my blog in 2009...fail

Well I started this blog in early 2009 with high hopes of being committed, funny, insightful, creative, perhaps so great that I got a movie contract---no, but really, I wrote one post, started several others and pretty much failed.

So, here's to the last week and a half of 2009, maybe I'll begin making this a habit.

I'm 'home' in Dalton, GA--I put the word home in single quotes because, let's face it, wherever my family is is where home is, but I've sort of lost a picture of a house to call home. Don't get me wrong, I love that my family has this house. It was purely provided by God for my parents to use for his glory, but the physical building is not what makes it home. In fact, I've recently tried to test myself. I think the word home and then try to decipher the picture that comes to mind. However this doesn't really work, because I am neither a definite S or N (for all you Myers Briggs lovers). I, a of all, have clearly overprocessed the whole matter, and b of all have to many images, memories, mental snapshots of my houses on Signal, Jackson, and a little of Dalton as well as faces of my family at lots of different stages of life and friends too--all just swirling in the atmosphere of my head that my amateur test of immediate response pretty much turns into a slideshow of my past. I wish you could watch it will me sometime.

Christmas at the Suddath's has a bit of a tide schedule. We seem to host many different groups a gatherings around this time of year because we're most often at home, since Dad works Christmas. So around 6ish most evening the week leading up to the big day, an influx of people spill through the front door, shake the cold off themselves like no one is watching, and ask where to put their coats and bags. Depending on the group, the tide heads out around either 9 or midnight. If you are the deacons and their wives, you're apt to leave at nine. If you are the sweet, make your insides tighten with genuine love, old friends from just up the road, we hope you don't mind sitting beneath the canopy of Christmas lights until the early morning hours.

Speaking of Christmas lights--my dad loves Christmas lights. If I'm right, it has something to do with a dueling pair of electricians from his childhood. So this year with mom in CA at the end of November, Dad got to work, reinventing his lights schematic to awe and shock all holiday guests. He has a strict colored lights only rule, with only a small bit of grace for mom's icicle lights around the pool. My mom thinks our living room looks like a Lite Brite from back in the day, but really it is classic Jim.

More to come about Christmas 2009. I am headed to the Rawlings for dinner, so it is sure to be a party. In the meantime, I guess just start praying this impulse to begin blogging again is not in vain.

2.5 days to Christmas!

Of onions and chocolate chip cookies

My dad has always said, "There are no normal people," and I believe him. We're all a little goofy, certainly messed up, and we've got layers and layers of ourselves just waiting to be peeled and pried open. My new friend Elise has this theory, of the onion and the chocolate chip cookie. The onion, clearly, has layers that are surprising, revealing, and even disappointing. The chocolate chip cookies of the world are the open-books, the immediate friends we make because we feel like we've known them all our lives, chosen first except by those health freaks and anorexics of the world, but not always worth the calories. Sometimes I know that I've wanted only cookie friends who want to go deep quickly, but I know the joy of sitting down with an onion, and both are immensly rewarding. It is interesting to see where people fall--or if they ever are cookies one day and onions the next. Isn't it amazing, though, that our God made us with different natures and personalities--different checkpoints of revealing our hearts to our friends?

"...He enables me to go on the heights." -Habakkuk 3:19

Bonjour mes amis! Je vous voudrais expliquer le titre de ce blog, mais en anglais il sera mieux je suppose!
Hello, friends! I would love to explain the title of this blog, but I suppose it will be better in English!

One thing I adore is being up high. I love the feeling, the calmness that is paired with the elevation and magnificent view. It is a way I encounter my Savior, where He reveals his might and immensity as well as my weakness and smallness. Mountain peaks, the steps of the Eiffel Tower, rooftops, magnolia trees, my lofted bed are pretty much the range of heights that I have been shown. Most recently I took myself on a field trip to Knoxville's Sun Sphere observation deck for my quiet time. I sat in the floor as some families walked around spotting their cars and parents' work buildings. I read revelation and journaled some prayers of thanksgiving for the opportunity of being in Knoxville, at UT. I made some loops around the sphere, praying for the city and my school, both spread out below my eyes.

Christ does enable me to walk in the heights, because he saved me from the depths, and I am thankful for the joy he has given me in drawing me near.

My Blogging backgroud...

So this is not my first time in the blogging world. I spent January-May of 2008 blogging for my former place of education, Wofford College, creatively describing the ins, outs, ups, and downs of studying abroad in Nantes, France. Now, I find myself in Knoxville, TN, somewhat less glamorous I know, but something inside of me still wants to write things down, tell stories, thoughts. Perhaps it will be only for me, but in the spirit of this past week's holiday of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the technology that lets us jot down these things in a creative way. So here goes... :)