the rose of kiev

I had been up since seven that morning, which, since I should've been out of bed by 6:30, meant that I had been running late all day. Running behind stresses me out, and as any girl can testify a hormone-stress cocktail is volatile if allowed to mix, and I could feel the spoon stirring inside of me. Even though I was running late to dinner with a friend on campus, as an act of prudence I changed course and sat next to Mirror Lake for 5 minutes to calm down. I sat in the grass and watched the fountain, waiting for the emotions to settle. Then along comes a happy couple of ducks waddling along the edge of the lake toward me pecking at the grass for food. Their boat-shaped hips swayed awkwardly from side to side as their flourescent- orange pancake-thin feet slapped the stones; I noticed the disproportionally pompous curled feathers at the tail of the male and began to laugh out-loud. Never before have I ever been so assured of two of God's attributes - His pleasure in the act of

I laid in bed at around six'o'clock in the evening a couple weeks ago, listening to the ceiling fan as I stared at the wall. It had been an exhausting week filled with a rainy birthday, a sinus infection, and not enough time with Dave. Earlier that afternoon he and I sat in the Lowe's parking lot for an hour wearily talking through ways we had let each other down and how to get through the rest of the school quarter. As I began to wake up from the three-hour afternoon nap we had taken together, I contemplated many things that fit into one general heading: Marriage is hard. Those who are married understand that small sentence with every fiber of their experience and being. Those who are not married may be aware of its truth, but the hard wisdom isn't in you until you're in it. But for me, the difficulties have been opening my eyes to see something about God and the importance - the beauty - of freedom in love. What's so strange about God is that He is both a pa