Overtures

"My new phone has a reject call feature with text messaging." "That's cool. But I don't even know what that means."

"Like I can reject a call and the person will receive a text message. I'll have to write some automated text messages."

"Like 'Busy, banging my wife'?"

"Um, yeah. Like that."

***

I have felt utterly exhausted by the last two weeks. I've been pushing through a couple of projects that were, in themselves, behemoths. I've been stressed and cranky and waking up thinking it was Sunday, only to horrifiedly realize it was Tuesday. I've showered the absolute minimum that a first world citizen can shower without receiving deodorant samples sent anonymously to my mailbox. Yet. And I entered into a new, financially imprudent love affair with the creme brulee latte (with soy!) at Sixbucks. My lands, is that the tonic of the gods.

*** I recently discovered we have the Gospel channel. This is not your standard Jaysus channel. It has really good programming! Not just Southern evangelical preachers trying to drain your pockets. It's good! Not that I could name a single Gospel artist, but they have a lot of contempo Christian concerts. I've watched the Jars of Clay concert twice already. Excellent. Even though the lead singer is dressed like Mark from "Rent" sans the hipster glasses. I think they are a highly underrated band. Their albums are all quite different in sound but the lyrics are consistently excellent; they are good studies of the uncliched faith journey.

*** In the midst of this end-of-semester distress and the condition of what Loverpants called "living under a rock; you didn't even know Gisele and Tom had their baby two days ago?!" I have really been moved by moments of sweetness from my family. The moments with Baby Girl when she takes her little pincers to my cheeks and, pinching the Cabbage Patchy flesh of my face, says, "Cheeksies! You so cute!" The moments when I don't at all deserve a hug and Loverpants gives me several in a morning.

I have also been returning again and again to Micah 5. I never knew how explicit the birth of the Christ child was, in prescription and spirit. That He would be born in the smallest of the tribes, that He would release Israel, and that He would be their peace.

In the last two weeks of fitful sleep and ever-expanding belly, I have called upon this peace to continue to reign in my heart and mind. I think of the sweetness of holding my own baby, and just the profundity of the Lord sending His own baby to earth to be stewarded by mere mortals, and I am closer to understanding how precious is the peace that was sent here for us to hold, like a mild little infant that so needs us to be still.