No words could describe this...

"...And I saw the mountains waking with the innocence of children
And my soul is still there with them wrapped in the songs they brought
And the Holy King of Israel loves me here in America..."

Not really about baseball...

...it's just the platform from which to tell the story.

I've been to 4 Cubs vs. Cardinals games, spread over several years, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. No matter if they're having a winning season or not (and yes, it's been "not" more often than I care to acknowledge), the Cubs have a track record of beating the Cardinals the majority of the time on the Cards' home turf. It's an indisputable, statistical fact that even Cardinal fans have to admit.

And just to prove my bad luck, the Cubs lost the last 3 games I saw. But I went Saturday fully expecting a victory. The Cubs have held the #1 position in their division for most of the season and they've statistically outranked every other team in MLB for nearly all of that time. And, until the very bottom of the 9th inning (actually, the last 10 seconds of the game), I was confident I was about to break my "losing streak" and witness a victory. But the Cubs lost. I watched it all happen and still can't believe my eyes.

And this really ISN'T about baseball.

The Cubs and Cardinals played a 3-game series--Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Cubs won Friday and Sunday. I didn't see those games. I didn't see them win, but I know they did. I didn't see them win, but I know they're a winning team. I've never seen them beat the Cardinals, but I know they do...almost all of the time.

And crazy as it may seem, this reminded me of the verse in Hebrews that talks about faith...when we have faith, we KNOW when something's real, even if we don't witness it with our own eyes. I've had a lot of challenges to my faith lately...and not just my faith in God, but essentially, it all points right back at God.

I never lost faith that I had a kick-ass printer (see the previous post), even though I had trouble getting it configured to work with my computer. I still have faith that there are decent, "dateable" men out there somewhere, even though I've encountered several that make me want to join a convent. I've not lost faith that marriage can be an amazing thing, even though...well, never mind--TMI alert going off there. ;-) And I've not lost faith in other believers, even though some need to have "Christ-follower" tattooed on their foreheads so I can recognize them for what they claim to be.

And if I can still have faith in fallible things like printers and men and Christians and the Chicago Cubs, even when they break and lie and cheat and lose because there's some small evidence (and a LOT of hope) that they will work and speak truth and be faithful and win, then I know I can have faith in a God who, unseen though he may be, just keeps inundating me with evidence that he's real.

My very own Clark Griswold moment...

This is one of my favorite moments from National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation"...after the kicking-the-Santa-and-punching-the-reindeer temper tantrum, Clark tries ONE LAST TIME to light the thousands of lights he's stapled to his roof. He slams the plug into the outlet with every ounce of strength he has...and the lights come on.

I don't have thousands of lights on my roof (I'm a Griswold in name only, thank you very much!), but I DO have a new, supposedly top-of-the-line HP photo printer that has caused me so much frustration by not printing even 1/10 as well as my 8 year-old cheapy DeskJet. Even set on "best quality print", the printer would print a photo in about 1.5 seconds...horrible quality, horrible color, huge banding--all my prints looked like bad cartoons. I've done every "fix" possible...and nothing's worked, not even the fixes other people have used on the same printer model with the same non-compatibility with XP drivers issues. GRRRR. I was pretty much ready to list it on eBay and go back to my junky little antique.

But I tried one last combo of "fixes" today and, with every expectation that the results would be the same, hit the button to print a test page. And I immediately heard the difference. S-L-O-W feed of the paper through the printer. Steady, even, concentrated dispersal of ink. And the finished product? Absolutely breath-takingly perfect. Exactly what I knew this printer could do.

You can call me Clark Griswold today and I won't even mind.

Technology...the wonder-drug

So, if you haven't heard, I broke my phone. Completely in half.


This is the best phone I've ever owned. When I bought it, I asked the salesman if they had one made of titanium, since I'm known to be hard on phones (that might be an understatement). This one wasn't titanium, but it withstood a lot of drops, several onto concrete. The last drop (actually, more of a flight) from the van to the parking lot started its demise--I didn't mind the 2 big cracks (my last phone was held together with black electrical tape, so cracks are nothing), but when I lost the front screen and the inside screen started turning strange yellowish colors, I knew the end was near.

Something prompted me to upload the photos onto Facebook Saturday morning...the inside screen started turning yellow Saturday afternoon and was completely gone by Saturday night (which meant I lost my text-messaging capabilities--NOT a good thing for me). And the phone completely popped in half later that night.

I have a new phone now. It's purple. Plum, actually. And it's a pretty cool phone--I think I'm going to like it. Not as well as the old one...and I don't think it's as durable, but I still haven't found that titanium one, so I'll settle for a cool color. And I've learned how to make my own ringtones, so I'm not too heartbroken over all of the ringtones I lost from the old phone.


But. I lost things. I'm a keeper of memories. My text message storage was over 80% full of messages that I just couldn't bring myself to delete. Some were funny...probably only to me, probably because you just had to be there in the moment. Some were sad, like the message telling me the tent at God's Katrina Kitchen was down. Some were good advice, like the one from Chad reminding me that I was bought with a price and there wasn't an "unsigning clause" on the day I was ready to give up and walk away. And some of them...well, they were sweet at one time, but painful to read now. Reminders of how life turns on a dime and leaves you looking at your empty hands and wondering what the hell just happened. Deleting them acquiesced to defeat and I wasn't ready to give that ground yet. I wasn't ready to let go.

Technology, though, had other plans. For a clean slate and a new start. Doesn't matter if I like it or not. Doesn't matter if I was ready to turn the page. Maybe it's a good thing that I now have a new plum phone with an empty inbox. Maybe I can see tomorrow (or even today) better if I'm not turning to glance back at yesterday. Maybe it's a good thing that decision didn't rest in my hands. I feel kind of robbed and naked right now, but in the end, I might just be grateful that I was dragged into a new day.

This is one of the ringtones I lost. Not sure yet if I'll use it again, even though it remains one of my favorite songs. Who would ever have guessed how appropriate it would be right now?


"Into the Day"--Bebo Norman

You could turn a hundred years and never empty all your fears
They’re pouring out like broken words and broken bones
They could fill a thousand pages, be the cry for all the ages
And the song for every soul who stands alone

The ache of life is more than you are able

Hold on love, don’t give up
Don’t close your eyes
The light is breaking through the night

Step out into the day, all the clouds and all the rain are gone
It’s over now
Step out into the sun, for you have only begun to know
What it’s all about
As the hungering dark gives way to the dawn, my love
It’s over now

Time will let the story told grow and grow ‘til it unfolds
In a way that even you cannot ignore
You can say the seasons change but never if you just remain
In a place where the freeze is at your door

What you don’t know is the signs are right for the turning tide

Hold on, hold on

It won’t be long
So hold on