This is long!

Here we go again. I wanted to start a new and better blog that read, "Welcome, friends, to a new and better blog! I promise to post more often, be more blunt and raw, and post more pictures. I promise you will know what's going on in my heart and soul". I'd be lying. Instead, here's the promise: I solemnly promise to try harder at posting more often and most solemnly swear that you will be disappointed eventually at how horrid my writing is, how depressed I can get, and how I can even forget to post (usually). So there!

The truth is, I forgot my username and password for my other account and decided to start over with Whitney's Lollygag. A title that snippets who I am. Never completely stable, never slightly together. Rarely photogenic (SOMETIMES I do well, on the 18th attempt). Never understanding. Never in control and never quite knowing what I want. Always lollygagging. ALWAYS lollygagging. Maybe tomorrow I'll change the title to Whitney, Strong Warrior! Until then, the lollygag will work.

A quick update (considering it covers alot):

6 months ago, Jed and I loaded our stuff and moved to Fort Collins. I honestly don't feel like explaining the last six months, let's just say we've fallen on our face, Jed hasn't found the world's greatest job, we haven't performed miracles, we haven't been saviors to the lonely and afflicted. Instead, I've been frustrated. I've asked questions.

Why do our friends mothers die when they are beautiful women who encourage the rest of us? Why are we torturously lonely so often? Why doesn't my husband entirely understand me? Why do I argue with my wise mom so often? Why do friends get divorces? Why do people cheat? Why do my friends moms get leukemia? Why am I always the one confronted? Why does my mouth always get me in trouble, (I woulda thought someone woulda stuck something in it by now)? Why does He answer everyone else's prayers? Why does He lay ME low?

On Sunday, Dad used an illustration from Anne Lamott (whom I delight over)'s book, Grace Actually, and included when Anne says, "I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark." These words perhaps unite my frustrations and beget my real feelings about faith. I am a scoocher. A slogger. A clogger. I am a one step forward, 4 steps back kind of gal. I learn from doing, and do a lot of sleazy, substandard, nasty things. But Dad's sermon was more about Jesus. More about his conquering the madness.

Jesus meets me in the dreadful and unexpected places. He meets me in bars, in my prized dog missing (last week), in raunchy stomach viruses (of which I have had 3 in the last 6 months), in a miserable move and drive across the country, in my arguments with my husband, in my harsh words, in our whole savings account vanishing before the eyes of a control freak (namely, me), in the the death of friends parents, in the opening of the door to my closet and the ensueing view of all the skeletons, in the embarassing moments that I so often find myself in, in my lack of right words, and even my obnoxious and horrific overabundace of the wrong ones, in the divorces, in the lost friends, in the confrontations, and in all the other ghastly places I've been and will go. He is in them. He is in them because He has conquered all of them. He comes in and amputates my pride and my idols. It is excruciating. He brings hope and life and gladness again. He is like the friend who finally really gets me. He is like the lover who is so handsome, I never want my eyes to leave Him. He is the essence of my joy.

On to the next topic, we are scooching to Memphis. Jed will be the IT director of NICS. We are actually very excited. Jesus is some kind of a crazy lover who never alerts me to what will happen. This is actually fabulous. He is breaking my control freakedness. He is redoing my to-do lists. He is loving me and wooing me and pushing my butt so the scooching and slogging is a bit quicker. He is slowly but surely morphing my heart. I once confided in my friend, Chip, who has twin boys AND a little girl that I am a control freak and I like my ducks in a row in many areas (not all). Her jovial yet truthful response was, "Good, God will probably give you twins". That is a spiritual truth. heehe. Seriously, Chip knows the same Jesus I do. The Jesus who is in the slog turning fingerpainting to professional artwork.

I am exhausted. I WILL write more later. Peace!