Renewed

Before I get to the main part of my post, I feel the need to say that I had kind of an awesome Saturday. I found an Iron and Wine record in a record store that I'd been trying to get for weeks but was never anywhere I tried mere minutes before I went to a Joshua Radin concert. It was pretty amazing. It was very exciting for me. But it wasn't the highlight of my weekend. That happened the night before.

I love books. If you've never read my blog before, that might be news, but for those of you who know me or have been reading this for any amount of time at all, you know that's true. This year, I started a book club with some friends. This month was my month to pick, and I picked Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which made its first blog appearance here). I love this book and think it is absolutely beautiful, but it is also kind of hard for me to read because it's about a kid whose dad died. The end is especially tough because I identify with so much of what the kid says and how he feels, but I love it. Friday was our book club meeting, and I was looking forward to discussing my book with my friends. I reread the ending just to refresh my memory because it had been awhile since I read the whole thing--I cried during independent reading in front of my first block class, but that's another story. The point is that, although I love my book so much, I was feeling a little sad by Friday afternoon. (The effect of the book was slightly worsened by the fact that I'm in the process of moving back home with my mom, step-dad, and little brother so that I can save up to buy my own house, which for a variety of reasons is making me miss my dad more than usual. All that goes to say that Friday night, even though I was super happy about my book club, I was feeling a little blue.)

After book club, several of my friends and I went out to dinner. And what that really means is that I went out to dinner with two of my friends and their husbands (who are also my friends, so it's kind of like going to dinner with four friends except that they're married to each other and that's kind of important to know for the rest of the story). Part of it was great because I navigated smoothly between conversations with my girlfriends and conversations with their husbands about sports, which made me feel like my interests make me perfectly built for being single--I can happily converse with people from either gender! But another part of it, like when they started to talk about how when you're married and you can finish each other's sentences and know how the other one is feeling sometimes without having to talk about it and all you can add to the conversation is "That's how it is with me and my sister" or when the waitress comes and asks about checks and it sounds like this: "We're together." "We're together." "I'm alone." is not so fun. That, in combination with already being sad because of my book, meant that when I got home from dinner, I sat down on my floor and started crying because I was lonely and sad that I was single. (And I'm going to pause briefly right here to tell my friends, who I think read my blog, that they should stop feeling bad about this right now because they didn't do anything wrong and because I like hanging out with them and their husbands and because they can't feel responsible for my stupid, irrational girl feelings.)

The old me would have spiraled down into one of her patented oh-woe-is-me-my-dad-died-and-I-don't-have-a-husband-I'm-so-alone-my-life-is-so-unfair wallowing sessions, but I remembered that I hadn't read my selection from Psalms for the day. So instead of wallowing and sitting in a puddle of my own tears feeling sorry for myself, I pulled myself up and went and got my One-year Bible. The selection for the day was from Psalm 28. As I read, I came to these verses:

Blessed be the Lord!

For He has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.

The Lord is my strength and my shield; in Him my heart trusts, and I am helped;

my heard exults, and with my song I give thanks to Him.

The Lord is the strength of His people;

He is the saving refuge of His anointed.

And I felt better. Instead of being sad alone, I invited God in. Yes my dad died when I was 12. And yes I'm single. But that doesn't matter. I was reminded that He is my strength. My trust should be in Him. I should give thanks to Him because He has saved me. I stopped crying and went to bed happy.