I really love these people

Dear Snoozy,

Happy Monday!  I dare you to love it.

This weekend, this weekend... I was telling Allyson last night, I cannot get over the goodness of God.  How am I so blessed to be surrounded by these beautiful souls every day of my life?  Old friends, new friends, in the middle type friends: I don't have the words.  I won't ever have the words.  I'm so sorry that I can't tell you how much I love you, how much you really mean.  Know that you're the world to me.

Dr. Spina said this last Wednesday: "Is it more important to be right or to be loving?"  I've been sitting with this for days as God continually says, "Hey Anna," and nudges me.  Through reading an article about Mars Hill for nonfiction, through Richard mentioning Fred Phelps in his sermon, through talks with Holly, through the pastor panel.

My mind aches sometimes from the sheer weight of all I am learning.  It's funny how everything fits together.

I miss this: sitting on a couch, surrounded by seven people, listening to about four conversations all happening at the same time.

Maybe I'll never be able to set wisdom down in words that just make people sit back and sigh and say, "I have always thought this.  Thank you for the solidarity."  There is something so beautiful about the union that brings: in the midst of all our differences, we still have the same fears, the same hopes, the same longings, the same needs.  The difference is important; not to be dismissed for the sake of the whole.

I can't... I just have too many thoughts on not enough sleep.

But I really love you: you need to know that.

--

This is my favorite sentence from today: There’s a certain stinging betrayal in those words, as though there’s this little part of me still clinging so desperately to the possibility that maybe all of this was just some horrible nightmare, that the last month hasn’t happened, that the last seven months haven’t happened, that I’ve just been sleeping and will wake up at any moment to climb out of bed, don that uniform for the first time in three months, and go to the first day of school and nothing will have changed and we’ll all still be in third grade with Tucker in tears.