DELIGHT

I crack myself up...I swear I should just fire myself from my day job and stay home and write super avant-garde, profound, yet heart-warming greeting cards...and then become widely aclaimed because of my lyrical delights. I can see CLARISSE GREETINGS (Clarisse being my middle name) SWEEPING the nation now....Okay, or completely NOT at all. If you get tired of your day job, phone me, text me, find me, and profess your readiness for said business venture. I have the card stock, and the brainy goodness already on hand. Anyway...;)

So this business of the Papalote - do we have any bilingual folks scanning this written piece? If not, let me tell you that the word that sounds so cool to say means, "Kite" in Spanish. Pretty simple, however, delightful in the way it sounds. Say it a couple of times and see what I mean. For work, a few of us from my organization truck out to Firebaugh (for those of you not local, it's about an hour away, out in the middle of nowhere), to put on this weekly parenting class. A few of the moms in the class either do not speak English, so what's said gets translated, or they are bilingual. Hence the spanish words dancing in my head. The kite flying freely is a perfect analogy for how I see these moms. They have so many difficult life challenges, are constantly weathering adversities, and yet somehow are finding small (and sometimes HUGE) victories in better relating with their children, and loving themselves more in the process.

I feel like a big 'ol Papalote today. Okay, maybe not big and old. Perhaps a kind-of stylish, sparkly purple number with flashes of red....but I am flying freely. Kind of plodding through a lot of the mundane of life with work and other stuff (I know...that previous sentence wins the award for clarity and conciseness, right?) Touching my passions here and there, loving on families and kids each day (ha, or most days) at work, etc. I have a lot of peace in my heart and life. I know that God is sovereign, however much I still work at transferring that from head knowledge to heart knowledge...etc. I sometimes just think, "what else God," or "what's next God?" There is a fire that is growing inside of me. A little voice that gives a giddy whisper...when I drive back downtown and take in the murals, and remember my "inner-city" internship at the Pink House 3 years back. It's the excitement I get when I connect with other young 20 somethings that are fired up to love the homeless, and look for practical ways to make a difference in the city. It is like my heart is beginning to listen more. The ears of my heart might be working just slightly better...(at least I'm hoping).

I am probably not going to run off to work in an African Village tomorrow (although I would love to go to Kenya someday, for at least a few weeks, meet my sponsor child, love on kids there, etc.) Right now I value increasing stability as I finish setting up Fresno as home. And it's not necessarily a restlessness of hugely needed change. It's more of an alert excited energy, anticipating what God could want to teach me, and about possible new (even if simple) ways that God could use me in this city. Fresno truly has become dear to me.

After work today I ran around town (or motored around town) just for a little while, and took a bunch of pictures. I seemingly do that A LOT....sometimes I feel more victorious in my abilitiy to capture what I am thinking and feeling inside, through a picture, than other times.

There is no grand finale to this post...but a little photographic peak of my run around today (and in months past.)

Enjoy :)