Abigail’s Weblog

I started working out. I ran today for a whole eight minutes. I was huffing, puffing, and sweating on the noisy  treadmill in the community workout room in my apartment complex for half hour total, and at one point ran for eight minutes solid. I had done it. I had looked ridiculous, no doubt, but I had done it. Change is impossible without effort. Deep, I know, but its surprising how often I act like it just springs from thin air. As though loosing twenty pounds will be the a same as Ed McMann coming to my door with a big check saying that I am already a winner, and all I had to do was sit in my apartment in my jammies.

My dad loves to find the right parking spot. When we go to the movies as a family, he will cut little old ladies off and run down entire groups of teenagers to get it. It waits for him around the back of the Imax compound with a curb on the driver’s side and a little pole on the passenger’s, making it completely protected from anyone else’s irresponsible door opening.  With a gleam in his eye reminiscent of the look children have on Christmas morning when they have riffled through the house at least twice a week since mom went to the Veteran’s day sales, he weaves his 2007 Honda CRV through the other idiots who don’t know about this little piece of heaven. He knows its there, and the excitement that has been building is palpable. He knows he has won. He is a hero. Al Williams has gotten what he wants for Christmas.

The day started off like any other- and would end the way a lot of them do. I woke to the sound of my roommate hitting the snooze yet again on her cellphone alarm. The time was probably 7:00 am. A respectable hour to get a day of school reading started off to a caffeinated sprint, but my best intentions are often foiled by the reality of my butt being restictivley lazy. I sat on the big brown couch that my roommates baught together last year and will probably belong to the one who gets married first, this being a finishing line that is still not in sight for either of them, the couch remains up for grabs and my home away from car.

I read a bit of Isaiah. The bit where he prophecies about the remnant coming back after the line of Jesse produces a king who will change everything. Then came a solid hour of reading. Then came a solid hour of doing next to nothing. Then I watched some of Lord of the Rings and ate breakfast. Finally I realized I would be late for class if I didn’t head out the door that instant.

I often spend the half mile walk from my car to the room wondering why I don’t just park in IV for free and ride my bike, which is parked at the houses, to campus, thereby saving me 2 dollars on a parking permit. After I conclude that it doesn’t matter in the long run and that I hate sweating and then sitting, I think about my ex-boyfriend and pray that the Lord would help me not to think about him. That usually gets me to the classroom and sitting down.

Its not that I like thinking about him. In fact its the imperfection which most hinders my hearing the Lord. I long to trust Jesus with a deep down trust that holds fast no matter what, but I am not such a saint. I trust Him as long as I am focused on doing so, but then my mind wonders and eventually old thoughts surface and linger. Those recollections and unchecked regrets build up and stick to the walls of my arteries until I have a heart attack right there in class but I have to remember that the middle of Religious Studies 106-Modernity and the process of secularization is not a place to cry out in anguish to the Lord. The professor would make me explain my rationalization for having “faith” in a being much greater than myself, who has the capacity to walk me through the fourth month of heartbreak without getting frustrated. The Professor would laugh. That student who I see all over campus, nay, all over town with his suit and wife and atheist pride flag, would laugh at my loneliness. Then I would storm out and half-way down the stairs wonder who I would barrow notes from for the rest of the lecture I was leaving.

But today went smoothly. Only a flash or two of the ex and then on to thoughts about that remnant. Isaiah said that Ephraim would not be jealous of Judah and Judah would not harass Ephraim. They would, together, swoop down and kick ass and the Lord would make the river split into seven streams. I need a good commentary on Isaiah.

I don’t remember much about class but since I managed to get through the lecture without going into cardiac arrest, I left campus feeling pretty good and still thinking about the line of Jesse. I think I read somewhere that Jesse means “gift”. Midterms are coming up in what feels like forty-five minutes so the most reasonable thing for me to have done was go to my best friend’s house to have a beer and read. Mrs. G wasn’t home but Mr. G was so we sat around discussing diesel engine conversion and the used bike market in Santa Barbara. Then back to the required texts.

When my friend came in the door I eagerly put away the reading. While Thomas Luckmann and Jose Casanova both have interesting points on the privatization, or in Casanova’s case, de-privatization, of religion in Western culture, Mr. and Mrs. G have a new puppy.

We keep ants. They are in the bathroom, in the dvd player, hiking their way through our carpet, but somehow they have missed the kitchen completely.