I found a box on my desk when I got home late Saturday night. I knew what it was and decided to save it for the next day. I have gone online to buy this book (and cyber stalk my favorite UCLA professor) several times. Finally, the week before taking off on vacation, I took the leap. I've read most of this journal, several of the articles (those written by Maniquis) multiple times over. This was in fact the primary source for my senior thesis. Robert Maniquis was the only scholar/ professor I could find applying the imagery of terror and violence to the cultural crisis of the French Revolution. My thesis dealt with the imagery of childbirth and it's power in times of cultural crisis. In France and England, the Romantics, affected by the Revolution, created birth imagery of terror with hinted abortions, horror, and sons murdered by their fathers. In the Apartheid in South Africa, Serote paralleled birth imagery with the war in the skies, heavens, blood, and graves. And in the end, it meant hope. Maybe none of this makes any sense, I'm doing my best to describe a 20 page essay in a few sentences. I bought the book because I know that regardless of grad school or marriage or the state I end up in, I'll be writing something more on this. It was that moment where I finally realized in school "This is why I'm here." Don't get me wrong, I've always known why I was at college, why I was in the Literature program, why I was training. And that was the first moment when the answer to those questions was actually touching the tip of my toes and my fingers tapping the keys made a bigger sound in my heart than in anyone's ears. I went to school because of a book I'm going to write, though I don't know exactly what it will say - but it surrounds the power of birth and birth imagery in literature during times of cultural crisis - such as now. When the Revolutionaries lost hope, they felt aborted by their fathers and they created pictures where they lost their children too. It was tied to terror, childbirth and generations was wrapped up in its very cultural core of disappointment and political suffering. When the South-African's began to fight back for their rights, their poets penned hope into the hearts of the people, hope through birth as a sort of war, as victory.

I didn't mean to pour all that out at you, I only meant to tell you all I'm excited to finally own this book, the only one I've read that touches on a specific passion in my heart. One I don't know how or where it will work itself out, so somehow owning this book feels like holding onto that spot where my toes touch calling.

I soaked in Psalms 56 and 57 this morning. Wow.

I told Toni (Rosemary) yesterday, I had a pregnancy dream the other day. I didn't really remember it, I just remembered I was pregnant.

She told me it typically means you're about to birth something new.

Last night, I had another. And stragenly vivid. I was in the hospital room. I remember the doctor (no one I knew). Toni was there. So was my mom, and others. I didn't feel like it was time. And I was scared. But the doctor thought it was about time. I even remember the physical pain I felt. I was still up and walking around. Toni and I walked to the bathroom and were talking in there, I was telling her I was afraid and didn't think I was ready.

I woke up with a couple thoughts. One, pregnant women are the bravest women I know. To anticipate and look forward to that pain, because they know the priceless gift it will produce. And the joy that will come right after the pain. Also, how much I still need the Lord to take away my fear of the unknown, the things He is bringing into my life that aren't meant for me to try to control. I did my senior thesis on childbirth imagery, and how much of it's power and promise is in the fact that once it is begun, it can't be stopped. I've learned a lot more recently about childbirth and how God created a woman's body to carry it out (thanks to Rob & Aime and all their studying for Cadence) - the best thing a woman can do is learn to allow her body to do what it was created for, not to rush it, or to fight it.

Father is so faithful to prepare us for the coming things, and I don't want to control any of it. I want to trust completely, in the way that takes whatever comes from His hands with a sense of resolve and of rest. I want to walk into this next season with trust from the start. I want my life to be purged of all the fear and anxiety.

Psalm 56 is all on trusting the Lord. I didn't search for it, or look up Trust in an accordance. In fact, I was still trying to process my dream when I opened up my Bible. I heard the Lord say to go to the Psalms. And as I began to read, my spirit began to drink, and my heart began to listen. Psalm 57 seems to reinforce that He is worthy of trust. He is faithful. He is perfect. And He is working out His plan.

Yesterday, I had coffee with MacKenna. I love that woman. One thing she said to me that so reinforced the very core of what God's been doing in me is, 'Katrina, just be.' Everything she said before went straight to my heart too, but her final words were like the bottom line of all God's been saying and doing.

Yesterday at church they asked those who needed a touch from God to raise their hand. I raised mine before I even knew my hand was in the air. And no one else around me did. But I realized in an instant, I didn't care. (Humility, or rather, humiliation, has been another trend lately. I find myself telling the one thing I don't want to tell, to the one person I don't want to tell it a lot lately. I'm getting over myself.) I'm in a season of transition, and I know I just need whatever I can get to press through into this new thing. I need a touch of His power. I need a breath of His mighty wind to carry away some things and clear the earth for what's to grow through the Spring.