Right now, this very minute, I am supposed to be picking up smarty pants husband from the airport.  But he is stuck in Denver and I am pouting with fudge and beer and cookies.  I am not sure what I am more upset about: his absence, a good hair day wasted or all that coffee I had earlier so that I would be up for the long drive home from the airport.  Awesome.

Bring on more black and white movies, more chocolate and more gym runs.  Oh, I need him.  He helps me to become a better human; I eat real food and brush my hair out and shave my legs when he's around and I'm a little nicer to hawaiian shirt guy.

I had my hair done in the city on Tuesday.  It was supposed to be a surprise but I let the secret out and as I was driving from the city back to our little, tiny town huge snowflakes fell and a train kept pace with me and it was like driving through a Hallmark card.  It was gorgeous.  My God is gorgeous.  I picked up the girl I am mentoring and we ordered a Starbucks and talked through the normal, safe things and then I looked at her, a beautiful girl who hasn't figured out how beautiful she is, a girl who is newly sixteen and newly thinking about love and like and dates, a girl who has potential bursting out of her.

I looked at her and she looked at me and I said Beautiful girl, let's talk sex drive.  She was shocked.  She blushed.  And then, we talked.  We talked and talked and talked.  Because she is sixteen and she is at the beginning of those searching years and it is hard to be a girl, today.  It is hard to wrestle with our bodies, with falls, with what good people don't say, with the way God wired us and with the things that are sin and the things we make into sin.  It is so hard to wrestle with sin that sometimes we forget that if we aren't in the thick of a fight now, it's coming.

I told her that it's good to think through what kinds of things are up ahead, what kinds of things you'll be asked, the way you're going to feel about someone you're crazy about.  It is good and wise and smart to think through those things and to make your mind up now.  But, sin is sneaky and it is going to catch you by surprise.  You are going to shock yourself someday and the greatest thing you can do now to get you through then is to know who you are.

You have a God inside of you, a God who is not silent and who is not in the business of standing back and doing nothing.  You have a God inside you and you have His truth written on your heart and you have the strength of heaven in a prayer and He has claimed you.  You remember who you are when you start to forget-- remember what you're about.  He'll help you.  And darling, redemption is sometimes the thing I love about Him most.

I walk away from those conversations that are gritty and messy and bold and I must smile.