I only wrote one blog entry last week, evidence of a lack of writing productivity that can be blamed on a few things.  One, I’m working on another writing project and have put myself on a deadline for finishing it.  And it’s pretty consuming.  Two, spring finally hit New York and the city has come to life as we all remember what it feels like to be outside without suffering frostbite, and just how wonderful that outside-sweaty-kid-smell can be.  Third, though, was the biggest obstacle to my blogging: I was too concerned with finding something meaningful to write.

Over the course of last week, I passed three three-legged dogs on the street.  These wonder pups are not as rare as you might think here in New York City; after all, there’s more of everything here.  But a trinity of them?!  I found that quite notable. Then, while cooking brinner the other night (that would be our Friday night breakfast for dinner tradition), I cracked an egg open to find it had two yolks inside. Whoa, I thought.  Three-legged dogs and double yolks?  What does it all mean?

Not much, it seems.  Because the week and weekend, canine and dairy issues aside, were pretty unremarkable.  As far as mind-bending symbolic analysis goes, at least. And therein lies my problem.  (One of…oh, a few.)  Life happens all around me and I’m working so hard to interpret and document the meaning of it all that I forget to enjoy it.

Winter is a great time for reflection.  Spring, however, is a great time for playing in the park.

And it turned out that last week was about just that: playing.  Any deviation from that playfulness stirred up an anxiety within me that did not match the sunny-and-sixty-five atmosphere around me.  Dwelling on tripod dogs sent me into writer’s block.  Pondering how a wedding can turn into a stage for Oscar-worthy performances of family issues to play out sent me to the Tums.  But playing…

Monday night was my biweekly dinner with AC.  Aside from Katharine McPhee sightings and face-stuffing, we talk and laugh about what’s going on in our lives. We give harmless nicknames to people who aren’t on our Most Favorite List.  We plan the faux involvement of Abby’s four-legged Yorkie, Beatrice, in my wedding (she will be wearing a tiara and a Jessica McClintock gown).  At some point, we’ll throw in the serious stuff, we’ll pray, we’ll discuss how grace ties it all together.  We basically revel in our shared senses of humor and love for Jesus, two qualities that are too rarely shared in one person, let alone by two girls in New York City.  And the fact that all this occurs not at some trendy downtown spot but at the California Pizza Kitchen on 30th and Park is just all too fitting.

Saturday afternoon I met AW at the wine bar, where we did basically the same thing over a bottle of Italian sparkling wine and a cheese plate.  I vented; she updated; we laughed.  Then I went home to the BF and we trashed our plans to conquer a restaurant on our bucket list in favor of ordering in and watching a combination program of NCAA basketball and episodes of Dexter.  After all, we had gotten our fill of outside-sweaty-kid-smell earlier in the day when we ate lunch at a sidewalk cafe and walked home from Trader Joe’s.  And one of the best things about being with the right guy is not having to always decorate your time together with elaborate plans to inject meaning into your relationship.

There’s another relationship that doesn’t need that embellishment.  The Big One. My faith is who I am, the substance of my being, and such close association with my insecure, flawed self often results in my trying to be its decorator; struggling to find the meaning of everything that happens, as if God needs me to be his Symbolism Consultant here on earth in order that his good news will spread and people will believe it.  Based on all the connections I’ve realized and documented in my little blog.

That good news is more than a philosophy or worldview, and its implications reach into every corner of life.  The very idea of a sovereign God contends that nothing is meaningless or coincidental; there is always a plan.  What wonder!  What glory! What (for a writer, pleaser, and approval-seeker) pressure!  And yet, not by design. Because I don’t have to figure it all out.  In fact, I wasn’t meant to.  And, though it often offends my sense of intellect, I can’t. And there is rest in that.  Which is good, because sometimes, all he really wants me to do is play.