I have been working on a blog little by little for the last 3 weeks. I was finally going to post it today but I am not going to anymore. Instead, I am going to direct your attention to Andrea Forsyth's blog: http://ajforsyth.blogspot.com/
Please take a moment to read the last half of her October 28th entry and then her entire November 18th entry.
I haven’t been able to stop my mind for the last week or so. It just keeps running and running and thinking about everything, almost like it is weighed down, but I am not sure what it is weighed down with. I wish I could just turn it off for a few moments (but that would mean ceasing to exist, I suppose). You might be thinking that sleep gives the mind a break. Yes, usually that is the case, but for me, for the last 6 months, sleep is anything but liberating to my mind. You should see some of the things I dream—and not just one dream a night—SEVERAL! And I remember them when I wake up. Anywho, so my mind has been endlessly running over so many things, but then today, I read Andrea’s blog about her father-in-law, and I just felt….well, like some of the burden was lifted off my head. I am not quite sure why.
You really should read her blog all the time. It is extremely amusing (of course I just made you read the serious blogs she wrote).
But let me give you a little background. Andrea Miller is my hero and she has been ever since I met her after I moved to Allen, Texas 12 years ago. She is warm, funny, compassionate, and very, very smart. She introduced me to Eric Clapton, Collin Raye, Yesterday (by the Beatles of course), Bread (the band), George Strait, and countless other musicians and their music. To put it plainly, she vastly expanded my horizons when it comes to music.
When we were just 14, we decided who we were going to marry, that we were going to be next door neighbors on the France/Germany border, and that our children would call us Aunt Annie and Aunt Ellie (and speak both German and French, of course). She loves going on walks and she loves good food, so that’s what we did together. We walked, we talked, and we cooked and talked, and we ate and talked. We were in choir together in 9th grade and the teacher loved us and let us do whatever we wanted. So we wrote notes to each other and went to a practice room often in the middle of choir period to play the piano and sing songs from the Methodist hymnal that was randomly housed in that room. Our families went camping together and we’d walk outside and eat some more.
She is innovative and can do marvelous things with simple, raw materials—like duct tape, for instance. Her commentary on just the normal, everyday things going on around her is priceless. We were roommates our sophomore year of college and she made the most delicious foods and we would eat them and never gain weight…well, almost never. Homemade caramel popcorn, apple and cherry pastries, chocolate chip cookies, spice cakes—oh how I miss those days.
Physically, she is absolutely stunning. She is beautiful, but if she knows, she never lets it show. Honestly, when we were 14 and at EFY together (the only one we ever went to, in fact) our male counselor, Lane, couldn’t take his eyes off of her and always talked about how gorgeous her big, brown eyes were. Yeah, a little awkward seeing as she was 14 or 15 years old and he was at least 21! But that’s just to give you an idea….(And the boys all thought she was beautiful despite the fact that we were just beginning to experiment with make-up and we look like apparitions.) Basically, Andrea is Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping but even better than that!
But you know what, when I think of Andrea, I think of a girl that we knew in our ward at the Riv. Standing in a crowd with the rest of the girls in that ward, this young woman was instantly noticeable. She stuck out. She was very different and it was obvious to me and everyone else. In a room crowded with people, Andrea is the one who finds this girl, the wallflower, and draws her outside of herself and makes her feel worthwhile. Though I sure wouldn’t mind looking like Andrea, having her wit, having her culinary skills, and having countless other attributes that belong to her, I think above all, I wish I had her ability to walk into a room, see someone’s need and then take care of it without drawing any unnecessary attention. I wish all of you knew her.
