"A high school stage play is more polished than this service we have been rehearsing since the year one. In two thousand years, we have not worked out the kinks. We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter. Week after week, we witness the same miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens. Week after week Christ washes the disciples' dirty feet, handles their very toes, and repeats. It is all right-believe it or not-to be people."

-annie dillard, an expedition to the pole

i think i am just now realizing that it's okay that i'm human.

i wrote this on the back of a receipt last month. it echoes, in much less eloquent words, what i felt when i read this passage.

"i've always thought it was shameful when i realized my faults - that i'd fallen, and screwed up, and missed the mark - but that is when the gospel is birthed. that is when i am justified - when i am broken, and far from home."

i wonder if moses, or david, or issac ever questioned if their sacrifice was sufficient enough for their sins. surely the 9,048th goat doesn't feel as meaningful as the first. but every animal that was sacrificed brought the same sweet aroma up to the throne of God and made things right with man and his God. this idea of rightness with God is even more prevalent in our lives. Christ died. once. for all. one sacrifice so i could come to him, with no mediator, and he could bend down, and pick up His rag, and wash my filthy feet, not once mentioning the fact that i'd stepped in the same mud puddle again. he allows me to fail. because he loves me. and that love is a love that i am positive, and pretty much guaranteed to never understand here on earth. but a love that i am just now learning, loves me despite the fact that i'm human.

this is my third attempt at writing something about what i've learned sacrificing for lent.

nothing seems to be coming out right.

i'm hoping that this sacrifice (which has actually become much more of a sacrifice and struggle than i immediately thought it would be), will show me a lot about myself. i feel that it already has.

i was a slave. and completely unaware of it's hold on me.

i've been so frustrated for so long with my inability to make any sort of headway monitarily, but i am just beginning to realize how much of it was my own fault. my own lack of discipline.

saying no is so hard in a society when it's so easy to say yes.

there are many things i hope to learn and see through this time.

ash wednesday was to remind me of my own mortality. i think i constantly need to remember to die to myself. and my selfishness. and my constant desire for more.

my name is kim. and i'm a shopaholic.