It’s the time of Advent in the Christian church, four weeks of expectation and preparation as we head toward Christmas. The word derives from the Latin adventus, “arrival” (Oxford English Dictionary), and heralds the celebration of the birth of Jesus as well as anticipates the future second coming. In other words, it’s all about the waiting. Have I mentioned that patience is not my strong suit?

“Sometimes I feel guilty for how lucky I am,” I told a friend. “I’m not sure many people would consider you all that lucky,” she said in response. She immediately apologized for her remark, but I did not take offense. What it made me think about is this: my happiness probably won’t look like yours, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

"I’ll be in Nashville for Thanksgiving, but in December I’m going to visit my brother in Raleigh,” said one of my girlfriends. “Get this: Last night he told me that on Christmas Day he’ll be leaving to have lunch with some friends in a nearby town.”

“What?” I sputtered (subtlety has never been my strong suit). “You mean he didn’t invite you to go with him?”

The bumper sticker, affixed to the crumpled front end of a blue four-door, read “Temporarily out of order.” As the faded import limped around the corner, I smiled. Not only because I found it funny, and honest, but also because I wished I could slap such a warning on my forehead when I need to alert folks that I’m not at the top of my game.

“It’s the nicest thing that’s happened to me in quite a while,” said my mother on the phone, calling from Mississippi. At 86, she still gets around on her own, but she is slowing down a bit and, I suspect, growing weary of the impermanent stuff of life. She and I have become accustomed to talking several times a week since my father died in 2000.

“You remember that sweet girl from your Sunday school class?”

About two hours and ten seconds after I thought to myself, “This is great. I haven’t been sick in six months,” I was felled by some sort of head cold that has kept me couch-bound for several days. In-between waiting for my husband to get back from the drugstore with the latest round of syrups and salves and dozing off with frightening regularity, I’ve been thinking about what it means to pray for myself.

Ugh. I have survived my first two Pilates classes and need to tell someone how proud I am of myself. It’s not much, I know, but it’s a start. A beginning of a new discipline that I hope will strengthen my body and improve my overall health.

“Please tell me you’re not going to talk about politics,” I said to John J. Thatamanil, Ph.D., who was serving as a guest preacher at the church we both attend. I was smiling when I said it, but I have, in all honesty, grown weary of political talk that seems to pervade most every facet of my life. It seems I can’t even open an email from a fellow writer or run into an acquaintance in Hillsboro Village without learning which way he or she plans to swing on election day and why I should follow suit.

While handing out goodie bags to trick-or-treaters and reminiscing about the Raggedy Andy costume my mother made for me oh-so-many years ago (my friend Sheila Beth demanded to be Raggedy Ann), I stopped for a moment to consider the day after Halloween.

As a writer, I sometimes wish I’d included another phrase in an article or chosen a different word in an essay. Usually there’s nothing I can do about it but vow to try harder the next time to make sure the piece is “just so.” But the beauty of blogging is that I can hop online and offer a “p.s.,” if you will.

Lately I’ve been hearing from an old friend with increased frequency. We have known one another since the mid-1970s, and we have been through a lot together: her divorce, my midlife marriage, the deaths of her mother and my father. We have moved across state lines, gotten through graduate school, and bemoaned our aging bodies. We talk more often when one of us is in crisis mode, and this time it’s her turn. She has recently ended a seven-year relationship with a man she loved.

"How full is your bucket?” asked my nephew, 24, as he slid into the booth when we met for lunch. 

“Excuse me?” I replied. 

“How full is your bucket?”

My mind raced to our last conversation, wondering if I had missed something, but I had no memory of a pail of any kind, full or otherwise.

When the minister asked the congregants to read along with him from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, I thought to myself: Here we go again. Can’t you guys be a little more original?

“This time,” said the pastor, referencing verses that may be familiar to some of you, those about love being patient and kind and so forth, “put yourself in the scripture.”

And so my longtime friend Carrie Ann has survived one week since the death of her eleven-year-old son. “I wanted to go with him,” she said when telling me about Alan’s final moments.

Today I’ve been on the phone with newspapers in three states, trying to get an obituary placed on behalf of a longtime friend. Her eleven-year-old son has died, after a courageous battle with a gruesome cancer. It might not be much, making those calls, but I was glad I could do something tangible for a woman I’ve known since our college days, some 30 years.

This morning, instead of going on a "race walk"--I don't know how to race walk, but I want to sound like someone who's fit--I decided to let my mutt, Quay, determine the pace of our outing.

You may be familiar with the mission of Magdalene, a community for women who have survived lives of violence, prostitution, and addiction, founded here in Nashville by Episcopal priest Becca Stevens.  

Now you have the chance to hear some of the women's stories firsthand when they read from and sign copies of their new book, Find Your Way Home (Abingdon Press, 2008), on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2008, from 2:00-3:30 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library (http://www.library.nashville.org).

Today marks the eighth anniversary of my father's death. He was the first love of my life, and for thirteen months after he died I did not draw a deep breath. I realize that sounds melodramatic, but it is desperately close to the truth. 

As my husband, Precious, and I left the stadium in Oxford, Mississippi, last weekend after the Vandy-Ole Miss game, we overheard several explanations for how the Commodores defeated the Rebels. “Horrible officiating” seemed to be the most popular reason for such an upset.

My niece, who is 23, has been creative since she was a child. Drawing with crayons, creating collages out of construction paper, her "artistic bent" was evident early on in her life. As it turns out, her family knew she was an artist before she did.

Recently she told me she accepted the reality that she's an artist when she filed her first tax return as a married woman. "I listed 'artist' as my occupation," she said. "So I guess it's official."