Annual Spiritual Review Time

I have session visitation tonight. For those of you who aren’t members of an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, “session visitation” is when elders of the church visit with your family as a way of keeping the church leadership in touch with the congregation. At my church, the elders generally make these visits in pairs. This has been occasionally awkward in the past, from a social standpoint. Who is asking most of the questions? Do I direct my answers to him or include the silent partner in my eye contact? Am I supposed to feed them?

 

Tonight the social dilemmas are solved by virtue of the fact that the visit is taking place at Starbucks. Obviously I can’t make and bring cookies to Starbucks even if I felt so inclined. The barristas would probably attack me (in a laid back café manner). I have been told in advance that I’ll be treated to a hot beverage. I think meeting around a table will also help with the eye contact issue, as most of my problem in the past has been with my apartment seating arrangements, and creating too wide of a conversational triangle.

 

When you…okay, I’ll just speak for me…. When I go to the dentist, or to the doctor, they usually ask me some questions I’m not comfortable answering. Questions like, “Do you floss?” or “Do you get enough sleep/exercise/healthy food?” I always squirm a little bit, because I know they’ve told me the same things over and over again. And I always try to think of something I’m doing better, so I can offer that up to placate the health professional in question.

 

Session visits are a little bit like that. Every self-justifying molecule in my being attempts to exert itself, but then so does every self-deprecating molecule. (I think the truth of my life is somewhere between those extremes—I’m probably doing better than I could dream and not half as well as I imagine.) There’s the temptation to confess “safe sins”; the temptation to spew out everything that’s feeling wrong in my life; etc., etc., all adding up to a larger-scale version of what I deal with every day: trying to figure out how to speak the truth in love, how to say “I’m not okay” without putting the burden of fixing me on anyone but God, how to rejoice in all the crazy chaos because I know (remember, Suzanne? you do know) the end of the story.

 

I kind of want to be graded on these visits. (I want grades on practically everything I do. I just love grades.) As it is, I never know whether or not I’m saying the right things, but I guess “saying the right things” is never what genuine conversation is about, anyway.

Laundry List

I'm not sure why I titled this post "Laundry List," as it's not really about laundry. Maybe because I'm so fond of laundry, so I like mentioning it? Hm. Moving on....

As I was thinking about marriage lately (my brother's getting married, so this is inevitable), I realized that when I imagine somebody I would marry, it is usually someone who likes to do all the things I'm not so fond of, and who after we were married would take over all of the things I don't like doing. Things like:

* Balancing a checkbook, because my math is not my friend. Math tapes "Kick Me" signs on my back while my head is buried in my hands over the latest checkbook misbalance.

* Encouraging me to exercise, because I need motivation to get out of the house and take walks or something. I used to have my dad and my brother for this, but since I don't live with them anymore I need somebody else to step up. Or, you know, I could develop willpower.

* Cleaning the bathroom, because it's my least favorite of the cleaning tasks. When Tim and Lisa were engaged, Lisa made a deal with Tim that she would clean the bathrooms if he would vacuum. Tim and I both thought this was the sweetest deal ever. I'll also throw in doing the laundry (nobody can take my laundry away from me), general organizing, dusting, etc.

* Doing yardwork, because that's "man stuff." (In other words, I don't feel like pushing a mower.)

* Cooking, because cooking takes up so much time. Actually, I wouldn't mind cooking so much if I were home longer than four or five hours a day. Which brings me to....

* Going to work, because my friend Amanda says that while I'm making up a list I might as well put "rich enough for me to stay home" on it. 

Realistically, with the exception of the last item, most of these are the sorts of reasons you hire people (e.g. accountants, cleaning services, personal trainers, etc.), not the sorts of reasons you get married. There would be a lot less commitment hassle with hiring an accountant. And a lot less frantic "what if I'm making the wrong choice??" angst over making a quick salad.

(For Trudy and Rosemary: I will not marry somebody solely because he is good at any or all of the above. Just FYI.)

My Mom and the Superpower of Niceness

If you've ever wondered if on some level you may be a heartless super-villain, I have a good test for you. Meet my mom. Talk to her for at least two minutes. If you don't love her, you should probably check yourself into Arkham Asylum right away.

If relationships were odometers, my mom could go from zero to best friend in two minutes flat. It's like a superpower. She specializes in bonding over jewelry (or at least I remember two distinct occasions where total strangers were suddenly telling her about their lives because she admired their rings), but she can bond over anything, really. This is probably because she tends to assume the best of people. People like to feel that other people think well of them.

Sometimes I don't think I have that much in common with my mom, other than physically. Physically, I'm practically her clone. This means less packing for me when I go to visit her, since I just wear her clothes and shoes to church. It also means that I'm going to be cute forever. It's hereditary.

Relationally, I'm much more hesitant around new people. I'm more cynical and less trusting. It takes me a lot longer to warm up to people. I'm not always as nice as she is. But every once in a while, the nice genes engage and I can feel the stranger I'm talking to fall under the friendly superheroic powers my mom passed on to me. (Probably my mom doesn't see kindness in terms of power. But I did say she was nicer than I am.) 

When I was a teenager, my mom's friendliness was hugely embarrassing. She would talk to anybody at all, and for some reason that was not cool. Until I went to college, and all of my new floormates loved her immediately, and I realized that I had spent years being irritated at one of my mom's best traits.

So on her birthday, here's to my mom. She loves practically everybody, and practically everybody loves her back. Especially (for purposes of this post) me.

Happy birthday, Mom!

Slow down, you move too fast

This morning I gave blood. I like doing this for several reasons.

1) Being a blood donor is like being part of an elite club. A club that gets to feel superior to the people who are too wimpy to give blood. And you get to compare your needle marks to everyone else’s and (if you’re me) show off how long it takes your body to heal itself. (One time the mark on my arm looked fresher than the mark on my dad’s arm, and he had donated a few weeks after I had.)

2) Donating blood is one of the easiest philanthropic things you can do, especially if the Blood Bus comes right to your office. It takes about an hour of your time, and you may help to save somebody’s life. I would guess that most people would find it harder to give $20 to the church general fund on Sunday morning than to give blood.

3) When the Blood Bus comes to my office, my company pays me to sit for an hour with a needle in my arm. If it were physically possible to give blood every day of the week under these conditions, I might do it just for this reason.

4) It is fun to say “Blood Bus.”

Here’s something I have trouble remembering about blood donation: your body gets a little confused. It’s thinking, “Wait…I needed that blood! What did you do to me?” (This is because your body sees blood like you see that $20 in your pocket. It just doesn’t let go without some sort of a fight.) Usually your body puts you in a timeout after you give blood, so you can think about what you’ve done.

I forget that I am not at optimal performance levels right after giving blood. I try to move as quickly as I usually would. (When we were at my old office, I’d get off the Blood Bus, walk briskly to the steps, and jog up them. Almost every time. Never once a good idea.) Today I felt lightheaded for a few hours after donating, so I forced myself to move slowly.

I say “forced” because moving slowly is not something I remember easily. It usually feels like a waste of time (unlike, for instance, spending hours on Facebook or watching old episodes of MacGyver). When I’m feeling weak, though, it becomes quite the performance art. I suddenly turn into a Jane Austen heroine. It’s really quite entertaining.

Let’s go give blood together in a few months and you can see what I mean.

Baby, It's Cold Inside

I have a love/hate relationship with HVAC systems (heating-ventilation-air conditioning, for those who didn't have enough engineer friends).

I love that I can have the air on all summer, which enables me to sleep through the night instead of tossing and turning uncomfortably. I love that I can turn the heat on in the winter, which prevents me from freezing to death.

The part that I hate? How other people use it. 

Not other people as in individual home choices. If you want to crank your air down AND open your windows in the summer, or if you choose to turn your heat up higher than 62 degrees in the winter, those are your energy choices, not mine. I probably don't spend that much time at your house on a regular basis, anyway.

Church and office choices, however, affect me every week. So far this summer, my new office space has not been too cold. I am rather inclined to think that this is because the HVAC system hasn't regulated yet instead of because we're consciously saving money. So far my church has not been too cold, either, but that's because we meet in a school gym and there's no air conditioning. This morning I went to my parents' church and the thermostat was set to 70 degrees. It was quite cold.

Here's my HVAC outlook. Since you can expect people will dress to match the temperatures outdoors (e.g. shorts and t-shirts in the summer, long pants and sweaters in the winter), you can also expect that people will be uncomfortable if the temperature inside does not mirror outside temperatures to some degree.

Short version: if it's cold outside, I want to put on sweaters indoors; if it's hot outside, I don't want to wear sweaters indoors. This is part of the overall seasonal ambience that comes with living in a temperate climate.

I want to believe...in the right things

About twelve years ago, I had a crisis of faith. A love I had long cherished was dimming, and a new affection was taking its place. Loyalties were shifting, and that always pains me.

The X-Files was possibly replacing Star Trek as my favorite science-fiction television show.

I remember confessing this with tears, but I don't remember my mother's reaction. Few people in my life have been able to understand the fusion of self and other that takes place with me and the fictional worlds and characters that I love, the depth of my emotional and mental investment in stories of all kinds.

Few people understand, but I understood. I was crying, not because of the titanic clash between my X-phile and Trekkie sides, but because I felt that what the seriousness of this clash signified was that I was investing too much in the wrong things. I mean, Star Trek vs. X-Files? Really? In the long run, what did it matter?

I am still drawn deeply into stories, but I am also gaining perspective. I know I have to be careful what I read, what I watch, because it becomes part of me. I am better able to push off the insulted feeling that still comes if you hated a movie I enjoyed, or love a character I despise. I don't agonize over whether or not I enjoy Heroes better than Lost.

Keeping my adoration properly directed also frees me to be as excited about going to see The X-Files movie as I choose to be.

I choose to be pretty geeked about it.

Hooray for this week!

Here's my favorite thing about this week: it's over.

Haha! But really, this week was about 50 times better than last week, work-wise. (Disclaimer: When I say "50," it is not necessarily meant to signify a real number. It is my standard multiplifying numeral of choice.)

I was really scared of this week. The kind of scared where you start dreading Monday and losing sleep over it beginning on Saturday night. But I headed into Monday knowing people were praying for me, and some friends made a point of letting me know they were praying for me, which was encouraging (this could relate to my post about my stealth prayers...hmmmm...).

I hate feeling overwhelmed and inadequate. But on the other hand, it's so much easier to remember God in those times, and I love that. (So much of my life is about choosing which part of my heart to hear, the old or the new.) This week, God let me be more organized and more able to cope with the workload. He also stopped me Wednesday morning when I was on a self-protecting internal rampage. I was feeling so angry at everything and everyone, and suddenly I thought, "Is this anger worth holding on to in the face of everything God has done for me?" Which felt like a Holy Spirit intervention, and my attitude was much better afterwards.

Thursday I felt rather melancholy and lonely (if I'm not getting angry, this is what tends to happen when I don't get enough sleep). I came home, put on a CD, and sang/danced my troubles away. Well, not away, but into relative insignificance.

Tonight I'll be going to visit my parents. And Saturday we will be seeing the new X-Files movie. <*INSERT GEEKING OUT HAND MOTIONS HERE*>

All in all, a good week.

The status is no longer quo.

I’ve been on Facebook for a while, and I’ve been playing an application called "My Heroes Ability" for several months now. This month I finally joined a group to share points, etc., etc., nerdy details go here.

This is currently posted in the description of the group: "WARNING - We have a few really hot chicks in our group. Player discretion is advised." (I would probably not have joined if this had been in the description when I was first checking it out. I’m pretty irritated/threatened by anybody who could be referred to as "hot" in that context.)

Yesterday I said something about things I wanted to do before I turned 30 next year and received this comment back: "OMG....YOUR 29 !!!!... TRUST ME !!!....U Look a YOUNG 21 !!!!.... WOW.....u definately know how to look great :)"

This comes from the sleazy 17-year-old of the group (though with a touch of prompting he did add "i meant it in the most non-sleazy, and true complimentative way possible :D"). So…apparently this means I'm considered one of the group "hot chicks"? This was semi-flattering (horribly inconsistent of me) and very amusing.

Me, a hot chick? Didn't see that coming.

Things used to be easier...or did they?

Tonight I went to the beach with Esther and Micah. While the coals got hot enough to actually cook something, Esther and I went to play on the playground equipment. This playground had...oh, I don't know what it's officially called. But it's a little tower that you climb into via ladder, and then you get to sit in it. That's pretty much all you do. I remember they had one of these at a pizza place we used to go to called Major Magic's, and I always loved the feel of secrecy and safety (well, until other kids came).

After we ate, we ran down to the edge of the lake. As I walked back and forth, watching the high waves and feeling the wind and seeing the stars coming out, I remembered the many moonlit nights I spent wandering around my backyard, singing into the night.

I was thinking that it used to be easier, back in the days of pizza place towers and backyard wanderings, but that isn't really true. Everything that is past seems easier (and everything that will pass will seem easier) when seen from a future perspective.

Once when my little buddy Lucas was crying over not getting something he wanted (I think it was a tortilla chip), I told him that life just kept getting harder. Some of the post-college age people listening said I was depressing them. But here's what I meant....

"Every year you grow, you will find me bigger," Aslan tells Lucy in Prince Caspian. And every year I grow, I find last year's problems seem smaller...and I find my God is big enough to handle everything that comes my way.

Life is never completely easy. It never has been, it never will be.

But sometimes you'll have a chance to play games with the waves.

Filler

A little over a week ago I decided I was going to try to write something on this blog every day, as an exercise in discipline. (Some people go running....) I would allow for overflow posts, by which I mean that if I wrote three posts in one day because I was on a roll (this has actually happened), I would save two for dry times.

I don't have one of those posts ready. I thought about just skipping a post today. Who would care? Then I realized that I had sort of challenged myself to do this, and that I felt it was too early to give up already. I mean, usually I'm the president of giving up. Or I would be the president if I had ever bothered to run for office. I'm getting tired of giving up. So this is sort of a filler post, and sort of a post about sticking with the little things even when they get a little harder.

I want to be the kind of person who, as far as it depends on her, does what she says she will do. 

Even if I only say it to myself.

The "what, huh?" moment of the day

You know this moment. There you are, minding your own business, sort of but not really listening to what is going on around you, and you pick up a random fragment of conversation or radio chatter. The "what, huh?" moment is that instant of thorough disorientation that you experience in these cases.

Today I was pulling together some product samples for a customer when I heard a radio announcer proclaim exuberantly, "God saves you gas money!"

Half of me was ready to become indignant at such a claim, and the other half (I call this "the thinking half") focused intently on the words that followed, because no way could someone have said what I thought I just heard on the radio. That would just be crazy.

Sure enough, in his next sentence the announcer spoke more of this marvelous gas-money-saving entity. And the word he used was not in fact "God," but "Dodge."

Anybody reading this have any funny mishearing stories to share with the class?

Tonight and the week to come

Tonight I was going to come home and sit by myself and play on the computer or watch TV, and instead I went to TerHaars and hung out with friends and watched Dr. Horrible and discussed the works of Joss Whedon with Aaron for so long that everybody else got annoyed and left the room. Which was nice (not the part where people were annoyed, but all the rest of it). I tend to feel lonelier when there are big things going on in my little world, and I tend not to know how much it helps to be around people until I'm actually around them.

I'm not particularly looking forward to this week. Last week I started a two month stint filling in for a coworker while she's on maternity leave, and I spent most of the week feeling chained to my computer as I frantically tried to accomplish in one day what would have taken half the time for Amanda. I felt like I was letting people down for most of the week.

So, yeah. Not really looking forward to doing that again this week. I know it will be getting better and easier as I get used to it. But just now I want to curl up in a corner somewhere.

I'm grateful that I have people waiting on the post-5:00 side to pull me through most of the days this week—book club tomorrow, regularly scheduled hang-out time on Tuesday, visiting with a friend who's been out of town for a while on Wednesday or Thursday, and a weekend with my parents.

If you think of praying for me during the week, I'd appreciate it.

Secret Blog

My idea of a clean house/apartment/office space is one that looks as though nobody actually inhabits that space. No clutter. No trinkets. No papers lying around. No crumbs. No dust. Nothing.

Of course, this being the case, my apartment never looks as clean as I would like it to look. Before I had many friends or much involvement at church, it looked much cleaner. So I blame Lisa and Trudy and Jessica and Jen and Micah and small group and Harvest for the mess in my apartment. No, but seriously, sometimes I have to remind myself that I do in fact see friends and church family as a good trade-off for a weekly Saturday cleaning fest.

One of the things I am enjoying about growing up is learning how to manage myself better. For instance, I have a very hard time getting rid of something once I have it. "What if I need this again?" I think, or "What if this expired medicine and/or food is really still okay?" And then I push the item back into the corner of a closet until the next time I drag it out to ask the same questions about it. As for the nostalgic items, like my Shrek and Chicken Run action figures.... Okay, let's not even go there. Anyway, knowing my packrat habits, and knowing how little I actually need, I just try not to buy things. If I don't bring it into the apartment, I won't be looking at it in a year wondering whether or not I'll need it again.

Another for instance. Lately I have found myself thinking fondly of the idea of an apartment fire, or maybe a tornado. Something that would happen while Apollo and I were gone, that would enable us to start over. I figure this is a serious sign that I need to scale back my possessions. And really, my apartment is about 700 square feet and the first house I lived in (with my parents and my brother) was 900 square feet. Only 200 square feet more. Sure, we had a full basement, but still. I should be able to fit at least one more person in this place.

So what with the above points, and the fact that I just spent a year sorting through and getting rid of things at work, I'm in elimination mode. I'm trying to pretend as though that tornado really is hitting. A tornado named Suzanne. No crying over what she gets rid of...no use in it.

[Disclaimer: I judge other people more on their hospitality than on the condition of their living space. Mostly.]

I'm totally against the Poles

(The last word of the title is how my college buddy Al misheard the word "polls" in a political conversation we were having.)

My poll is proving both unscientific and unsatisfactory, since nobody who is answering "yes, with qualifications" is explaining the qualifications. I just want to know why women who wear jelly roll shirts think that looks good. Or why men like to see jelly roll bulges on not-really fat women. It is a deep mystery to me.

Also, without comments I'm wondering if this issue is falling along the predictable gender lines, as the only commenters so far are both guy friends of mine who felt like I was trying to trick them. Don't worry. It's not a trick. I already have a bad opinion of male standards of attractiveness, beaten into me by years of good church people saying "Men are just very visual." Over. And over. And over. Nobody says "Women are just emotionally hyper-sensitive" like it's an okay thing that can't be dealt with on any level having to do with the women themselves.

This is turning into another post, the post about how I despise any gender-based or "that's just how it is" excuses. Sorry. 

*sigh*

The point is, I am curious about the "qualified" in "qualified yes." Actually, there are two points. The other point is that polls are useless.

Poles, however, have made some important contributions to our society and should be welcomed and thanked.

...and speaking of idolatry

Til you put a girl in it
You ain't got nothin'
What's it all worth
Without a little lovin'
Put a girl in it
Some huggin' and some kissin'
If your world's got somethin' missin'
Just put a girl in it

-- Brooks & Dunn

Many (if not most) popular songs express similar sentiments from both male and female perspectives. But hearing it today this blatantly...wow....

God save us from our own twisted vision.

Subtle Idolatry

 I think I confuse people with God. To show you what I mean, here is a brief list of things I've wanted people to do:

• To know what I'm thinking before I have to say it.
  
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• To be strong enough and brave enough and good enough to sacrifice on my behalf.
  
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• To see beyond what I am to what I am destined to be, and to urge me to be the latter while encouraging me by noting the good they already see in the former.
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• To anticipate my needs.
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• To teach by word and example, and by oblique story more than direct preaching, because they know love reads between the lines in good ways and they want me to work harder at those ways.
• 
  
• To bowl me over with everyday kindness, and the sheer amazing fact of their willingness and eagerness to stay with me.
• 
  
• To love me with a love that never falters, and with a certainty that bolsters my unbelief.

I notice two things from this. 

1.  I am prone to look to people to fill needs only God can completely fill. 

2. I think an awful lot in terms of my needs.

These sorts of idolatry are hard to explain unless you're familiar with them. Worshipping giant statues? Okay. Wanting to have more and more possessions? Okay, we understand that pretty easily. But I'm only just growing into the idea that looking anywhere besides God for anything that comes ultimately from God is in itself idolatry. And it wasn't all that long ago that I thought God could practically be seen in my mirror.

God in the mirror? What am I talking about?

I think it is the most insidiously subtle form of idolatry: making God in our own image. To take the truth that only God knows our heart and to make that into a warm squishy companionable thing, instead of a an admittedly encouraging and comforting but also rather terrifying and humbling thing. To move from trying to fathom the depths of the mind of God to thinking we have thoroughly plumbed those depths. 

I did this when I was afflicted with depression. God became my ultimate advocate, in the way that Job seemed to mean. Not the advocate who would plead the right to sacrifice for the undeserving, but the advocate who has a mountain of evidence to draw from while defending his client. When I finally woke up to what I was doing, it terrified me so much that I'm still afraid to be really as deep-down solidly opinionated about important things as I was before. Because what I was doing was playing the "the God I believe in" card. You've heard it. "The God I believe in would say such and such." "The God I believe in is love, which means He'd never do this thing." "No God I would serve would say/do/be that." 

It's so easy to carve an idol out of your own heart. You don't even need a chisel.

Too Many Curves

This is probably going to sound ridiculously old-fashioned to some people, but you have to remember that I'm almost 30, and thus I made it through college just before these fashion trends hit.

What trends? "Modest" cleavage, mid- to lowriff, and jelly rolls.

I had a roommate in my senior year at college whose shirts just barely met the top of her pants. Sometimes when she would move, you would see bits of skin left exposed between shirt and pants. She told the rest of the roommates once that she couldn't find longer shirts. We sort of laughed at this, since we had never had this problem ourselves. What we failed to remember was that she was from Chicago and the majority of the rest of us were from Michigan. In case you didn't know this yet, Chicago apparently gets the fashion trends before the mitten state.

My college pictures show a lot of girls in high-waisted pants and baggy shirts. (I mean some really baggy shirts.) During my freshman and sophomore years, I lived on a floor with about 39 other girls. My junior and senior years were spent in fairly close living quarters with 4 other girls. In all that time, I don't remember thinking, "Wow, that girl is bending too far over and I can see WAY too much of her" more than a few times. But I've thought it a lot since then. From little kids to adults, I've seen way too much in the lower spinal region for my taste. And these are the modest dressers.

Then there are the really tight shirts that not only show mid- to lowriff, they also show every single curve on the torso. Women who aren't really even fat look like a stack of jelly rolls in these shirts. To me, anyway.

Here's something I wonder: is it really even attractive? I mean, do guys look at these girls and think...well, first of all, do they think with their brains when they see that, and secondly, do they think "Oh, that girl is nice to look at, in a non-sexual sort of way. How nicely that color complements her eyes"?

Some people say women don't dress to impress men, they dress to impress other women. Personally, I'm not impressed. But I may be in the minority on this. I haven't taken any polls or anything. UNTIL NOW (see poll at right).

My Evening with Trudy: A Casual Post

Tonight as I was finishing dinner in preparation for biking to Trudy's, she called and said she was home and didn't need me to come check on the cat after all. This was initially disappointing because it threw me off my evening plan, which had been biking for a while after visiting the cat. Why couldn't I go biking anyway, you might ask? Because I have a hard time exercising for the sake of exercising. I'm very destination-oriented, and always have been.

I sat around trying to convince myself to exercise aimlessly, and then I made up a place to go and a reason to go there and took off, and on the way back from there I decided I would swing by Trudy's and drop off the key to her house.

She was talking on the phone when I came in, and I was very thirsty, so instead of going out on the porch to say hello I went and got myself a glass of water. (Good friends don't need to bother offering you a glass of water when you come in, because you've already gotten it yourself without asking them. Because THAT'S how comfortable you feel with them and their house.)

Then I sat on the porch with Trudy while she finished her conversation and I finished my water, and we talked for a bit, and tried to figure out what kind of bird of prey lives by them, and watched the cat sitting happily outdoors. We have a very relaxed friendship, Trudy and I. And I do think the best kind of friends are the ones you do nothing with, in the Christopher Robin sense ("it's when a grown-up asks you what you're doing, and you say, 'Nothing,' and then you go and do it"). Yes, despite all my crazy planning tendencies, my best friends have always been the ones I can just sit in a room doing nothing with for hours. "How wonderful to just be," as Trudy herself put it once. 

I rode home as the trail was beginning to sparkle with fireflies.

So much better than spending the whole evening online.

False Expectations

Today Pastor Dale said one of the obstacles to faith is a reliance on false expectations, things God never really promised but that we sort of imagined were promised. "God," Pastor Dale said, "seems to delight in obstacles," because so often He uses them in His plans. And I was laughing/crying over this (poor Rosemary...I don't think she quite knew what to do with me this morning), because I was hearing my own story.

I am by nature a very decisive and opinionated person who makes snap judgments untempered with mercy and who feels strongly about just about everything I care about at all. I like plans and structure and control and knowing what's coming next, and often I've found myself thinking that being a really good Christian would mean not needing to lean on God so much because you were actually learning the lessons. (I like lessons, too. And grades. Oh, do I like grades.)

But I've noticed a pattern forming....

• Freshman year of college, soon after telling people I couldn't imagine rooming with anybody but my current roommate, said roommate announced she would be living with someone else next year. But through a mutual crush on a deskie neither of us has kept in contact with, I met my sophomore and junior year roommate Rachel, who remains a friend to this day. (I also found out just how many people were watching my back that year...many of them went and talked to the resident director of the dorm to ensure that I would be able to stay on a floor I'd grown to love.)
• 
  
• I swore I wouldn't stay in Grand Rapids. Why on earth wouldn't I just move home? Hadn't that been what I'd wanted from the beginning? And I would especially not stay alone. But then it came down to March of senior year, and I decided I was going to live with four other girls. And then three dropped out. And then Kerri got a job in Denver, after I had already gotten a job in Grand Rapids. Well-played, God....
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• I used to think that people with duct tape on their headlights were annoyingly cheap. How could they drive around looking so white trashy? Because (as I discovered when I knocked my own headlight loose) fixing one of those lights costs about $600. Oh. That's why. Good reason. I drove around with duct tape on my car for quite a while.
  
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• I have a list (long enough to be embarrassing if grace hadn't made it humorous) of friends whom I initially did not like. So now I rather expect that, when I meet someone I strongly dislike, we could probably end up being good friends.
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• I was going to be one of those girls who get married right out of college, but I didn't even date in college.
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• If either my brother or myself were ever going to get married at all, it would certainly be in chronological order. Because that's How Things Work.
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• Oh, and there was depression, and dealing with other friends in dark places, when my earlier impression had been that real Christians didn't get depressed.
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• In retrospect, I think my favorite day of my European trip last summer was the day everything went wrong. We had an over-booked schedule already, and then I hadn't set my alarm and woke up over half an hour later than expected (seriously, we were so tightly booked that we couldn't spare half an hour...this is something I learned from, too, believe me). There was a terrific traffic jam that slowed us up for another hour or so. A fellow traveler had difficulty with her Metro pass. The plan had been to see The Merchant of Venice at 7:30, but as we were (finally) sitting on the train to London I realized this was clearly not going to happen. And I was okay. And not stressed out. And it was so blatantly obviously the peace of God that it became that moment on the train I treasure most of all from that trip.

I could probably go on, but those are just the highlights that came to me just now. I'm certainly not saying that it's always easy for me to remember now to lean on God because He knows what He's doing even when I don't, and that I don't have to be in on the plan in order to trust that I will benefit from it. But it's certainly easier to remind myself of that when I have such a stockpile of examples to look back on.

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is." (I John 3:2)

And that is something I can expect with 100% certainty.

Math is not my friend, but it might be stalking me

I tried balancing my checkbook again today. This is almost always a brain-wrenching activity for me. My math is...not linear enough for checkbook balancing. If you happened to be a fly on the wall, you would see a lot of forehead wrinkling and temple-grasping, and you would hear a lot of whining, from muttery noises to aggravated "What? How is that even..." half-finished exclamations.

This is my persistent dilemma: when it doesn't balance, my checkbook almost always doesn't balance by an amount in my favor. That's right. Currently the bank website says I have more money than my checkbook says I have. I have a lurking fear that someday the bank will send the police after me for extortion, that all the times I've just given up and written down the numbers the website told me should be in the checkbook I've actually been getting money siphoned off from somewhere. 

This is why today I decided that the website (and, by extension, math) might be stalking me, trying to win me over with extra cash. Poor math. That might work on somebody who actually trusted you and could figure out your game plan...but I'm not your girl.

Stealth Prayers

I pray for a lot of people. If I've met you, I've probably prayed for you at some point. And I don't restrict myself to people I've met, either. (One of the great things about God is that if you know Him, you only have one degree of separation from anybody.) 

I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back, because I'm not what I would call an incredible prayer warrior. Most of my prayers go something like, "God, be with so-and-so because such-and-such," as in "God, be with Lisa and Tim and Nate as they're kayaking to keep them safe and help them to enjoy your world" or "God, be with Jeremiah and Dorothy as they make plans for the future, and especially Jeremiah as he has school stuff to consider." Things like that.

The reason I am saying this is that I don't usually feel all that comfortable telling somebody I'm praying for them, unless they've specifically asked me to do so. It comes out kind of awkward when I do say it, like I'm trying to show how pious I am or how good of a friend I am or something, and I don't always know what I'm intending to accomplish by telling them.

So I usually don't even tell Christians I'm offering unsolicited prayers on their behalf. As for my non-Christian friends and acquaintances, well...it's problematic.

Let's say somebody I know has surgery and I tell them "I'll be praying that your recovery goes well." Here are some things that could happen: 1) their recovery goes well, they believe in the power of prayer, and they are shallow-earth converted to get in on the ground floor of the health and wealth gospel that works; 2) their recovery goes well and they attribute it to the good wishes flying up to any being that will hear from dozens of people they know; 3) their recovery goes horribly and they are more firmly convinced that prayer is useless.

Here's the stumbling block part of talking to a God who is real and beyond your control: He can do whatever He chooses to do. And if He doesn't choose to heal you, He won't. And the people who talk to Him believe that's okay, because what He chooses is best for all concerned. They might not be happy about it. They might yell at Him about it for a while. But in the end, they know they are dealing with a God who has bigger plans than they could ever comprehend. "Thy will be done" is a prayer that flies in the face of all natural human instinct, a prayer that can only be uttered honestly when the Holy Spirit is present in your life.

And because I don't know how to explain that, I mostly keep my praying intentions quiet.

What have you been up to?

I've been re-connecting with a lot of college friends recently (thank you, Facebook...and yes, I do remember how much I ridiculed it back in the early days when it was just for the whippersnappers). It's been a lot of fun. What's not always so fun is providing an answer to the major re-connecting question: "What have you been up to?"

I tend to think of myself as pretty entertaining in person and in writing, but pretty boring as far as actual life details go, especially when about seven years of life details are being condensed into a few sentences to fit on somebody's Facebook wall. I drudge up last summer's Europe trip a lot. Because Europe is cool, right? (Kerri, back me up on this.) And otherwise, what do I have?

Same job for seven years.

Same church for seven years.

Same apartment for seven years.

Same roommate situation for seven years (just me and the bird).

My life is pretty stagnant, if you look at the broad-strokes version. Especially when so many of my college friends have Facebook profile pictures that feature themselves with their significant other and/or their children. Because before I actually went to college, I would have said that that would be me. Wait, I DID say that, in some college interview...I was going to be married with kids in ten years, and it's been eleven or twelve now. So much for my advance planning skills.

But there are other things that have happened in the past seven years. Things I don't think to talk about as quickly because they seem either only marginally connected to me or all too connected.

A divorce in the family, with painfully far-reaching effects.

The death of a beloved grandfather from a long illness.

The death of a beloved cousin from a sudden car crash.

The weddings of several family members and multiple friends (some that overlapped, as when a church friend married into my family...weird).

A struggle with depression.

And then there are the little things, the things that sift down and fill the cracks between the rocks and pebbles in the jar of the past seven years (belabor email-forwarded metaphors much? me, neither).

The birth of a friendship out of the ashes of a battle-scarred relationship. Actually, several of these, but especially the first one, which provided evidence that all the healing that followed was indeed possible.

The growth of patience to the point where people can see it...not always the patience, but the growth.

The friends who were there even in my darkest hours when they didn't know what to say to me.

My church family, including a grandma and little siblings and a whole string of cousins-in-law.

The small voice that I listen for more often now than I did seven years ago, and with a far greater interest in hearing what it says instead of only what I want it to say.

They've not always been fun, these past seven years. But they've been good, because God is good, and because I'm more sure of that every year.

What have I been up to? 

Living, mostly.

Today these lyrics made me cry

He ain't the leavin' kind
He'd never walk away
Even from those who don't believe
And wanna leave him behind
He ain't the leavin' kind

No matter what you do
No matter where you go he's
Always right there
With you

~~ Rascal Flatts

That's the sort of thing I need to be reminded of a lot. Especially in the times I feel like the kind who deserves to be left (as I think everybody does from time to time if they catch a glimpse of themselves in the metaphorical mirror). And even on the days I think I'm running from Him, He's really still in front of me, fiercely defending me from anyone and anything that would seek to take me away.

"How can I give you up, Ephraim? 
       How can I hand you over, Israel?"

~~ Hosea 11:8a

Ten Things to Do Before I Die

Here are some things I would like to do (or do again) before I die, in approximate order of difficulty (10 being the highest level):

10.   Have a few books published

9.     Sit in a limo, or maybe actually ride in one

8.    Figure out how to use GarageBand properly

7.  Sing karaoke in public

6.   Write/record/post a fictional dramatic podcast with Brittany & Friends

5. Start a writers club meeting at least once monthly 

4. Go tandem biking

3.     Finish my fanfics 

2. Chase fireflies

1.     Run through sprinklers / run around outside in a rainstorm

The thing about most items on this list is that I either need help to accomplish them or that they wouldn't be so much fun alone. (This is the part where living by yourself is sad: the times you want to be all spontaneous and do something like run around outside in the rain with somebody and there is nobody to run around with. These are the times I really miss Delta 11.)

I could make a companion list of People to Do Things with Before I Die. Let me know if you want to be on it. I have room for you.