The Two Me's

I had a great day today!

First, we went to church (more on that later), and since this was the last Sunday of the month, the choir, which I am in, performed at both services. Since it's Memorial Day, the band, which DH is in, also played with us. We did a beautiful arrangement of Battle Hymn of the Republic, with an a capella verse by the men in four-part harmony, that was just breathtaking. We actually got a standing ovation when we finished, at both services. We go to a fairly large church, with about 350 people combined at the services, so it was really exciting to get an ovation!!! That's never happened before, not even at Christmas, so it was totally cool.

Then we went out to lunch at Longhorn, and I had an amazingly good Seven Pepper Steak salad, with blue cheese, my favorite. After that, since it's at the outlet mall, we stopped into the Plow and Hearth outlet and I got a present for my mother for Mother's Day, which I told her I already had but couldn't find in the boxes, oops. Hey, at least I'm sending her something, right?

Then, best of all, I spent the rest of the afternoon gardening. Yesterday, I was at Lowes, and made the most amazing score at their Dead and Dying clearance area! They had about eight portable racks, each about six feet high, completely stocked with plants marked $.50 apiece! After a little pawing through things, I got eighteen large geraniums, twelve six-packs of impatiens seedlings, a Gerbra daisy plant, three large hanging baskets of snapdragons, and eight quart-sized draping something-or-others-that-look-like-petunias-but-aren't, for $25!!! There is NOTHING wrong with almost all of these plants, except that they weren't being watered properly and/or they weren't blooming at the moment! The geraniums all have clusters of buds on them, and frankly, it takes a lot to kill a geranium. I mean, you have to TRY. I'm pretty sure nearly every single thing I bought is going to come back just fine, and I am going to have a kick-butt garden for under $30!!!! So, I planted all of that into the existing garden (which had already gone by, since it's mostly bulbs) and made a new garden strip along both sides of the walkway, mulched it all with everlasting-color mulch, weeded the garden that goes along the side of the house, mossed and mulched the vegetable garden, and cleaned up all the odds and ends that have been laying around, like shovels, toys, etc. Woohoo!!! Oh, it was truly my favorite kind of day.

To finish it up, we had pancakes, bacon and cherries for dinner (hey, it's protein, carbs, and fruit, right?), went to the park to release the koi that were living in the little water feature that used to be in the backyard when we bought the place (which had to go because of a) dogs and b)mosquitoes) into the pond there (it was that or certain death, so we opted for the wildlife replacement program), and then went to a local creamery for dessert. No one argued, no one whined, no one dropped their ice cream. It was a fabulous, rare treat of a day.

Now, about church.

I'm not entirely comfortable, still, going to church. As a thinking, well-educated person, I have serious questions and concerns about the Christian faith. However, I want to believe. I think it's important to have something to believe in. We had a guest speaker at our church awhile ago that summed up our choice to attend church very neatly; he said that as a learned man, after much consideration when he was younger, he simply chose to believe, and that faith means exactly that, choosing to believe what you cannot prove to be true. I say that to myself often when that voice comes up in my head that says 'what on EARTH are you doing here?! You were a Women's Studies minor, for crying out loud!' I know that several of my childhood friends, none of whom attend a church, are shocked and weirded out that we go, and I don't usually feel like it's anything I can discuss with my pre-small town life friends because of that. When I do, I feel like there are probably a lot of thoughts they're having that are similar to the ones in my own head that I'm trying to ignore in favor of something different.

There are other things that draw us to church, too, of course. It's a great way to meet people, and everything's free, basically. Being large as it is, our church has a LOT of social opportunities that we'd never get elsewhere, like music programs for adults and kids (both kids are in the choir and Josie is in the kids' bell choir), vacation camps, and basic camaraderie via adult classes and discussions. Most of our best friends in town have come from our Child Parent Relationships class that we take there, and they are honestly some of the best people I have ever met. There are picnics, trips, everything. Not to mention, in everyday literature and life, there are so many biblical references that it's helpful to have a background in Christianity in order to get the hidden meanings of things (as in, almost all the names of places and things in The Matrix are biblically based, for example, plus the obvious near-constant references by all the Big Literature books) Plus, the denomination we attend, First Christian Disciples of Christ, only has one requirement for membership - that you believe in Christ's teachings. That's pretty basic, and I can manage that, at least, easily. I'm working on the rest of it. Allowing myself to believe something, even something I want to believe in, that I have resisted all my life, isn't as easy as one would think, but I am choosing to do it.

As a result of this struggle, I feel like a fraud a lot of the time. My church friends don't know anything of my internal struggle, since it's not something I want to admit to people who seem to find belief so easy. I'm not pretending to them, but I'm not entirely honest, I suppose, either. With non-church friends, I feel like a sell-out. It's strange, and it makes me wish I thought about things less. Life would be a lot easier if I could just once simply go along with things and not try to reason them out!