Everything is going on right now.

Seriously. I can't think of a single aspect of my life that isn't hopping with events (or, at least, thought-nudges). Things are in a holistic state of continual happenings.

Six-week classes have turned me into a dutiful student. No, seriously, I'm actually doing assignments as they come and hiding out in my room during movie nights to study and... being responsible and working ahead. Procrastination has gone out the window (I did splurge on 43 pages of Chesterton last week. The flesh could care less, but the spirit was all-too willing to take that detour). Crazy how things get done when I take the time to do them. Boom. Life never fails to surprise.

Consequently, I've been a horrible friend, sister, daughter... there is simply too much going on for me to possibly fill everyone in on everything. I've purposefully avoided all methods of online chat because... well... I can't work and chat at the same time. I don't have it in me. The stereotypical feminine-multitasking-unit is lacking from my system. (The truth revealed...) Even if I see you and talk to you, I probably fixate on one or two things, and ninety percent of anything worthwhile goes unsaid. I'm afraid this is probably true of the scant numbers of emails I have sent, and will definitely be true of this post.

There are a few thoughts springing out of all this that I (for reasons unknown to the annals of mankind) have chosen to fixate on tonight. The first is my own unworthiness. I've been so productive. I've been so diligent. For the first time in my life, I half-resemble a model student. I've been a student for fifteen or sixteen years. What took me so long?

Let's make a grand leap of utterly groundless assumptions and say that I've had fifteen years of good studentship. Suppose I've been amazingly diligent and not procrastinated one iota of those fifteen years. What could I say of myself? I would be an unworthy servant even then, because I had only done my duty - all things, as unto the Lord, with a readily cheerful attitude, in submission to the wills of my parents and teachers. Instead - procrastinator, twenty years running. My worthys are in the negatives.

So I take all this productivity with a grain of salt - the best, most potent salt there is. I take it with the Gospel, and I realize that the productivity does very little for me. I wonder how quickly time is running out for me to avail myself of the means of grace, to pray, to fight temptation... there are certain spiritual disciplines that are exclusive to life in a fallen world. Have I availed myself of the opportunity to exercise those with diligence - not because they are my tickets to heaven, but because heaven is coming fast, and the opportunity to live as a citizen of heaven on earth is running out? Yes? Unworthy servant, only doing your duty! Saint and daughter, fall on Christ. Have I failed utterly to even want to exercise these? Unworthy, wretched woman that I am! Saint and daughter, fall on Christ.

The second thought is how tired I am. I tried putting in a few nights at work last week. It wasn't too bad. I'm going to try again this weekend. Nevertheless, these things take their toll. The press to complete tasks and achieve and anticipate every little detail in work and school is wearing me down. Even my nights are no longer sacred to rest. (That's okay, because there's really only one day in the week I would venture to call sacred, and it's not necessarily for the purpose of literal rest, per se, although that has its place.) My eating schedule has slipped, and I'm suddenly prone to grouchy phases (read: low blood sugar levels) at odd times in the day because I've forgotten about food. Gaaah! Scriptural basis for unworthy servantship aside, I don't know when I've ever been more diligent and on top of things and yet felt they were so completely out of my control.

Well, yes, I do. First year of nursing school, first day of clinicals, when I thought I'd botched the whole day and made a mess of things. Driving to the hospital, swallowing down the urge to vomit, and reminding myself over and over again that the catechism-phrase glorify God and enjoy him forever had to meet the road as rubber some day and obliterate this desire to glorify Anna and enjoy myself forever. Or, as one functioning under divine inspiration said, He must increase and I must decrease. It is inevitable. God grows; Anna shrinks. That's what my life is about.

So there - I'm tired, and I'm a tiny bit on edge, and I really wish I weren't trying to swallow all of this right now - but whether I manage to shoulder this schedule or not is irrelevant. The point is, I can't blame the tiredness. I can't blame the school schedule or the work schedule. If I am so far from being gruntled that I am disgruntled, it is because I am discontent. If I am discontent, it is not because I am weak and can't take it anymore; it is because I am not willing to love God's strength, to delight in His glory. I must decrease...No, if I am discontent, it is because the feet of this shadow have not yet learned to bear such harsh realities. 

Saint and daughter, fall on Christ.

 (This is me, defying humanity and Dorothy Sayers, with quite a lot to occupy me and still a nuisance to the world. Also, short on sleep.)

Megan recommended this book a few months back, and 'midst this last week I finally succeeded in getting my hands on a copy of it.

Bad idea. Horrible, horrible idea.

That book has been sitting on my shelf, taunting me ever since. I am henceforth convinced that purchasing books in the middle of a summer semester is a very bad idea indeed. Not only because they are sure to rob me of my peace of mind and threaten the deepest foundations of my grade point average, but because they will then steal even more time from me in the form of a commiseration-bound blog post.

Yes. Very much a Bad Idea to the core of its core as an Idea.

Not only is the book sitting on my shelf, but it is rainy today and I have a cup of hot coffee and the atmosphere practically screams "Chesterton!" And I am about to go stick my nose into a pile of doldrums in the form of an evolutionary-driven novel detailing the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains. (Fascinating stuff, really, but falling far short of the obvious epitome of idealhood here... also, pagan.)

But the doldrums must win out. I have only a few short hours before work, and ... they grow shorter still, with far too much that must fill them. This is a tale of sheer grit, flint-like resolve, and massive self-control. Chesterton, I shall see thee at the end of June.

...and if I do succumb to the temptation, at least I can always cry out, Adam-like, "The author you gave me!" Comfort in small things and big excuses.

Looking for something more substantial over the Sunday morning breakfast table than a cinnamon roll, I selected a banana. When someone remarked that bananas were rather sweet and sugary themselves, I planted my tongue firmly in my cheek and retorted: "Yeah, but I can only just stand to eat bananas, which means I can feel really good about myself afterward."

Behind each jest there usually lies a grain of truth. Contemplating my (FEEL GOOD. GIVE BLOOD.) cup this evening, I begin to see the glimmer of rightness behind Sunday morning's joke. Quite frankly, it inspires a greater uneasiness than its herbaceously-originating subject.

It doesn't kill me to eat a banana. Sometimes, if it's too ripe or soft (read: slimy), I might be fighting a very strong impulse to gag, but I can swallow them and I usually don't aspirate out of panic or allergic reaction or any such crisis. I step away from them feeling healthy and wholesome ... victorious, even.

But I have a nagging suspicion that I order my life according to bananas. (The frequent association of this particular fruit with my name is purely irony on God's part, I think.) I do my best to only swallow those things that will make me feel bad enough while doing them so that I can feel good about doing them later.

Bananas don't break me. They make me feel a little bad, but mostly good - and I don't need to feel good about myself. I don't need to have my futile ideals about my own ability to muscle through things sustained for a moment, however fleeting. God knows I need to be broken. Thank God! He knows. I suppose I can take that as a guarantee that my stupid attempts to live a banana-lifestyle will certainly fail.

Please, God. No more bananas.

As for me, I said in my prosperity, "I shall never be moved." By your favor, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed. -Psalm 30:6-7

We're all waiting for the Last Time.

We can't help admitting it. We throw those words around like pinballs in an overzealous machine.

This is the last time I'm going to tell you, young man!

This better be the last time I have to change these sheets tonight...

I hope this is the last time I have to take a math course... 

He's been hospitalized three times this year; hopefully this is the last time for a while...

The last time, the last time, the last time... the last time we make that mistake, give into that temptation, sign up for dish duty on Friday night (I haven't committed that last one, but I'm not sure why it's so bad, either). My life is ridden with looking forward to these. I began to realize how much when the spring semester started winding down. The last clinical... the last journal... the last exam... the last skill sheet... the last two weeks were a continual checking off of a long list of Lasts. I realized it even more when the six-week summer courses started full-throttle the week right after finals, only this time it's more along the lines of: This is the Last Time I am ever taking a six-week course... ever. (No rest for the weary...)

If nothing else, my summer session has made me more sensitive to something about myself and the world around me. We live our lives with these falsified, contemporary ideals of how work and rest are balanced throughout the year. As students, summer is considered a ... 'break.' A rest. A time to relax and kick back and not go to school (work). Even the potentially monotonous grind of a summer job is comparatively relaxing to term papers and exams and ... well, the job only lasts for the summer, usually, so it's unrealistically fun anyway. Summer courses remind me that my summer is not sacred, just like working Fridays and Saturdays during the school year remind me that my weekend is not sacred. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work... I can't gripe about working six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year - whatever work that is. At the end of that week, I am an unworthy servant, having only done my duty (if that!) and desperately in need of some rest.

It pushes me forward. It pushes me to look to another Last Time. Not the end of merely this six-week stretch, or even the end of work itself, because I don't think work is a bad thing. But the idea of futile toil... of struggling hopelessly against something I can never effect... this is everything I do. This is everything fallen about work in this world. Every bed I change at the hospital is futility. Every person I comfort and care for is (looking at it pragmatically) futile. I can't make them all better. I want to keep them from dying, and I can't. They're going to die eventually. I can't stop that.

Take something even nearer and dearer to my heart than classes and work. My youngest brother is sitting in a hospital somewhere. His body is wasted and hurting and fighting and struggling - struggling so hard - against the natural current of death and sickness. We're all fighting it, and fighting it with the same futility; we just don't know it as well as Calvin does right now. I don't know if this current attack on his body will be the last severe one that I'll have to witness. I hope so - I dearly hope so! - but at the same time, I know that the struggle does not end with this recent illness. The moment his condition stabilizes and returns to the best kind of normal it can, he will still be with the rest of us: the heart, a ticking time-bomb, slowly counting down to the Last Time it beats...

Calvin needs the resurrection. My friend over in Britain, who just pounded an attack of cancer into the dust (God willing!), needs the resurrection. I need the resurrection. All of us, sick or healthy... we don't need some doctor or procedure to merely prolong death; we need death to die. 

Tonight, I heard a song by Ben Shive, the main thrust of which was this: before Jesus comes back, somebody's going to die. Maybe a lot of people will die, but someone in particular will die. Just one person - maybe seconds, maybe moments, maybe hours before Jesus returns - one person will die, and then...

That will be the Last Time anyone dies. Ever.

Perhaps the most striking thought is that this won't be obvious or noticeable. God's not going to point out when it happens. Much will not be made over the minute death takes its last life. There will be no fanfare. The indignity of its exit is remarkable.


If the indignity of death's exit is remarkable, the glory of Christ's entrance will be tenfold (a hundred! million! infinity! -fold) so. The last death will be easily missed. Christ's second coming? Never so! Several weeks ago, Pastor Noah preached through the first half of Mark 9, taking us to task for the ease with which we fall into a state of awe at the pain and suffering and problems of this world. He challenged us instead to look to Christ; to be in awe of Him, and to eagerly await His return - not just the Last Time for death, but the First Time we will behold him not only with eyes of faith, but with our physical eyes...


The lyrics quoted above which made these scattered thoughts semi-cohesive belong to Ben Shive. Do me a tremendous favor and go listen to the song: it's called 'A Last Time For Everything' and I've fallen in love with it about as much as anything Andrew Peterson has written/recorded. (Ben does write for Andrew, and he tours with him a good deal.) Maybe if enough people view it on youtube, he'll actually release it to an album...?