the evolution of oragami.

yesterday was one of those days that can only be adequately described with the word fabulous.

friday night was just me and the Lord, and i ended up falling asleep on the futon and having a dream about my new wind-up pet penguin, Shoobie, that Drew so kindly purchased for me at burger king the other day. i don't remember the dream, but it was about a three-inch plastic penguin. how awesome is that? very awesome, if i do say so myself. and i do.

so i slept in yesterday morning until about 9:45am or so, then woke up and ran some errands. one of which included returning a tank top i bought at old navy a couple months ago and exchanging it for a pair of candy-cane-striped toe-socks with penguins on them.

in the afternoon, Drew came over for a bit, and we went to new trier high school to help his college friend Cody (who teaches at my brother's high school in des moines) judge some seven-minute extemporaneous speeches in a speech and debate competition. i soooo enjoyed this, primarily because i am a BIG nerd AND because i got to write "poop" in the lower left hand corner of the chalkboard in the classroom we were in. just like mr. canarsky's honors chemistry class my junior year of high school!

Drew, Cody, and i sat in my car for about a half an hour between the end of the competition and picking up some other students from another competition, and they kept me entertained with their drake university stories of mystery and intrigue. then we all went to chipotle with the high schoolers.

afterwards, Drew and i decided that the only appropriate way to end an evening of such adventure was to, of course, rent "march of the penguins" and make oragami animals while watching it. of course. so we went to blockbuster, where they had the "happy feet" (penguin movie) display up promoting the new movie, and Drew had the awesome idea that i should, of course, ask the blockbuster staff if i could claim the penguin display when they were done using it. Ben, the helpful blockbuster employee, wouldn't give me a straight answer, saying that all of the other blockbuster employees were planning on taking the display outside once its time had come to beat the crap out of the thing. it did make a lot of noise.

on the way back to my apartment, i intentionally drove by the house in wheeling that has a RIDICULOUS number of seasonal lights and lawn ornaments in it. it's not a very big house, and not really a big yard, either, but once you get within about 100 yards of the place, you start to feel as though you're at an amusement park. they have several of those big blow-up snowglobes, and lighted displays of all christmas kinds strewn about the entire yard. my guess is that with the money these people spend on electricity every month (and i do say "every", because this house goes all out for EVERY holiday), you could probably feed approximately 10,000 starving children in africa. that's just my guess.

so we were parked in front of this house for a minute or two, just in awe of the vast array of christmas cheer so concentrated in one location, when OUT OF NOWHERE this guy, who probably lives in the house that hosts this display, walks into the house living room, in full view from my car on the street. this man looked to be tall, perhaps slightly overweight, but most of all... he had white hair and a long white beard. i started to pull away, not wanting him to see us gawking at his lawn, when i realized something very important.

IT WAS SANTA.

i found his home! it's on wheeling ave. in wheeling! you should go see. don't tell him i told you.

after commenting on this revelation, Drew and i lost it for about five straight minutes. you would have too.

we then went back to my apartment and looked at pictures, and Drew figured out what was wrong with my cheap ikea lamp because he is a physicist and is cool like that. we watched "march of the penguins" and made oragami animals. i made a starfish, and Drew made... well, right now it looks like a squid, but soon it will be a polar bear. grrr. that's how evolution works, you know. it's in the oragami.

all in all, a fabulous day. fo sho.

today, eh. not so much. today i pretty much want to be anwhere but here. i so would like to up and leave. like, for good. but You won't let me. and i know it's because You love me and You are answering those prayers i have prayed to be wholehearted. oh, it hurts! but You are doing a quick work in me, so i must press on. i say yes. i give up my right to be angry about it, i give up my right to blame anyone for mistreating me in this. i give up my dreams and goals and ambitions for this; Yours are better. please, help me not shrink back from the affliction in cowardice. help me embrace the suffering of heart so that i may fellowship with You in Your sufferings, dear Jesus. help me respond in gentleness, kindness, and love.

i've decided this is all kind of like oragami. you fold paper in a very precise way to, in the end, make something beautiful. a lot of times you make folds early on in the project, and their full value is not realized until much later in the process. a fold you make in step 3 may not seem to do anything until step 26, but it was SO necessary for the fold to be there AND for it to have been folded at the time that it was for the whole sequence to work. and THAT is precisely what You are doing with me, isn't it? all these little creases and folds, these little lessons and heartaches and happinesses, they may seem meaningless for a time, but you are fashioning them into a beautiful piece of oragami.

hopefully an oragami penguin, the most noble of creatures.