a gift, and the friend who gave it

A couple of weeks ago, I went on for a bit about our apartment's poor ventilation and the yucky smells we deal with as a result. That was it. The post was literally: We live in this apartment, and sometimes it stinks, and there's not much I can do about it, rant rant rant, ha ha ha.

Then, last Friday, I answered the door and the mailman handed me a large brown box. I was puzzled- I didn't think we had ordered anything recently. I opened it up to find this:

An air filter?!

The confusion vanished; I knew exactly who had sent the box. I texted this friend a picture and said "YOU ARE CRAZY AND I LOVE YOU."

"I love you too, although I don't remember putting my name on that," she replied.

"You didn't have to," I said.

And she didn't. This friend is an incredible giver and receiver of gifts. She knows people in a deeply thoughtful way, watching and observing and studying their quirks so she can love them better. This friend delights in sweetening other people's days with grace and joy and little surprises. The gifts she gives come in all forms: notes, food, time, encouragement, little presents. And she has an uncanny knack for timing-- if you need something, she knows it, and she probably knew it before you did.

As our friendship grew, I came to see what a beautiful thing gift-giving could be, and I learned how to do it in return. I still remember one of the very first gifts I gave her: a Slurpee from 7-11, all the flavors except blue, that I walked upwards of 2 miles across MSU's campus to bring to her when she was having a bad day. I did that a few times that year, because that girl can drink Slurpees for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We live 2000 miles apart now, but that doesn't deter her. A few months ago, we were on the phone and I joked that all my stuff was falling apart, and my "to-buy" list was so unending that I couldn't ever convince myself to buy socks. A week later, of course, I got a box in the mail stuffed full of brand new socks; underwear and tights too, which she had guessed (rightly) that I also needed.

So she's struck again, and our air is filtered and odorless now. No more taco bathroom!

I'm grateful to this friend, not just for socks and an air filter, but for the way she's taught me to love and know and give, and how to brighten days, and how all of that helps me comprehend the Father's heart a little better.

And, sweet friend: Good try for anonymity, but gift-giving betrays gift-giving, if that makes sense. You're just too good at it. Maybe give me something awful next time? :)

simple berry salad & vinaigrette

If we are friends in real life, then you know I'm a shameless foodie. My fondness for cooking, eating, and talking/reading/learning about food probably warrants embarrassment, but I'm in far too deep for that. Foodlove has settled into a deeply nerdy part of my heart that I didn't see coming but just cannot hide.

It's kinda like when that girl in my ninth grade English class wrote a book report about the Lord of the Rings trilogy and ended up so obsessed that she spent hours crafting homemade prop replicas including the Phial of Galadriel and leaf-wrapped lembas bread and elven rope, which she then proudly presented to her half-impressed, half-horrified (ok mostly horrified) adolescent peers.

Wait, what? Of course that wasn't me. Well...it's not important.

Anyway-- tonight the foodlove began with some gorgeous blackberries. They've been staring me down since Sunday in all their fat purple glory, and when I peered into my fridge looking for dinner, they practically jumped into my hands. Wondering what to do with them, I scanned the rest of my groceries, and my brain spat out some quick culinary mathematics:

(blackberries + feta + spinach) x (lemon + honey + balsamic) = HECK^YES

Deeelish. I scarfed that goodness down in about two minutes. It tasted like dessert-- but super healthy, only about 200 calories for the whole bowl! Here's the breakdown for one serving:

salad:

2 cups spinach
2/3 cups blackberries
2 tbsp feta

vinaigrette:

1 tbsp honey
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
lemon juice to taste

Mix up the vinaigrette and toss it over the salad. Say whaat? Easiest dinner ever!

What I love about salads is how easy they are to tweak-- you can increase/decrease/add/subtract anything you want. I tend to like more acidity, and these blackberries were especially sweet, so I used extra lemon juice in the vinaigrette. If your berries are more tart, up the honey instead. Walnuts or pecans would be a fantastic addition, and I think sliced apples might taste great too. The nom possibilities are endless.

So, simple blackberry & feta salad, thank you for helping me announce to the blogosphere that I will occasionally detail cooking adventures and post recipes, because I am a Class A foodie/nerd. Also generally just a nerd, but we won't go into that any more than we already have. Yikes.

words for wednesday

This is one of the surest things I know. It's what hearkens me back to God when I wander-- that within us is a yearning for the infinite. We want everything; we look for it everywhere. What we find is never enough. Or rather, it is enough for a little while; but then one day we wake up and it's not enough anymore. And again we feel the endless yearning.

Psalm 16:

Keep me safe, my God,
for in you I take refuge.

I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord;
apart from you I have no good thing."
I say of the holy people who are in the land,
"They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight."
Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.

LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Phew! So much goodness in there.

I love how the psalmist says, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."

What if I began the day by saying those words out loud? "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."

What would my days look like if I needed/expected/wanted nothing but my God?

 

(Don't mind me looking bummy in my husband's Justin Bieber hoodie.)

Anyway, there it is on my bathroom mirror now. I want to go out into the world every morning with this in mind. "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." I'm sure I'll return each evening knowing it a little better, whether I remembered it or not. I am forgetful and easily distracted, but God is good at reminding us of Himself.

So then let's end with this gem: "You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand."

What a sweet truth. In Christ, God has made known to us the path of life. We may know joy in the presence of our Savior, Creator, and King. He gives us infinite and eternal and everything when He gives us Himself.

Wait. Soooo...

He who is everything has given us Himself.

You guys, we have EVERYTHING. Forever.

meteor grace for Russia (and us)

You and I and everyone have probably heard something about the meteor that exploded over Russia last Friday. Flash of light, little crashes, uneven shockwave, shattered glass, 1000+ injured, 0 dead.

Yesterday morning I heard another snippet about it on NPR. Morning Edition host Renee Montagne was talking with NYT reporter Andrew Kramer, who was in Chelyabinsk, Russia-- the town most affected by the meteor.

Towards the end of the segment, she asks: "What's the mood of the people there? Are they afraid that something else is going to come crashing down from the sky?"

Andrew responds:

"Well, people were very, very concerned on Friday. I was talking to many people who said that their pulse rate went up, that they were nervous. They had no idea what this was. But by Saturday, a lot of people were giddy. They were amazed that this danger had passed them by. Russians really have a deep expectation of tragedy because of their history. People here often think that things will end badly. This is an exceptional instance in Russia where a huge fireball fell out of space and missed everybody in the city. It could have easily obliterated the entire town, or struck a nuclear facility...it was a near miss for this area."

Ah. Did you get that?

"Russians really have a deep expectation of tragedy, because of their history...People here often think that things will end badly."

And yet? The fireball fell out of space and MISSED THEM.

"People were giddy. They were amazed that this danger had passed them by."

What a potent picture of grace.

Our history is tragedy. We expect the fireball to strike.

It passes us by. 

Last week's meteor should have hit full-force, but science-y shockwave stuff happened and most of it shattered in the air.

And the bulk of the meteor? They can't find it. Nearby, there's a frozen lake with an inexplicable hole in the middle. Some scientists were guessing part of the meteor crashed through it -- but then divers found nothing.

None of this is to diminish the very real aftermath of the meteor's explosion: the community sustained damages of more than $30 million, and 1000+ people were injured.

But no deaths. But no fireball.

It passes us by.




(You can read the transcript of the Morning Edition segment with Andrew Kramer here.)

Love.

Grateful for a day to celebrate love-- like all the days before and all the days after. Grateful for dear friends and family. Grateful for a husband who loves me better than I ever could have dreamed someone would. Grateful, always, for a God who loves his people sweetly, intensely, permanently. And I'm grateful for you! Happy Valentine's Day, dear friends!

taco bathroom

I smell tacos.

I smelled it immediately upon waking up; beef and cheese and heavy seasoning and thick grease. I smelled it in my kitchen whilst sleepily making coffee. I smelled it in the bathroom as I washed my face.

Gag. Friends, Taco Bathroom is NOT a great morning experience.

But Taco Bathroom is exactly what I wake up to roughly twice a week, whenever my neighbor decides it's time for Mexican food. Taco Bathroom happens because our ventilation mostly pulls from the apartments surrounding ours-- so when the guy next to us cooks, the smell creeps into our air.

It's not so bad while he's actually cooking, even if it is a little strange to smell Mexican food while I'm having dessert. But I really start to seethe when I come home the next day and my apartment is rife with the stinky stanky STANK that is stale beef.

Taco Bathroom is the bane of my apartment-dwelling existence. Honestly, we've had house dreams for a while now, but nothing makes me crave my own space more than Taco Bathroom.

And I have bad news for my neighbor: It's Mexican night in the Kelsey household...soo...

on passion

So, five months away from graduation, this happened:

@emjkelsey ya know, Spanish teachers are great...but you have the soul of a writer. Just sayin' 😊

— Sara Kells (@SaraKells) December 8, 2012

My sweet friend Sara has these lovely, otherworldly eyes that can see straight into your soul. Um, and apparently also through Twitter?!

Anyway. When that little nugget of a reply popped up, I was suddenly very aware of how much I had enjoyed composing my ridiculous fog horn tweet.

Also every tweet I've ever tweeted.

And...right. Everything I've ever written.

What a great moment. "Oh. Of course! I'm a writer."

For me, this was not so much the discovering of passion as the uncovering of it. I grew up with a book (or five) in one hand and a journal in the other. Words are my very old friend.

It's hard to explain why I hadn't already realized this, but I think it had a lot to do with fear. As I began to seriously consider what role writing might have in my life, little anxieties rose to the surface:

"There are already so many other great writers."
"I don't have any credentials."
"What if my writing isn't well-received?"
"Writing won't fit into our lifestyle."
"I'll never make money as a writer."

I'm finding that passion- on its own- is a little terrifying. It's wild and frenetic and raw and unpredictable. I'd prefer passion be coupled with plans or direction or opportunity or validation, because those things feel safe, and passion does not feel safe.

Thankfully, we have a God who is Himself the very embodiment of passion: full, wild, eternal passion. He breathes it into our hearts that we, too, may know a beautiful kind of wild. Our Creator delights in giving us these gifts, and incredibly, they are given in pure grace. God doesn't need me to write, but he enables me to.

How freeing!

So my fear-questions aren't answered, at all, not even a little bit. I don't know if writing could support my family. And it's true that I have no credentials. Maybe I'll never write anything but a blog. Maybe Sara will be the only one who reads my blog. (Um, Sara, now you have to. Sooo...)

But the fear is gone, because the Creator made me a writer. And so I'm going to write.