WARNING: Extremely boring post about life insurance follows. Go make some coffee.
Lately I've been obsessing about the fact that we haven't heard back on the application for life insurance for my husband that we filed more than a month ago. As a Catholic mother intent on growing her family, I've had waking nightmares about cleaning houses at night in order to feed our (five, six, nine?) kids, in the event my husband dies "prematurely" (Why it wouldn't be EVEN MORE of a nightmare for him if I should die, one usually doesn't speculate. It's always assumed that the husband dies first.) This causes me to wonder, "Is it an utter disaster if we can't get life insurance?"
Insurance salesmen will tell you that you NEED term life insurance if you have kids. In fact, they will tell you that most husbands are underinsured, most wives are uninsured, and that you need more insurance than you think--at least five times your income. What they won't tell you is that you don't need as much money to survive the death of your spouse as they say.
This needs hard-eyed analysis, because many Catholic families are tossed on the dual horns of a financial dilemma: the calling to raise up (and educate) saints for Christ, and the expenses that seem to be non-negotional necessities for raising families in a materialist world. One of these non-negotiables is term life insurance--hence my anxiety.
So let's examine this. First, what is the purpose of life insurance? You are considering a policy that costs, say, $500 a year for 20 years, for a total of $10,000. You are buying the assurance that you will have $250,000 in financial help in the event of your spouse's untimely death. The odds are against your spouse's early death, or they wouldn't sell you the policy. At what other time in life would you lay down money and gamble on not winning? In contrast, $10,000 in your bank account, or invested in CDs, is a sure bet that you will still have your $10,000, or more, regardless of what happens. But would that be enough?
Let's examine the costs a life insurance disbursement is designed to cover:
1. The mortgage. This is usually the first expense out of a life insurance salesman's mouth. But, practical housewives that we are, is it really conceivable that, in the event of your husband's death, you are going to attempt to maintain the same lifestyle you did when your husband was alive? Of course not. You take advantage of the denial stage of grief and move into cheaper lodgings. "But what about the memories?!" Prepay your mortgage and you won't have to worry about this problem.
2. The burial. This one costs less, is more obvious, and is actually necessary. A decent burial in a Catholic cemetery will probably run you at least $5,000. If you have no employer-sponsored life insurance or other savings, there are less expensive insurance policies that are designed to cover just this. Or, if your husband was in the military, they will bury him for free. Plus you get a flag.
3. The income. This is also a necessary expense, but let's be real. Life insurance is only there to provide a stop-gap to get you over the hump of losing your main income. It is not there to make you rich. It is not there to last forever. Eventually, you are going to need to line up another plan for supporting your family. Your judgment on how long that will take determines how much life insurance you should be buying.
4. College. Why do life insurance salesmen bring this up? I contend that this one is a boogeyman designed to make parents sweat. There are more and better ways to get through college than counting on your dad to die.
There may be other expenses, but these are the biggies. You need peace of mind, the salesmen say. And in a purely materialist sense, if this is the only way to get it then you need the insurance. But as Catholics, we don't put our trust in policies, we put it in God (it even says that on our money). Remember, all the "security" in the world couldn't save Job. He still lost everything. And until he learned to trust God, he didn't get anything back, either.
On the other hand, if you hang onto your $10,000, you've still got $10,000. And if you buy the policy and your husband DOESN'T die, you're out $10,000. If he DOES die, $10,000 may not sound like much compared to $250,000, but it makes a big difference how you spend that money. The $250,000 might run through your fingers like water, while the $10,000 becomes seed money for a business intended to support you and your family, or it pays for vocational training so you can get a good job to support your kids. The more I think about it, the more life insurance sounds like a scam perpetrated on people who think they can't afford to have a spouse die, but who pay anyway--when they would have been better off setting a little money aside.
So what's the solution? Briefly, let me outline my plan. As long as Dean is working, he can get some amount of life insurance through his employer at little or no cost. To handle the problem of transitional income I would, right now, make a six-month emergency savings account my highest financial priority. Common sense tells me that unless I lose all my faculties, I will be able to provide for my children in some capacity, with the help of God's providence. And if it did happen, I would move to an area with the highest concentration of sympathetic relatives.
So do we really need life insurance? Or are we just buying a feeling? Are we not, in fact, buying a kind of peace that we ought to get from God?
"As for you, do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not worry anymore. All the nations of the world seek for these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these other things will be given you besides. Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom" (Lk 12:29-32).
UPDATE: Since writing this post, I have gone through some seldom-suffered writer's remorse. Of course, jettisoning a life insurance policy you already own is not a good idea, and there is no guarantee that God is going to "make it good" because you failed to make this provision for your family. I guess I was just trying to make myself feel better in the event that we absolutely could not get life insurance (BTW, we did finally get the policy!).
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Toddler Insanity
I have become what I never thought I would be: the mother of two who, at the ripe old hour of eleven in the morning, has yet to bathe, or eat a hot meal, or bother to clean up her place because she knows it will just get messed up again and therefore is not a good use of her time.
What happened? Up until now I would have said that I was proud of my ability to keep my house clean, cook from scratch, and take care of quasi-obedient kids. But somewhere in the last week, more of my cherished illusions of Super-Stay-at-Home-Motherhood have fallen. In the last ten days, my toddler has managed to turn my world upside down on an almost daily basis.
Last week he broke my new glasses, handing them to me like they were a precious gift (as in, "Gee, Mommy, thanks for letting me have this $100 toy. It entertained me for five whole minutes!"). At the beginning of this week, he got a hold of my keys and popped the trunk of my car (on a rainy night, of course, causing me to spend the next afternoon cleaning out the garage just so I could get the car in there to clean it out). And for the grand slam, two nights ago I called 911 because Carl locked himself in the bathroom with a broken light bulb and I was unable to ascertain whether he had swallowed any of it (unable to think is more like it), which turned out to be a FALSE ALARM, but not before we wound up in the emergency room. I called my mother this morning and told her that if I had not already had grey hair, it would have turned white by now. As of this morning he has already pulled all the stuffing out of his Winnie the Pooh bear, pulled all my mixing bowls out of the cabinet, spilled my tea on the carpet, and inspired another adrenalin rush when he screamed so hard his feet turned bright red, all because he had a nasty poop that gave him a rash.
I called my mom to vent. I told her about the glasses. She said, "Well little kids are like little animals. They're opportunists, and they act on instinct. You just have to anticipate what they're going to do." Then I told her about the trunk. "Oh..." she sympathized, laughing. "Well little kids are smart, their brains are developing and you are going to have two sets of eyes on you and everything you do, so if you are pressing buttons, he is going to press buttons." Then I told her about the emergency room visit. "Oh," she said again, sympathetically. "I've been meaning to call you." She stopped pontificating on the human vs. animal nature of children at that point.
Now I could be spending my down time cleaning up the mess, but I thought, "This article will last longer than my next batch of dirty dishes, and Carl will appreciate it more." So Carl, this one's for you.
What happened? Up until now I would have said that I was proud of my ability to keep my house clean, cook from scratch, and take care of quasi-obedient kids. But somewhere in the last week, more of my cherished illusions of Super-Stay-at-Home-Motherhood have fallen. In the last ten days, my toddler has managed to turn my world upside down on an almost daily basis.
Last week he broke my new glasses, handing them to me like they were a precious gift (as in, "Gee, Mommy, thanks for letting me have this $100 toy. It entertained me for five whole minutes!"). At the beginning of this week, he got a hold of my keys and popped the trunk of my car (on a rainy night, of course, causing me to spend the next afternoon cleaning out the garage just so I could get the car in there to clean it out). And for the grand slam, two nights ago I called 911 because Carl locked himself in the bathroom with a broken light bulb and I was unable to ascertain whether he had swallowed any of it (unable to think is more like it), which turned out to be a FALSE ALARM, but not before we wound up in the emergency room. I called my mother this morning and told her that if I had not already had grey hair, it would have turned white by now. As of this morning he has already pulled all the stuffing out of his Winnie the Pooh bear, pulled all my mixing bowls out of the cabinet, spilled my tea on the carpet, and inspired another adrenalin rush when he screamed so hard his feet turned bright red, all because he had a nasty poop that gave him a rash.
I called my mom to vent. I told her about the glasses. She said, "Well little kids are like little animals. They're opportunists, and they act on instinct. You just have to anticipate what they're going to do." Then I told her about the trunk. "Oh..." she sympathized, laughing. "Well little kids are smart, their brains are developing and you are going to have two sets of eyes on you and everything you do, so if you are pressing buttons, he is going to press buttons." Then I told her about the emergency room visit. "Oh," she said again, sympathetically. "I've been meaning to call you." She stopped pontificating on the human vs. animal nature of children at that point.
Now I could be spending my down time cleaning up the mess, but I thought, "This article will last longer than my next batch of dirty dishes, and Carl will appreciate it more." So Carl, this one's for you.
Insecurity and American Idol
Americans are self-conscious idiots. Every weight-loss commercial and hair ad reminds us of our flaws. Young girls look at magazines and think they're fat. Older guys look at Viagra commercials and conclude that if they can't get it up, they should just get out. And even if we aren't complete dupes of the advertising moguls, we can't help but absorb the deadening message: you are what you eat/wear/drive/live in. And it is nowhere more apparent that today's youth are absorbing the message than when you watch the audition opener on American Idol.
These poor kids--who fly to whatever city the star-studded judges alight on, wait for hours and hours to get their numbers, then wait hours more to get into a 90-second audition that will most likely spew them out just as Jesus said he would spew out the lukewarm churches--these poor kids, after absorbing years of consumerist messages, have duded themselves up to the nines to impress THE CELEBRITIES. And they look HORRIBLE. I don't know if it's the lens on the camera, or the lights, or what. But when you see America's youth lined up like Holsteins at a cattle show, it ain't pretty.
I call this the Wal-Mart phenomenon. Ever gone into a Wal-Mart and shaken your head at how ugly America is getting? I love to watch old movies because at least those films portray a nation with a sense of dignity. And they didn't have streaky hair or anti-aging highlighting foundation or enough black eye makeup to give a mime nightmares. And I'm not saying there aren't people who would be attractive if they weren't so AWARE of themselves. It gives me the creeps to see a teenage girl trying to look like a Britney Spears clone (at Mass!) when she would be better off wiping most of that stuff off. This is not to say that I have the franchise on natural good looks. But I like to think I know how much is enough and how much will make people stare.
What's behind all this frazzled fakery? Am I just getting old? Is it that I've given up on my thighs and am now absorbing insecurities about my securities? Because that's what the grand ol' machine of the economy does, folks. Its job is to sell fear. And if people aren't buying enough, its job is to sell more. Fears about my looks, fears about my money, fears about my health, my house, my kids, my job, and my personal favorite: OUR NATION'S FUTURE. And since all these fears have mainly to do with ME, I am so wrapped up in them that I don't care about anything else. I don't care about the rise of militant nationalism, or economic coercion, or families that walk days in search of food, or people who are killed because they were on the wrong side of a border. Instead, I care about the expense ratio that might rob our retirement fund of an extra $15,000 thirty years in the future.
I'm not crying conspiracy. There's no cigarette-smoking man in some back room of Congress pulling strings. I just don't believe that. But I do believe in sin. I think it's sin that makes people look ugly. And I'm not talking about people who weren't blessed with symmetrical features--I mean everyone. We all have an ugliness about us that makes us, on a bad, rainy, crappy day, think that everyone and everything else is ugly. The Britney Spears girl is ugly. The rapist guy on the news is ugly. Nick and Jessica on the cover of the tabloids are ugly. And when I look at myself in the mirror, I realize that I'm no different.
What's the antidote to all this ugliness? I'm amazed that the decorative masks people used to wear haven't come back into fashion, because there are days when I sure feel like wearing one. I think the ugliness should remind us that true beauty--which is only hinted at in rain-washed hills and gauzy clouds and the soft fuzz on a baby's cheek--will never be found on this earth. Our soul longs for it, and our inspirations and desires clearly indicate that, since we are capable of imagining it, it must be found somewhere. This has been called an argument for the existence of God. And the argument is compelling, provided we don't confine our notion of beauty to what is found on this earth, and in the aisles of the drugstore.
These poor kids--who fly to whatever city the star-studded judges alight on, wait for hours and hours to get their numbers, then wait hours more to get into a 90-second audition that will most likely spew them out just as Jesus said he would spew out the lukewarm churches--these poor kids, after absorbing years of consumerist messages, have duded themselves up to the nines to impress THE CELEBRITIES. And they look HORRIBLE. I don't know if it's the lens on the camera, or the lights, or what. But when you see America's youth lined up like Holsteins at a cattle show, it ain't pretty.
I call this the Wal-Mart phenomenon. Ever gone into a Wal-Mart and shaken your head at how ugly America is getting? I love to watch old movies because at least those films portray a nation with a sense of dignity. And they didn't have streaky hair or anti-aging highlighting foundation or enough black eye makeup to give a mime nightmares. And I'm not saying there aren't people who would be attractive if they weren't so AWARE of themselves. It gives me the creeps to see a teenage girl trying to look like a Britney Spears clone (at Mass!) when she would be better off wiping most of that stuff off. This is not to say that I have the franchise on natural good looks. But I like to think I know how much is enough and how much will make people stare.
What's behind all this frazzled fakery? Am I just getting old? Is it that I've given up on my thighs and am now absorbing insecurities about my securities? Because that's what the grand ol' machine of the economy does, folks. Its job is to sell fear. And if people aren't buying enough, its job is to sell more. Fears about my looks, fears about my money, fears about my health, my house, my kids, my job, and my personal favorite: OUR NATION'S FUTURE. And since all these fears have mainly to do with ME, I am so wrapped up in them that I don't care about anything else. I don't care about the rise of militant nationalism, or economic coercion, or families that walk days in search of food, or people who are killed because they were on the wrong side of a border. Instead, I care about the expense ratio that might rob our retirement fund of an extra $15,000 thirty years in the future.
I'm not crying conspiracy. There's no cigarette-smoking man in some back room of Congress pulling strings. I just don't believe that. But I do believe in sin. I think it's sin that makes people look ugly. And I'm not talking about people who weren't blessed with symmetrical features--I mean everyone. We all have an ugliness about us that makes us, on a bad, rainy, crappy day, think that everyone and everything else is ugly. The Britney Spears girl is ugly. The rapist guy on the news is ugly. Nick and Jessica on the cover of the tabloids are ugly. And when I look at myself in the mirror, I realize that I'm no different.
What's the antidote to all this ugliness? I'm amazed that the decorative masks people used to wear haven't come back into fashion, because there are days when I sure feel like wearing one. I think the ugliness should remind us that true beauty--which is only hinted at in rain-washed hills and gauzy clouds and the soft fuzz on a baby's cheek--will never be found on this earth. Our soul longs for it, and our inspirations and desires clearly indicate that, since we are capable of imagining it, it must be found somewhere. This has been called an argument for the existence of God. And the argument is compelling, provided we don't confine our notion of beauty to what is found on this earth, and in the aisles of the drugstore.
Prayer Is...
The best way to kick your new year's resolution into high gear is to start in December, so that once the health club ads start running in January you can smile smugly as you write out a check for the full balance you charged on your credit card last month while balancing a coffee cup within the voluminous folds of the two wool sweaters you wear to cut down on your heating bill.
My new year's resolution was prayer. Not the "now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep" rote prayer from childhood. Not the ingeniously-creative-whoever-goes-on-the-longest-is-holiest extemperaneous prayer I learned in Protestant circles. I'm not even talking about the Rosary. What I'm talking about is honest, boring, day-in-day-out liturgical prayer, which is the official prayer life of the Church. The Divine Office. Now that's a mouthful for those in the know, so let me add several qualifiers.
1. I am a boring, stick-in-the-mud, only occasionally creative person who loves routine and structure. Prayers that are written out in a book were designed for people like me.
2. The Liturgy of the Hours is no longer the nine-hour-a-day ordeal that you read about in historical novels. The charming Latin names are gone, but so is the getting up in the middle of the night and praying all 150 psalms in one week.
3. Those who are raising two kids and taking care of the household practically by themselves are not obligated to say the entire Divine Office, but are invited to participate in the public prayer life of the Church by praying Morning and Evening prayer, which can be said whenever it fits into your day and only takes about twenty minutes total.
I thought I'd report on this after I'd been doing it for a while, so I wouldn't embarass myself by appearing to have monastic pretensions, or by quitting two days after the book arrived. The book I use is Shorter Christian Prayer, which is the short version of Christian Prayer, which is the short version of the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours. Now, figuring out this book is an act of faith in itself. It took me about forty-five minutes to read through the ordinary while flipping through the psalter and trying to figure out what an antiphon was. It didn't help that Christmas was right around the corner, and I had to tangle with the Common of Seasons. And this was the short short version!
The best help I can recommend for someone who is trying to get started with Morning and Evening prayer is to find an audio clip of what it's supposed to sound like. On the EWTN web site you can find the link along the left hand side at the bottom, and mouse over it to find the appropriate day.
"Oh, what Romanist tripe! Who needs all this LEGALISTIC muttering day in and day out? You Catholics are losing sight of Jesus in all this stuff. Why don't you just pray to Him?"
I have to respond to this objection, because it's what I would have said before I converted, and it honestly deserves a response. The fact is, I have considered myself a Christian most of my life, have gone to several churches, read most of the Bible, and heard some good preaching here and there. But I have NEVER had a prayer life. I mean, I can put on a good show if I'm sitting in a small group study or something and I'm really put to it: "And we lift up So-and-so who has cancer to you, Lord, and we just pray that your will would be done upon him..." and on and on and on. And that kind of prayer is fine, I ain't saying anything against it. But I never prayed at home on anything like a regular basis, except in times of extreme stress.
What I've discovered is a threefold reality. One, that the Church is universal, and historic. If you were going to start a church that was supposed to cover the earth and last until the end of the world, and you were supposed to devise a mode of prayer to fit all these nations and times and situations, spontaneous extemperaneous prayer wouldn't be your top pick. That is a conceit of modern Evangelicalism, and has anti-Catholic bigotry at its heart.
Two, people are prone to shirk, sidestep, and procrastinate prayer whenever possible. This is because of sin. Turning prayer into something that is between you and your nightstand is a guaranteed recipe for failure. Jesus knew that, and that is why he gave us the Lord's prayer. The Church has since created forms of liturgical prayer to carry us through the day and throughout the year, but they always have at their heart the Lord's prayer. You could say more, but the Lord's prayer really does say it all.
Third, spontaneous prayer, while offering complete freedom to tailor what you say to God at any one time, lacks all rhythm--and if you are planning to have a regular prayer life, you will get tired of having to come up with every single thing you say to God yourself. It's like trying to join in a dance without bothering to learn the steps. It's fun once or twice, but you eventually get tired and feel foolish. You never have the opportunity to just rest in Him, to trust the words that he has given you through his Church. And what about praise? I never feel so foolish as when I try to praise God in my own words. But that's exactly what so many of the psalms are for!
The Liturgy of the Hours is the endless, rhythmic, call-and-response of the Church to her Bridegroom, who called her to pray without ceasing. The Catholic Church has always taken this command at face value, requiring the full Divine Office of all Her consecrated clergy and religious on a daily basis. Though not so rigorous as it once was, the prayer life of the Church is an endless reflection of the divine life that is within us by virtue of the grace we receive with our baptism and through the sacraments.
It means that I, an isolated housewife with many small tasks on her hands, have the chance to consecrate time itself--to offer it, and myself, back to my Lord. I come from a family that has a history of mental illness and alcoholism. I've battled depression all my life. You could say that my main motivation is to stop the voice of fear for just a few minutes. But then a miracle happens. The fear goes away. I can't tell you how, in so many ways, I have experienced peace, moments of beauty, reservoirs of patience and charity towards others (especially my children) that aren't native to me--and a complete surcease of fear.
Prayer in this sense is a duty, a service, a consecration, and a consolation. Those psalms...they're love songs. Even when I've only got my short little book and I have to repeat some of it day after day, I get to rest in it. Meditate on it. Everything takes on meaning.
My new year's resolution was prayer. Not the "now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep" rote prayer from childhood. Not the ingeniously-creative-whoever-goes-on-the-longest-is-holiest extemperaneous prayer I learned in Protestant circles. I'm not even talking about the Rosary. What I'm talking about is honest, boring, day-in-day-out liturgical prayer, which is the official prayer life of the Church. The Divine Office. Now that's a mouthful for those in the know, so let me add several qualifiers.
1. I am a boring, stick-in-the-mud, only occasionally creative person who loves routine and structure. Prayers that are written out in a book were designed for people like me.
2. The Liturgy of the Hours is no longer the nine-hour-a-day ordeal that you read about in historical novels. The charming Latin names are gone, but so is the getting up in the middle of the night and praying all 150 psalms in one week.
3. Those who are raising two kids and taking care of the household practically by themselves are not obligated to say the entire Divine Office, but are invited to participate in the public prayer life of the Church by praying Morning and Evening prayer, which can be said whenever it fits into your day and only takes about twenty minutes total.
I thought I'd report on this after I'd been doing it for a while, so I wouldn't embarass myself by appearing to have monastic pretensions, or by quitting two days after the book arrived. The book I use is Shorter Christian Prayer, which is the short version of Christian Prayer, which is the short version of the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours. Now, figuring out this book is an act of faith in itself. It took me about forty-five minutes to read through the ordinary while flipping through the psalter and trying to figure out what an antiphon was. It didn't help that Christmas was right around the corner, and I had to tangle with the Common of Seasons. And this was the short short version!
The best help I can recommend for someone who is trying to get started with Morning and Evening prayer is to find an audio clip of what it's supposed to sound like. On the EWTN web site you can find the link along the left hand side at the bottom, and mouse over it to find the appropriate day.
"Oh, what Romanist tripe! Who needs all this LEGALISTIC muttering day in and day out? You Catholics are losing sight of Jesus in all this stuff. Why don't you just pray to Him?"
I have to respond to this objection, because it's what I would have said before I converted, and it honestly deserves a response. The fact is, I have considered myself a Christian most of my life, have gone to several churches, read most of the Bible, and heard some good preaching here and there. But I have NEVER had a prayer life. I mean, I can put on a good show if I'm sitting in a small group study or something and I'm really put to it: "And we lift up So-and-so who has cancer to you, Lord, and we just pray that your will would be done upon him..." and on and on and on. And that kind of prayer is fine, I ain't saying anything against it. But I never prayed at home on anything like a regular basis, except in times of extreme stress.
What I've discovered is a threefold reality. One, that the Church is universal, and historic. If you were going to start a church that was supposed to cover the earth and last until the end of the world, and you were supposed to devise a mode of prayer to fit all these nations and times and situations, spontaneous extemperaneous prayer wouldn't be your top pick. That is a conceit of modern Evangelicalism, and has anti-Catholic bigotry at its heart.
Two, people are prone to shirk, sidestep, and procrastinate prayer whenever possible. This is because of sin. Turning prayer into something that is between you and your nightstand is a guaranteed recipe for failure. Jesus knew that, and that is why he gave us the Lord's prayer. The Church has since created forms of liturgical prayer to carry us through the day and throughout the year, but they always have at their heart the Lord's prayer. You could say more, but the Lord's prayer really does say it all.
Third, spontaneous prayer, while offering complete freedom to tailor what you say to God at any one time, lacks all rhythm--and if you are planning to have a regular prayer life, you will get tired of having to come up with every single thing you say to God yourself. It's like trying to join in a dance without bothering to learn the steps. It's fun once or twice, but you eventually get tired and feel foolish. You never have the opportunity to just rest in Him, to trust the words that he has given you through his Church. And what about praise? I never feel so foolish as when I try to praise God in my own words. But that's exactly what so many of the psalms are for!
The Liturgy of the Hours is the endless, rhythmic, call-and-response of the Church to her Bridegroom, who called her to pray without ceasing. The Catholic Church has always taken this command at face value, requiring the full Divine Office of all Her consecrated clergy and religious on a daily basis. Though not so rigorous as it once was, the prayer life of the Church is an endless reflection of the divine life that is within us by virtue of the grace we receive with our baptism and through the sacraments.
It means that I, an isolated housewife with many small tasks on her hands, have the chance to consecrate time itself--to offer it, and myself, back to my Lord. I come from a family that has a history of mental illness and alcoholism. I've battled depression all my life. You could say that my main motivation is to stop the voice of fear for just a few minutes. But then a miracle happens. The fear goes away. I can't tell you how, in so many ways, I have experienced peace, moments of beauty, reservoirs of patience and charity towards others (especially my children) that aren't native to me--and a complete surcease of fear.
Prayer in this sense is a duty, a service, a consecration, and a consolation. Those psalms...they're love songs. Even when I've only got my short little book and I have to repeat some of it day after day, I get to rest in it. Meditate on it. Everything takes on meaning.
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