Miss Truvy, I promise that my personal tragedy will not interfere with my ability to do good hair.

I just got my kitchen clean. Then I wrote a whole paragraph about cleaning my kitchen. Then I deleted it because no one wants to read a whole paragraph about my cleaning the kitchen.

Why haven’t I blogged lately? (I’ve actually been asked that by more than one person) What’s going on? How’m I doin’?

Let’s put it this way…when I woke up on Saturday morning, I was horizontal in my bed, half of my pillow case was off of my pillow, and the face glaring back at me in the mirror as I stumbled to the bathroom…it wasn’t pretty.

So, I last wrote on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, a very dear friend of mine died. My David had cancer, and even though we all knew he wasn’t getting better, it was still a bit of a shock. The viewing was today, and it was very very hard. I’m not looking forward to the funeral tomorrow. I also have another funeral later this week as well.

On Friday, the day went pretty well, through the WOW performance. When I got out into the parking lot and into my car and turned the key in the ignition, the car simply refused to acknowledge that there was even a key in it. At all. No lights, no dying, coughing, sputtering, choking. Nothing.

God took very good care of me, though. A dear sweet friend’s husband ‘happened’ to come to church and ‘happened’ to be parked next to me, and was able to revive my car, help me get a battery at a greatly discounted cost, and get the battery installed for me. I am lucky.

But it gets better… I did dinner and a movie with my sister tomorrow yesterday, which is a whole other post, as evidenced by my inability to distinguish between tomorrow and yesterday. Right now, the post is ruminating around in my head, but it’s too expletive-laden to post for all the interweb to read. I’m still editing it and working on it and will tell you all about it sometime this week.

Hopefully, this is the bottom. The low. I was able to talk to both my aunt and my BFF, which helps me process a good bit. Plans are underway for camp next week, and though we’ve got a lot of work to squeeze in between two funerals and some other stuff, it is going to be grand.

This all reminds me of a story I read in an Anne Lamott book. I’m not as radical and painfully liberal as she is, but I really think this is one of the ways God works. Here it is: The Dalai Lama, well the people that are with him, the “they” if you will, believe that when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something beautiful and grand that is happening. Something that can’t be born unless we are completely distracted.

I think that so often, I try to get in the way of God’s plans for me, mistakenly thinking that I know what needs to be done, and can go ahead and take care of it. Sometimes, I think something is so important that He can’t rely on me to step out of the way so He in His graciousness throws me for a loop just so I have no chance of ruining something beautiful.

I don’t know if something beautiful is going to happen in the next few days, weeks, months, or years. But I know that even the thought that it might does wonders to help me muddle through the coming days and weeks of business and challenge.

The hope, if you will.