Agitation

I slept with sneakers last night.  Jeans too.  I do that sometimes, typically when I'm feeling especially pensive or antsy.  Something about it makes me feel secure in the fact that at any moment I can spring back to life and keep going.  There is nothing to hold me back.  When my thoughts run too fast, my body feels the need to run too, and somehow I find enough safety in the immediate accessibility to running that I usually don't need to set foot on anything other than my bedsheets.  I'm not sure when I first discovered the beauty that is sleeping with your feet securely bound, but when I did I had to fight with myself not to do it nightly.  There are a few nights here and there, however, that I allow myself this luxury.  Last night was one of them.

I've been turning thoughts over and over in my mind recently, trying desperately to grasp concepts that I should have mastered years and years ago.  Thoughts about God and guilt and sin and salvation.  Concepts that have blurred in my mind during the years I spent wrestling through seemingly harder concepts.  I'm crossing my fingers, hoping that after a bit more tossing the rough rocks thrown in my mind will topple out as smooth stones, easy to hold and slip smoothly into a pocket.  It never works that way.  I guess that is what comes with being human.  

A few years ago I clawed my way through what I believed about depravity and wretchedness of humanity.  Jesus dying on the cross became less and less about God caring about me and saving me from hell and more about God taking a highlighter to his character.  Somewhere among the bright yellow streaks is the fringe benefit of human salvation.  The status of my soul and my salvation is simply fringe.  I spent years thinking through this.  I'm not ready to say that this is untrue, but I think it lacks crucial facets and places too tight a harness on God's intentions.   Anyway, I never properly built up again my understanding of God, humanity, and God's relation to humanity after tearing it all apart.  So with my jagged edges and less than sufficient grasp on basics like God's love, I am trying to tackle bigger things.  I am attempting long division without first knowing how to count.

This led to the shoes.  They didn't help much.  I woke up this morning still processing, still thinking, and feeling like my mind had only had a full 2.8 minutes of rest.  It was this distracted, groggy person who agreed to bake on school t.v.  I'm not sure what I was thinking.  I'm not even a student anymore.  A broadcast journalism major friend has been trying to get me to agree to bake for the campus news broadcast.  I skillfully rejected the phone calls and kept "forgetting" to call back.  Until this morning.  I forgot not to answer and I forgot to say no.  No t.v.'s beyond the ones gracing the cafeteria walls will ever have the pleasure of playing the segment, but that is more air time than I'd like.  Oh well.  Anyway, I suppose I can turn those pink swirl cupcakes I never ended up doing into green swirl shamrock cupcakes.  They should be bright and aesthetically pleasing enough for college t.v., right?

Anyway, time for bed.  Time to brush my teeth, time to wash my face, and time to tie my pink converse extra tight.  Double knots.  Triple knots.  Duct tape those little buggers.  I can't afford another slip up tomorrow morning.