Dogs and Wool Socks

I can't sleep and felt like writing.

In Shakespeare this week, Rick was talking about how cold it's been lately and said he was out at 2:00 in the morning the night before. Someone asked what he was doing out at that time and he replied that the dog had gotten out and he had to corral him back in.

"Oh right, the dog. You were out partying, admit it!"

Rick smiled, this look of "Oh yeah, that used to be cool a long, long time ago."

"No, I wish my life was that exciting. It's all about dogs and wool socks now."

I like how he threw the student a bone by making it sound like he still had some desire for the college life of 2 am shenanigans. I had a conversation with Rick this week that let me know that what really gets him excited is young people seeing the world and backpacking with his sons.

I like to write. Write write write writey write write wrikey writey I wrike to write a wrot.

Last week I was trying to pray and was feeling really overwhelmed with a sense of self-righteousness about it. All I could think about was telling someone what I was praying about to look good. I couldn't shake it and eventually just started asking for that pride to be taken away, that it wasn't what I truly wanted from my prayer. I felt like such a slug, it makes me feel sick now thinking about it, and writing it now brings some of it back too. What happened was somewhat atypical for my prayers: I was lying on my back in bed and suddenly felt like I was looking at myself from just behind my head down at my prone body, and that some clear, thick coating was breaking up and being pulled away from off of my chest and dissappearing just above me. It went on for about 2 or 3 minutes. The whole time I felt like holding my breath, like breathing would stop it, and that what was leaving was something that had been there for a while and I had gotten so used to it that it appeared "clear" like a varnish on me. I wasn't sure at all that I liked it leaving either. I'm thinking now of the character in the Great Divorce that refuses to part with the lizard on his shoulder because it's been there so long that he doesn't quite know what he'd do without it even though he knows it's doing him harm. Afterwards, the image stopped, and I felt scared to move. Something that had always been there, like a protection, was gone and it's unnerving.

"You know, you can't live on Hamlet forever." another gem from Rick this week.

What made this even more powerful for me was that Taylor and I had just been talking about prayer and how life-changing we should expect each and every prayer to be. I can't say I've felt a more direct and immediate effect of prayer in my life.

I'm reading my nightstand note sheet that I use to jot down late night thoughts and saw that I thought about writing something that symbolized recurring sin not in an action, but in the antitheses of good things that we desire naturally. We were talking about sin not really existing in bible study a few weeks ago, how it's just the completely wrong pursuit of an inherently good desire, just met the wrong way.