The night is gone and the dawn has broken

Do you ever wonder what's been buried under your shoes?
Do you ever wonder why troubles come in twos and threes and still-

All of our days are filled with joy and laughter
It's just a taste of the sweet, sweet hereafter
Where all of our names will be spoken
Like a dream that we awoke in
When the night is gone and the dawn has broken

Do you ever wonder what's been carried over your head?
Do you ever wonder why we don't just sleep the day away in bed?

Do you ever wonder what's been hidden behind your back?
Do you ever wonder why we want the things we lack and still-

All of our days are filled with joy and laughter
It's just a taste of the sweet, sweet hereafter
Where all of our names will be spoken
Like a dream that we awoke in
When the night is gone and the dawn has broken

Do you ever wonder what's appeared before your eyes?
Do you ever wonder why we can't just break the ties that hold us here where-

All of our days are filled with joy and laughter
It's just a taste of the sweet, sweet hereafter
Where all of our names will be spoken
Like a dream that we awoke in
When the night is gone and the dawn is broken

-"Sweet, Sweet Hereafter" by Clive

I must go down to the sea again

I must go down to the sea again



To the lonely sea and the sky



And all I ask is a tall ship



And a star to steer her by

I think I'm quite ready for another adventure!

I know I have been quiet these past few days, with the exception of a post with a quote or something small in it. I've been spending that time reflecting and praying over many things, for there is just so much that I have to mentally process these days.

But I am feeling ready for another adventure. I am off for the weekend with my family to Maine. We are spending the weekend at The Grey Havens, where my cousin will be getting married on Saturday. I am in her wedding; I have been feverishly practicing my flute this entire week in the hopes to have the music (and my sore lips - I haven't kept up with playing!) ready in time, and it's been coming along nicely. We are flying up there this evening and driving home on Sunday. But it will be nice and relaxing to spend a weekend by the sea.

And yes, the Lord of the Rings fan in me is rather excited at the thought of sailing to the Grey Havens for the weekend.

White Shores and a Swift Sunrise

"Though they rode through the midst of the Shire all the evening and all the night, none saw them pass, save the wild creatures; or here and there some wanderer in the dark who saw a swift shimmer under the trees, or a light and shadow flowing through the grass as the Moon went westward. And when they had passed from the Shire, going about the south skirts of the White Downs, they came to the Far Downs, and to the Towers, and looked on the distant Sea; and so they rode down at last to Mithlond, to the Grey Havens in the long firth of Lune. ...

" [said Gandalf], 'Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.'

"Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard [the ship]; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."

-J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King

It is impossible...

"It is impossible to rain on my parade; it comes with a transparent, traveling canopy."

Happy Friday!

Malachi 3:10

"Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."

Good, Better, Best

5 Good Things About My Weekend:

1. Kathy got married!
2. An absolutely gorgeous day on Saturday.
3. I received some much needed encouragement on Sunday morning during Sunday school.
4. Getting several nice compliments.
5. The huge stack of mail that had been gracing my desk was finally put to rest in either 1) the trash can, 2) file folders, or 3) my journals, thus clearing off my desk!

5 Better Things About My Weekend:

1. Hanging out with Becky to see the new Jane Austen movie Sunday afternoon.
2. Trip to (the outskirts of) Baltimore with old and dear friends on Saturday night to visit Megan and Jordan.
3. Getting to sleep in on Saturday morning.
4. Seeing my family in NJ.
5. Realizing that pre-season football has already started.

5 Best Things About My Weekend:

1. Spending time with God.
2. Spending time with family.
3. Spending time with friends.
4. Spending time in reflection.
5. Spending time just being.

And, as a bonus --

5 Happy Things About Today:

1. I saw three deer (two bucks, one doe!) this morning while driving in to work, and then once I arrived, a butterfly landed on my car.
2. The office was very quiet today.
3. Chocolate!
4. Being productive.
5. Knowing that I get to share about my Morocco trip tonight with one of my supporters.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Revelation 3:8

"I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name."

Stephanie Weber Colmery

My very wonderful friend Stephanie got married last month! Her new husband's name is Doug, and even though I don't know him that well, he makes her very happy. I wasn't able to attend their wedding because I was in Morocco (07/07/07). She had an open house/reception at her family's house that I was able to go to and see her and Doug and just celebrate with them.

Stephanie and I have been friends since highschool. We both worked together at the bookstore, and then together at Great Stuff. We ended up going to UD together, and took several classes together. We did Marching Band one semester together, and then regular band for a few more semesters after that. And we were both involved with InterVarsity during college too.

Some of my best memories of the two of us are when she and I would walk back to where my car was parked all the way across campus after band practice and I would give her rides home, and we'd talk about what God was doing in our lives and the struggles that we both faced in college and life. I'd go home with her after band and just visit with her family and consequently, I was able to watch and get to know her younger siblings as they all grew up, and she has quite a few of those! She was the one who taught me the beginnings of playing the guitar and most recently let me borrow her guitar to take with me to Morocco. She singlehandedly saw that I got to go on one of the spring break trips that IV sponsors every year while I was in college, and one year for my birthday made me a little memory tape over the course of a semester that has her reading Scripture verses and singing songs on it. She spent a summer during college in Uganda and then just last year spent approximately six months working in Sudan as a nurse. Now, she works right down the road at the local hospital, doing what she does best, which is serving and loving others.

She is one of the most beautiful women I have had the privilege of knowing, and always has time for those she knows and loves, not stopping until she knows how you're really doing, and I am incredibly thankful that I get to call her 'friend.'

The Bourne Ultimatum

I just got back a short while ago from seeing The Bourne Ultimatum. My brother and his wife came over earlier to ask if any of us wanted to hang out with them this evening and go see it, so of couse I went. I loved the first two and was really looking forward to this one coming out, and I was not disappointed! I don't really want to say much about it, as it's still fairly new, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I think I might need to watch it again, as we didn't arrive at the theater when we meant to, which meant the only seats available were the ones directly underneath the screen. Since sitting in that section to watch that type of movie is usually a guaranteed prescription for a headache, I think a second viewing at some point in the near future is and will be in order.

The only thing spoilerish in nature that I will say is that there is one sequence of events that takes place in Tangiers, Northern Morocco. The characters run around in the Medina; all of the action takes place there, and it gives a rather good and accurate depiction of how the streets of the city of Fes were put together. As I watched the screen, I had a rather hard time containing my excitement as I saw it, for it was as if I'd stepped back into Morocco. One of the characters said, 'Sukran,' (translated: 'Thank you') and my automatic response was to silently think, 'Bla gmil!' (translated: 'You're welcome'). It's what comes from taking a class in Arabic. It was then that I wished I'd had someone from my team nearby, for no one else would have understood my excitement. Here everyone else behind me was gasping and oohing and aahing at the action in the scene, and I was getting excited over a word. ;-)

Anyway, go see it! It's awesome!

Rejected, and Loving It!

Ahh, the pleasures of jury duty.

A testimony to the power of prayer:

It all began with a little summons for jury duty back in April for the end of May.

I received it, and didn't think much of it until I took the time to peruse through the summons and saw that it was for a capital murder case lasting anywhere from 4-6 weeks.

This was right after the decision to go to Morocco had been made; I had started making headway on all my preparations - my passport application had been submitted, my letter almost written, permission to take off from work had been granted, etc.

Getting called for a 4-6 week case would have put me being called into court up through and past my trip to Morocco. And seeing as how I was going to be out of the country and knew that was where I needed to be, jury duty needed to be postponed, if at all possible.

After several rounds of telephone calls with unhelpful and unfriendly clerks at the New Castle County Courthouse, I was told what I needed to do: get in writing a letter from my employer stating the reason(s) why I could not be placed on a jury for that particular call date.

That was the easy part. It was the waiting afterwards that wasn't so easy. I'd been told by no end of people, including those clerks in the county office, that the courthouse doesn't take too kindly for asking for postponement, and chances were that I'd have to go in on my called date anyway, "until such time as I was informed otherwise." And in the meantime, I did what I have a tendency to do - worry. What if they decided not to grant my request? What if they did, and decided to schedule my jury duty around the time of my brother's wedding? Praise God for those friends and mentors who helped encourage me through the waiting process, and encouraged me to pray about it.

Finally, an answer came: I received in the mail a few weeks later a postcard from the court system, telling me that they'd granted my request and had given me a new date - August 1. Two answers to prayer, staring me in the face in the form of a little postcard that I still keep stapled to my little bulletin board here at work as a testimony to the power of prayer. And here I'd spent all that time and energy getting upset over what "could have been." I wish that I gave more thought to that little thing called faith.

Fast-forward to the few weeks before Morocco. My new prayer became that I would receive my new summons before I left, so I could fill it out and not worry about it sitting at home for two weeks. I received it 6 days before I was supposed to leave. There was yet another answer to prayer with this new summons: I was no longer assigned to a capital murder case. Praise God, no 4-6 week trial to have hanging over my shoulders waiting for me to come home to.

And that brings us today. I went in, and spent the entire morning sitting and reading. Of the 31 cases that were supposed to be called today, only 2 went to trial, and I was not called for either one of them. They only took one small, select group out at the very beginning, and then said nothing more to us all morning. I got an entire book read.

To top off the morning, I ran into a friend of mine from church, Melissa, who had also been called in for jury duty the same day. It was comforting in a God-sort of way to know that she was there; we ran into each other on the way to the bathroom, and could only laugh over the odds of having jury duty together at the same time. It was also a comfort to know that, if we both did get called into the courtroom, we'd have to explain to the courts how we knew each other, and if my understanding of the way the legal system works (which, believe me, isn't very much), then we wouldn't have been allowed to sit the case anyway. And in the end, while waiting for our respective rides to come and pick us up, we were able to chat and catch up on how our summers have been going thus far.

As for the little card from the court system? It will remain on my board, until one day it makes its way into my Morocco journal.

I am so incredibly thankful that God's answers are wiser than my answers.