Bloodstained hands.

….Or rather, hand. And if we want to be really technical, I suppose I should say that its actually blueberry juice. I know. I feel like I have let you down. There you were thinking that maybe something exciting had actually happened to me, but all I did was reach my hand into a bag of frozen blueberries. The stains really do look quite sinister, though, so I can at least pretend, right? Speaking of frozen stuff, I finally saw Frozen. It was most bodaciously excellent. Oh, I might as well also let you know that I just finished The Book Thief. My review is: if you haven't read it yet, read it ALREADY! I actually don't own it, I was borrowing a copy from a friend. But I gave it to her for Christmas, so I have a sort of connection with it all. I must say, I have amazing happen-chance taste. I knew nothing whatsoever about the book when I bought it for them, so it was kind of a shot in the dark. In fact, the only way I knew it existed was that I saw a trailer for a movie of it that came out last fall. What I could gather from the plot interested me, so I used my friends as guinea pigs got it for my two of my friends with an innocent hope that they would like it.

***A CONFESSION***

Most of my presents have twofold purposes.
For instance, I also gave a bunch of my friends beanies,

both because I knew they would like them,

and also so they would stop stealing mine.

The theory is better in theory than in practice:

they still steal mine.

Anyway. They did like it, and then I gleefully reaped the benefits of my scheme they graciously lent it to me. Now I just have to remember to get it back to them...

And now we shall take a nosedive from fairyland to Lincoln's Inn Fields (Sorry, its reference that very few, if any, of you will get. Pretty much the jist of it is that things are about to get real.) As some of you know, yesterday was not only the day of my my 200^th post—sorry it was so lame, by the bye—it was also the feast of The Annunciation. Which is sort of a big deal for everyone, whether they know it or not. I mean, all that happened was that God became man and in doing so set in to motion his plan for saving the entire universe. Yeah, that doesn't exactly happen everyday. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that—and you can quote me on this—its an even bigger deal than when The Avengers came out. Anyway. I'm going to talk about the most important word ever spoken by a human being: “yes.” That's what Mary said to God, and through her saying, “yes” the universe was saved. Granted, they spoke in a somewhat verbose and archaic fashion back then, so she actually said something along the line lines of, “Let it be done unto me according to thy word.” which is pretty much a super drawn out, yes. So back to “yes.” Its an amazingly powerful word, and the way in which it is used in our life can, and will, determine the course of our existence.

Now saying “yes” can obviously lead one toward good or evil. I want this to be a happy post, so for right now we will just concentrate on it leading us to good. I've been thinking about this a lot lately as one of my Lenten practices; I've been thinking about how many more times I could say “yes” to God and to the people around me. I can tell you that its a staggering number. I can't tell you how many times a sibling asks me to get them, or help them with, something and I tell them that they can do it for themselves. Even if its just moving out of my way the tiniest bit for them. Even more staggering is the amount of times I say “no” to graces that daily God tries to give me. Once you start to think about it, everything becomes more clear, and you can practice saying “yes” in the little things so that once our time here on earth is exhausted, we will be able to make that ultimate “yes” and enter into the heavenly fold for eternity.

***A SACARY THOUGHT***

What if Mary hadn't practiced her “yeses”???

Its obviously quite important, so try to do it.

….And if you've read The Book Thief, you'll know that I'm totally stealing the bold interlude thing from that. Well, I can't help it. Its just too cool. And somewhat appropriate, if you think about it.

TTFN.

-Thomas