Idle and Blessed

My sister is my hero. This wasn't always the case. Growing up, the mere 21 months between our ages was a catalyst for fights of the worst kind. And as the firstborn that I am, my way of handling fights with my sister was to wield an iron fist of adolescent bossiness. We used to spend a lot of time acting out made-up stories in our backyard, and she was always forced to assume the role of errand-runner and stick/leaf/flower-gatherer. She was the best helper. At the time I didn't realize our way of relating said a lot more about her character than it did my leadership skills. A lot of people look at me as the brave one in our family. I have an ambitious disposition and like to blaze my own trail. Academics are where I feel at home, so getting the degrees and accomplishments is life-giving for me. I also have this love of travel that gives everyone the impression I'm fearless. And in a lot of ways, I am. The Lord has blessed (or cursed?) me with an ability to reason my way...

Some days I don't feel like the resurrection is coming. You know, the resurrection. Of the people in our lives we want so badly to come back to us. And the parts of ourselves lying unresponsive at the bottom. Some days the story seems bleak, like a tragedy. Like Shakespeare is writing it, and high schoolers will have to act it out in literature class five hundred years from now. Characters being taken from the storyline willy-nilly, leaving us standing there, marveling. I believe the story is intentionally bittersweet. The bitterest of sweet, intentionally . My experience does not reliably tell me this. My experience tells me the bitter removes the sweet, like a zero-sum game where they compete with each other for percentage points. Fight the bitter, taste the sweet! Grab it while you can and eat it fast! Before the bad guys win and the Shakespearean tragedy comes to an end. There's a book of Puritan prayers called The Valley of Vision , and its introductory prayer says...