Starting Now

More on life as in "event to event" coming soon.

But for now there's just time to convey what I'm learning about He Who ushers the events along.

On Saturday my friends were so fabulous to celebrate with me in the city.

You know the one.

I guess I'm just weird or something because my idea of celebrating was to go to church. Just to put the crazy in crunk birthday celebrating. It wasn't to be high and mighty or cool (especially temperature wise, because the place was hot with people) or in wide open spaces to ring in adulthood (again with the mass amounts of people).

You see, what I love about a wedding is of course the couple and the party and the love and the dreams about the future. But what I really love is that more than anything it is a dedication-- a recognition that for better or for worse, as humans, we are much more prone to mess things up than to admit to fault and make things better. Thus, the marriage is presented as an offering to God-- a promise to give it to Him before giving it up.

I don't have a wedding in sights. But why wait?

Birthdays, like weddings, are about the person and the party and the love and the dreams for the future-- why miss out on the dedication aspect until that one wedding day that will go by too quickly and for that matter is not even necessarily going to happen simply because it's what I've pictured since I was able to walk down a pretend aisle in a white dress-up dress.

At 21, there is no wedding for me. But there are "I dos" to be said.

Sadie, do you care about poverty?

Sadie, do you care about sadness?

Sadie, do you care about honoring me?

Sadie, do you care to know me more than you know about me?

Sadie, do you want my will in your life? Do you spend time counting the cost?

Sadie, do you commit your fears to me as you wait in anticipation for direction?

"I dos" to be pondered. Commitments to be made. Especially as a single 21 year old anticipating adulthood.

So I took the attention and the love and the company and the well-wishes and the gifts and the party intended for me to the alter to leave it there for Him-- careful not to be foolish enough to think that I've earned or deserved or been entitled to the absolute privilege of a life I've been able to live for 21 years.

It's been a gift.
An unexpected gift.

I got to tell God that I don't expect these fabulous things from Him in order to continue to love Him and enjoy His plan and delight in His promise that He has something much better not only for me (after all, I already have it pretty good) but also for the people who really need better. Who live without enough. Love, water, resources, access, care, strength, life.

I've got love, water, resources, access, care, and strength. I even have life. 21 years of it.

What I want is to have these things in such abundance that they spill into the lives of deep, admitted need.

I want the humility of recognizing my own areas of true need, not wasting time with surface level complaints regarding temperature or taste or smell or personal preferences that are okay, but not what I'm ultimately convinced of... that ultimately are not my hope.  I want to give voice to truly convicting things and to glorifying the God who does something with those convictions.

I want life. Not time, necessarily.

I want to remember that my time is limited, that the next day is not guaranteed to me and that even if it was, there is no guarantee that my life as a quantitative whole would mean something.

I want to be as desperate as those in physical need in my approach to God, asking that He grant spiritual life to my days. And in the process I want to help meet those physical needs.

As Mark Batterson preached on Saturday, I want to make worthy complaints to the One who can do something about it. I want the petty complaints out of my daily conversations-- bigger picture: I want the me out of "my" life.

The Old Testament book of Habakkuk is all about the minor prophet getting upset by what he sees in the world and asking God to do something already. So then God said, in essence, "you're not going to like it." The Lord says that comfortable had to look a little worse before change would look a little better.

And as Habakkuk looked around at injustice and terrible quality of life around him, he coupled his worthy complaints with reverent resolve to do something about it, knowing that ultimately God would bring change and that ultimately his joy and strength was the Lord, not the circumstances in his own life or the lives of others.

And he said all of this with stringed instruments, in praise.

Part of complaining about the right things-- the things that break God's heart, too-- is appropriately appreciating all that I do have. Being thankful for the good I see provides the motivation to confront the less desirable things. It also means recognizing it while I have it, knowing full well that with or without the "good", God would still be good.

I don't do stringed instruments so much. I do pictures, though.

So with my 21st birthday commences "365 days of thankfulness"-- a picture for every day to convey my appreciation for life as I seek out God for life. It focuses on my own life for the express purpose of me recognizing that I have so little to complain about. It also reminds me that those complaints I do encounter in my daily thought life belong with God and not mixed in with a world struggling with worthy complaints. 

Day 1:

I'm thankful for sunflowers.

I'm thankful that they only stay fresh on the table for one week and make you stop and appreciate their beauty while it lasts.

I'm thankful for Noelle (who bought them for me on a weekend intended to celebrate her) and the beauty of college living with her while that lasted.

I'm thankful for the many things she and the sunflowers have in common-- most notably, the ability to brighten my day.

Also I'm thankful for the unexpected blessing that they both were.

Smith, Party of 7

In typical Sadie-always-forgets-about-her-camera-upon-returning-to-school fashion, I have zero pictures to illustrate the introductory days of my senior year.

That's actually a lie-- I have one picture that Katie and Claire took of me sacked out Tuesday morning. But then there's drool and that's awkward and doesn't nobody need to see all of that.

Dad and I were, for the most part, slap happily sleep deprived. One of us slept while the other drove so we didn't see much of each other, even within the confines of my sportscar.

Why the exhaustion, you ask?

Oh, just a little thing called a BABY!

More specifically, a little thing called Truett.

I am, of course, not nearly as exhausted as the two who formed this new little family. And the little bit of sleep deprivation I did endure was, hands down, worth it.

I didn't think I'd get to meet this little man. I mean sure I harassed him to COME ON WITH IT through voice messages and texting and in person every time I thought about it in the month leading up to his birth (don't worry, I always ended with "... but I'll love you unconditionally anyway.") But then on Thursday Dr. Simmons was all like, "this baby isn't coming within the next week" and hope was lost. It was actually kind of nice to have a definite "no" and set my mind to packing up for school, resigned to meeting Truett over my fall break.

Then along comes Friday afternoon, when Mom and I are trying to pump ourselves up to a last minute Wal Mart run by laying around watching Project Runway on the couch (likely strategy, I know) and Steph calls questioning whether or not she'd just experienced her water breaking. After Mom assured her 9 different times that this was indeed happening, we squealed for no shorter than 5 minutes and tried to ourselves comprehend that this was, indeed, happening. Pretty soon we kicked ourselves into high gear, no Project Runway required this time.

Critically, Emily and I called Steph to sing "I'm Coming Out," as if from Truett's point of view. We wanted the world to know, we had to let it show! 

The thing about *almost* grandparents, apparently, is that they experience some type of weird relapse to their roles 30 years prior at the onset of labor (28 to be precise. And by precise, I do mean to the day). Mom kept suggesting things all frantically and Dad would be reassuring and accomodating and all "what do you need me to do?!" Thoughts like, "Oh no, the room isn't ready" and "I didn't even get to paint my toenails" come rushing back to the new grandmother as naturally as they came with her own labor.

But this time her children get to laugh at her.

We beamed as we entered Chic-Fil-A and then again when we showed up at the hospital.

We beamed pretty much everywhere we went the entire weekend, despite exhausted exteriors. Luke and Stephanie included.

I might still be beaming.

We laughed a lot and prayed a lot and listened to Selah a lot and waited a lot.

I remember hugging Luke and saying (just hours after his 28th birthday had come and gone), "next time I see you, you'll be a dad."

And then at 5:08 a.m on August 21st.

Christopher Truett Smith.

7 pounds, 9 ounces and 20 3/4 inches of great.

With his precious nose and tiny toes and big feet and the most adorable little profile.

Okay, am I right?!

Maybe I'm just biased, but the kid is awesome and club-can't-even-handle-him-right-now kinds of great. After 17 hours of adoring the brilliance of God's handiwork, I certainly couldn't handle it anymore. So I drove a thousand or so miles away.

Or at least that's how we're spinnin' it. School was a minor factor.

Aaaaaanyway, that's the way we became a party of 7, and I can't get over getting to be a part!

A Taste Of Things To Come

It seems the more I put a new post off, the more I have to write. Thus, the more I don't want to do a new post. I call it blogger's quandry. You could call it lazy.

But.

I have good reasons for the absence. And, heaven help us, I have a lot of photographic evidence of said reasons. I also have a few excuses that are beyond what I can fit in a pretty photo-- the kind of stuff that comprises a much bigger picture. And, well, God's got that one captured already. So I'll let him reveal it (to me and to you) as he will.

I'll make specifics out of this very vague post when the sun again rises on the flurried grounds of the campus. Right now, there simply are not enough hours in the day morning night. In fact, the only reason I'm writing this much is because I promised dear Bess (who thinks terribly of me after an incident involving Tom Hanks and some show about animal bites and a gap "ad" for AIDS and a certain amount of inappropriate laughter...) and I'm working at becoming a better woman of my word.

So, since it was Jill's birthday on the 4th, and because snow seems to be a big part of the near future around here, I'll leave this with a picture, a taste of things to come...

Watercolor Friend

It's crazy, before her big surprise 22nd birthday bash on Saturday, if you'd asked me to describe Sarah Holljes (I know I forgot the two dots, but how do you even go about getting them there, Sarah?), my number one adjective would have been "colorful."

Funny, then, that we guests spent the majority of our time at the party engrossed in watching Dances With Wolves making slightly ridiculous but mostly heartfelt tribute paintings to our friend using all sorts of color.

Because that's just what she is. Colorful.

No, not just in terms of her selection of words to express surprise (and hopefully delight?) at the presence of a dozen of her friends being shoved into her room, she is also colorful in her choices of clothing, her decorative style, her taste in art, but mostly (and bestly), in her personality.

It's like being around her you never know what you're going to get, except for you always know you're going to get honesty and spirit and probably be able to leave having found something to share some laughter over with her. Or at least that's my experience. She's just got this passion. That pops.

Like color.

Like watercolors.

Watercolors that do not do her justice

but do try and capture something of what she means to each of us.

Peterso pretty much covered all of the bases (uh hmm. then covered them in green)

"The King is enthralled by your beauty, honor Him for He is your God." -Psalm 45:11