It's an odd feeling, difficult to identify precisely, and I am the type of person who likes to be able to identify a feeling and to do so precisely.  For all the times I've been called "free spirited", the truth is that I like things in my life to be organized and structured and concrete.  I like to be able to label and categorize my life:  my goals, my experiences, my wishes, my fears, my failures, my successes.  I am one of those people who wants my internal world structured into flowcharts and adorably designed file folders.  My external world, the one that exists around me, is disorderly and cannot be contained, nor should it be, so it's important to me that my internal universe makes sense.

Which is why this sensation is unsettling, even though I know what it is.

It's God, working in me, stirring around inside my spirit and kneading me like bread dough.  It is an uneasy sensation, this knowing that He is trying to tell me something, knowing that He is at work to make something happen in my life, but not knowing what.  I feel like I'm on the precipice of something big.  That He is mixing up my world and making it into something more incredible than I can imagine, which is exciting of course, but a little terrifying too.

I feel like I need to curl up in a corner somewhere and just be silent.  Like I need to be Moses and cover my face against the pounding storm to get to that place where I can hear the whisper of God's heart.  My life is so full of all the things I have to do and all the things I want to do and all the things I get to do and that's fabulous, but it makes it hard to hear the quietness.

The structure of my life and my internal world is waiting.  I've been here before, at the place where I feel like I'm holding my breath and waiting for whatever it is that is just around the corner.  Last time it was sad and suffocating, waiting for my marriage to end and the rest of my life to begin again.  This time it is invigorating and exciting.  I feel like a swimmer on the starting block, fingers locked on the edge, every muscle in my legs tense and ready to spring, waiting for the signal, waiting, waiting....

I'm ready to go.  At least, I think I am.  I'm ready to discover what lies ahead.  I'm ready to dive in.

There's something big coming, and I'm ready to make it mine.

I don't shop at the mall very often, so I was surprised this weekend to walk into JC Penny's and be greeted with a huge display of their "A.N.A." line.  Cute clothes on ridiculously skinny models seem common enough, but c'mon.. naming the line ANA?  Isn't that a bit over the top?

While I'd venture to guess that many average middle-aged and up consumers may not recognize the term, I'm betting it's common to most teen girls, and certainly must be well known in the fashion industry.  "Ana" is the deceptively innocuous sounding abbreviation for the term anorexia nervosa, and the pro-ana message of starving oneself into gruesome stick figures is alive and far healthier than the girls it destroys.

I Googled "JC Penny ana" to see what would come up, and surprisingly found only one article questioning the company's choice of brand names.  Of course, that was only the top three pages of results, and perhaps this line has been out long enough now that some of the controversy has died down.  However, when I added the word "controversy" to the Google search terms, the top three pages again proved a disappointment.  I found the same article as mentioned above, plus some mentions on a controversial men's ad (set in prison) and one promoting teen sex, as well as many other non-Penny's controversies, but nobody decrying the promotion of starvation as style.

I saw lots of other things at the mall this weekend.  I walked past life-size mannequins wearing lacy underwear and larger than life banners of provocative Victoria's Secrets models in barely there lingerie, certainly yet one more form of "thinspiration" for the pro-ana crowd.  I had an uncomfortable chuckle at Hot Topics jeans advertisement that screamed "Get Into Our Pants", which would gain cleverness kudos from me if not for the fact that it's a store aimed solely at teenagers.  I saw t-shirts with pro-marijuana slogans and more innuendos than an episode of Two & A Half Men.  Call me desensitized, but none of it really bothered me.  Except for Pennys and their ANA line.  Sex, nudity, drugs... parents know about the prevalance of these things and know to be on guard for them.  But how many moms of teenagers know what message their daughters are getting when they see the boney models promoting A.N.A.?

One article I read suggested that Penny's must have been out of touch with teenagers to name their line in such a way.  Unfortunately, that's not the way marketing works.  Not only did the corporate fashion designers know their lingo, but they found a way to tap into a growing sub-culture that fosters disease as a way of life.

Shame on you, Pennys.