Gone from My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

-- Henry Van Dyke

My grandpa is dying. It seems such a precious, mysterious, and distressing time--all at once. He will soon know greater joys and pleasures than we could ever dream of, and yet he must first go through an indefinite period of this rather unpleasant process called dying. And we, his family, just want to do what we can to love him as best we can until God decides it is time to take him home.

Before the Throne of God Above

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea.
A great High Priest whose name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands;
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in heav'n He stands
No tongue can bid me to depart.

When Satan temps me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

Behold Him there the risen Lamb,
My perfect spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I AM,
The God of glory and of grace.
One with Himself I cannot die;
My soul is purchased by His blood.
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Savior and my God.

--Charitie Bancroft

This is one of my favorite hymns. I can think of nothing more comforting, hopeful, and wonderful than the message of this poem.

Merry Christmas!

Top 5 Favorite Gifts Received:

• Autobot License Tag for Bumblebee
• GPS for Bumblebee
• Knit Newsboy Style Cap
• Barnes and Noble Gift Card
• Charlotte's Webb DVD (although I have yet to watch it, heh)
  

I think Bumblebee will be pleased (he's my car for those who don't know...I'll have to get a picture up here sometime). And I'm excited about the possibility of not having to print out mapquest directions--depending on how reliable I think this little GPS gadget is.

We got dad the Wilberforce movie "Amazing Grace" so we watched that tonight. I had forgotten how good it is. Unfortunately, it turns out that their representation of Wilberforce's wife isn't really accurate (at least according to Wikipedia, ha) -- specifically, that Barbara was not interested in his political activities and the movie portrays her as deeply interested. Alas. I know that really is not the point of the movie anyway, but I guess from a woman's perspective her portrayed influence in the film was inspiring--i.e., encouraging William to continue with his work when he had given up hope--and it was disappointing to me to find that this characterization was not real. On the other hand, I had been thinking to myself that I greatly admire a man like Wilberforce and wish that I could be the sort of woman that could love and support such a person, and yet I am not at all like the woman in the movie. But it does sound like I could be like the woman that his wife actually was (minus the "narrow-minded possessiveness" mentioned, I hope, ha). So there's that...

And then we watched Anastasia because I wanted to watch it, and my family loves me, so they watched it with me. =) Except my mom got tired and had to go to sleep, but Joel and dad watched with me 'cause they're sweet like that.

I sort of feel like I should say more, but I mostly just wanted to wish you, my readers, a Merry Christmas and to, well, sort of prattle about the simple parts of the day. Perhaps I will write on the less simple parts another time.

"I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour is born to you; He is Christ the Lord."

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

Luke 2:10-11 & 14

Turtles, Health Food, and Humility

So I've decided to take down my adsense ads because I didn't really think that ads about the Anti-Christ being revealed and Hell not really existing could possibly be that beneficial or appealing for anyone. And it just always made me want to click on them out of curiosity, which you're not supposed to do. So thank-you Jenn for $6.78. That was very kind of you, and I am doing my best to return the favor ;-)

Maybe some day I will try it out again when I get into a focused research mode. At present, my best expertise is in humility, and I'm afraid there isn't much of a market for said trait--except for this book called "Speak Softly: What's happened to American Humility?" that appears in the ads in my gmail account frequently.

In the past, I think I could have made a decent blog about taking care of red-eared slider turtles, as well as various discussions surrounding health foods and certain health conditions due to my experiences over the past year. Hm...maybe I need to get an exotic pet so I have a reason for having a strange expertise so that I can write an educational blog.

Time to get ready for church. Happy Sunday!

Self-Appreciate

I know I have written about this before, but it just gives me such warm fuzzies that I felt the need to write about it again.

So at present I'm writing about the issue of humility being equated with low self-esteem, and it led me to look once more in the Oxford American Dictionary, which is so handy on my powerbook dashboard, at the entry about the words appreciate, admire, and esteem.

I get frustrated because people are right to feel that humility seems to imply low self-esteem... This dictionary defines humility as "a modest or low view of one's importance." Sometimes I kind of cringe at dictionary definitions of humility, but I can't really argue with this. And to esteem oneself is to think highly of one's importance, no? And the problem then is that low self-esteem as defined in psychology is just an unhealthy thing. I feel like it all comes down to whether your value and worth depends upon your "importance." Because if your worth depends on being important then having low esteem for yourself will leave you miserable, but if your worth depends on simply being a part of God's creation or something like that then having a low esteem for yourself won't be such a crushing matter.

Ah, I got off track there... on to the warm fuzzies.

The Right Word
All three of these verbs [appreciate, admire, esteem] are concerned with recognizing the worth of something, but in order to appreciate it, you have to understand it well enough to judge it critically.
If you admire something, you appreciate its superiority, while esteem goes one step further, implying that your admiration is of the highest degree.

If we read this, doesn't it then feel very silly to speak of "self-esteem"? What arrogant, vain creatures we suddenly become when you think of all the programs we design to foster self-esteem in our children...

So I call for a reformation. I don't think we intended to nurture little narcissists with our self-esteem building...but I say we reformulate our approach and work towards self-appreciation--understanding ourselves well enough to judge critically (while also acknowledging that our value comes from elsewhere...hm, that got a little confusing). But I think this will foster an attitude of humility much more nicely than admiring ourselves to the highest degree. ;-)

Pandora Radio

This really is a wonderful site. Free radio that plays the style of music you want to hear. My dad said it's one of the top 5 most visited sites at our church, ha.

My favorite stations?
Today I've been listening to my "Imogen Heap" and "More than Words" stations. They both provide for some great chill yet upbeat tunes (is that oxymoronish?). Of course the amazing part of it all is that they are both slowly but surely being molded to my unique taste. If a song pops up that doesn't suit my ears, I just give it a thumbs down and I never have to hear it again.

And it's free.

Courage for Humility

I saw this quote on a friend's facebook profile, and I absolutely love it:

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody." J.D. Salinger

Christmas Carols

We sang all Christmas Carols this morning at Perimeter. They are such amazing songs; it is a shame we don't sing them all year long.

Hail the heav'n born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings, ris'n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing, "Glory to the newborn King."

Goodness, can you hear them singing? Amazing. And that line, "Mild He lays His glory by"...so brief that I have sung it a million times without probably ever really feeling the weight of what it means.

And then I don't know that I have ever either sung all the verses to "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" or at least appreciated them as much as today:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing:
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing.

Oh for glad and golden hours!
"Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heav'n's all gracious King."

Seasons

It seems so strange to think that all of a sudden I live in Atlanta now. Last weekend I was in Richmond getting the last of my things, spending time with friends just like it has been the past 2 years. And I had a lot of fun, but I was also so thankful to find that God had provided a strong peace in my heart that I was doing the right thing, rather than a strong sense of sadness and loss that I had feared would overwhelm me.

Now it's Friday night back in Georgia, and I have energy to go out and do something fun but I suddenly realize that I don't exactly have any "go-to's" here. No regular circles of friends, hang-outs, etc. I know these things come in time but perhaps this is just the first time that I have even had the energy to miss going out. Or perhaps this is the first time I have really looked at my situation as a starting over since I hadn't been sure whether I would be back in Richmond in the spring or not.

Well, here's to the adventure.

PS
Back to Grad School #1 And we'll add "Sand in my shoes" Dido.