FSF

In college, my friend Rhonda used the initials FSF in place of saying "feel sorry for". It got mean. We'd look at someone having a bad hair day and say "FSF". Or, more commonly, she'd say something like: "I'm FSFing. I have a test tomorrow that I'm not ready for."

Well, I'm in an FSF mood.

Tried to pull myself out of it with a one-mile "pilgrimage" to church for a brief prayer time. Didn't help. I only realized you shouldn't walk fast in jeans, and you shouldn't walk at ALL in Vegas wind.

Came home. Yelled too much at my daughters putting them to bed. Slumped down on the floor of my bedroom and pulled open a never-opened drawer in a nightstand to find an old, old, old journal I wrote favorite quotes in. I'm not in the mood to FSF myself in blog form, so I'll just share this quote. I loved it then (in about 1994), I love it now.

"They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching-
They have soaked you in convention, through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching-
But don't you hear the wild? - it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the wild is calling, calling... let us go."

Okay, it's not just a quote. More of a poem, really. By Robert Service. Jim Elliot includes it in his journal and it appears on page 82 of Shadow of the Almighty.

I have cousins who are missionaries in Ecuador, just like Jim Elliot was. I was a missionary of sorts for a few years, but now I have a different vocation. I'm wondering what the "wild" looks like for me. Different, yes. But not nonexistent.