A glimpse at my schedule

Here's what I'll be up to for the rest of this week and through the weekend. I know, I know...you're either jealous or you're one of the people who invited me. 

Happy New Year, everyone! I'll be seeing some of you before the year is out!

All the good men

Where have all the good men gone
and where are all the gods
Where's the streetwise Hercules
to fight the rising odds
Isn't there a white knight
upon a fiery steed
Late at night I toss and turn
and dream of what I need
I need a hero


In Save the Males, Kathleen Parker argues that women are largely to blame for the scarcity of good men. Feminism started out as a protest that women are able to do many things men do, and somehow morphed into the decree that they could always do them better—"the best man for the job is a woman," as the slogan on Lois Lane's coffee mug reads in Lois & Clark.

I'm appreciating the book so far. I can't say I'm enjoying it because it paints a grim picture of the state of men in Western culture. Males have been portrayed as abusive, as stupid, as inattentive. Small boys are too rowdy, too jittery. Adult men are too obsessed with video games, too incapable of real relationships. While this might allow the other half of the species a bit of a self-esteem rush, it's also true that, for any woman paying proper attention, such a rush must be followed with a rapid descent into melancholy.

Where have all the good men gone? Is it possible that women have helped to chase them into hiding, at the very least?

To be honest, between the lines of this book I read my own culpability. I have done my share of big talking about how much smarter/more sensitive/easier to relate to women are. Of course they are often easier to relate to. They tend to think more like I do. But we weren't made to be entirely surrounded with people like ourselves. We were made to be stretched by difference.

When Adam needed a companion, God didn't bring him a drinking buddy, he brought him a wife. In this time before sin, difference was seen as marvelous, not threatening. I find it interesting that the original sin involved woman rushing ahead to do things on her own and man sitting back passively. How often throughout history has that pattern been repeated? How often have we mourned the lack of proper, godly male leadership?

I miss male companionship. I miss it like crazy. My best friend while I was growing up was my brother, and I got along wonderfully with my father, my grandfathers, my male cousins. At college, I lived in community with men and women alike, a community that wasn't affected nearly as much by the acquisition of boyfriends or girlfriends as my later life has been. Now, I live in an increasingly Amazonian world. Most of my co-workers are female. No male family members live nearby. And it has been my experience that in a non-communal setting, male friends tend to fade away after they acquire girlfriends, and virtually disappear once the girlfriends become wives.

I, like Lois Lane, tend to retreat to the rather sour grapes position that men are unneeded, and that there are no heroes left. But that's all cover. Really, I believe in capable Supermen and classy Clark Kents (again, we're talking Lois & Clark, not Smallville).

From the sparks I've seen in so many males of my acquaintance, right down to the very young, there is vast potential out there for males to rise to what they were meant to be. To them I have two things I want to say: Don't underestimate your power to encourage the other half of the species. And thank you.

Snowy Sundays

It has been happening once or twice a winter: my church cancels all services due to weather-related trifles like blizzards. Then I have the whole day open, and I don't quite know what to do with myself. You might think it would just feel like an extra Saturday, but it doesn't, and here are the five main reasons why.

1) The rhythm of the weekend is upset if church is cancelled. Usually, it goes: day at work, day running errands and visiting friends, day at church. And usually, by the time I receive notice that church has been cancelled, I am almost ready to leave, and thus not feeling like going back to bed immediately.

2) If church is cancelled, it feels like a serious road situation. I am almost constitutionally obligated not to leave the apartment. (I'm not sure what constitution I'm talking about here.)

3) If I don't leave the apartment, I have a whole day at home, which is rare. And while I may do a few things here and there on a Sunday, chore-wise, I don't make a concerted effort to work like I would on a Saturday. I do any cleaning, organizing, etc. in a consciously more relaxed mode than usual.

4) If I have a whole day at home, I don't see another human being unless one comes to me for some reason, which is almost stranger than me seeing nobody, especially because....

5) If I don't plan to see another human being, I dress accordingly. Today, for instance, I'm wearing sweatpants and a baggy shirt, and my hair is up in loose French braids. Totally casual and very comfortable.

Today I listened to a few sermons online, and I trimmed Apollo's nails and his flight feathers, and I ironed, and I organized my bathroom closet a bit better, and I did a bit of communication on the subject of the youth group banquet, and I have been and am watching the two Anne of Green Gables movies that I own. I missed being with my church family, especially since I'll be out of town for a few weeks now for the holidays, but it has certainly been a restfully productive day. 

Every once in a while, I like being forced to slow down. 

Gift Games

I am extraordinarily competitive. I'll repeat it for emphasis: extraordinarily competitive. For many years, I avoided any game I didn't have a good shot at winning, because persistent not-winning would make me very unpleasant to be around.

This competitive tendency has been reined in quite a bit, but it still bleeds out from time to time. The unfortunate thing is that it isn't something that confines itself to games. I'm competitive about life.

One year, I bought my brother the game Guess Who? for his birthday. It was on his list, and something I knew he really liked. Then my parents brought out their gift: a Batcave playset for his action figures. Guess what? The game was all but forgotten. This was probably more than fifteen years ago, but I still remember the rush of anger and frustration I felt at being upstaged. My gift was not the coolest, which meant I was not the coolest. I vowed never to let that happen again.

Fast forward to present day. I have practically zero imagination for gifts. I can buy off a list, no problem. I (sometimes) see something in a store and think of someone, sure. But if it comes down to "it's Christmas/my friend's birthday/some other special event, and it is time to buy her/him a present"? PRESSURE.

Because when I buy a gift, I like it to be something that's an in-joke, or something that strongly reminds me of someone, and sometimes I sit around and nothing in particular comes to mind, and I brand myself as a horrible friend because I don't know the person well enough to come up with something immediately. Or what if I buy a gift and it's cute and everything, but my friend is thinking, "Wow, I'm worth $10 to her and she's worth $20 to me. I wish I would have donated that extra $10 to charity"? And sometimes I just think, "Personally, I feel I have a lot of junk lying around already. I don't want to add to their pile of junk."

I love my friends. I do. But mostly, in lieu of gifts, I'd rather we just sat around in a room for a couple hours. Yeah, it's what my friends and I usually do, but I just like sitting with them. Doing nothing. Requiring nothing. Being together.

But what if, at least for Christmas and birthdays and other special events, my friend would rather have a new book or DVD or scented candle or something mysterious that I haven't figured out than spend a few hours sitting in the same room with me? What if I'm not a happy-sitting-around level friend to them?

Gift-giving is a risky game. 

The 99 Things Meme

Things I’ve done in bold. 
Things I haven’t done but would like to do in italics.
Things I haven’t done and don't want to do in plain text.

1. Started your own blog.
2. Slept under the stars. (I sleep under the stars every night. Do some of you sleep above them?)
3. Played in a band — or musical.
4. Visited Hawaii.
5. Watched a meteor shower.
6. Given more than you can afford to charity. (What's the definition of "more than you can afford," anyway?)
7. Been to Disneyland. (I went to Disney World.)

8. Climbed a mountain. 
9. Held a praying mantis.
10. Sang a solo. 
11. Bungee jumped.
12. Visited Paris.
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.
15. Adopted a child.
16. Had food poisoning.
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.
18. Grown your own vegetables.
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France.
20. Slept on an overnight train.
21. Had a pillow fight. 
22. Hitchhiked. (With my dad, because we ran out of gas.)
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.
24. Built a snow fort. (And had it collapse on me.)
25. Held a lamb.
26. Gone skinny dipping.
27. Run a Marathon.
28. Ridden a Gondola in Venice.
29. Seen a total eclipse.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.
31. Hit a home run.
32. Been on a cruise.
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors.
35. Seen an Amish community.
36. Taught yourself a new language.
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied. (I'm satisfied with what I have, but the satisfaction isn't really monetarily rooted.)
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person.
39. Gone rock climbing. (Clambering up without gear on real rocks, with gear on indoor rocks. Still in pain sometimes from an incident on my last outing...I'm so hardcore/clumsy.)
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David.
41. Sung karaoke.
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.
43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant.
44. Visited Africa.
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
46. Been transported in an ambulance. (Yeah, this one is weird, I admit. And I don't want to pay for it or actually need to be in it, really...but I want to ride in one, absolutely.)
47. Had your portrait painted.
48. Gone deep sea fishing.
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person.
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. (I only went to the second floor, but wouldn't mind going to the third if I were there again.)
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling.
52. Kissed in the rain.
53. Played in the mud. (Yay, Calvin Mud Bowl!)
54. Gone to a drive-in theater.
55. Been in a movie.
56. Visited the Great Wall of China.
57. Started a business.
58. Taken a martial arts class.
59. Visited Russia.
60. Served at a soup kitchen.
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies.
62. Gone whale watching.
63. Gotten flowers for no reason. (From a co-worker's husband...and there WAS a reason, it was because his company had extra sitting around that he brought in for everybody at our office.)
64. Donated blood, platelets, or plasma.
65. Gone sky diving.
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.
67. Bounced a check.
68. Flown in a helicopter.
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy. 
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.
71. Eaten Caviar.
72. Pieced a quilt.
73. Stood in Times Square.
74. Toured the Everglades. (I've been, but it wasn't exactly "touring.")
75. Been fired from a job. (More like "let go from a temp position," but still.)
76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.
77. Broken a bone. (Mine, or someone else's? Haha, just kidding...neither.)
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.
80. Published a book.
81. Visited the Vatican.
82. Bought a brand new car.
83. Walked in Jerusalem.
84. Had your picture in the newspaper.
85. Read the entire Bible.
86. Visited the White House. (As in saw it from outside.)
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.
88. Had chickenpox.
89. Saaaaaved someone’s life. (I added those extra vowels.)
90. Sat on a jury.
91. Met someone famous.
92. Joined a book club.
93. Lost a loved one.
94. Had a baby. (Would I like to have children someday? Yes. Would I like to have one biologically? I don't think so.)
95. Seen the Alamo in person. (I may actually have done this...if so, it was when I was really little. I don't quite remember.)
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake.
97. Been involved in a law suit.
98. Owned a cell phone.
99. Been stung by a bee.

Public Tears (Wedding Post #3)

When I was a little girl, I would see my mother crying at the drop of a hat and something about it bothered me. I was not going to grow up and be that person. I was not going to cry in public, to let people see my feelings that swiftly. I was going to be strong.

It turned out, of course, that this was one of the things that irritated me so forcefully because I could sense something of myself in it. Still, I worked on not crying for a long time. I would rub my eyes surreptitiously at emotional scenes in movies. I would save whatever tears I had for whatever reason until I was behind closed doors. I would not cry much even when family members died...not in public, anyway. I had to be strong. 

I am becoming increasingly convinced that nobody really needs us to be strong, or impressive, or even right. While those may all be good things in the proper context, what we really need, deeply and desperately, is honesty paired with love.

Honestly? Anyone who cares to look can probably see my emotions rippling just under my skin. Probably people would rather see me cry than experience me lashing out in frustrated self-protection. And letting myself cry in public is another way of acknowledging I rely on Someone beyond myself to protect me.

I cried a fair bit over the wedding weekend. Weddings are emotional at any time, and with it being a family wedding it was even more so. Then there was the fact that it was the most Christ-centered wedding service I've ever witnessed, and the beauty of it and the hope of it and the glory of it were so magnificent that tears of joy and of longing were the only appropriate response to what was resonating through my heart.

After the wedding, my mom said, "You were having a hard time up there." 

"I was crying," I said. "But I wasn't having a hard time."

What we have a hard time with is dealing with tears. We want them to go away. We want to fix things, to make things "better." We want to pat people on the shoulder and give them pitying looks, which generally doesn't fix anything at all but may drive wounds further under the surface. It's up to God to dry every tear, not us. And not now. Here, now, our tears can sometimes be our sacrifices, sacrifices of gratitude, of contrition, of love. Don't try to stop that. Be there for people, but be careful not to confuse your discomfort with another person's, of stopping the flow of communion with God with a hastily proffered Kleenex. (I'm writing this to myself as well.)

I am weak, but it doesn't mean I am helpless. He is my help. And He is strong.

"You'll just know." (Wedding Post #2)

My revelation on the way out to Metamora (see last post) was well timed, because I got a fair amount of sideways "it's okay you're not married and someday you might still be" comments over the weekend of the wedding. This is the sort of thing that happens when people start to think it's really not okay, or that maybe you think it's not okay. Kind of like how ever since the age of about 26, every birthday brings a few "you're still young yet" comments. I've never heard anybody say that to an 18-year-old.

A whole conversation on the merits of online dating sprung up in the room where some of the wedding party gathered while Jeremiah and Dorothy were in the receiving line. Again, it's the sort of conversation that comes up more frequently as I get older. But maybe I'm paranoid. Maybe it's just because online dating is becoming more prevalent. Maybe they're not trying to imply that I've got to get on this "singleness" problem right now in whatever way I can. In all fairness, they didn't come straight out and tell me to join eHarmony. "You'll be going along minding your own business," one of the bride's attendants said, "and all of sudden...you'll just know."

This must be something that only makes sense to the people who "just know." I have never understood it. And I mean never. 

When I was a little girl playing Barbies, the Ken doll would propose and Barbie would say, "I'm going to need a week or two to think about it." Barbie understood that this was a major, life-changing decision, and not one to be taken lightly.

When Wonder Woman was choosing which superhero to marry (this is the sort of thing that happens when your little brother decides he doesn't want to play Barbies with you anymore...he puts up with you dragging typical little girl storylines across toy genres), she would hesitate: "With a mask, or without a mask?" Wonder Woman didn't believe in soulmates or One True Loves.

And this was before I ever encountered a real life couple who had "just known" and then had just changed their minds.

Probably what they mean, all these people who say "you'll just know," is that it is one of those moments of knowing that reinvents everything that came before it...one of those moments, like the experience of grace, that gives you a new perspective. One of those moments that makes the years of not knowing seem insignificant. 

Come to think of it, I have known my share of those.

First Sight (in Retrospect)

he was funny-looking

shallow

dull-witted

she was obnoxious

abrasive

boring

they were uncaring

fawning

impossible

you were annoyed

isolationist

self-righteous

when suddenly

laughably

the victor began rewriting history

G.O.A.T. (or, Wedding Weekend Post #1)

(Oh, so much to post from last weekend! I decided to do it in installments instead of cramming everything into one post, so they'll be trickling through.)

I was feeling mopey on my way to my parents' house on Tuesday afternoon. My little brother would be getting married in a few days. I was nowhere close to getting married. Because nobody ever liked me. Because I wasn't as whatever as the other girls who got married. Whine, whine; angst, angst.

Way back when I was a kid I heard that humility was a virtue and I translated humility as "putting yourself down so nobody thinks you're good at anything." (I've said it before and I'll say it again: kids might not be hearing what you are actually trying to say.) For the past two decades or so I've tried the self-deprecating route. It's never made me feel better, and it's left me kind of confused. I think it's because you get confused when you lie to yourself.

Because, as I was singing along to my music and dancing in my car and in general being ridiculous, I felt a smile come onto my face and this little voice said, "Who are you kidding? You think you're amazing."

Let's be honest. I'm not dealing with a lack of self-esteem. I'm dealing with a perceived deficit in how much other people esteem me, because I think they should be crazy about me. Because I have mad writing skills and a quick wit and an intellect to rival the Sicilian's and a penchant for random references and nerd pride and, and, and...and I enjoy that. All of that.

Am I perfect? No. (Duh. Raise your hand if you've met somebody who's perfect and I'll raise my hand if I spot any liars.) But the Holy Spirit is working in me towards that goal. Do I want to turn from self-deprecation to wallow in utter conceit, or use "it's who I am" as a shield of pride to ward off needed changes? No. But I don't want to be somebody else. I do want to make the most of who I am. To dig down to the core of the uniqueness that is me and shine it up to the glory of God, who made each one of us unique. Each one of us has something a little different to bring, and I want to bring what I have.

In thinking about how people might not like me for whatever reason, I realized that I'm not even really mopey about that. Mostly I'm just frustrated when other people don't show a willingness to fight to love me like I fight to love them (not that it's always a fight, but sometimes it is).

As for how all that relates to the bit about me not being married, well.... 

They had a bouquet toss at the wedding reception. My cousin and I got up and stood in the back. When we returned to our seats, our grandmother joked, "You didn't even try!" 

I replied, "I have self-respect. I don't jump for flowers...somebody needs to come and hand them to me." 

Granted, I'm probably very intimidating to anybody interested in trying. 

I enjoy that bit, too.

Giving Thanks

Last Sunday I asked my first grade class what they were thankful for.

"Nothing," came the first smirky response.

"Nothing," I said. "You have absolutely nothing in your life that you enjoy."

"Ice cream!" he said.

One boy ran through a list of all the kids in class he liked, starting with his best friend, continuing through most of the other boys in the class, and ending with, "...and even the teacher." Which was actually kind of sweet coming from that particular kid.

Some of the kids broke out their Sunday School answers: "God and Jesus!" said one boy.

"Good," I said. "What about them?"

The boy looked panicked, then came up with, "Well, they're Christians...and they're the same person...."

We attempted a small bit of theology adjusting on the "they're Christians" score, but it was a good start. Because it's sure a lot easier to rattle off God and/or Jesus in a list of things you're thankful for than it is to think about why you're thankful for either/both.

Thankfulness is something that takes mental effort, sometimes. It's a choice of focus. I could choose to dwell on all the things I want that I still don't have, and all the reasons I might not have them. Or I could think about how I always, always get what I need, and how what I want and what I need are intersecting more and more frequently.

The first choice spirals me down towards depression, and the second brings a smile to my face and peace to my heart. (Why, then, is that choice sometimes hard? Doesn't it seem ludicrously simple?)

I have so much to be thankful for this year. I know you do, too. If it doesn't seem like it right now, just search for it. You'll find it.

Things old and new

I am a writer. And I should write more fiction, in whatever form presents itself, because if I don't have that kind of outlet I tend to write my life. "I will say this, and then so-and-so will say that, and then I will reply...." I can get very invested in these shadow extensions of people with familiar faces. More than once I've mourned when reality dissolved them. More than once I've held back from people out of the fear of simply inventing them to my liking.

I am a reader. Maybe I should have read less, because somewhere along the line I got the idea that I could read real people as easily as fictional people. It turns out that real people are far more independent than fictional people, and I've read them wrongly with enough frequency that I no longer put full confidence in my ability to read them at all.

I am an analyzer, a pattern-finder. I should remember, in an "active remembering" sort of way, that things as they were do not equal things as they are, or vice versa. I am not doomed to repeat all the same patterns I've fallen into so often before. No matter how much it feels like I am stuck in a time loop in which only external details change (underneath, the same emotions; the same thought patterns; the same sins).

I am becoming a fighter. Even if it means struggling uphill all the way, I won't let my worst tendencies master me. I will not pretend to know what you're going to do. I won't presume to know what you're thinking and will trust what you tell me. I will have faith in a God who can break patterns, interrupt cycles, turn the very sun back in its path. And if I've prayed all these times for these thorns to be removed and they have not been, I will not have the arrogance to assume that I can thwart the power of God by not believing in just the right way. His grace is sufficient. His power is perfected in weakness.

No matter how I feel from day to day, I am new. (2 Cor. 5:7)

Anybody...

...want one of these?

It's kind of hilarious to me that they exist.

Spiritual Warfare

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm." (Ephesians 6:10-13)

Somehow in growing up I got the idea that the spiritual forces thing was kind of over. No more miracles, no more demons after you. That was all from the Bible, and since the Bible was now complete, God handed the world over to science. Which was kind of nice, because I like when things are visible and in my face. I've not been very good at picking up on subtlety. I've read the wrong things into just about everything I could.

Then I had a good friend, Jolene, who talked about the spiritual realm as though it were as real as anything she could see. She would pray earnestly for deliverance from oppressive spiritual forces. She didn't leave the house without praying on the armor of God.

Personally, I was afraid that I would confuse oppressive spiritual forces with stuff that makes me uncomfortable, or things my senses tricked me into. I didn't want to be praying away a demon that was really only a piece of undigested bit of beef.

Lately I've been thinking that God doesn't mind me praying away the undigested bit of beef, either. But I've also been noticing a trend. It seems that when I promise God I will do my best for Him in a particular area, or when I make a public proclamation of a truth I cling to, clutter starts accumulating. Someone tells me news I didn't want to hear. Traffic lights are all red when I get to them. I forget to put something I needed on my grocery list. Old worries rattle around with new ones. Thorns grow up around the new plant sprung from seeds of the Gospel. 

I am starting to realize that my weapons are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses (2 Cor. 10:4). And I am beginning to see you, invisible foes. 

You shall not pass.

Asking, seeking, knocking, expecting

Whenever I go to visit my grandmother, she's always trying to give me things. She will buy extra food so that I can take it home. She will rummage through closets for a sweater I can wear and then tell me I can keep that, too. She pays for lunches and dinners and show tickets and whatnot.

Her daughter, my mom, is like this as well. My mom likes to shop at Goodwill (or Kohl's, or most anywhere there's a bargain advertised), and she's constantly picking up things that remind her of me. She rarely comes to visit without a bag full of things she has for me to look at or a basket of laundry she's done for me. She'll send me home with food almost every time I go visit my parents.

I used to brush these things off. "No, Grandma, I don't need that pudding." "Mom, I can't think of anything I could possibly ever want from that store." Why should I make them spend their money on me when I didn't even need anything? But eventually one day I realized from their disappointed expressions that what they wanted me to say was something more like, "Thank you for thinking of me. I will accept the food/clothing/random gift you are offering me because what it is to you is not just a thing, it's a way of showing love. And if accepting graciously is me loving you and not me taking advantage of you, that's what I will do." (Okay, they didn't really want me to say all that. But that's the gist of it, I think.)

This last time I visited my grandmother, it hit me: God is like her and my mom. He doesn't want me to stand back saying I have everything I need and couldn't possibly want anything else, thanks anyway. He wants me coming to him like a child. And one of the things children do is ask you for things without thinking about if it's proper for them to do so, or if you have the time, or the resources, or the desire to grant the request. 

God's not like me. He doesn't worry about whether or not our relationship is balanced, whether or not we're giving equally or loving each other equally (and all praise to Him for that!). He is not hesitant about blessing me beyond all I could ask or imagine, whether I ask for it or not. But I think He wants me to imagine good things, the best things I can, and to ask for those; and to wait with my eyes closed and my hands held out, expecting to get what I asked for or better.

He's not the God of second-best or of disappointing results. It's high time I stopped living like He was.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!" (Matthew 7:7-11)

Random Fact

I used to hate static electricity a lot more before Elle was introduced in the second season of Heroes. Now I often run my hand purposefully along metallic surfaces and approach file cabinet corners palm first.

It's fun in my world.

Dangerous Prayers

I may have mentioned this before, but I prayed one of those dangerous prayers again. About this time last year, I prayed for God to give me peace in unusual situations I'd never dealt with before, and within about a month my brother began dating the woman who will soon become his wife (shout-out to Dorothy, in case she's reading this: way to be an answer to prayer; I'm sure it won't be the last time).

About a month ago, I prayed for God to protect my heart, to take away my useless dragon scales I try so hard to pull back around me, to take my controlling hands away from my life, and to bring me to full recognition of His control (all clauses of the same prayer). Since then, God has brought a bunch of issues up in a roiling boil. 

A few weeks ago, it was the election. How much trust was I putting in laws written on paper by humans instead of laws written on hearts by God? How much confidence was I putting in God's sovereignty over all things? How hard was I willing to fight for harmony with fellow citizens of a kingdom far greater than any on earth? 

Post-election, there's the youth group banquet. This has been "my" thing for about five or six years and it has been my major theatrical outlet. This year, somebody else not only came up with the main idea but wants to be involved in its execution. Also, two people sometimes more popular and almost entirely always more laid back and thus possibly more inherently likable than I am are competing for the leader spotlight.

This afternoon, I pondered how tightly my identity had gotten wrapped up in this annual church youth group event, how much prouder I was of it than I thought, how much I liked basking in the affection of any youth group kids willing to offer it, how supplanted I felt. I was still thinking about this when I got to church tonight...and found the guest pastor had changed his sermon from "Godly Grief" to "Godly Boasting."

He said boasting in the Lord means...

...we praise God for whatever He does through us.

...we don't boast based on comparison with others.

...we don't exaggerate our strengths.

...we don't take credit for what we didn't accomplish.

...we value the Lord's opinion above any others.

God is the only one worth impressing, he said. God is the only one who gives you worth, he said. We can have peace with ourselves through peace with God...it will never come from the adulation of others.

Again with the timing of God.

This banquet is not (should not be) about how awesome Suzanne is. Or how awesome the other leaders are. Or the performers, or the cooks, or whoever. We're doing this to raise funds for ministry, not fuel our egos.

Also, thinking that people only have room in their hearts for one person, and that if they care about somebody else they can't also care about me, is pretty shallow. Especially considering I've been increasingly experiencing the reverse: that the more deeply my love is based on God's love for me, the more people I can love deeply.

And what if some focus is being taken off this creative outlet because it's time for me to stretch my creative self in other ways? 

I don't know what else the Holy Spirit is going to be doing in my life this year, but what I do know is this: it's going to be something amazing.

Timing is everything

Yesterday I went out to the company warehouse to organize boxes. I was feeling very sorry for myself about current events in my life, and then suddenly I heard the receiving foreman saying to the truck driver who had just come by to pick up a truckload of foam: "Jesus Christ was in the tomb for three days and He rose again."

My heart jumped. Immediately I was tuned into their conversation. They talked about trusting God and praising God at all times: in good health and bad, strong economic situations and shaky ones.

"It is not by accident that I am in the warehouse right now," I thought, and I almost cried at the encouragement that was pouring over my soul as I was reminded (again): God's timing is right. God knows where I will be, and for what reason, and He leads me along where I need to go. I barely see the next footstep, but He sees the whole path...and gives light for one step at a time because that's all I can take, anyway. And He uses people even when they don't know it.

"Keep that church on wheels moving!" the foreman called out cheerfully as the driver left, then turned to me. "Did you see his truck?"

We went to the door and looked out at the semi parked at the dock. "JESUS IS LORD," it proclaimed in big red letters.

"Amen!" I said. 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.

For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, he on whom we have set our hope. 

And he will yet deliver us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed upon us through the prayers of many.

~~ I Corinthians 1:3-11

My heart is burdened beyond my strength, and I don't want to keep people unaware of it until it starts crushing me again, like it did before when I was relying so heavily on my own strength. I am faced with things I am not and things I want to be and everything is swirling around in my head faster and faster and I am fighting for perspective to see past this moment.

He will yet deliver me; please join in helping me through your prayers to the glory of God.

I'm pretending that Brittany tagged me for this one-word meme. Because these sorts of things cheer me up somehow, and lately I take what I can get in that department.

Where is your mobile phone? Desk
Where is your significant other? Dawdling
Your hair colour? Brown
Your mother? Smiles
Your father? Laughs
Your favorite thing? Many
Your dream last night? Unremembered
Your dream goal? Write
The room you’re in? Messy
Your hobby? Nerdy
Your fear? Failure
Where do you want to be in 6 years? Beyond
Where were you last night? Jen's
What you’re not? Telepathic
One of your wish-list items? Tower
Where you grew up? East
The last thing you did? When?
What are you wearing? Red
Your TV? Old
Your pets? Gorgeous
Your computer? Shiny
Your mood? Drained
Missing someone? Yes
Your car? Honda!
Something you’re not wearing? Monocle
Favorite shop? Pet
Your summer? *woosh*
Love someone? Improving
Your favourite colour? Blue
When is the last time you laughed? Tonight
When is the last time you cried? *sigh*

Well, that was fun. Even though it ended on a crying note. Come on, meme-writers, you're supposed to be cheering people up.

My Shtick (or part of it, anyway)

I am hyper-concerned about image and I hate it. It is a constant struggle for me to place God at the center of my striving and let people feel the outpourings of that love that I want to surpass all other loves, especially the self-love that comes so easily.

Crazy example? Okay.

Tonight we auditioned a bunch of youth group kids for roles in the annual fundraising banquet. One of the roles was "the ugly girl." And I got my back up because I'm very sensitive about ugly girls. I don't think we should be so concerned about image. Why? Partly because, as mentioned, I'm hyper-concerned about image, and when people talk about physical appearance a lot I feel all shrivelly and gross. (This is not a bid for compliments on my appearance, it's a confession of self-idolatry, which is the most insatiable form I've ever encountered.)

And then I have to be at least twice as funny to make up for my perceived lack of gorgeousness. Which is good because "funny" is one of the power plays I have down so people will like me. In my interview for church membership, I was hilarious.

Am I always funny to make people like me? I hope not. I hope that more and more often I'm simply exercising a gift to bring enjoyment to self and others. Do I actually think I'm ugly? Parts of me, sometimes, and certainly not as infrequently as I should. (Oh, but sometimes I think I'm all that and then some.)

Seriously? I am a ridiculous human being. I think we probably all have this part in common. My goal is to be a more and more sincere human being...and that includes being sincere about my ridiculous bits. 

Someday all of me--physical appearance and humor and skill sets and all--all of me will be focused on the right things, the right Person, and then it will bring joy to others and to me in ways I can't even imagine now.

Today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and until that someday--I fight.

So my brother's getting married this month....

I thought I would be married by now. As a kid, I mean, that's what I thought. If you had told me that my little brother would be getting married before I'd ever dated, and that even he would be nearing 28 by the time this happened.... Well, that just wasn't possible. Because you grew up, started dating, got married, had kids. That is how life worked. 

Except not really. Really, life worked (works) like this: God sets the schedule, not me. God sets the agenda. 

And God let me fall on my face where my original agenda was concerned (a lot). He let me try out different angles and adjust my paradigm based on past experience and attempt to work out a nice safe scientific theory that covered all the variables and eliminated all potential problems. Then he knocked that one over and let me start again. And again. And again.

He let this happen until I was thoroughly content with being unmarried forever, and then he brought my future sister-in-law into the picture and showed me how big of a liar I can be, even to myself. He let me see contentment in all circumstances wasn't about feeling perfectly fulfilled in all circumstances. He let me think about where I expected that perfect fulfillment to come from, anyway, and when.

He let me ponder the myriad ways other people could let me down, the myriad ways I could let myself and others down, and led me into pondering why I was so concerned about the harm any of us could do to each other, why I was clinging to my dragon scale armor when he gave me his own and sized it to fit me (or perhaps me to fit it).

He let me make my lists, back in the college days, of what I was looking for in a guy (how tall/smart/funny/etc. he should be), so I could see from here how thoroughly worthless most of the list was, how impossible it is for a human to fill my needs, how harmful to myself and others to lean on them so hard.

He let me rush in like a fool so I would appreciate the virtue and wisdom of being still, of waiting.

He made "I give up" and "I don't know" important and precious sayings in my life, inasmuch as they relate to giving up the hurtful things and not presuming to know all things.

For instance, I don't know whether or not I'll ever be married. But I give up on making marital status an indication of extra-special blessing I haven't earned yet, and also on making it something that I can't even think about until I've reached some mystical goal point in my spiritual life. 

Am I free of all my fears about commitment? No. Am I going to start introducing myself to every unattached male I see? No. Am I attracted to the idea of marriage?

If it looks like this, I am.

Election day thoughts

The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD;

he turns it wherever he will.

~~ Proverbs 21:1

Nothing takes God by surprise.

No differences of opinion confuse him.

No political zealot sways him from his intended purpose, but the prayers of his people are effective and accomplish much...more by far than you can ask or imagine.

In a time of rising political unrest, with all eyes on Rome, Christ came to be born in a small town to politically insignificant parents. He was the most important event in history, and the only savior of any country. (When ticker-tape parades are over, every elected official eventually becomes human.)

He cares about national politics, but he's more concerned about individual hearts.

And when you ask him to show you your heart and to take guarding it out of your hands, he can be amazingly quick to respond. (He is dangerous.)

So get some sleep, Suzanne. He doesn't need your worrying to save the world. He is already using you in ways you may never know (and some that you may), and there are greater things to come. Know your place, and know that it is under his protection and care.

Peace. Be still.

A different kingdom

When the Israelites asked for a king "like all the nations," God told Samuel he'd give them one. But he told him to warn them: that kind of king wouldn't be what they thought he'd be. 

Sure, Saul was tall and charismatic and popular. So were a lot of Israel's kings, no doubt. But God warned the people that their kings would look out for themselves first and their friends second; that they would raise taxes higher and higher; that their administrations would balloon out of control.

Sound familiar? It should.  This is what happens with human rulers. Even now, even here in the United States, where our form of government is far more free than that of other nations. This is what happens.

I haven't been watching political ads much this year. They used to make me angry, but this year they make my heart ache. Every ad promises that a better life hinges on which candidate you vote for. Every ad promises change. Every ad promises more than any human being has a right to promise, let alone the ability to follow through on.

Every ad sounds like offering cosmetic surgery to cancer patients.

John McCain may be able to keep the troops in Iraq, but he will not be able to stop terrorism. Barack Obama may be able to change your health care plan, but he will not be able to keep you healthy. They are right: we need change. They are wrong about the kind of change we need most.

No matter who is elected on Tuesday, on Wednesday morning there will be people who wake up hating each other. There will be people who wake up with physical illnesses, people who wake up apathetic about their jobs, concerned about their relationships, afraid of what will happen to them in this economy. People with, at the ground level, the same concerns that people had back in the founding days of the United States. Or in the founding days of the nation of Israel, for that matter.

Who is going to protect us? Who is going to look out for us? Who is going to make us look good to everybody else?

Two thousand years ago, along came this blue collar worker from a backwoods town, with no ad campaign to speak of except for some guy dressed in camel skins. He didn't address the problems people brought to him, he told them they only really had one problem.

Our problem isn't that we don't look good enough. We don't need nose jobs or tummy tucks. Our problem is that we are not good enough. Like cancer, which turns the body's cells against themselves, our very selves are operating at odds to the way they are meant to operate. (It is said that, when asked to write an essay on what was wrong with the world, G.K. Chesterton replied, "I am.")

We stand guilty before God of violating our purposes. Our hearts need to be changed.  And only God can do it...so it's a good thing he's already offered: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (Exodus 36:26).

There is only one physician capable of this kind of heart transplant, and of cleansing us of the cancer of self-righteousness. The only conditions? That we acknowledge that we can't do it ourselves and that we ask him to do it for us. That we stop trying on our own and do it his way. It isn't painless; no surgery is. But there's no other cure.

If you'd rather opt for cosmetic change, there is no end to your options. Two men and their running mates have been throwing some of those at you for months now.

"The kingdom of God has come to you," the blue collar worker named Jesus said (Luke 11:20). And this kingdom is about power, not fancy speeches (I Cor. 4:20).

I'm so tired of fancy speeches.

Dark Phoenix Rising

Lately I've been feeling like Dark Phoenix. Yeah, from the X-Men. (I identify with fictional characters on a level nobody else I know of has ever been on.) There is a lot simmering in my heart and mind and soul just now, and some days it feels like I'm hovering on the edge of a psychic break.

"What are you talking about?" the non-X-Men-literate among you ask, quite probably while shaking your head fondly all the same (I'm thinking of a few of you in particular here). Well, once there was a woman named Jean Grey who had the powers of telepathy and telekinesis.  Through a series of strenuous events it eventually became clear that Jean was far more powerful than she thought she was, and that she and her mentor had been blocking off that power because it was confusing and frightening and she didn't know how to handle it. But then the psychic break happened and she became Dark Phoenix, all that power unleashed, not suppressed anymore but also not under proper control.

Sometimes I feel like I am more than what I have settled for, that there are things I could have and be with a simple flex of power running just under my skin. And feeling powerful scares me. I'm afraid of turning into Dark Phoenix, that my judgment isn't strong enough to temper my abilities, that I could destroy just as soon as create, wound as soon as heal.

But you could also argue that pretending the power wasn't there was what started the Dark Phoenix problem in the first place.

It's all very confusing, even to me, and I live in this head. (There are days I can't help but think that my life must make more sense from the outside.) So if you're confused now, too, I certainly can't blame you for it. 

Things I Don't Get #56: Spiky Hair

Okay, okay...I don't really have a list of things I don't get. And I did just randomly pick that number. But it's true that I don't understand the current male obsession with spiky hair, which to me includes any form of hairstyle in which the hair carries too much product to actually move.

I say "current obsession" like it hasn't been around for a while. I don't actually know how long it has been around, because I was home-schooled and thus insulated from trends, but I know that my first exposure to it was when I was about sixteen and the ten-year-old boys I took TaeKwon-Do with were sporting the spiky hair. I used to pat them on the head and mock them for their vanity and for the fact that I could almost slice my hand open on that crusty mess.

Flash-forward to the present, and the crusty spiky look is everywhere. Last night, for instance, I saw a guy walking around Meijer with his hair spiked up so much a bird landing on his head could be killed. (Maybe he fears birds. Maybe the hairstyle is defensive.) 

Despite thirteen years of increasing exposure to it, I still think spiky hair looks ridiculous. This could be more nurture than anything else...neither my father nor my brother has ever gone in much for that sort of thing. I don't mock people for it anymore because it's been a trend for so long it's practically normal now. It's morphed almost completely into "something I personally think looks silly" from "something I mock you for because you're only following the crowd." Also, most boys who were ten when I was sixteen are now too tall for me to pat them condescendingly on the head and crack some of their hair product loose. The mocking just wouldn't be the same, somehow.

Besides, it might take me three tries to wash the gel off my hands.

New Works by Old Friends

Last weekend my alma mater, Calvin College, put on a production called New Works by Old Friends. It was a selection of 10-minute plays written by alumni, and mine was one of them. As in, I wrote one. Very few people caught on to that right away when I would mention "my play." They thought I might be directing something, or maybe acting in something ("Oh, you mean Midsummer Night's Dream?" one girl asked me after hearing "my play"). Writers fly under the radar...though possibly still not as far under as the tech crew. I've never been on tech crew, so I can't be sure.

I've written skits for youth group presentations before, but this was different. People would be auditioning for the chance to be in this play, not drafted into it against their will. Also, the writing of the play was the extent of my creative control. No one consulted me on my vision or asked me what I meant by one line or another. I had no input in casting, staging, anything. This was exciting in that I love that theatre is a collaborative art, and all of the imaginations involved bounce off each other and create something greater than the sum of the parts. This was terrifying in that I wondered if that sum would be recognizable. 

What if my writing didn't stand up under outside examination? What if what I thought was clear was actually obscure? Or what if all the people I had told in my initial excitement piled in to see the play, found that they didn't like it at all, and felt they had to come up with something nice to say that I could tell was spoken out of pity? 

There was a lot of internal wrestling over these questions and the larger question of where they were coming from in the first place, but I won't get into that now. Now, what matters most is that none of my doubts were justified, and more than all of my hopes were. From the moment my portion of the show began on Friday night, I knew that. My play had taken on a life outside of me. It had been processed by a director and a pair of actresses, all very talented young women, and it was being taken in by an audience. It was an incredible experience. 

(It was the first theatrical experience my little buddy Lucas ever had, too...he did very well for a two-year-old. I was proud of him. My favorite part of him being there was when he tapped the back of my chair because he wanted to hold my hand.)

Saturday night they gave me a name tag to wear that said "playwright" on it, and they had all the playwrights in attendance come up on stage after the show. This was far less comfortably incognito than Friday night had been, but it was kind of fun in a ridiculously surreal way. And then after it was all over I got to spend time with Calvin friends I haven't seen in ages.

I'm so glad I got to do this, and that it came this year. I couldn't have written this play any earlier than this year and had it have nearly the depth and truth it has. I received so much encouraging feedback last weekend that has encouraged me to hope for...well, for more than I was settling for. I could keep going with all the mental and emotional and spiritual stuff that was/is bubbling up because of this play, but I don't feel I could do it justice at this point. 

To sum up, it was quite possibly the best weekend I can ever remember having in my entire life.

Seven Things

 My friend Beth tagged me on a blog challenge I had never seen before. I've seen more than my fair share of blog challenges and never get tired of them, so this is hard to do. Props to Beth. Rules: Write 7 little-known facts about yourself and then tag 7 other people to do the same.

1.  I can't remember a time before I could read.

2.  I can't remember a time before I was writing something or other. One of my earliest works (self-illustrated) featured a pair of parrots who got everything I wanted at the time, including a doll house. Someday this might be worth millions, so I hope my parents have it in a box somewhere.

3.  I enjoy cooking once I get going on it, especially with a long day ahead of me and a lot of throwing random things together. ("What's in this cupboard? Oh, I'll use some of that, too!") Of course, I can also be mind-numbingly lazy when it comes to food and do something like finish off a jar of peanut butter for dinner. Just eating it off a spoon, not with bread or crackers. I don't recommend this.

4.  I've never tried to hide this, but apparently it's still a little-known fact: my general dislike of dirt and danger is not a result of age (twenty-nine is really not that old in the grand scheme of things). I have never been a fan of dirt and danger. As far as that goes, my personality was pretty firmly formed by the age of eight. I can break out of my usual spheres by choice, and usually enjoy myself, but I only get more rigid if I feel badgered to the point of insecurity.

5.  I have found that I usually get most irritated at someone when they are displaying character traits that I myself have/repress.

6.  My favorite part(s) of living alone: having dance parties and crying at whatever I want to and singing randomly to myself and not having anybody around to mock my weirdness. 

7.  My favorite friends embrace and enhance the weirdness.

Okay, I'm going to tag the following people: Kerri, Sabrina, Brittany, Abby, Stephenie, Lisa, and Jessie (Beth tagged her already, but it's been months since she blogged so I think she needs an extra nudge).

(I will post something about last weekend before the end of the week. I'm still processing the awesomeness.)

Interpretation

I write a lot of fanfiction. Sometimes I get quality reviews, even quality critiques. And sometimes I get reviews that say things like this: "Sorry to say, but that's kinda sad. But otherwise, good job." Sad happened to be what I was going for in that fic, and I thought I warned people about it upfront by including the word "angsty" in the summary. 

When I read reviews, I find that things which are perfectly obvious to me are not obvious to everyone. Sometimes I read the story over again and I can see that the flaw is in the writing, that I failed to accomplish what I was trying to accomplish. Sometimes, as in the case above, the flaw seems to be in the interpretation.

Granted, interpreting some of my writing might be a little difficult to people who come to fanfiction sites to read about their favorite characters making out (there are lots of these people out there). The story, the characters, the themes sometimes hover between the lines. I don't like to be thoroughly obvious in any form of writing because I like to make people do a little digging, which in turn is because I like to dig myself. My favorite writers of all types write in a slightly oblique fashion, making things a little difficult. Life isn't easy, and not all of us really want it to be.

I have been thinking a lot about interpretation this week. This weekend, for the first time ever, a play I wrote will be in performance. There will be three layers of interpretation between my original intent and the end result: the director, the actors, and the audience. This is as it should be, but I wonder...what will people see?

Friends have been asking me what I want their reactions to be, and up to now I have been unable to formulate a proper response. But every time I've tried to give it a shot, because the way I think about the reactions of others is broader than the scope of this weekend. So if you're coming to see New Works by Old Friends, and curious about what I want from you, here's my go at it for tonight:

I want you to be you. 

One of the downfalls of my creative side has been that I have tended to script life. I'll say such and such, and you'll say such and such, and I'll throw you this witty remark, and you'll give me this certain look, and I'll...etc., etc., etc.

I'm tired of that. I want people to be honest. I don't want to tell them what to feel or say or think. I want to interact with them in real life, not direct them in my own personal mental theatre. If I can keep my character inventions confined to the page, that will be a much more useful way to channel creative energy that has previously been wasted inventing scenarios featuring invented people who wear familiar faces.

~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~

Speaking of familiar faces reminds me of a story about the opposite. Tonight I went to see the fabulous Deborah Lew perform at Calvin. While there, two girls I'd never seen before approached me.

"Are you Suzanne Winter?" they asked.

"Yes," I said, panicking briefly and wondering how they could possibly know...oh, right, my publicity photo for the play, probably from....

"I'm directing your play," said one, introducing herself. 

"We're both producers for the show, too," said the other, also introducing herself.

Note that I can't remember their names. I am not proud of this, and their names will definitely be the first ones I look up when I get the program in my hands tomorrow night, but my brain seriously short-circuited at being approached by strangers while I was alone. I am glad that for Friday and Saturday there will be people I know around. I can be a lot more extroverted when people I'm comfortable with are somewhere close by.

Road Trip!

This Friday I will be leaving on a road trip up to Houghton to visit my friends Abby and Ryan. I will be riding in a car with four other people. For about nine hours. One way. I'm not a fan of road trips, in general, but I'm trying to reason with myself that this trip will be fun. The following are some pros and cons. Let's start with a con.

I'm not a big fan of driving. I just want to be there, already. Driving is such a waste of time. You can't multitask at all. Well, you can't multitask very safely. I have in fact written out checks, wedding cards, and grocery lists while at the wheel. I have compiled said grocery list from flipping through a flyer. I have read the next page of my book, or the next chapter. Granted, all of this was (mostly) while traffic was stopped at stop lights or really long construction delays, but it's still probably not the safest thing ever.

On the other hand, driving with people is a much safer form of multitasking. You get to socialize while traveling. And if you're not the one driving because you're riding with people who actually like to drive, you can read or make lists or write checks with no major repercussions on the horizon other than maybe a little bit of carsickness.

I do get a little carsick sometimes when I sit in the back seat. Just in the nauseated sort of way. This comes from seven years in which I've mostly driven myself everywhere.

On the other hand, I have these acupressure wristbands that look like something out of a movie from the 1980's. They work. I won't have to spend the whole trip trying to sleep my way through the carsickness.

Speaking of sleeping, on the long trip down to Pennsylvania I have the back seat to myself. This means I can stretch out for naps. On the trip to Houghton, I won't be able to do that. I'll likely be sharing the back seat with two other people for the whole trip.

On the other hand, these two people I'm thinking of are Lisa and Mara. If I fall asleep leaning against the seat behind me and end up against one of their shoulders, it won't be awkward.

And then there might be sing-alongs, and reading out loud, and trying out our Office character skills, and those really deep conversations you can get into in a dark car when nobody has to make eye contact with anybody else. And at the end of the trip there are two friends waiting for us, and a weekend full of both invading each other's space in ways that will be good for the practice of patience and of spending time together in ways I love.

Sometimes I just need to talk myself into things to realize how great they are.

I don't get it

When I was 8, I spent a lot of time in “junior church.” Junior church, for those who haven’t been, is sort of like youth group, but for kids. So there is some attempt at having lessons and meaningful discussions, but mostly the kids get to run around and goof off in the basement, which is something those in the sanctuary above us would have frowned upon had we been up there.

I have a lot of junior church stories, because apparently most of my childhood church memories come from Oak Park. And I’m sure I’ve told the following story before, but it is one of the most prescient stories of my childhood, so it keeps coming up.

After the lesson, the free time was often spent with the boys chasing the girls around the basement. (It’s only now that I wonder if these were the mornings when the teachers had just been so overwhelmed that they were giving up for the rest of the day.) I distinctly remember one particular time when the boys were trying to snatch purses from the girls, and most of the girls were squealing and running. I, however, was standing firm in the center of the room, calling out to the other girls, “If you don’t want them to chase you, just stop running and they’ll lose interest!” A boy ran past me and grabbed at my purse. I yanked it out of his grasp and gave him a withering look.

This story is a good illustration of my personality on several levels, but for the purposes of this post, it's a good illustration of the fact that the guy/girl dynamic mostly escapes me. I don’t like the double-talk and the backstage chatter and the dissection of meaning. Not that I haven’t done it, because I totally have. But it just gets…*annoying*. And it often seems like such a pointless waste of time.

Example that inspired this post: overhearing a group of guys in the cafeteria at work talking about how “whipped” somebody was. I thought to myself, “This guy is either disrespecting the other guy’s girlfriend, OR he actually believes it’s really nice that the girl calls her boyfriend so many times a day, and this is a weird male way of expressing that.” I don’t understand.

And as the song says, “We don’t like what we don’t understand—in fact, it scares us.”

On a semi-related end note, if I ever am “seeing” somebody in the dating sense, and anybody starts calling him “whipped,” I’ll probably hate it so much that I’ll try to break up with him.

Summary: I don’t think I operate like normal girls.

Making It Right (part two)

I've been thinking more about my post from Thursday, and felt as though it could stand expanding. Because while the most important part of making things right is realizing that you can't do it alone, that's not all there is to it. I for one have wasted far too much time sitting around waiting for God to fix me without me having to expend any energy or put any thought into what's behind what I say is wrong with me. It's possible to do this with relationships, too.

For instance, I've had a lot of relationships that went south, without (or more usually with) my active participation. "Every time you raise your voice I see the greener grass," as Alanis says. Most of those relationships came back around after I had given up on them. I hadn't done anything, but they were given back to me as unearned gifts. This, combined with the fact that the way in which I chose to participate often got me into relational trouble in the first place, makes it easy for me to take a passive "wait-and-see" attitude. Which can be good. Sometimes. But it can also be making the other person do all the work, making the other person responsible to come to me.

On the one hand, over-passivity. On the other, over-aggressiveness, pushing people where they weren't meant to go. I try to walk the line.

If I feel that I have wronged someone and that they are aware of it, I trend towards one of the two extremes above: ignore it or go way too confessional. Either one just adds baggage. In the first case, I end up wondering how much the person remembers, how much our relationship is being affected in subtle ways, how much staying silent can be a form of lying. In the second case, I wonder what possessed me to reveal so much about my motivations and inner life to somebody who was really only wanting to hear "don't worry, we're still friends."

If I have wronged someone and they are unaware of it, sometimes it might be for the best to let them remain unaware. For instance, I had a college friend whose boyfriend broke up with her after telling her he thought she still had feelings for her previous boyfriend. Later, he felt the need to confess that really it was that he had just been using her to try to get over somebody else. I'm not sure that was helpful. I think sometimes we confess to make ourselves feel better, not to heal a breach.

There are situations in which total openness is valuable, but maybe those are only for very close friends and people who are planning to marry each other. My example for this: someone I know whose husband only told her he sometimes suffered from severe depressive mood swings after they were married. A confession that wouldn't have been about an error before marriage became a huge wrong after it.

I once heard somebody say, "People don't want your apologies, they want you." It has the ring of truth. I'm going to wrong and disappoint people, and they're going to wrong and disappoint me. And yet it's amazing what honesty can do. It's amazing how easy it can be to forgive and be forgiven when we repent sincerely and don't drag our self-protection into it ("I'm sorry, but I only did that because...").

Is there a simple 12-step program for forgiveness? No. But what if that's because it could be even simpler, if we didn't spend so much time complicating it?

What if it's as simple as love?

Making It Right

This might be the hardest part about life: people need people, but yet people disappoint people. 

I want to believe that people are more than what they seem, but maybe I'm making them up and they aren't even what they seem. I want to trust, but I have so many good reasons not to. A little voice in my head tells me people are out for what they can get from you, however they can get it; they will use you up and throw you aside without even blinking if you give them half a chance. (Don't think I exempt myself from this. I'll be the first to tell you I will let you down in almost as many ways as I let myself down, and almost as frequently.) Perhaps worse than the pain of disappointment is the self-inflicted pain of never letting people get close enough to disappoint you. Because they almost always get in under your guard anyway, and then you're hurt twice. 

People who need people aren't, as the song claims, "the luckiest people in the world." They are the only people in the world. And yet we are frustrated so often by our inability to connect in meaningful ways, by our shallow love and weak or nonexistent trust.

On Tuesday night some friends and I watched a documentary about a woman who used to be a stripper and a drug abuser and a lost soul, a woman who was pursued and loved by and in turn came to love and pursue a patient and gracious God. She now devotes her life to connecting with girls in the industry who are devaluing and debasing themselves. Some people in her community were not okay with this, as though God couldn't use somebody who had sinned so much.

"What could I do to make it right?" a friend asked me not long afterwards, a hypothetical question in response to the issue of hidden sins coming to light. "If you found out about something I had done that disappointed you, what could I do to make it right?"

The first answer that came to mind was "Nothing." It's the wrong answer. And the right one.

It's the wrong answer because it's not who I want to be, who I'm called to be. I may not have committed many of the big Socially Unacceptable sins, but I am daily guilty of selfishness, of loving myself above others, of trying to fix myself, protect myself, take care of myself, live by and for myself. Me. Alone. Nobody else. But if nothing can make it right between and among people, nothing can make it right inside of one person, either.

It's the right answer because it's not up to the people who have wronged me, directly or indirectly--how many people do we wound arrogantly, casually, not even thinking of them at all?--it's not up to them to make anything right. They can't. It's not up to me to make it right. I can't.

But I know someone who can. I know someone who suffered wrong but never inflicted it. I know someone who loves me and forgives me because he is more than big enough and more than strong enough and more than willing enough to do those things. "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

And so I will believe that people can be more than what they settle for, because God doesn't settle for leaving us where we are (even when we're happy to be there). God catches up to world-weary ex-strippers and world-weary "good church girls" alike. God won't leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:8), even when those closest to us forget us (Isaiah 49:15). God makes it possible for us to love people and forgive people and trust people even though we know what they are capable of because we know what we are capable of (I John 4:19). God gives us all we need for our fullest protection and empowers us to throw away the shadow-armor we cling to so fiercely (Ephesians 6:10-17). No, we are never going to attain perfection here and now on this earth. But here and now is not all there is (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

God makes it right. God uses implausible people. And the God who turns mourning into dancing can surely turn deep disappointment to even deeper satisfaction.

"For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life" (Romans 5:9).