Orange Peels

They say it's good to slow down, take time to "eat the orange," as it were--enjoy the present, little moments of life without worrying about the past or the future. Good advice. The only problem is that this semester I've learned that eating the orange can sometimes be confused with eating the orange peel. I'll stop being abstract: many times I managed to think so much of my own present moment that I paid little attention to future ramifications or even to the people around me that might be affected, forgotten, or hurt by my own indulgence.

I don't have with me a ready solution, nor even an apology. I am only here because it is midnight and I find myself unable to sleep. Heaven knows I should be tired after a semester of late-or-all-nighters, relational battles, intense academics, and spiritual darkness. Somehow, though, all of these leave me in a state of mild insomnia. I figured getting something out, jotting a word down and engaging in the all-too-American process of self-analysis, might help me to sleep easier in the end. But none of this seems very important now that I sit down to "pencil" it out.

The only things that seem important now are these:

-The soft snores of a 3-month old child in my parents' bedroom.

-A slender bouquet of purple mums from dad to mom on her twenty-second Mothers Day.

-The shucking sound of pages turned as my sister reads to fall asleep. (The promise made by that shuck shuck shuck that family is near.)

-Family.

-Five Frescas chilling in the fridge, waiting for tomorrow.

-The vibration of an incoming text message spelling out the words: "I love you."

-Unshaved legs. (There's significance in that, women: unashamed to be the way God made you.)

-An empty box of Kleenex.

-And thus, catharsis.

-Bavarian sugar cookies.

-"A smoldering wick He will not snuff out."

Anyway, they say that most of the nutrients in an orange reside in the peel. I look back on this semester with relief that it is over and that I can close that chapter of my book and never open it again; yet I also look back with relief as I understand how God can use even my sin and selfishness to purge me of the same, to teach me His grace, and to give me a glimpse of Jesus who wore that sin written on his skin and that grace written on His heart.

Like I said, not offering solutions. Only: maybe now I'll sleep.