LightGirl realized a dream yesterday.

And seriously outted herself. She’s got no excuses anymore.

Here’s how it went. She has a private lesson with CoachTopDog on Mondays and Wednesdays. He’s a really super guy and has helped her come a long way in a short time. After her Wednesday lesson a group of boisterous teenage boys are usually on the ice for an impromptu scrimmage. She is supposed to spend her time practicing what she has just learned from CoachTopDog. However, she’s been overwhelmed by the boys. I get overwhelmed and I’m sitting in the bleachers, so I can hardly blame her.

Then she went to goalie camp over the holiday break and she met CounselorGuy. They had great fun together in an older brother, younger sister kinda way. Although, LightGirl developed a tiny bit of a crush on him, I believe she understands he is TOO OLD for her. The short of it is, they became friends.

Yesterday he was among the boisterous boys who were going to scrimmage after her lesson was over. So she screwed up all of her courage and asked him if she could be included. These boys are all 16 and up. My little girl was playing hockey with VERY LARGE boys. I’m glad I was not there. LightHusband reports she had a ball. Even more, she skated HARD and ran after that puck. She checked the boys and they checked her. For an afternoon she was one of them. CoachTopDog came out to watch and had a glimmer of pride in his eye too.

The last thing I ever expected out of this hockey thing was that it would be part of the reconciliation of roles between men and women. But I wonder if it is. I wonder if it’s a place where our children can grow up to see each other as real equals, no more and no less than one another.

The whole LightFamily embarked on a new adventure yesterday. The wailing and gnashing of teeth was incredible. I believe the LightChildren even said (at top volume), “Stop torturing us!!” and “You’re going to KILL us.” I dunno … I think Will Samson has a great idea and so does LightHusband. So we’re joining in the Pantry Challenge 2007. LightHusband was ambiguous at first. He accused me of derailing our efforts before we began. I was unaware of Will’s oncoming brainstorm and decluttered our pantry last week. I ridded ourselves of such gems as 2 year old canned mango pulp, a 2 year old package of freeze dried squid tentacles, out of code (by a year) stuffing mix, and hundreds (I may be exaggerating) of boxes with miniscule dribs and drabs of bits of crackers and cereal in them. I began to wonder if those stale bits of crackers and cereal could be considered seed for new crackers and cereal. Then I threw them away. LightHusband thinks we’re going to lose the challenge because I trashed our dearest treasure. What. Ever.

I’m not in this for the winning anyway. I’m in it because we need some place in our lives where there is a boundary that says, “Stop. That’s enough.” We are overflowing and still can’t find anything for dinner each night out of sheer laziness. Bad craziness. I need a reason to be creative with food again. So I’ll be blogging about this and our silly food creations.

When LightHusband was in TOG (The Old Guard), they had a saying. It went like this, “Rumor-control is outta control.” It meant that some rumor had gotten out of hand and had traveled through so many people and gotten so twisted up it was now completely silly and everyone knew it. It was also code for, “We live in a small circle and we need to be careful with each other.” I’m going to coin a new phrase for the emerging church blog-o-sphere. Not that anyone reads my blog and pays attention to me. So no one’s going to know. But I’m still going to try: Meme-control is outta control. You heard it here first!

I don’t know quite how it happened but I’ve been double-tagged on a meme. In a meme where a number of people have been double-tagged. And they’re all whining about it. It’s been meme heaven around here lately. Too much meme-ing going on. Here’s the line of meme that happened to me (I think) …

It began with Phil Wyman (the meme man from Massachusetts 😉 ). He tagged Cindy and John Smulo. Cindy tagged Jamie and Jamie tagged me. John tagged RobbyMac who tagged Brother Maynard who then tagged John and me (both for our second time). I say we all tag Phil and make him …. hmmm … I can’t think of a fitting discipline for meme-madness. Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?

It’s the beginning of the year and I’ve been struck this year by entities who are claiming this year. A church in our area (who enjoys tormenting me with their offensive signage) claimed 2007 as the Year of the Bible. “Whoa,” I thought as I drove by, as I must on a nearly daily basis. That’s quite a claim to make before the year has barely started.

Almost the next day, the dearly beloved Brother Maynard came out with prognostications of his own. Nay, spaketh he, 2007 is the Year of the Missional. And, not that I would ever be so bold as to suggest that the good Brother might be seeing what he expects to see, I’ve been now seeing a plethora of posts at his place on missional sorts of stuff. 😉

So, thought I, it seems to be vogue to make declarations about this year. Perhaps I’ll make one. Here’s what I’m seeing a lot of (and I’ll say it first … I could just be seeing what I want to see). I’m seeing a lot of action in the area of redeeming relationships. Particularly the area of redeeming the relationships between men and women. Women want to make their lives and the lives of men whole and healthy. So, I’m calling it …

2007 … the year of Redeeming Relationships.