christmas stories with children.

Newberg Friends Church.

And the kids being adorable in the Christmas pageant last weekend.

Coffee dates with wise older-than-me women in my small group.

The strong women in Wendell Berry's fiction.

Justin McRoberts's version of O Little Town of Bethlehem.

An email from Lindsay ending in, "Okay, time to go feed the baby!"

Baking Christmas cookies with an almost 3 year old.

Lessons learned from baking cookies with an almost 3 year old... if you tell a toddler that eating raw cookie dough is bad for her as you sneak a bite, it does not have the effect you hoped for. And no matter how stern she's being, it is still funny when you hear your cousin-in-law scold her child for throwing a piece of the nativity scene, "You need a time out! That was NOT nice to the baby Jesus!!"

Twenty-two hour whirlwind Seattle trips.

The familiarity of beloved faces I've been looking at for years.

Two-minute mid-work-day phone calls from across the country asking for prayer.

Feeling known and so happy here... and realizing I'm not leaving anytime soon.

Feeling sad after finals because it means the semester is ending.

.long-awaited Holy stranger.

tears are falling, hearts are breaking

how we need to hear from God

You've been promised, we've been waiting

welcome, holy child,

welcome, holy child...

fragile finger sent to heal us

tender brow prepared for thorn
tiny heart Whose blood will save us
unto us is born,
unto us is born


so wrap our injured flesh around You
breathe our air and walk our sod
rob our sin and make us holy
perfect Son of God,
perfect Son of God

incarnate: embodied in flesh; given a bodily, especially a human, form

Rhythms.

"We give thanks for your ordered gift of life to us,

       for the rhythms that reassure,

       for the equilibriums that sustain."

"We treasure from you,

days to work and nights to rest.

We cherish from you,

days to control and nights to yield.

We savor from you,

days to plan and nights to dream."

-Walter Brueggeman,

"Our true home"

parents: mine.

Reading up on Reactive Attachment Disorder at Chapters...

Me via text to both of them: Thanks for warmly and consistently interacting with me in my infancy!!

Obviously without knowing the other's response, they both replied within a minute:

Mom: My pleasure!

Dad: The pleasure was all mine!

They're keepers.

On Psalm 95.

"Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are His also. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put Me to the test and put Me to the proof, though they had seen Me work."  (Psalm 95:1, 3-4, 7-8)

That psalm is prayed every day in the church liturgy. Of all the psalms, when the church fathers chose what to include, what they thought we need to hear and pray daily, they chose that one. Why?

I first heard that question explored at a service at Rez last winter. I remember how Justin showed the place where the voice in the Scripture changes: from about God, to God speaking. Up through verse seven we are speaking of God, but at verse eight, He speaks to us:


"...on the day at Massah, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen me work."

That's a reference to Exodus 17. Verse 7 tells us exactly what God is referring to here, what happened at Meribah and Massah. Moses had just led the Israelites out of Egypt, into freedom...


"[Moses] called the place Massah and Meribah (testing and quarrelling), because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, 'Is the Lord among us or not?'".

I was literally breathtaken as I read the words of that psalm, the one the church fathers decided out of a hundred and fifty psalms we need to read every day. Breathtaken with conviction as I saw spelled out, by the Israelites, exactly the question my mind and heart wonder so often.


Is the Lord among us or not.

Is God really guiding this decision I have to make... or not.
Did God see my girls... or not.
Was He with them... or not.
Is any work occurring in my heart... or not.
Am I changing and growing... or not.
Did that conversation happen for a reason... or not.
Does He know how she's hurting?
Is He working in his struggle?
Could my flaws and failures screw everything up?
Does good really come from pain?
Did You know that was going to happen?


Are You among us, or not?

Awareness of that question in my heart has changed my prayers since hearing that sermon.
My prayers in fear; my prayers in uncertainty; my prayers in the various new seasons of the last year; my anguished prayers, still, looking at sweet girls whose lives seem so unfair to me.

I don't have answers. I don't like pain. I hate what those girls- what everyone who's known real suffering- have gone through. I still have very little understanding how the whole our-decisions-affect-our-lives vs. God-is-sovereign-and-guiding thing works.

But I have 'seen Him work', and I know that He is among us.


I may not know what You're doing, God.
I may not understand the balance of Your will and my decisions.
I may not like what You're doing,
and sometimes I may not see if You're 'doing' anything at all.
But, when I ask that question, I can answer: yes.
Whatever it is that You're doing-
yes, You are here. You are among us.

Send a Christmas card to a street kid in Seattle?

From one of the blogs that's had the biggest impacts on my life, an opportunity:

"Would you like to send a Christmas card to a street kid in Seattle?  This is a very simple opportunity to show love to the fatherless by extending kindness to a young person living on the streets – in a big city – where it rains all the time – in the winter – where it can be a dark and frightening place... Would you do a simple “mom task” for a street kid in Seattle?  You can Be That Mom by sending a Christmas card to a street kid that will be tucked into a backpack of supplies and passed out this month. "

More details here:  Be That Mom

Me with some of my faves:

Officially my favorite picture ever.

We had coffee together every week for five years. 

Including on her wedding day.

I talked to her for an hour and a half last night while sitting in a coffee shop...

she was 2,000 miles away, but it still fed (caffeinated?) my soul.

So grateful for her and our friendship.

(photo credit: Yeesum Photography!!)

Oregon life, as told by my phone.

Flipping through the random moments I've captured recently made me smile last night. It is rich, this life of mine.

On a walk alone, with coffee. (This was about a month ago and it's already hard to believe I was in flipflops).

Pumpkins in the window of my favorite coffee shop/bookstore.

Kids playing together in front of church, a few minutes before the service starts.

Screen door in our kitchen, letting in fall air and light.

Cuddly cohort members, on a break during class.

Studying with my sweet roommate.

Friends who show up at the door with ice cream.

Notation on my cousins' calendar.

And catching a parenting moment in the kitchen.

Pumpkin tattoo on the bicep (announced by, "Look at my GUNS!!").

Sunny afternoon, reading and homework.



Current favorite spot for a quiet time.

Breakfast-for-dinner one night at Chels and Ryan's.

Making apple juice after church (no idea, but it was freaking cool.)

Sunset behind pine trees.

.first Sunday of Advent.

"Come, Thou long expected Jesus,

born to set Thy people free,

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in Thee."

Black Friday Shopping with the Goldberg Girls.

Me and my mama.

Mom: Ooh, look, leopard-print pants!

Allie: Yeah, the world got a little bit worse the day those were made.

Emily: ...Sorry, what'd you say? I was looking for a Starbucks...

Family.

Train organized by my favorite coffee date (who sat in front because he was the ENGINEER, and proud of it.)

Seats: Kitchen chairs.

Train riders: Grandpa Glenn, me, MY MOM WHO IS VISITING!!, Memaw Peggy, Rubes (who you can barely see poking out), and Jodi. Cameraman: Andy.

What, isn't that what your family does after dinner?

.sunday morning.

The Lord be with you. 

And also with you.
Lift up your heart.

We lift them up to the Lord.

 Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give Him thanks and praise.

***

It is right, and a good and joyful thing,

always and everywhere,

to give thanks and praise to You, Father Almighty;

our Creator and Lover, O Giver of life.
You make all things and call them good.

You love us into being,

You form us in Your image,

and breathe into us the breath of life.

When we turn away, and our love fails, Your love remains steadfast.

You delivered us from captivity, and made covenant to be our sovereign God.

You stretch forth Your hand to heal.

Through Your Son Jesus Christ,
with Your Holy Spirit in Your Holy Church,
all honor and glory is Yours, Almighty Father,
now and forever.

Journal.

Grateful this morning to be writing in my new journal.

I love it because it's beautiful.

I love it because it was hand-made by a precious woman in Kenya, supporting herself through the Amani organization.

Most of all, I love it because it was sent to me by my beautiful friend Breanne.

For absolutely no reason, other than that she knows I love "journaling like a crazy woman" (according to the note she wrote in the front).

It arrived in my mailbox in kind of a hard week,

and reminded me how filled with love and joy my life is.

For-no-reason presents rock.

 Precious friendships rock even more.

 

Can't wait to spend time with God in the pages,

reminded of the gifts He's given me.

Wonder what your psychologist was like in grad school?

I've written before about my beautiful friend Chelsea, who is one of my favorite favorite people here. We hang out all the time and she is my coffee date buddy and walk-vent-need fulfiller of Newberg. Her husband Ryan and I were assigned to be therapy partners for each other this week and after our respective "sessions" we got slightly unprofessional...

Good psycholog-izing, right?

We love you, Chels!!

So happy.

Yeah they did!!!

*******

While in Wheaton I got this email from Marcile, one of my favorite people at my new church. (I just ran into her at Chapters and she told me about how happy she is that six of their grandchildren are going to make it home for Thanksgiving):

"Emily,

We missed you Tuesday night. You missed a great potato bar with all the trimmings! as well as great fellowship. Christine reported you were on your way to a wedding in Wheaton and we prayed for you that this will be a precious time of renewing friendships and confirming God's leadership to where you are now. We will touch base when you return.

Love, Marcile."

 Yes, it was.

.grateful.

Happy bridesmaids at the rehearsal brunch!

Emily M, Court, THE BRIDE and me at the rehearsal brunch!

Yeah, they had a rehearsal brunch. So cool. They got engaged over a pre-church breakfast at that restaurant.

WEDDING TODAY. SO EXCITED.

Christine is getting married in five days.

 

meg, me, and the bride, small group retreat, july 2011.

beautiful friend, this girl.

.of His simple loving.

I've had a total theologian crush on Julian of Norwich for a long time- I love every quote of hers I've seen but haven't read anything straight through. I'm finally diving into a devotional edition of her Revelations of Divine Love and I am loving it.

I've been praying lately to be more aware of God's love for me; and I've been less-consciously but very actively wrestling with rest, and how to find it. These readings are speaking to me so perfectly. I'm super grateful.

"I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us.

He is our clothing which for love enwraps us,

holds us,

and all encloses us because of His tender love,

so that He may never leave us."

"...He showed a little thing,

the size of a hazelnut

in the palm of my hand

and it was round as a ball.

I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: 'What can this be?'

And it was generally answered thus: 'It is all that is made.'

I marveled how it could continue,

because it seemed to me it could suddenly have sunk into nothingness because of its littleness.

And I was answered in my understanding:

'It continueth and always shall, because God loveth it;

and in this way everything hath its being by the love of God.'

In this little thing I saw three characteristics:

the first is that God made it,

the second is that God loves it,

the third, that God keeps it."

"For this is the reason why we are not fully at ease in heart and soul:

because here we seek rest in these things that are so little,

in which there is no rest,

and we recognize not our God who is all powerful, all wise, all good,

for He is the true rest."

"Also our Lord God showed

that it is full great pleasure to Him

that a pitiable soul come to Him nakedly and plainly and simply."

"For the goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it comes down to the lowest part of our need.

It vitalizes our soul

and brings it to life

and makes it grow in grace and virtue.

It is nearest us in nature

and readiest in grace

(for it is the same grace that the soul seeks and ever shall,

till we know our God truly who has us all in Himself enclosed)."

-from chapters 5 & 6

You with ears bent close to our lips.

"...So many words we need to speak
          to you from whom no secret can be hid,
          you beyond us, you with us, you for us,
          you with ears bent close to our lips,
You... and our woes turned towards you, always you, only you,
          yet again you.
Amen."

-Brueggemann,

from "You with ears bent close to our lips: Approaching the Psalter"