Today's word

daedal \ˈdē-dəl\ - 1a :  skillful, artistic  b :  intricate  2. adorned with many things

When I saw the first definition of this word, I immediately recognized its etymology. But I wasn't aware that the pronunciation of the first syllable of this word was also acceptable for the first syllable of the mythological Greek whose son flew too close to the sun. (Of course, we now know that there is pretty much nowhere in the atmosphere that Icarus' chief concern would have been the sun's heat.)

Accomplishing a goal

I finally managed to swim a mile this morning. I find in the afterglow that I have to watch out for my ego. I'm going to try to just enjoy the accomplishment without that.

Sorry for being cryptic

I just read a post, a question, shared by a couple of FB friends and originally posted by my favorite current-Ravens' former-Terps' football player. And I know my answer, and I don't like what it says about my life, and I know I'll probably die without it ever changing.

Today's word

tweep \TWEEP\ - a person who uses the Twitter online message service to send and receive tweets

I suppose the reason I didn't know this is that I'm not one.

Long aftermath

I'm still more troubled by what he got me to participate in, to ask for, the things that he coerced me into, than in the situations that he blatantly forced on me.

Summer memories

I love the smell of chlorine on my hands throughout the day when I swim in the morning. It reminds me of my childhood, long summer days playing in the backyard pool with Karen. Okay, we were usually arguing, and I never appreciated her as much as I wish I had.

True little observations . . .

. . .  can still hurt for a moment. But my hurt is nothing compared with the hurt this family is feeling right now.

A daughter/sister whose dad and brother appear to have died in a circumnavigation attempt posted: " . . . hug your siblings and parents - tell them you love them. . . a thousand times. It will never feel like it's been said quite often enough."

No. It never will.

So I am now reminding myself, or perhaps the Holy Spirit is reminding me, that He eternally continues to unite those who are one body in Christ.

The sleepless turn of events

Begin with several nights of waking up alone in bed a couple of times, bracketing another night in which I was up late baking a pie. Monday evening I'm hoping for some couple time together, but oldest daughter calls me before I leave work asking if I can come over to help with homework. My wife asks if I'd like her to go with me and I reply that it's up to her. I don't realize until later that I really do prefer for her to go, too, but by then she has made up her mind to stay home. Oh, and I'm also to bring home the younger two local grandchildren as they are going to the pool on Tuesday, which means that we won't have any couple time together after I get home from our daughter's either.  There is another pertinent, recent historical detail that I'm not going to share here.

When I underwake slightly from my alarm on Tuesday, I decide that rather than swimming laps before work, I'll go to work early so I can leave early to join them at the water park; I want to surprise the grandchildren, who have been asking what days I'm off and practically begging me to go swimming with them.

I experience an unavoidable delay in leaving work, waiting for a deliverable from a coworker who will be out of the office starting the next day for a surgery. We debate via text whether to still surprise the grandchildren or save it for another time. We decide to still try to make it happen.

I get the file my coworker needs me to have and head out the door. I arrive at the water park during adult swim time, and she asks if I want to take advantage of the chance go down the water slides. I misunderstand which one she's talking about and climb the stairs for the one that it turns out she won't do because it's too tall for her comfort level. By the time I get down it, adult swim time is over, so for some reason that means we can't go ahead and do the one she wanted to.  The youngest local grandson has been dealing with an irritated eye, so he leaves the pool for the seating area, and I follow him. A few minutes later grandma gives him a hard time for not telling her he was leaving the pool area, which he probably didn't think he needed to do because I was with him. It's clear from her tone, though she doesn't say as much, that I should have told her. And there is a time constraint on when the kids have to be home, so she and our granddaughter go to get changed and I end up with only about 45 minutes at the pool with them. Basically, the afternoon activity I was looking forward to was almost a complete bust, with the additional effect of making her feel like I didn't care about her wishes.

I get home first, as she has to take the grandchildren home. She has hamburgers thawed, but it's still 90° outside, and I have prayer group in a little while, so I decide to broil them in the toaster oven rather than fire up the grill and turn myself into a sweaty mess. When she gets back from taking the grandkids home, I'm told that cooking them this way is, um, unsatisfactory. (I can't remember if the actual adjective was "gross," "nasty" or "yuk.") When we eat them, I think they turned out pretty tasty - though not as good as grilled - but don't receive any feedback from her whatsoever, so I assume that I am alone in that opinion.

I leave for prayer group, setting my expectations for afterward pretty low, probably a repeat of her late tv viewing of the last couple nights. Basically, I just prepare for the worst.

I get home from prayer group to a pleasant surprise: she's doing the dishes rather than watching tv. She has washed up a few items to empty the left side of the sink. I help out a little, but have to leave the room when I see that she is going to handle the remaining dishes four times to wash them. (1. empty the right side of the sink/stack the dishes in the left side; 2. fill the right side of the sink with soapy water and put the dishes back in it; 3. wash the dishes and set them down in the left side of the sink to rinse them; 4. rinse the dishes and put them in the dish drainer.)

I return to the kitchen and we have a laugh over where our daughters get their OCD characteristics from. I had never really noticed before, but she had.

After having handled the dishes twice to immerse them in the soapy water (rather than using the direct foam detergent that I would have selected if I had been doing the dishes), she joins me in the living room. I see that it's about 9:25, and figure that if there is any hope at all of our retiring together for the evening at a decent hour, it is going to be up to me to start washing the dishes that are soaking in the sink. So I start in on them, now not using the direct foam detergent that I would have selected if I had been doing the dishes. I am therefore now washing the dishes they way she likes to rather than the way I prefer to. Still, I manage in the moment not to be upset about either the fact that I'm doing this chore this late or that I'm doing it her way. After all, I'm pretty sure that it was not her intention for me to take this over for her. I don't think at any point that she has manipulated me into this. (If, in fact, she has, she should never tell me and never do it again.)

At about 10:05 the dishes are finished and we begin making our way to bed. I realize that the dog hasn't been let out yet, so I do that, because the alternative would be to fall asleep waiting for her.

At no point does she express any appreciation for my having cooked dinner nor washed dishes - a fair number of which were still left from Saturday evening - but in fairness regarding that latter factoid, she had been the only one to wash any of them from our dinner on Saturday. I had washed up quite a few things from my pie-baking, though.

We go to bed, and playfully hug and kid around and kiss for a few minutes, when I feel a muscle in my back starting to twitch repeatedly. Curious whether she'd be able to feel it, too, I ask her to move her hand - her left hand, the one she has wrapped around me - to her right a little. She moves it to her left, instead. When I point this out, instead of just moving it the other way, she insists that she did move it to her right. She asks why I wanted her to move her hand anyway, and I explained that I wanted to see if she could feel my back muscle twitching, but that would have meant moving her hand in the direction I indicated. Except the way I expressed that probably wasn't such a good idea: I teased that this would have required knowing her right from her left. She now has no idea which way I want her to move her hand from where it is, so she lowers it to my hip and, basically, goes to sleep. And there go my hopes for the evening, following those of the rest of the day.

I remain awake for five additional hours, moving from our bed to the upstairs sofa curled around a sofa pillow, back to our bed, to the guest bed, back to our bed again (I think; I've lost track now), downstairs to watch a recorded Mythbusters, and finally, back to our bed. I shut off my alarm, as there is no way I want to try to get up in three hours. I figure I'll just call in sick for the morning.

I sleep soundly until a thunderstorm and an upset dog awaken me at almost the exact minute that my alarm would have gone off. I do manage another 90 minutes of additional rest.

I know that this just a matter of my whole life being "crackers."

Today's word

Yooper \YOO-per\ - a native or resident of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan — used as a nickname

I may have heard this one, but hadn't seen it in writing before.

The cost of intimacy and the nature of love

The cost of intimacy is time, which is a direct function of priority.

Like anything else, you get what you pay for. When we aren't paying the price, there is really no point in complaining about the result.

Love is more than how we feel about each other. Thank God for that, actually. Love is the decision we make to make each other's needs a priority, to invest in each other, to nurture our relationship together ahead of other choices we might make.  To love is to lay down our lives for each other.

Longing

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. - Ps 23, 1
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. - Ps 51, 10

These words have been in my heart this morning, by the Spirit's grace. They're good words for me to focus on, I think.  Also, this quote:

Do with me, Lord, as you will and know to be best. - St. Philip Neri

And this longer prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

With regard to all of these, I know myself well enough to recognize that I often want my own will in full awareness that it isn't God's plan for me.  These prayers are therefore the as-yet-unfulfilled cry of my heart.

Lazy writing, or pedantry

Background: the FIFA World Cup ended the day before this article was written

. . . with Scolari's current contract, which expired at the end of the World Cup, not to be renewed . . . - AP

Umm, then it isn't current, is it?

On my guard

So there's this silly little FB game I started playing with my oldest aloha granddaughter some time ago which I've just kept up on over time as a distraction. A few weeks ago it announced it would be introducing a new character to my game, and asked me for the name of my first crush. Instead, I entered my wife's name. Now I'm glad I did. There's going to be a "first date" and a "proposal" coming down the line, and who knows what else. I am so glad to be associating these pretend events in the game with my bride rather than the girl on whom I had a crush in grade school.

I'm glad my 9-year-old granddaughter has mostly quit playing, though. Who knows what lessons about life she might encounter around the bend, and who knows what perspective they might teach her?

Finding irony and paranoia in self-awareness

So I realized before posting a comment that pointing out narcissism on FB is probably narcissistic. That's a good thing to realize in advance, right?  (Is asking that narcissistic?  Geez, now I'm working on a nice case of neurosis.)

Today's words

epenthesis \ih-PEN-thuh-sis\ - the insertion or development of a sound or letter in the body of a word

This is one of those words that I see and think, "Oh, yeah, I know that word," but rarely encounter a need for it and probably wouldn't actually recall the word if I needed it.

sclaff \SKLAF\ - to scrape the ground instead of hitting the ball cleanly on a golf stroke

I've done this many times without knowing the word for it.

Just in case

So, dear friends, when I post about the role of suffering, and that happens to coincide with one of you going through a tremendous trial, please don't read the wrong message! Praying for God's healing for a loved one or for ourselves is not the same thing as asking to be delivered from the cross. Jesus told us in no uncertain terms that we are to pray for our needs!

Deliverance from what?

Deliverance takes place in the broader context of advancing God's kingdom. Deliverance is much broader than deliverance from evil spirits . . . Reading a book like this could lead someone to think, 'Now I have the answer. Now I know what I need. I will get it right this time.' We look for a formula for freedom instead of looking for a relationship. We want to escape the need to depend on the Lord daily. We want to be free, not from bondage but from facing the cross. 
Deliverance from evil spirits removes the obstacles to freedom, the hindrances and the bondage. It does not remove the cross from our lives. Suffering is the pathway to maturity. The eradication of pain is one of our idols in the Western world. But suffering is part of what it means to be human. - Neal Lozano, Unbound: A Practical Guide to Deliverance (emphasis added)

So about six weeks ago I put a bookmark in this book at this passage, intending to reflect on it further. I suppose it is a reflection of my degree of busyness and my lack of any consistent spiritual discipline that I am just now getting around to entering it here. Further, it may indicate how true the latter half of the first paragraph above still remains for me.

I have often lamented how much we tend to approach Christianity as if its purpose is for us to reach a point at which we no longer need a Savior. While it is important for us to grow in holiness and closeness to God, these things can never happen if our attention is wrongly focused on ourselves rather than our relationship with Christ Jesus.

Today's word

catfish \KAT-fish\ 1. any of numerous usually freshwater stout-bodied fishes with large heads and long thin feelers about the mouth  2.  a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes

Didn't know the second definition.