Day 1 — Your best friend (Emily)
Day 2 — Your vices (Starbucks, etc)
Day 3 — Your parents (Linda & Jerry)
Day 4 — Your siblings (Emily, Graham & Lauren)
Day 5 – Your Dreams (Sing us a song…)
Day 6 — Someone that inspires you (Ernie Halter)
Day 7 — Your job (nothing)
Day 8 — Your favorite internet friend that you’ve never met (Krystin Behannon)
Day 9 — Someone you wish you could meet (Donald Miller)
Day 10 — Someone you don’t talk to as much as you’d like to
Day 11 — A deceased person you wish you could talk to
Let’s talk about unspoken rules again. If you remember, a few days ago the prompt “your favorite internet friend you’ve never met” was immediately followed by the prompt about someone you’d like to meet. I took the stance of assuming you could not write about the same person twice, or at least twice in a row.
There’s another unspoken rule I follow. It’s the unspoken Jesus is the answer to most things rule. When people ask questions like “who is your favorite person in the Bible?” I always answer Moses; not because he is my favorite person in the Bible, but because I assume that Jesus is a given. If people ask who I want to be more like, I don’t say Jesus because I assume it’s implied. All of that said, when Emily guessed that Jesus was the answer to the deceased person I wish I could talk to, that was a great guess. However, Emily.
#1. Jesus is alive….
#2. and he walks with me and he talks with me.
You are going to think “duh!” in your head when you read who the deceased person I wish I could talk to is.
None other than Madeleine L’Engle.
It feels silly to write about Madeleine because I’m always going on about her, but it will be good for you to know more.
My fifth (and fourth!) grade teacher, Mr. Gifaldi, had us read A Wrinkle in Time which quickly became my favorite book. For the longest time I didn’t do much reading. But one day I was sitting in the hallway of a school in Walla Walla, Washington talking to Dave Barnes (oh no big deal……) and he started talking about Madeleine L’Engle’s book Walking on Water which is about faith and arts, the conversation we were having. I immediately went and bought the book.
Two years later, I finally finished the book and was again blown away by Madeleine L’Engle. She was reinstated as my favorite author, and have since always carried a Madeleine L’Engle book in my purse with me wherever I go.
I considered making a list of subjects I’d want to talk to Madeleine L’Engle about, but they all kept blending into one and I realized that I wouldn’t even care what she said. I’d just want to hear her thoughts on anything. Faith, marriage, recipes, the fly that keeps buzzing around the room.. she was a funny, wise woman with insight into everything.
When I get to Heaven, I hope that Jesus takes me on a really long walk and we end up at Madeleine’s mansion and then we all sit around in the back yard, talking about everything.
I will leave you with some of my favorites.
My favorite Madeleine L’Engle book(s) – Walking on Water, Two-Part Invention, A Circle of Quiet
My favorite Madeleine L’Engle quotes (get ready for this!!) –
Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth.
If it can be verified, we don’t need faith…. Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.
“God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.”
I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.
It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.
“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there’s no danger that we will confuse God’s work with our own, or God’s glory with our own.”
“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
“I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.”
“Truth is what is true, and it’s not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.”
“It’s a strange thing, how you can love somebody, how you can be all eaten up inside with needing them–and they simply don’t need you. That’s all there is to it, and neither of you can do anything about it. And they’ll be the same way with someone else, and someone else will be the same way about you and it goes on and on–this desperate need–and only once in a rare million do the same two people need each other.”
ps. when I grow up more, I will have a daughter. she will be named Madeleine Grace. She will be perfect.
Day 12 —Your dream vacation
Day 13 — Something you’re looking forward to
Day 14 — Someone you’ve drifted away from
Day 15 — The person you miss the most
Day 16 — Someone that’s not in your state/country
Day 17 — The place you wish you were from
Day 18 — The person that you wish you could be
Day 19 — Something that makes you different
Day 20 — Your favorite television shows
Day 21 — Someone you judged by their first impression
Day 22 — Your pet peeves
Day 23 — The last person you kissed
Day 24 — The person that gave you your favorite memory
Day 25 — A life changing moment
Day 26 — The last person you made a pinky promise to
Day 27 — The thing you most enjoy doing
Day 28 — Someone that changed your life
Day 29 — Your talent
duh!
That makes me want to go back and read A Wrinkle in Time. My deceased person I want to meet is also an author, Jane Austen. She’s my fave. Just haven’t had time to blog on that one yet 😉