soundtrack for your life

my little ishuffle was really on top of things this weekend. check it out.

on saturday at hockey, the ladies decided that they just wanted to scrimmage, so they picked up chris on one of the teams. he was the only guy out there, and i'm sure he had a blast. since they didn't need me to do stats, i took the ipod out once the ball was dropped. of course, it's always on shuffle, but what are the odds that the first sound that greeted me was "DAA! DAA! duuuuude looks like a laaaaady!" i cracked up. i told chris about it later, and he cracked up, too.

my english paper was due today. not only did i put it off until the last minute, but i didn't start reading the book (which was Twelfth Night, and it was awesome) until last night. i got really into it and ended up not getting any sleep at all. as you know, sleepless nights are no new thing for me, but here's the catch: i stayed in las cruces last night. so at six a.m., i headed back to socorro with a very large cup of coffee and two hours of abandoned freeway ahead of me.

at some point i made the unfortunate realization that it didn't matter how much coffee i had in my american flag travel mug, because i had grabbed the freakin' decaf. yup! so i spent a very long, long time consciously trying to keep myself awake on sheer willpower. by the time i got back to socorro, i was wired. and then i got some real coffee before class. yow.

i still haven't recovered. i feel very weird right now.

but anyway... back to the ride. of course i turned to my ipod for stimulation. during one particularly boring stretch of highway, i think i actually said out loud, "give me a good song so i don't die." and wouldn't you know it... "stayin alive." but immediately following was "another one bites the dust." thanks a lot, ipod. but then right away it threw me a bone with just what i needed. no really, "just what i needed", the cars song. tee hee.

but here's the really cool part.

earlier than that, before the sun had come up, before i realized my drink of choice was both disgusting and useless, the first song that came on was "the beautiful letdown," which is one of my very favorite switchfoot songs (i like "gone" a lot too, i use the lyrics for my away message pretty often ;) ). it's a lovely song that encourages christians to look forward to heaven, because lets face it, sometimes this world isn't so fun. it's chill, so it was the perfect song to listen to on an empty highway in the desert, when the mountains are still deep purple and the mesas are pinkish-orange and the sky is hazy blue. i love driving in the morning. i was just thinking about how pretty the song was and how pretty the desert was, when i came over a hill that looked down into a little valley that had canyon-looking walls that were all sorts of beautiful desert colors, and i gasped and thought, "i may just stay here forever."

and at that very moment, the chorus kicked in, and jon forman and his little brother started singing in their lovely voices, "i don't belong here."

and my tired little mind said, "whaaaaat? how come?"

because, of course, you're supposed to be in the world but not of the world. the song talks about how we try to fit it, but it doesn't work because this isn't our home. we're only here temporarily, for seventy or eighty years. only little kids think that's a long time. the rest of us know better. it took me about four seconds to think, "and if this is how gorgeous the desert is... just think."

so do that. just think.

but there's more. here's part of one verse:

We're still chasing our tails and the rising sun
And our dark water planet's still spinning in a race
Where no one wins and no one's one

lest i write all this off as a coincidence, can you guess what happened when ol' jon sang the words "rising sun?" at that exact second?!? well, the sun broke free of whatever purple mountain it was behind and suddenly flooded the whole road with gold. it was cool, guys. i could feel the change in temperature when the sunshine came in my windows, and suddenly everything looked and felt different. everything was so bright and warm. i couldn't see very well. considering my sleep deprivation, it was probably unsafe, but it was very, very pretty. and then the chorus came again...

i don't think it's blasphemous to say that my mp3 player was blessed with good timing, as long as i know who is doing the blessing.

be encouraged.