Other people's children

Everyone always says children are a gift. But to a single woman whose chances of having her own kids have pretty much gone out the window, other people's kids are maybe the greatest gift of all.

I have the blessing to somehow have the love of 6 children, and the honor of being able to invest in the lives of 4 more through organizations like Compassion International.

All in all, my 10 kids are in 6 different countries and only 2 of them live close enough to me that I get to see them about once a week. But they are constantly in my heart.

There's Rose who is 17 and lives in Haiti. I've never met her but I've been sponsoring her for about 6 years now. Sometimes I get letters from her thanking me for the goat I gave her for Christmas or her birthday. I get the sense that out of all of my kids, life is hardest for Rose. She is only in 5th grade and she implores me in all of her letters to pray that she will be smarter. I tell her in my letters to keep trying, to not give up, to not get pregnant and to stay in school. And I pray for her, probably more fervently than I do for the others.

Next is Graham. He's 16 and he lives in Canada. I'm visiting him this week. I've known Graham since his mom was 12 weeks pregnant with him. Yesterday I watched him drive a car, all the while thinking of the little baby who used to crawl after me wherever I went when I was 17. My bond with Graham is strong and I am so proud of the young man he's becoming and that he still lets me hug him.

After that comes Thomas, also Canadian. He's 14 and he has the unique distinction of also being my godson. I'm not totally sure what that really means, except that I try to stay on top of his life and ask him questions and pray fervently for him too. Not really a hugger at this stage, but he did let me hit his arm when I got here on Thursday. Thomas is creatively brilliant. He designs and builds things and has been that way his whole life. And he is always up for adventure.

After Thomas is Estrella. I think she just turned 12. She's one of my newest kids and she lives in the Dominican Republic. I started sponsoring her right before I went there in November and got to meet her when I was there. I don't know much about her yet, but my heart has never been so full as it was when she was playing the recorder for our group with the other kids and she kept popping her head out from the back row to make sure I could see her. Then she came and found me and stood snuggled against me for the rest of the time we were there. She's a bit sassy, I think, in addition to sweet, which make her a girl after my own heart.

Dylan is next. He's 11 and the youngest of the Canadian boys. When they moved here he was only a year old and I was convinced that any kind of relationship with him would be a long shot because he didn't have memories of me the way the older boys did. But Dylan has been a delightful surprise. We have been blessed with an incredibly sweet relationship that confounds all logic. Out of all of the boys, he is the one who wants to Skype throughout the year and the one who snuggles with me the most and who plays games with me and tells me he loves me about 20 times a day. He is my heart melter.

Next up is Mariceli. She is 10 and she lives in Peru. I met her about a year and a half ago while leading a mission trip. She's the girl equivalent of Dylan when it comes to heart melting. She only speaks Spanish but that doesn't stop her from calling me every few months and chattering to me about her life and her dog and her family. She told me to never forget her when I was leaving and so far I haven't. It is a unique privilege to have been given the gift of her love and I've been touched to see how her parents also recognize the sweet bond we have and they make the financial sacrifice to let her call me every once in awhile. She was a sweet surprise to my mix.

Next up are Laurette and Farrah. They aren't twins but they look like they could be and they are both 8 years old. Laurette lives in the Congo and Farrah lives in Haiti. I am helping both of them go to school. They are still young and full of hope but both face incredibly overwhelming futures and obstacles. More than anything, my prayer for these baby girls is that they will be spared rape and molestation and AIDS, even though the odds are not in their favor. My heart often feels heaviest for them.

Gwennie comes next. She's 3 and hands down the light of my life. Her mom texted me yesterday to share with me that Gwennie had just announced that , "I love Daddy, I love Mommy, I love myself, I love Robin, and I love my doctor." What an honor to have made that list! Gwennie lights up the room and it is no small thing to have been blessed with a secure place in her heart. She also is the chief recipient of lots of international toys. It's good to have a child to buy things for when I'm out of the country.

Last but not least is my new niece Sophie. She will be 11 weeks on Monday and she doesn't have a clue yet who I am but she is quite content to sleep in my arms. Her birth defined me in a new way. She made me an aunt, something I have never been before.

My friend Candace got to meet Sophie the other day and she remarked that it's so important for children to have an adult in their lives who adores them and thinks they're awesome and who is not one of their parents. But I think it's even more important for that adult to have those kids.

I'm pretty sure I would be a lousy parent. I'm impatient and selfish and independent, and it's possible God has not been amiss in not giving me my own. But I love that He has given me other people's children to love and know and invest in. And I love that other people let me love their children.

"He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, with the princes of their people. He settles the barren woman in her home as the happy mother of children."  - Psalm 113:7-9

Because "Jeff" told me to

Somebody - we'll call him "Jeff" - recently complained about my lack of blog posts in the last few weeks. I wish there was a good reason for it, like that I'm off doing something amazing for the benefit of humanity, but mainly it's because I've recently discovered the tv show Fringe and now spend any free time I have at home watching it. I just started season 3 last night. Olivia is stuck on the other side and her mind has just been infiltrated with Olivia from the other side's memories while Olivia from the other side is back on our side pretending to be the real Olivia and Peter doesn't know! Oh my!

Anyway, I'm sorry, "Jeff," and everyone else, that I care more about watching tv than blogging. I've also decided to refinance my house to a 15 year mortgage, and this has taken up about 1 hour of my life as well. It's possible "Jeff" has been helping me with this. Here are some snippets of conversations that we've had over the last 10 days:

Jeff: "Give me your social security number."
Me: "Ok."

Jeff: "Give me your credit card number."
Me: "Ok."

Jeff: "Sell me your soul."
Me: "Ok."

Wait, that last one hasn't happened yet, but the day is still young and full of soul-selling potential, and I wouldn't put it past him to slide that one in on the side.

We also had this conversation:

Jeff: "Go see The Hobbit with me and some other people."
Me: "Ok."

So I went to see The Hobbit on Saturday with "Jeff" and some other friends. I don't see a lot of movies in the theater, probably because I'm at home watching Fringe all of the time. In fact, The Hobbit is only the 3rd movie I've seen in the theater since May. Don't tell "Jeff", but I kind of liked The Hobbit, only because I haven't read the book in 14 years and couldn't tell you where Peter Jackson strayed in accuracy. But "Jeff" can, and he disapproved.

Here is where today's blog post takes a sudden, unexpected, dark turn. I warned "Jeff" that this might happen.

About halfway through the movie on Saturday, I looked around the dark theater at all of the people sitting there enjoying the show (or not) and eating their popcorn (or spilling it on the ground, like I did) and the first thing that popped into my mind was, "Please don't let anyone come in here and gun us down."

It was an awful thought, and yet it being the day after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in CT and five months after the shooting in the Denver movie theater, it also wasn't an entirely unrealistic thought. And that grieves me.

And after the movie, I went to the mall to get a couple of things and as I walked into the mall, the same thought hit me: "Please don't let anyone gun us down in the mall." And it grieved me even more that I would have the same thought twice in one day and that it's real things that have happened that triggered the thought in the first place.

It's heartbreaking to live in a world where elementary schools, movie theaters, and malls are all of a sudden targets for angry, hurting gunmen. It's unfathomable to see the sweet faces of six and seven year old children on the news whose lives were snuffed out way too soon, and know that there are presents under Connecticut Christmas trees that will not be opened this year and families who will spend their holiday together amid many tears.

But it's also a reminder to me of why we even celebrate Christmas in the first place, because the world is a dark place in need of light.

I'll confess - I hate Christmas songs. It annoys me to no end that my favorite radio station decides to play Christmas songs 24 hours a day starting in mid-November. I ban the station from my car during those 39 days. I'm really not ready for Christmas songs until about 3:30 PM on Dec. 24, unless it's Amy Grant's "Tender Tennessee Christmas." This one is on my iPod year-round, because who's not ready for a tender Tennessee Christmas in the middle of August?

I talked to someone last week who had just returned from the predominantly Buddhist country of Myanmar. She said it was such a stark contrast to be in a place where there are very few Christians and most surround sound she heard while there were Buddhist chants and then to come back to America and be bombarded by our extreme love of all things Christmas, especially Christmas songs.

It is, after all, the one time during the year that people don't seem to mind being reminded of Jesus and singing songs about Him for 39 days straight. It's like this 6 week window where light is allowed to shine mostly unhindered and it's a beautiful thing.

This Christmas is going to be a hard one for a lot of people, maybe even for you. There are many heavy hearts both right here in Fort Collins this week and around the nation. If that is you, I will be praying for you. There are never perfect words to say to someone who is grieving or hurting or broken. You simply have to keep living each day, one moment at a time, until the pain lets up enough that you can start to breathe normally again. And that day does come.

But be reminded that there is light in your darkness. We celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 because it's the day that Christians picked to acknowledge the day that God entered into our world as a human baby. It was the brightest day in the history of the world.

 

In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understoond it...the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world....the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

 

- John 1:4-5, 9, 14

 

My prayer for all of the families who will be hurting this Christmas is that somewhere, somehow they will find a little bit of light in their darkness. And if you are blessed to be healthy and safe and at peace within your family this year, think about how you can be a little bit of light to someone who is not.

 

Christmas blessings to you.

 

P.S. No, "Jeff," I will not sell you my soul.

 



Sneak Peek

This is going in the Lifetree Adventures newsletter tomorrow, but you, loyal blog reader, get to read it here first. And you get the better version, since this one has pictures. Don't say I don't love you.

************************************************************************************

Thanksgiving meant a lot more this year to our team of 15 who served on Lifetree Adventures’ final 2012 mission trip, to the Dominican Republic, the week before the holiday. For most of our group, our week in Santo Domingo distributing Operation Kid-2-Kid backpacks and Spanish New Testaments to needy children was the first time most of our team members had traveled outside of the United States or Canada.

We spent most of the week visiting Compassion International projects and one day visiting a World Vision project, and interacted with close to 1,200 Dominican children throughout the week. We were impressed with the work that both of these organizations are doing within Santo Domingo communities but humbled by some of the things we heard during the week:

“Some people in this neighborhood have electricity for just one day a week.”

 

“For many of the children in this [Compassion International] project, the meal we give them is the only meal they will eat all day.”

“This neighborhood has almost no access to clean water. To buy bottled water costs more than some people make in one day, so they just don’t buy it and the drink water that is bad for them.”

 

Coming from a country where we can walk into virtually any public facility (hospital, library, grocery store, etc.) and get a drink from a drinking fountain and losing power usually only happens during a really fierce thunderstorm, and even then it’s usually restored within a couple of hours at most, and none of us have ever lived a day without food, it was an eye-opening and, at times, hard week.

But we also came home with hearts full of good stories of hope and healing.

Three of our team members got to meet children they sponsor through Compassion International. For these children, the bond that they have with their sponsors, now cemented even more from getting to meet their sponsors in person, will give them the motivation to stay in school, learn about God, and rise above the circumstances they were born into. At least one other person on our team came home with the name of a child that she will begin sponsoring later this month.

 

We learned that for every New Testament we gave out, it’s estimated that at least 5 people in that child’s life will read that New Testament. That means almost 3,000 Dominicans will have the chance to read the good news about God’s love for them because of this trip!

 

We discovered that two of the seven sites we visited have already begun clean water initiatives to provide their community with clean, cheap water, which will drastically reduce the number of water-borne illnesses currently affecting these areas.

 

So there is hope in the midst of darkness and reasons to be thankful. Thank you to everyone who financially supported, prayed for, and encouraged our team of 15. This trip could not have happened without you. And we know that the hundreds of children we met and shared God’s love with are thankful for you too.

 

We are excited to see all that God has in store around the world in 2013! Would you consider praying about joining one of our teams?

Hope

It's Sunday, December 2. There are so many noteworthy events that occur today that it's hard to keep track of them all!

First of all, it is Erika's 6 month wedding anniversary. And Robert's anniversary too, I suppose, since he's married to her. Happy 6 months to you both! I was honored to be part of your wedding and to continue to be part of your married life, even though we don't live as close to each other as we used to. Thanks for throwing your bouquet at me, even though it hasn't worked much magic yet. (To read the pre-Erika wedding blog post, click here)

Second, since it's Erika's anniversary, it is therefore also my half birthday. I am 33.5 years old today, which means you only have 6 more shopping months until my birthday. I like giftcards to Amazon and Starbucks. And sunflowers are my favorite. And as always, checks can be made out to Robin Clark.

Not only is it my half birthday it's my stepsister Diana's birthday and my oldest friend John's birthday. Oldest as in longest lasting friendship, not oldest in years, but you can read more about that here.

Finally, today is the first Sunday in Advent. In church this morning, we lit the first Advent candle, which stands for hope.

Hope. It's a small word with big expectations, sort of like the entire season of Advent itself. Advent is a short period of time in the church calendar but full of anticipation as we await the birth of Jesus, the moment when God did the impossible - entering into the confines of time in the limitations of a human body.

There is something about new life that brims with hope. My sweet little niece Sophie was born five weeks ago. She has a head full of dark brown hair and is on the verge of smiling any day now. She is just about as perfect as she can be and I can't help but be filled with hope every time I'm near her. I know she will someday have to face sickness, heartache, disappointment, and sorrow, because you can't live through life and not experience those things. But at the same time, I have hope for all of the joy and blessings that will come into her life as well.

Webster defines hope as "to cherish a desire with expectation of fulfillment." I hope that Sophie's life is full of joy, happiness, promise, and big dreams. And I don't just vaguely wish these things for her - by hoping for them, I long to see them actually happen and will do my part along the way, as her trusty aunt, to help them come into fulfillment. And I also promise to smack the first boy who tries to kiss her. And every subsequent boy after that.

I was reminded of hope through a different child earlier this week. Some of you may remember my blog about baby Joseph, the sick little boy our Peru team met in the jungle a few months ago. If you never read that story, you can read it here.

I found out on Wednesday that Joseph died in September from pneumonia. The reality is that out of the probably 1500 children I have come into contact with in Peru, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic over the last 18 months, there have most likely been several others who have died too. But Joseph was a hard to one to hear about, mostly because we all had so much hope that he would make it. We had hoped that we had helped him in time. We hoped that he would have a better life once he got that help. We hoped so much for him, and to hear that he died only a month later was very hard and seemed so unfair.

So much so that I woke up in the middle of the night on Wednesday and couldn't go back to sleep as I thought about his frail little body and how unfair it was that his life was cut so short. Being born in the jungle lowers your odds of thriving after birth anyway. Between lack of clean water, parasites, dangerous animals, and disease, any child who makes it to age 5 is a walking miracle. Joseph in many ways was probably the norm rather than the exception.

As I lied in bed thinking about how unfair it was that he died so young and wondering why God didn't honor our hopes for wholeness in his life on earth, I sensed God's gentle and quiet voice reminding me to think beyond the confines of my human body and think about eternity instead. And in the quiet stillness of the night, I realized that Joseph is healed now. His earthly body was too frail to support him and he never walked on his little legs in this life. But now, in heaven, he is not only walking, but running and jumping on legs that are strong and able to hold up his body. In his earthly life, he never had enough to eat and he never had clean water to drink. But now, in heaven, he is feasting at the table of the King and he is drinking from the river of life.

Every Sunday in church, whether it's Advent or not, we say the Nicene Creed together. I was struck today by the last sentence of the creed and it made me think of Joseph. It says, "We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come."

I am hoping for the life of the world to come. Joseph is already living in it.

And that's the whole point of this first Sunday in Advent, to remind us of what we hope for, to remind us that without a Savior who makes us clean and whole, we have no hope for the life of the world to come. We don't deserve the life of the world to come, and yet, when Jesus was born into human time, that hope presented itself to us.

My hope for this Advent season is that by the end of it, each of us will find ourselves closer to the One whose birth we celebrate in just a few weeks. If you think of it, please pray for Joseph's family. Even though death is a normal and expected part of jungle life, it is still hard and sad, just like it is here in America. Pray for their comfort and healing.

 

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

 

- Paul, in his letter to the Romans (8:22-25)



 

It's Thanksgiving and I'm not in Canada. What do I do?

It's Thanksgiving Day. Normally I'm in Canada on this day being part of normal Canadian life and not gorging myself on turkey and pumpkin pie, but this year I'm here in Fort Collins and looking forward to the feast to come this afternoon.

I don't always stop and think about what I'm thankful for when I'm in Canada on this day so it's a change to have reflective moments of thankfulness today. Really, it's something I should do every day, not just on the 4th Thursday in November when I happen to be in America, but I'm still grateful for the deliberateness of a day that reminds me of the good I know.

I saw Runaway Train again. Not just once, but four days in a row. It's probably the oddest thing to be thankful for on this day and yet it's what is most present in my thoughts this morning.

For anyone joining my blog since more or less February, Runaway Train is the nickname I gave to a man who had a very brief yet destructive place in my life. A completely unexpected diversion, someone who took my heart by surprise and then dropped it almost as quickly as he had snatched it up in the first place as he ran off to the next woman.

I have a tendency to take things to extremes. This combined with a tender and loyal heart means that when my heart breaks, it breaks hard and takes a long time to heal. I envy the people who seem to be able to bounce back from heartbreak in a brief amount of time. I have never been one of those people and doubt that I ever will.

I was almost healed when November finally appeared. Almost, but not quite. And I think it was the "not quite" that made seeing RT an unwelcomed necessity, sort of like how sometimes a bone needs to be re-broken so that it can be set correctly for healing to take place. Sometimes a cast isn't enough to heal the original break and more breaking is the only option to make straight what is crooked.

I recently read a book written by one of my colleagues - Sifted, by Rick Lawrence. There are books that come into our lives that seem to have been written just for us. That was Sifted to me. It's brilliant and I'm not just saying that because we both work at Group and sometimes I loan him my stapler. Rick takes a very short verse - "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22:31) - and tackles the hard subject of what it means when Jesus gives Satan permission to mess with our lives, to sift us as wheat.

It's one thing to believe in a God who allows hard and painful things to happen, like meeting RT in the first place. It's a whole other thing to believe in a God who doesn't stop - in fact, gives permission to - the enemy whose only purpose is to destroy.

I knew for about a month that the time with Runaway Train was coming. In hindsight, I'm both grateful and resentful of that month. Grateful because it gave me time to let the crazy, unfiltered, raw emotions run their course privately instead of publicly and it gave me lots of time to pray and talk through it with others. Resentful because of the heavy burden it brought into my life and the resulting stress and angst that threatened to take over what should have been a fun and exciting event.

I knew for a month that permission had been asked to sift me and the request was not denied. It is a very hard thing to look at the One you love, the One who has given everything on your behalf and understand why He would give permission to let you be sifted.

The sifting part is what we notice first in that verse in Luke, because that's the part that hurts and disrupts life. But the part that comes next brims with power - "I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail."

I had lots of people praying for me during the week that I had to see him again, but the most important person praying for me that week was Jesus Himself. My faith is of great worth to Him. It is a treasure that He cares for and died for and so He prayed that His treasure would not fail and I think it's reasonable to say that when Jesus prays, things happen.
So I survived my week of sifting. I realize I'm leaving a lot of details out, and that's deliberate. But I will say that through the sifting, I was given closure and the freedom to finally leave him behind with no more questions, no more longing (it's crazy how much you can still long for someone who shattered your heart), and no more reason to ever talk to him again. For real this time. The bone has been reset and is no longer crooked and it no longer needs a cast.

I keep thinking about what I should have done differently a year ago when he first appeared in my life, but I think that's a protective mechanism more than anything. If anything, I think the lesson is to keep living life exactly the same way. I wasn't looking for love when I met him. He was unexpected but I think that is the best way for love to start. I would rather be taken by complete surprise and have to re-route my life, even around heartache, then to spend all of my time running after love that may never come. I think that is where the greater heartache comes - when you invest everything in trying to get and find love only to be let down if you never find it and realize how much you missed out on along the way. I would rather live each day to its fullest rather than spending my brief moments here on earth seeking something I may never find.

So as I have the rare opportunity to be in America on Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful for the hardest week of my life, the week spent with Runaway Train, for the growth, the closure, the strength, and the beauty that it brought. I'm thankful that even though Jesus sometimes gives Satan permission to try and wreck our lives, He prays for us that our faith won't fail.

I'll eat pumpkin pie to that.

Quiet

I'm still on Santo Domingo time as I write this at 6:20 AM. I've been wide awake for about an hour and a half, knowing that it's after 9:00 AM on a small Caribbean island and that traffic is crazy, the morning school shift is underway, and life is going on three hours ahead of me as I sit in the still dark (and cold) early Fort Collins morning.

I savor these first few days after getting home. It's like holding a newborn baby - so quiet and sweet and precious, who in just a few short weeks will grow and change and never be that newborn again.
There is a stillness in my soul and a gentleness in my heart that I don't seem to find anywhere else except after spending 8-10 days outside of my own country, surrounded by those with much less than me materially but so much more relationally and spiritually.

I think a lot of people want to go on a mission trip because they truly believe they can save the world in the course of seven days. People who have maybe never stepped foot in a soup kitchen in their own community or shared their faith with the neighbor across the street. To be honest, I've never done either of those things either. And I know for sure that my week in Santo Domingo didn't result in any great changes in anyone's life except maybe my own.

But this trip more than any other taught me some important things. I learned how to walk slower, how to listen without needing to speak, how to care for those with needs far greater than my own. I learned that forgiveness sets one free but that there is wisdom in creating boundaries with those who have caused great harm. I also got to meet one of the girls I sponsor through Compassion International. I plan to blog separately about that experience, but for now I can say that while my week in Santo Domingo didn't save or change Estrella's life in one instant, my monthly commitment to her over the course of the next 7 or 8 years will change her life.

I know that in a few more days I will be sucked back into the frantic pace of my American life. I will stay in bed until 7:00 AM and moan and whine about things like my obnoxious cat or not being able to make the copy machine work. All of the silly things that distract me and keep me stressed. But for today I sit quietly in the dark morning holding my quiet and gentle heart, grateful for the stillness that poverty, chaotic traffic, and unfamiliar language brings to my soul.

Hey Russia

I decided to do some research on who reads my blog and discovered that I can actually see what countries of the world read my blog. This is especially helpful in knowing who is NOT reading my blog because it means I can continue to blog freely, something that will be very helpful in about a month.

Not surprisingly, my blog is read most frequently right here in America. Thanks, America, for your continued faithfulness to me in spite of my frequent comments of adoration about Canada, and my propensity to leave your beautiful shores whenever possible. I am truly proud to be an American, unless America re-elects the man who is trying to turn America into Canada, in which case I am just going to move to Canada. But that's a different blog for a different day.

What was surprising was to discover that after America, the country that reads my blog the most by a landslide is Russia. What? Huh? Come again? This stunning revelation is worthy of its own blog post. So, Russia, this one is for you.

I've been wracking my brain for the last 48 hours trying to remember if I even know anyone who lives in Russia, and I can't come up with anyone who does. So, if you're my good friend reading my blog in Russia, I'm really sorry that I don't remember you at all. Send me a message, let's re-connect.

It's shocking to me that for every Canadian who reads my blog, there are 3 Russians who read it. Or one Russian who reads it three times for every one time a Canadian does. Ironically, Canada isn't even third on the list. No, third on the list is Germany. I can only hope that it is Dietrich Bonhoeffer reading my blog from the grave. I love you, Dietrich.

Canada is actually 4th on the list. Really, Canada? I thought we knew each other better than that. But I digress. This blog is not about Canada, it's about my surprise Russian fanbase I had no clue I had.

I do want you to know that I know some Russian words, including nyet, dos vedanya, and gulag. I will try to be more sensitive in my blogging going forward and include these words when it makes sense, such as, "I remember that time that I was imprisoned unjustly in that Russian gulag." So far, that doesn't make sense for me to blog about, since it hasn't happened yet. We can only hope.

So whoever you are, loyal Russian readers, thank you for taking the time out of your busy Russian days to read my blog. I hope you are bundled up nice and warm. I get cold just thinking about your homeland.

 

I'll leave you with this thoughtful sign someone hung up in my cubicle awhile back. From now on, whenever I see it, I will think of you.