Long day

Today was perhaps the most perfect autumn day yet. The weather is really warm (unusually, maybe?) and the full explosion of color has reached the city streets of Asheville. Everywhere you look there are crimson, orange, and golden leaves twirling off tree branches and swirling on the pavement. I crunched through quite a few today. I was sitting with some friends on someone's back porch praying today, and I couldn't bear to close my eyes. I'm not really one to close my eyes while praying anyway, but today I couldn't tear my eyes away from the wind and sunlight moving through the trees in the woods behind the house. It was breathtaking. Literally. Made me want to shout praise to God.

It has been a very long day for me, and I don't even really know why. My emotions have been rather topsy turvy lately and I am attributing it to being a woman. But it makes my days feel long.

So, I will leave you with a meme:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Living free.

2. What is your greatest fear?

Bugs.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I deplore my fleshly self... there's a lot of bad traits that go along with that.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Indifference.

5. Which living person do you most admire?

I admire my brothers and sisters in Christ who are persecuted and killed for their faith and still stand firm through torture, pain, and death.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?

The occasional massage or pedicure (just got one, as you might have noticed from the picture above). Probably eating out would be a better answer though, because I love to go to restaurants and I do that far more often.

7. What is your current state of mind?

Tired physically and emotionally, but hopeful.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

If political correctness is considered a virtue these days, I think that needs to be thrown out of the book.

9. On what occasion do you lie?

Usually when I'm embarrassed. But I get so incredibly convicted upon the spot that I have to confess right then. Which makes my embarrassing situation more embarrassing. So I avoid lying altogether.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

My ridiculous complexion.

11. Which living person(s) do you most despise?

I don't. I dislike some. But I'm working on that.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?

Loyal love.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Trustworthiness and stalwartness.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

"Yo" after I finish a sentence, and I'm annoying even myself.

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Jesus, and I actually mean that, although it sounds like a Sunday school answer. :)

16. When and where were you happiest?

I am very happy right now. For the past several years, I always had this nagging dissatisfaction that there was something more, that my life was meant to be something different. That feeling is gone now... replaced with excitement and hope.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?

I'd like to be able to play the dulcimer.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I'd be more disciplined.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

I don't know what to answer for this one.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

A cat. I'd like to lounge around on the deck all day stretching in the sun, then pretend I'm a lionness and stalk a squirrel. Then I'd like to come inside and allow people to pet me. :)

21. Where would you most like to live?

Here, Chicago...

22. What is your most treasured possession?

I think it might be some of my jewelry, or my journals, or my keyboard. I dunno.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Shame and condemnation.

24. What is your favorite occupation?

The one I'm doing now!

25. What is your most marked characteristic?

Hmmm... I'll have to ask around. Maybe my pointy nose?

26. What do you most value in your friends?

Vulnerability and loyal love.

27. Who are your favorite writers?

I think my two favorite fiction writers would be Ted Dekker and Francine Rivers.

28. Who is your hero of fiction?

Haddassah from A Voice in the Wind.

29. What is your favorite movie quote right now?

"What's the matter with you? Your life's going down the toilet!" - Moonstruck

30. What is your favorite blog to read?

Aaron's usually makes me laugh. I also like to read Elyse Sewell's, who is a model who was on America's Next Top Model, Cycle One.

31. What are your favorite names?

I don't have a list... not that close to baby world yet.

32. What is it that you most dislike?

Injustice. Complacency. Nuts.

33. What is your favorite color?

Green.

34. What are you most looking forward to in life?

Transforming into the woman God created me to be, marriage, community, Jesus coming back.

35. What is your motto?

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:10-11