To have and to hold

Parking three blocks from my downtown workplace has many cons and only three pros: I don't have to pay the $30 a month to park in the lot across from my workplace, I get some exercise (you know how they say to take the stairs instead of the elevator? this walk is my justification for not taking the stairs), and I pass the Christ Episcopal Church Book Store.

Yesterday after work I was feeling particularly unspiritual, I needed a book to read to my new cat, and I like to buy things, so the bookstore sensed my vulnerability and gave a shout out. I knew that I wanted a Lamott book, for I was also feeling particularly unwriterly and wanted inspiration.

(All those things are important in their own right and deserve to be noted, but reading and writing really don't have much at all to do with my point. Shopping does.)

I like shopping because I like Things. I am a gifts person. I am tactile,
and I think I would pray more if I were Catholic, because of the rosary. I admittedly know nothing about rosaries, except that my Irish great-aunt who's a very short nun in France gave one to my mom and that I want it.

(Kyle and I are doing a "love languages" group study, and during the "gifts" week one of the leaders said that he believes Jesus was a gifts person. I felt quite smug; I take all I can get.)

When I spend a night alone, I sleep with my Bible, for extra protection. God is actually there with me, when I hug my Bible.

At the wedding of Kyle and me, I was adamant that the preacher not explain the unity candle. Symbolism speaks for itself, I said. Things can say a lot, if you listen.

So when I stood at the counter, paying for my new book with part of the $30 I saved this month, my eye was caught by a little basket of "angel prayer charms" that had little birthstones stuck right into their hollow chests and functioned like lockets. I picked the one that held a blue stone for September. I paid the man again and left.

Today at work I typed up a 9-point-font, sentence-long prayer and folded it neatly into the angel and attached it to my key ring. I sat it in front of me, beside my cell phone and red coffee mug.

When I look at that little angel -- as when I felt it in my coat pocket on my three-block walk to work this morning -- I breathe a prayer, and I know that Kyle is safe in Georgia. I just know it, and the tiny blue stone twinkles.