They are the best because I spend them with these girls:
Meet Focus Table Four (most of them, anyway!)
These girls are undergrad students at Oxford. They are wicked smart (hello, it's Oxford), funny, beautiful, and hungry for the Gospel.
We meet every Thursday evening at Focus, the undergrad Bible study held by our church (St. Ebbes). This year we are studying the Gospel of Mark, exploring who Jesus is and how we are to respond to Him. The students are split up into tables of 6-8 students, with a senior leader and a junior leader. I was excited (and a little nervous) to be asked to lead a table... I had worked with junior high and high school kids before, but college? Am I old enough for that? Will they be interested in listening to the crazy American?
They keep coming back. And it's not because of my awesome jokes, believe me. It's because of Jesus. It's because of His Gospel. It's because of the Holy Spirit producing beautiful fruit in their souls. And I get to be a part of that. Every Thursday.
All photo credit goes to Karen Rice, one of my fabulous Table 4 girls.
My Anne Moment wasn't a total fail. I did stumble through this foliage in my quest for the fastest and least embarrassing route home. Normal people might go about it in a dryer, mud-free way. Not this girl. I needed to be one with Fall. Mudnure and all.
One of my all-time favorite books to read and re-read as a child was Anne of Green Gables. Ok, a more accurate statement would be that one of my all-time favorite books to read and re-read as an adult is Anne of Green Gables. And by book I mean the entire series. There. I'm an Anne fan and proud of it. I always connected with Anne Shirley--her love of good books, her precocious attitude, her wild imagination, her dramatic flair.Had I lived on Prince Edward Island I'm sure we would have become "bosom friends." Oh, and had she been real. Details.
Real life interruption: Will just walked in and asked what I was blogging about. I responded with "Anne Shirley," to which he JUST said, "Who's Anne Shirley?" How.dare.you.
Anne has been with me foryears. She has infiltrated my subconscious to such a level that, when caught in a ridiculous predicament in which I only have myself to blame, I call it "having an Anne Moment." Of course, I often keep that label to myself because most people don't catch the referenceand, since the Bible says I'm not to judge, I find it better if I don't know that they're horrifically uncultured...
This super long introduction (in true Anne fashion) to my once private "Anne Moments" brings me to my story. Or to my Anne Moment. I briefly hinted at it several posts ago but never got around to telling my story until today. It all started out when my husband abandoned me.
See the dramatic flair? Anne and I are like two peas in a pod.
By "abandoned" I mostly mean that he cracked a cartilage plate in his left knee cap while simultaneously developing some wicked tendinitis in said knee due to his running like a bajillion miles a week. This made walking pretty painful and hikes completely out of the question for some time (he's only now feeling slightly back to normal). So when I asked him if he felt up to taking a Port Meadow hike with me one sunny November day he selfishly said "no." Do you see what I have to live with? Unbelievable.
I was not to be deterred by my husband's lameness (literally) and decided that I could go out and enjoy nature all by myself. I set out and, for the first two miles I really was enjoying myself! It was a great day to be alive! I ambled across the meadow, breathing in the fresh air, humming to myself, praising the Creator for His creation, when I came to the edge of the dried up pond.
Now this dried up pond is an overflow of the Thames River. In the summertime the banks of the river spill into it and the cows and horses come to drink and to wallow in the cool mud and shallow water. And to poo (but we'll get to that later). By the fall the pond only truly fills when there has been a significant amount of rain. There is always some remaining water, but the pond's circumference significantly shrinks by yards, leaving a ring of mud around it. It was this mud ring that stopped me. And it really did stop me--I stood there for a minute, pondering the murky ground (with its eau de manure), wondering how solid it was. I could walk around it... but that would add at least another mile and a half to my hike. Yes, there was what looked to be about two to three inches of puddle, but I had my unstoppable, unsinkable Clarks on! I even noticed the horse hoof prints in the mud... they weigh more than me, surely I can get across... right?
I went for it. I took a few squishy steps forward...and promptly sank up to my shins in mud/manure. Mudnure.
It was somewhere between the urge to cry and the desperate look around to see if anyone else had seen my stupidity, that I remembered this Anne Moment and started laughing hysterically. The cows probably thought I had lost it. I know I looked like a crazy woman, standing shin-deep in mud, laughing like a maniac.
There was no going back, the damage was done. Help me Rhonda, I could only go forward! And forward I went, lifting one heavy, mud-filled boot after the other, until I made it to the other side. I was so embarrassed by my stupidity that, between the giggles, I ducked into a trail that I mistook for a shortcut out of the meadow, took off my fleece and attempted to wipe off some of the mudnure.
This was AFTER the mud-wiping.
My scraping was interrupted several times by Brits out on their walks. I may or may not have jumped behind trees, hid behind bushes, or abruptly turned around and walked the opposite direction whenever I spotted them and their dadgum knee high walking boots. My shame was too great to finish the rest of my intended walk home. There was absolutely NO way that I would be walking up Woodstock road in my mud-stained jeans (the "puddle" moisture had now seeped up to my knees), holding my manure-smelling fleece. I decided to follow this "shortcut" in hopes that I could avoid those looks. But, like Anne Shirley, I have no luck. Turns out that my "shortcut" was a THREE MILE LOOP! AND I WALKED IT LIKE AN IDIOT, WITH MY TOES SQUELCHING IN THE MUDNURE THAT HAD FILLED MY SOCKS EVERY STEP OF THOSE THREE MILES!
I finally made it home in one piece. One mud-caked, smelly piece. My socks were now a dark brown, the inside of my jeans were covered in a cold slime up to my knees, and I could barely untie my laces because they were so covered in mud. I did, however, have enough wisdom to 1) not strip in the hall (figured my neighbors didn't need to see that) and 2) document the removal of my shoes on my iPhone. I may have walked through two feet of crap but by golly I would at least get a blog post with some pictures out of it!
These socks started out white...
I wish this picture meant that I was hardcore. It doesn't. It means that I'm an idiot.
And that, readers, was my most recent Anne Moment. Moral of this story: nature is dangerous and embarrassing. Avoid it.
Strong winds whipping up the rain outside my windows+ vanilla candles flickering on the coffee table+ clean apartment smelling faintly of fresh laundry+ glowing Christmas tree lighting my living room+ one hot cup of assam tea+ unexpected free time to catch up on my writing=
One cozy afternoon in Oxford.
And to make up for all of my away time, I'm working on several posts to be released over the next few days. Stay tuned!
