Resolution #5.  Resolved, never to lose one moment of time but improve it in in the most profitable way I possibly can.  –  John Piper

I dare you.

I dare me.

A door held open, a kind word spoken, a seat given up, I notice.  A question well-posed, an interest exposed, a listening ear, I notice.  A respect for women, a soft spot for children, a love for family, I notice.  I notice and appreciate it and say thank you, kind sir, for chivalry’s not dead.

Sorted are the seeds and into the ground they go, please make these little buds grow.  For only you can bring the sunshine and pour down the rain.  For only you, will this harvest be sown.

To be in the mood to write is certainly a luxury, one to which I am not currently afforded to.  Nevertheless, as the sun rises and sets over this city that never sleeps, so time plows on through life’s fields without the least consideration of whether or not I am ready to write.

Ergo, this is my attempt to ruminate on the wonderful harvest of this past month because although I have the tendency to think I’ll always remember everything, I also have the tendency to be wrong.  So here it is, friends and family and future Malia.  Here is my claim to this crisp and sunny October day:

I’m happy.  I’m really, really happy and content with life.

These shoes of relocation have not been easy to break in; still, I have a lot to be thankful for and much to look forward to.  Life is good.  No complaints here, just a cute pair of shoes and a sick dance party (or two!) ahead!

“People need to be reminded far more often than they need to be instructed.” –Samuel Johnson

This is my current battle, and right now is my season to be reminded.  The following is an abridged version of an assignment I wrote earlier in the year, a time when my very own sentences were a lot easier to own and believe.

I Peter 4:10 “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”  Two things.  Simply extracted.  Not so easily employed.

First of all, each and every one of us has been given a gift.  I have always known that in my head, but for so long—too long—I approached it with more of a Christmas morning mentality, the kind where parents give gifts to all the kids out of fairness, but you could always tell who was the favorite.  Needless to say, I never really felt like the “favorite.”  I felt like the little sister who got the pocket-sized plastic labyrinth with layers of adhesive caked over the front from being put on sale too many times, and my brother was the one getting the X-Box.  I have been learning, though, that around God’s Christmas tree, there are no gifts out of the $0.99 bin.  Every one is allotted theirs out of purposeful consideration by the Maker who arranged the mountains to raise up to a certain height and no higher, the waves to reach a certain point and no further, and this planet to rotate at a certain speed and no faster.  He is the one we not only belong to but also are jealously desired by.  Consequently, to consider that this is the God who gave us our gifts, one would have to believe that He has invested much thought, intention, and expectation into this act of assignment.

Ergo, we are led to a sense of stewardship, the need and responsibility to utilize that which we have been entrusted with.  The thing with gifts, though, is that as a lover needs a beloved, so a gift needs a recipient in order for its inherent properties to be appreciated.  By nature and way of the second principle, gifts require movement.  Lewis Hyde uses the genesis of the term “Indian gift,” (a “proverbial expression signifying a present for which an equivalent return is expected”) in order to explicate this concept (3).  He begins his book, The Gift, with the following story:

“An Englishman comes into an Indian lodge, and his hosts, wishing to make their guest feel welcome, ask him to share a pipe of tobacco.  Carved from a soft red stone, the pipe itself is a peace offering that has traditionally circulated among the local tribes, staying in each lodge for a time but always given away again sooner or later.  And so the Indians, as is only polite among their people, give the pipe to their guest when he leaves.  The Englishman is tickled pink.  What a nice thing to send back to the British Museum!  He takes it home and sets it on the mantelpiece.  A time passes and the leaders of a neighboring tribe come to visit the colonist’s home.  To his surprise he finds his guests have some expectation in regard to his pipe, and his translator finally explains to him that if he wishes to show his goodwill he should offer them a smoke and give them the pipe.  In consternation the Englishman invents the phrase ‘Indian giver’ to describe these people with such a limited sense of private property.  However, what this man doesn’t consider is that perhaps the more fitting term here is ‘white man keeper,’ that is a person whose instinct is to remove property from circulation, to put it in a warehouse or museum” (4).

Point being, our gifts can only be displayed when active in service unto others.  It will and can only survive with constant movement.  For when kept to one’s self, every one loses.  The gift stagnates.  And in the end, as Julian Green put it, those gifts not consumed in service “end up causing a sort of rotting inside of us, and one dies with a head full of fine sayings and a perfectly empty heart.”

Lord, you know I’m still working through the notion that when you set up time and space and determined exactly what New York would need in 2011, you plucked me out of eternity and placed me here with a present for these people.  Right now, I’m asking that would you show me what that is and give me boldness to grab hold of it–to love wildly and serve lavishly with it.  For your glory.  In your name.  Amen.

“Be yourself.”

That’s what they always said.  That’s what they still say, and I’m finding out, it’s for very good reason.  Now I know none of my thoughts on this matter are original, still there is something magically enthralling about these two words right now.  For in this city of 8,175,200 people, I am realizing more and more that to be myself is all that is really available.

“Everyone else is already taken.”

-Oscar Wilde.

Imagine a world with no journal entries.  It’s a world of jam-packed days, weary treks up apartment staircases at the end of the day, and overpowering desires to go to bed as soon as possible.  “Carpe diem,” the people say, seizing the day but letting it go with the subsequent sunrise, the details to go with it as days turn into months and months into years.  It’s a world of living full out—yes, but it’s also a world of forgetting.

Imagine a world with every escapade recorded and every thought developed.  To write is fun and indeed worthwhile; however, in this world, the people spend all their time transcribing matters that they run out of things to write about and ultimately miss out on the opportunity to enlighten a gentleman that Hawaii is indeed a state and not a country, to meet Elmo…Elmo…and another Elmo (with Mexican accents) all on one street corner, to watch an Aeropostale employee breakdance in the store’s entrance, to eat breakfast overlooking Lady Liberty, to wait four hours at the DMV with a lady in a fully-knitted (neck to ankles!) jumpsuit, to witness a proposal in Times Square, and to enjoy the most wonderful plate of black linguine with a dear friend in a new place…amongst other tales and exploits.

Now imagine a world where Malia could have the very best of both worlds, to have these wonderful adventures as well as enough energy  and willpower at the end of the day to write them down, to share them with and keep in contact with the people she loves.

Thank you for being patient with her as she works to make this a reality.

I feel crazy, but I feel confident.  I feel small, but I feel significant.  I feel powerless, but I feel protected.  I feel like I am going to miss Santa Barbara terribly, but I know that this is what I am supposed to be doing.

So after all is said and done and packed, well…

I feel ready.

It all really doesn’t make sense, and yet in another world, in belonging to another kingdom, such is the wonted way of life…or so I am told.

The arm floaties would not be put on.  The stairs woluld not be used, not today.  For today was little Molly’s big girl moment—she was going to jump in the deep end of the pool!

Yet as she stood on the edge of the glistening tiles, her lungs froze.  She couldn’t breathe.  Her heart, meanwhile, wouldn’t stop beating at what seemed like a million miles per hour.

It was all so much scarier from this view.

She wasn’t going to do it.  She was going to do it. She wasn’t going to do it.  She was…well, she was just going to stand there for a little bit longer.

While up there, though, she looked down and locked eyes with her daddy who was already in the pool and close to the projected landing zone.  And in that moment and in those eyes, she saw the most intense kind of love and knew nothing bad could or would happen to her.  She didn’t know it then, but this was the very love that would put pictures in his wallet where money used to be and bruises on his shins when she would fall while learning how to rollerblade.  Because of this very love, she had no reason to doubt.  She knew she could trust him.  She did trust him.

And so she jumped.