from the girl who should not be allow to blog after 7:30 pm

it woke up.
right now.
well, a few minutes ago.
around 10:45.
after a bath and taking my evening pills.
after snuggeling with herb.
after the light went out . . . for the third time.
as my tall and broad and always warm husband drifted off,
i felt another presense with me.

next to me.

not snuggled up like herb, but rather tugging and prodding.
a presense much stronger and much warmer.
it breaths the hot yummy-stink of creativity . . .
you know what i mean?
it is kind of like "sexy-ugly" or the smell of grass or gasoline.

anyway, it hummed this tune under it's intoxicating breath . . .
the hope of possibility.

full of ability dying to burst through the seams of your neatly croched socks.
ripping out of the bounds of something created to keep me warm and safe.
it is uncaring.
unwilling to take excuses.
it doesn't even have to seduce me before i am slinking out of my bed and following the heat within my own heart into the office to discover any number of endless possibilites.

books, talks at conferences, retreats, photography, a line of fun girly cards, a line of wedding invitations . . .

they all clang about in my head.
and then i see a book (not hard to do in our house) or a photo or a painting . . . .

and i stop.

because somebody already did it.
they don't need you.
the world doesn't need you to do what anyone else can do and what hundrads who are far more brave than you have already done.
and done well.

so i slink away.

but not this time.

you see, i have another pal.
even stronger than creativity.

so here i sit.
me and curiosity.
very interested in what god might possibly do through and in and around this girl.

I Was Trying to Pay Bills Online, and Oopsy-Daisy, I am Blogging Instead!

Apparently it is all the rage to google: "(your name) needs".
When I googled "Cara Needs", this is what I discovered!

1. CARA NEEDS YOUR HELP!
(if you would like to help, you could choose from many exciting opportunities such as cleaning my bathroom, making dinner, and figuring out how to get that janky smell out of my kitchen garbage can! after that, i have some client notes and filing to catch up on. then there is the . . . )

2. CARA NEEDS THESE PANTIES.
(well, i have always heard that you should wear clean underwear just in case you got into an accident and the paramedics have to cut you out of your clothes. the reality is, that ACTUALLY happened to herb a few years ago and i bet that since he knows how it feels to be stretched out, mostly-naked on university blvd., he would agree that i do indeed need these panties.)

3. FOR SERIOUS, CARA NEEDS SOME OF THAT PAPER YOU ARE HOLDING DOWN.
(well, if it is scrapbooking paper, sure - give it to me!)

4. CARA NEEDS CARERS (care-givers?) THAT CAN UNDERSTAND HER DIFFICULTIES AND PAST LOSSES.
(no, i am not quite to the stage of needing caregivers . . . and while i have difficulty focusing on paying bills instead of blogging, i don't think there is that much to be concerned about!)

5. CARA NEEDS VOLUNTEERS.
(see number 1)

Thanks

When Herb and I started dating, one of our jokes was that we couldn't wait to get married, move to the suburbs, and buy a mini-van for me to drive. In this tongue-in-cheek, "no way in the world will this ever be our reality", fantasy, I would be a scrapbooker with a bad haircut.

Well, something odd happened along the way. I actually became curious about scrapbooking. It began our first Christmas when I was buying stocking stuffers for herb. I found a small, sophisticated black scrapbook in the dollar section. I bought it. I didn't have time to do anything with it before Christmas. But for Valentine's day, I used it to tell our love story. I used some pictures, but mostly my handwriting, doodeling, and passages from my old journals. I love love loved making it and it is the one handmade gift I have made him that he goes back to over and over again.

But still.
Scrapbooking?
I bought a magazine.
And a few pretty patterned papers from Target.

And I let it all sit, tucked away for about six months.
Somewhere in there, I saw an article in a magazine by this girl . And i figured that if she could scrapbook, so could I.
Then, I saw this gal's blog and thought . . . "oh, yeah . . . scrapbooking. i have all those pretty papers tucked away. I can do this. If they can do this, I can totally do this."

SO, thanks Elsie and Jody for scrapbooking.

Today, Elsie shared her favorite picture on her blog. And asked "us" to show ours.
Sort of a less dirty version of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

So, here are a few faves from the past couple of years.

I of course love this smoochy italitan honeymoon picture.

And then there are these two which perfectly show off my husband's character . . . hard-working and playful! Plus, who gets the chance to help two old italian fishermen dock their little boat!?!?!?

None of Us Our Free

Today's Song: None of Us Are Free
The Voice: Solomon Burke

The Thoughts:


as we enter into Advent, we try to put on our old school jewish hats . . . we try to imagine what life was like as they anticipated the messiahs first arrival.

again, we look back and see a people who spent generations in exile . . .
then in slavery . . .
then wandering . . .

they lived a life without a foundation. without safety.

there is a long history of unfortunate things that happened TO the jewish people . . .
but there is also a long, painful story to be told of the constant push and pull between god and his people.
from the beginning, we see this.
and all through the old testament.

i remember sitting in my old testament class during my second semester of seminary . . . i had just graduated from college, where, despite (or perhaps because of) my high involvement in a campus ministry, i left feeling completely disillusioned in my faith. it was rattled. i had arrived at a place where i had too much evidence to deny god's existence . . . i even saw that he was good . . . and that he loved people . . . but i had too much evidence to the contrary to believe that he loved ME.
still, i left college and went to seminary to study the bible and counseling.


i sat in that class, and for the first several months, i was overwhelmed by god's harshness.
the way he punished.
the way he doomed.
the way he cursed.
and even destroyed.

line after line. chapter after chapter.
i was disgusted.
with him.
but the more the people messed up, the more he gave them a second chance. consistently . . .

what an interesting sensibility our god has.
he really took the spiritual, internal reality of his beloved people . . . spiritually enslaved.
and he caused them to have a very external, tangible experience with it.
wow.

we are spititual slaves to anything that is not of god.
on top of their unfaithfulness to god . . . their adulterous hearts . . .
they would eventually become actual, physical, human slaves to an empire that did not, and would not confess god's name.

that is like the ultimate object lesson.

they were enslaved
and they longed to be free

it makes me wonder . . .
what am i enslaved to?