We made an effort to buy a car today. We researched on the internet during the week and today we went to sit in and test drive the vehicles we were interested in. We had several reasons for doing this – the 156,000 miles on the Aztek for one, the earned GM bucks on our credit card that are due to expire next Wednesday for another. It was a very reasonable thing to do and could have been a way to save money on an inevitable purchase.  But we didn’t do it. We were actually to the point of emptying out the Aztek and vacuuming it for the trade when we decided not to complete the process.

I learned a significant thing. There have been times when we’ve made purchases like this without praying about them, trusting that God gives us enough common sense to figure it out, but this time we prayed together. I guess we feel the financial uncertainty of the times more, our ability to earn has been threatened in various ways and we are earning for others besides ourselves and didn’t want to put those commitments in jeopardy. Neither of us enjoys car shopping. There are so many options and decisions to be made and sometimes you don’t even know whether they are important decisions or not! So we did pray that we would know what we should decide about all these options.

We decided that better mileage was one goal, and two cars fit that bill pretty well. We liked the feel of one of them better than another, it drove well, we found it in a color we could live with and the price was manageable. But I could feel a small storm starting – even though I agreed with all these assessments. And what I learned was, that when you pray about something, you pay more attention to the inner storms that you might otherwise dismiss.  That can be a good thing and it could be spiritual direction.

You would think I would be excited about a new car. I would think I’d be excited about a new car, especially one with Bluetooth connectivity, OnStar, remote start, and a computer that tells you when something is wrong and what the something is and even sends you an e-mail about it. But I wasn’t excited – not like I was when we got the Aztek. After we decided not to buy I felt so relieved and content with the decision.  And Dennis was too, I think.  He didn’t agonize over it at all.

So let me tell you all the things I love about my ten year old car that outweigh the irritations of having no working gas gauge or windshield washer, the broken key fobs and dimming dash lights. I love that it is bright yellow instead of one of the other four colors that all the other cars in the world are. That color makes me happy, and visible. I love the cooler between the seats that keeps things cool that would otherwise melt in the Florida heat. I love that I can put my cereal bowl on top of the cooler for easy access at stop lights. I love that all I have to do to get in it is open the door, back up to the seat and slide in (no lowering myself into the cockpit). I love that it’s taken me hiking in the mountains, to the northwoods,  to the horse farm, carrying all manner of unwieldy objects with ease, with never a bad breakdown.  Ten years of living and it’s still an exciting vehicle.  I’m always glad to get in and drive. And one morning this week I started the engine to go to work and the first thing out of the radio was “Shirley”! Well, actually it was “surely” and it was part of a sentence but it was still kind of heartwarming and I took it personally. 

We may still buy another car someday, but it wasn’t right today and I am happy.

I don’t normally give furniture much thought – my house is a decorator’s nightmare – but I love to rearrange what I have. Really, tell me that something is too big and heavy to be moved and I will rise up from my death bed to prove you wrong. And it’s tricky work so you want to wait until you have little to no interference. When I’m in the middle of a complicated move the last thing I want is someone second guessing my strategy, the only exception being someone who is a kindred soul and has a good sense of humor.

 I started young and probably learned furniture rearrangement from my mother. She moved things around a lot to avoid boredom and because it was cheaper than buying new stuff – you just put it in a different place and it looks new, kind of.  I always loved it when things got moved around and required new patterns of sitting, walking, etc…  The only drawback to rearranging is that you have to give people a little time to get used to where things are, and even then, if it’s night and they’re half asleep they might make a mistake and dive into a dresser instead of the bed (sorry Dad, had to tell it).

Yes, Mom was a kindred soul and a mentor to me.  I came home one summer when Mom was “rearranging” and wanted to move an old mahogany dresser out to storage. It was slightly smaller than a compact car and nearly as heavy, and it was on the second floor of our old farmhouse. Many times since I have looked at those 20 steep steps and that narrow stairwell and wondered how we did it without being permanently injured.  My clearest recollection is of being stuck part way down in a very awkward position and having to wait until we stopped laughing to continue.

Carpet and other floor coverings are in much the same category as furniture. Changing what is on your floor can be liberating, and I have been liberated two or three times in my career. The same farmhouse, a downstairs bedroom with old wall to wall carpet with stains and probably at least fifteen years worth of dust mites… I found some decent looking wood floor under a corner of this carpet and decided to get rid of it one day when my husband was out of town. He is not a kindred soul.

Carpet requires as much or more skill to remove as furniture. Think about it. You either have to move all the furniture out of the room, or you have to move it all to one side, roll up the carpet and then move the furniture over the roll. No small matter. I don’t remember which I did because it was so awful, my mind erased all the memory of it in self defense.  Furniture amnesia is what keeps me doing these things. Once rolled, carpet is very stiff and surprisingly heavy. I could barely lift one end of it and there was no way it would bend around a corner and out the doorway. I had to go out the window with it, and it was a serious rival to the “dresser in the stairwell” for being ridiculously funny and somewhat dangerous. Most people probably don’t remove wall to wall carpet until they’re willing to cut it up in small pieces, and that is the way I have done it ever since.

And all this came to mind while I was moving furniture today. Twenty years ago we bought our first really good set of living room furniture – a large, heavy Lane sofa with recliners on each end (still in the living room) and a rocking love seat with reclining function also.  The love seat has been in a rental unit and has seen better days … kids, dogs, garage storage have all taken a heavy toll and I’ve decided at least twice to put it out by the road on it’s way to furniture heaven. But it was still in the garage and recycling is so “in” now that I decided to give it another chance. I pulled two pencils, a TV remote and a dirty sock out of the cracks, vacuumed and scrubbed the fabric with carpet cleaner and cleared the way through the house.

 I use physics principles when I move furniture; levers, friction reduction, and obstacle avoidance. And I have plastic sliders, which my mother never had but I could not live without. When I made it through the first doorway, I knew I could get it all the way into my bedroom on the other side of the house. It was really a pretty piece of work, especially since the recliners kept unfolding and rocking kind of like a ship at sea. I had to stand it on one end to get it through the narrow places.  It’s now sitting at the end of my bed under the ceiling fan, smelling like a dirty dog as it dries from the scrubbing.

All this to say that it may not stay there long.  It makes the room seem more crowded, and my designer friend, Arlette, says I never should have gotten furniture more than 37 inches deep in the first place. Who knew? If I don’t like it I can always get rid of it, and just like carpet, I may have to cut it up in small pieces this time.

I think that’s what we all would like to do – make peace with our questions. Our little questions like “what should I do today?” and our big questions like “what am I supposed to do with my life?”  I have most of this day off still ahead of me and quite a list of things I wish would be accomplished at the end of it. Which things on that list will bring the most peace? Personally, I don’t know that I would make the right choices – I just don’t know enough. There are so many things going on already in nature, in the world, in the lives of my family and friends and many of these things are so complicated I can’t begin to understand them. And yet there is this amazing sense of order underlying it all that gives me confidence in someone who created it all and keeps it going. Outside my window is a beautiful, living plant with outrageous red coloring in its leaves and as the spray from the irrigation hits it, beautiful large drops of clear water pool and drip from the leaf tips – this kind of miracle that existed before any of us were around was invented by a God who cares.

So someone knows what would be the best thing for me to do today and in my brief span of time living on earth, and I see evidence that he’s willing to give me direction. I know things may look a little uncertain and chaotic at times – nature shows me that too – but I eventually have to trust myself or someone clearly smarter than myself. Easy choice. How we ever come to think that we are smarter than whoever created our ability to think is hard to understand.

One of my questions is this: how do people who are very busy, very much in demand, very involved in passionate causes of all kinds, find time to write? Like big government and political people who suddenly come out with a biography or autobiography or a novel – when did they sit down and put in the hours of writing that it takes to produce a book? How do they decide to attach such importance to their writing that it trumps all the other stuff they need to do?

As I looked at my aging self in the mirror last night, I considered how many years I might reasonably have to make sense of all the journals and letters of my life. There’s supposed to be a book in there somewhere that I’m going to write “someday”. Suddenly, there’s not all that much time left, maybe 20 years at best, possibly much less. I should get at it with a sense of urgency if I believe it’s worth doing. I need to ask God for some clarity in the purposefulness of the project. I sense purpose but I don’t know how to express it in words yet.

I’m going out to work in the One Acre Woods for a while, to let my thoughts cook while my hands work. How thankful I am for my gardens.

I am used to having an inner compass – one that allows me to get around in a new place after a minimum of introspection, orientation and driving around. Maps not necessarily needed. But in Seattle I don’t really know where I am except when I’m in the living room…  So many places look alike. There are a million or so hills covered with buildings that slope down to some water and a lot of boats. There are always islands in the water and mountains on the other side of wherever you are. It’s confusing. I’ve actually taken the interstate highway the opposite of my desired direction for about 20 miles before realizing it was north instead of south. It makes me realize that I live in the right place (Florida) for me. The beach is always on one side of the interstate and the interior is always on the other. All the interstates go north or south, none of this four direction stuff. I am spoiled.
Today we went to Discovery Park and walked. We’ve walked in a different park every day, all interesting places with beautiful old growth forests, water flowing, people jogging with their dogs. It’s been sunny every day and the temps have been mild and if you know Seattle, you know you don’t often get four days in a row of this kind of weather. This is my last day here so maybe it will rain tomorrow – I think I saw it in the forecast.
We have also visited the Ballard market and eaten at a couple nice restaurants. Our evenings have been at home where Es and Jonathan have introduced me to Downton Abbey, a British tv series. In the midst of all these comings and goings we have talked and become reaquainted. It’s been a couple years of limited communication and I knew I needed this.  So many things have changed in their lives and I think if I had waited too much longer they might not have seemed like the same people at all.  Part of being family is the struggle to keep that from happening. Just like with geography, it’s important to know the direction different parts of your family are going in their llives in order to feel oriented in your own world. My connection with my family is kind of like my compass – it tells me which direction to face, what to focus on, where the ground is, where the sky starts, all that stuff.  I’m not saying I can see very far ahead on the road but that’s not really what the purpose of my trip out here was. It was just to see more clearly what the road looked like that we were on, and I feel satisfied I’ve been able to do that.