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Good evening, and welcome to the conclusion of the long-awaited 26th of December.
For a long while, I'd had this day marked as the day I had to "make it" till.
Here I am! Making it.
Wrong country, but same girl.
And also, not the same girl.
I received a letter today from my sweet friend Leslie (have I spoken of Leslie before? Surely. Les is my NI roommate from our Family and Human services trip summer 2012. and also my personal Charles Wallace. Invaluable human.)
I actually received two letters today. One which made my room smell of lavender but both marked with the name "Emmanuel." Emmanuel is God with us. To quote Les (sorry if you read this and are horrified. I'm probably going to do it again, though.): "Not only did God care enough about us to come down and be a part of humanity, but He also still dwells with us every single day. God is with me. And at the same time He is with you. How very special I feel when I remember I serve Emmanuel, who never leaves me."
I couldn't think of a better way to word that. Beautiful. Such beautiful truth. God is with us and through us and around us.
My two other favorite highlights from her letter are when she compared me to Frodo on return from Mordor (Her impressions of my person when she saw me in Siloam last week. Yikes. Re: "not the same girl.") and her comment just after.
The Mordor thing is meant to make you laugh, not deepen your worry for me, by the way.
Her after comment, though, was: "I saw you, and there were no layers to peek under to find you, as there sometimes have been."
I don't think I could receive a higher comment from a higher source.
All my life, I've been trying to hide or to become. When I finally realized what I was doing (a much more recent event than I'd like to admit), I honestly had no idea where to even begin to pull off the layers I'd built around me. Sifting through the actual and the constructed, impossible.
Will the real Jamie Odom please stand up?
I guess the real Jamie Odom wasn't standing up at all. She was kneeling. She was curled up in a ball on the floor. And I didn't even know there was anybody else in the room to see her. I didn't see her.
I guess the real you doesn't show up when you're looking for her; she shows up when Jesus himself rips everything else away.
I'm not really even sure what I look like right now. Have kind of a blind spot. But others seem to be able to see me, and they couldn't before. So whether or not I would know me in a crowd, praise God He and others can.
Today, I woke up kind of anticipating I'd want to be alone and hostile. I wasn't.
I actually woke up very cheerful. Jansie and I had a nice long chat, had lunch together, wandered a trendy part of town (decided neither of us are trendy enough to desire a return visit), and walked along the pedestrian bridge. It's supposed to be over the river but, in pure Oklahoma fashion, our river is dry, dry, dry.
After, I'd settled into an inverse parabola. Definite sink.
Spent the next three hours in a coffee shop with my cuz. Krissy, with (not despite of) all her craziness and her very definite, passionate opinions, makes sense to me. One of my most favorite people to be around and has a knack for shoveling me out of any foul mood. Half distraction, half no-nonsense "let's deal with this crap and move on" attitude. It works.
Day 2 in a row of almost total clearmindedness. I'll take it, with thanks.
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