Finally. It's one o'clock and the sun is shining. And I'm going to go in a few minutes and change from my front desk dignified and conservative persona into something more girl next door. Then I'm going to grab some chips and a pop, maybe a sandwitch and some kettle corn, and take my journal and a blanket to the park. It seems like that kind of day. A weary, nap in the park, warm-snuggle in the sun kind of day. If I knew what the weather was like south of me, it would be a loll on the sand by the water day. Should I take the chance?

I was going through my old beat up sermon notebook, transferring it to my new shiny Sermon/Prayer Requests Journal, and I found a sermon from a month or so ago that got me thinking.

I went to a church that is in the process of changing names. The sermon was on the importance God places on names, his own and other people's. I took his challenge and used my concordance to look up the word name. It's in there a lot!

The point of his sermon was that our names are not an accident. Even if our parents only chose them for the sound, God has given them special meaning unique to each of us. I'm not sure what I think about a divine mandate about my name, but then I remembered how in Perelandra Ransom's name was chosen before ransom was a word. Before his ancestors morphed their name from Ranolf's son. Before ransom mean to act as the redemption for someone else. (BTW, did anyone else go back and catch in Out of the Silent Planet that Lewis says the name Ransom is a pseudonym? Nitpick!)

So I bought a baby names book and looked mine up.

Rachel: (Hebrew) Ewe, Lamb of God, Innocent.
LeAnn (Either a combination of Leah and Hannah, or Lee and Hannah)
Leah: (Hebrew) Weary.
Lee: (Old English) Meadow
Hannah: (Hebrew) Full of Grace, Mercy, and Prayer.

I kind of like going with Leah over Lee, because then I have an all-biblical, Jewish women of faith sort of name....But then, it is a lot to live up to!

(Over at Marla's Musings she has a link to name origins and meanings...Go find your own names)

After Great Pain

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--

The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round--

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--

A Wooden way

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone--

This is the Hour of Lead--

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--

First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--

~Emily Dickenson~

Tired again. Three days of double shifts in a row takes it out of you. How did I ever work five days through the holidays? I can't do this for too much longer...If I make it through the month-of-spring-breaks, maybe I can make it to May. After that I think all the EmergenC's and sleeping aids in the world won't be enough.

This has been a good year. A year of healing old wounds simply because I wasn't around the things that ripped them back open and made them bleed afresh. Sheer physical exhaustion is much to be preferred to mind and heart numbing depression and false hopes and never-quite-attained resignation. So I can't complain too much (though I do) about all of the working and too little sleeping. It's been a good year.