It is incredible the kinds of burderns we try to bear at times, burdens we know are not, and will not be, producing fruit because they are not life-giving. I surely don't believe we should just make decisions on short-term impulses to whatever might seem to feel good in the moment, but sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be the woman who extravagantly 'wasted' that bottle of perfumed ointment on Jesus. I hear them now, all around the table, because they are all sitting around the table in my mind, watching and waiting to point out how ridiculous, selfish, foolish, wasteful, etc. are the dreams and would-be expressions of my own love of life. And so I sit, tightly corked. Both bottle and bottle-holder. Eyes darting around the room hoping I'll be seen the right way, understood the right way, all the while restraining the only gift I truly have, an outpoured heart.