Since you've made it to the "about me" page, I guess that means I should write something about "me" on it. Its a curious thing really, that while I've found that telling people in person all the minutest details of my life is easy enough to do, writing about it is another thing altogether. I looove sharing the funny stories of grocery store trips gone wrong, my latest adventures of getting lost or loosing other people, alien abductions and highly fanciful exaggerations of already overstretched facts - yes, hyperbole is a habit of mine! As well as using long bizarre words. But when I write about me....
There's a funny story I remember from when I was young. We'd gone to a friends house for dinner and afterwards I took my young eight year old self out to the back yard with the family's oldest daughter, at least four years older than myself. While helping this older friend keep an eye on our numerous little siblings I felt very prestigious, rather grown up and important. At one point our toddler charges, my two year old sister and her two year old brother, staged a little theatrical in the clubhouse. We peeked in the window and discovered to our delight that they were playing "house", each sweetly presiding over their respective role of "Ma" and "Pa", watering plastic flowers with a miniature watering pot and bending over the grubby playhouse kitchen table to give each other a tender hug. My friend smiled and gushed - "Aww, that is so cute!"
I felt this called for an adjective more descriptive than cute, more divine than cute. After a moments frantic brain scrabbling - involving hands clasped, raised slightly to heaven, twisted lips and scrunched up forehead - I hit upon a word I'd recently come across, and saved up for just such a momentous occasion,
"I know, they are so perfectly PATHETIC!" I uttered, in the most sincere tones at my disposal.
Yeah, I was dramatic then too. The look on her face was priceless, apparently twelve year olds know the meaning of pathetic. It took several visits for me to figure it out and properly explain that I didn't have a weird twisted sense of sarcastic humor, that I'd meant everything truly noble and devout in my use of the unfortunate word, and I got labeled as a "sesquipedalian"ever since. Only, that wasn't the word they used, it was something much plainer and more along the lines of "she likes to use big words".
Sesquipedalian: given to or characterized by the use of long words. (But lets face it, Sesquipedalitist sounds better, so I've made my own version :)
I'm often paranoid of using the wrong words. But even more importantly I've always been afraid of being misunderstood, of what other people think. My distaste of writing about myself stems from this. I'm a perfectionist. Its something God's working on in me. I love writing about ideas, I love talking about ideas, but it really shouldn't be about me. Its about Christ who saved me. And He is still working in me, as I hope He is working in you, to sanctify me for His work. So this blog is about things that come to me along the way - thoughts on culture, books, governments, worldviews... Hopefully you will join the conversation and share your thoughts! How can we encourage each other in the truth? How can we make a difference in our communities? Country? The world?! I think it starts with a willing surrendering of everything in our lives to God. Less of me, more of Him.
