It's Not You…It's Me.

I need to take a break from Fierce Peace for a while. I’m feeling overwhelmed and understood. Can a person be overstood? Because I might be that too. At the beginning of this blog relationship, I found great freedom in this new way of communicating. But I have entered a new phase of life and I only know that the freedom I once sought is calling to me again. And this time the wind is blowing in a new direction. So, in the interest of self-preservation AND protection of those I love, I am going to disappear for a while. I honestly don’t know when or if I’ll be back. Maybe in the next phase. But the river phase ended in the ocean and I drank of it deeply. Now I’m in the blowing phase. And the blowing phase might just blow this blog off the face of the internet entirely in about a week or so. Or I might be back later when my phase is over. Who knows? In the meantime, I’ll say goodbye just in time for my husband to get his blog up and running once again. I know. We have issues. Multiplied. Funny that my name is Fierce Peace. Peace always seems so elusive. Like I’m desperately grasping at something that’s always out of reach. Whimpering, staggering and falling. Not very fierce-sounding, I know. I’d rather be a warrior, on a mighty stallion, galloping with my long hair flying behind me and my many-layered satin dress whipping in the wind. But I’m really not. I’m just here, in all my ordinariness, looking for truth and beauty and willing it to wash over me. In the washing, I feel God’s love. In the event of a flood, I may understand more fully His peace.

The only thing I’m not sure about is how I’m going to stay in touch with you that I love that live far away. I appreciate each of your blogs. They’re like lifelines to me and just seeing pictures means so much. If you join Flickr and add me as a contact, you can keep seeing pictures of our family too.

See you soon.

Leslie

P.S. I know I promised to put more pictures up from our trip to Galveston. You can see them all here on my Flickr page, if you’re interested.

Vacation!

Last weekend we did something as a family that we have never done in sixteen years of marriage: We took a vacation, just the five of us, for the sole purpose of vacating. It was glorious, marvelous, magnificent and delightful. We got a little condo right on the beach in Galveston, Texas and we swam, saw sights, swam, ate, swam and ate some more. Between the five of us, we took over 300 pictures with my camera, so I’ll have to get them up here in batches. I’ll start with these of us all dressed in white, since they’re my favorites. I also give thanks to some random guy walking down the beach for rescuing me as I was in the midst of trying to figure out my tripod and self-timer settings. He walked up, said he had the same camera as me and would love to snap some family pictures for us. He took some beautiful shots. I don’t even know his name. I hope I can be that random person for some family some day.

More to come…

Dear Dallas,

(Dear Entire Metroplex, for that matter),

I love you dearly. You know I do. But I am thoroughly fed up and disgusted with the temperature of all places indoors in the summertime. How can it be healthy for a person to vacillate multiple times daily between 100 degrees and 65 degrees? And it’s not a gradual vacillation either. It’s an immediate shock to the system every time. In. Out. In. Out. Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold. My system doesn’t like it one bit. The other day, my husband and I sat, shivering, absolutely miserable, through my daughter’s awards ceremony at her elementary school. This is a public school. This is a school where my tax dollars are going to pay the exorbitant electrical costs of cooling a building to the ridiculous extent that you need to wear your winter coat inside on a 95 degree day. I don’t want to take my winter coat around with me in the summer. I don’t want to take my down comforter to restaurants. I don’t want to pay for something that is not good for anybody. Why can’t we be warm in the summer and cool in the winter? I’m not saying I’m against air conditioning. I’m simply proposing that the entire city of Dallas turns their thermostats up to 78 degrees in the summer. 78 degrees, people. That’s not unreasonable. Use your ceiling fans if you’re hot. 65 is fine for winter. Everyone benefits.

Consider:

• There are rolling blackouts every summer due to the energy usage across this state. I heard about them yesterday. And it’s only June.

• The cost of gasoline is creating hardship for many families. If we’d all cut back in other areas, we’d have lower electricity bills AND lower taxes (assuming all government offices join us in the cutbacks), which would free up gas money. And then we could ride our bikes or walk more places, which would free up more gas money. But I digress.

• If Global Warming is real, it surely can’t be good for the earth for us to be using more energy than we need. Just imagine all that invisible wavy, steamy stuff that our air conditioning units put into the atmosphere. If Global Warming is not real, disregard this point.

• It takes as much petroleum to make 14 plastic bags as it does to drive a car one mile. (I know, what does that have to do with air conditioning, right? Nothing. But it says it on the side of my green bag that Chris got from Half Price Books and it really affected me. When I bought a bunch of scotch tape at Target yesterday and I didn’t have my green bag with me, I told the lady I didn’t need a bag for it and I put it all in my purse. She looked at me like I was crazy. I felt good about doing my part.)

• If houses and businesses are warmer, we can all wear less clothing, which means we will be doing less laundry. I don’t know, maybe that’s a stretch.

Sincerely,
Leslie Linebarger

Inventory

I am not who I was.

My daughter is content. She is not who she was. Her voice has grown deeper, her ways have grown lighter. She is calmness and thoughtfulness and dedication. Life in the seventh grade has been the best life ever.

My daughter is a storm. A deep, roiling storm. She is not who she was. Her eyes still sparkle, but we’re only beginning to see the flames that the spark reflects. She is coming into her own and the layers are slowly peeling. Life in fifth grade has been revealing.

My daughter is enthusiasm. Funny, but I think she is who she’s always been. Maybe someday she won’t be who she was. She rattles and moves and loves and dislikes with fervor. Life in second grade has given her a whole new vocabulary with which to rattle.

I am not who I was.

My husband is not who he was.

And love goes on.

I will not be who I now am.

God was and is and always will be.

And love goes on.

Day on the Green 2008

Here are some of my favorite pictures from this last weekend.