What Next?

Sometimes I wonder if being single is what I really want.  Usually it's right after (or during) a wedding.  During a wedding is usually when my brain starts thinking about it so that by the time I get to the reception..well the reception is usually the point at which everything gets busy with dancing, toasts, etc so you forget about "real life" but then after it's all said and done and reality sets back in the brain (or at least my brain) starts thinking about the events of the day.    This is when things like my marriage come to mind.  being the last single sibling was hard to take at first.  I didn't think it would be.  "I can handle it."  Not really.  It took some time.  Not a lot of time but the week of Joel's (my last brother to get married) wedding was not easy.  I'll be the first to admit there were tears shed. 

I went to a wedding recently and again, I started thinking about the fact that i was single.  Why was this such an issue?  Did it have something to do wit the fact that I'm turning 40 in a week?  A mid life crisis? A bit early for that.  :-)  When asked I've always talked about the verse that says singleness is a gift  ("I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another^. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.  (1 Corinthians 7:7-8) Also, as of right now I believe that God as called me to being single.  Of course that may change.  (It hasn't been all that easy either.)  Only He knows what my future holds.    That said, given that Jesus said "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and ^(C)the two shall become one flesh.", (Matthew 19:5) it only stands to reason that thoughts would arise in a single person's mind, even if God has called me to be single.  It's a natural feeling.  Right now I'm trying to figure out what to do with them.  I think leaving them at the foot of the cross is my best bet and so that's what I've done.  I'll see where the tide takes me.  I'm looking forward to this adventure!

"If I live to be to be old..."

I just finished reading two books that go hand in hand with each other.  84 , Charing Cross Road and Q's Legacy, both by Helene Hanff and they really encapsulate the life of a struggling writer trying to find identity as a person.  She couldn't make it as a student.   She had to drop out of school but her love for literature found her scouring the library looking for a writer that was easily understandable but still "the best".  That  ended up being Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, M.A., King Edward VII Professor of English Literature (henceforth referred to as Q) in the University of Cambridge and he wrote a book called On The Art of Writing.  She checked it out and found it so compelling that she proceeded to get his other writings.  Thus she became a student of his teaching via his writing.

Helene loved to write and looked for jobs doing that.  She wrote for TV but she continued to read.  As time passed her collection of Q's books (and others) grew.  A source for getting her books was a small book store in London called Marks & Co.  Over twenty years of correspondence via letter she built a relationship with people she never met by buying books and at times just being a nice person. 

Out of that correspondence came 84, Charing Cross Road.   It's a book full of letters.  The book was very successful and actually was consdered a "cult" book.  That is to say it had a cult follwoing.    Hanff became so popular that eventually when Marks & Co got torn down she was given the bookstore sign.  She got thousands of letters over the years,gifts, phone calls, and was able to go to England.  Anyone looking on would say she was a success and quite frankly, they would be right.  She even got a marker on the site of the Charing Cross Road Bookstore where all the correspondence had taken place.  But in the long range scheme of things was she really?  The TV show, the plays, the fans, the trips, the books, and all the stuff she acquired over the years. All those things.  In the end though what was it for?  The books she acquired ended up sitting on a bookshelf accumulating dust and while there was a metal plaque made after her book was published at the site where all the events of the book took place it wasn't until after the store had closed and been torn down. That said, one must ask what kind of a mark we want to leave.  Will it be one that will stand the test of time or will people just look at the mark we leave as a memoir that they shelve with the other trinkets they collect?  Something to think about.