And...and...and....

I will put My laws into their minds,
And I will write them on their hearts.
And I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.
And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen,
And everyone his brother, saying, "Know the Lord,"
For all will know Me,
From the least to the greatest of them.
For I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And I will remember their sins no more.
~~ Hebrews 8:10b-12 ~~


I'm sure there's an official term for it, the repetitive "and" device, but I don't know what that official term is. As far as literary devices go, it's one of my favorites. I love the sense of build, of heightening emotion. I love how it moves you, spiraling and avalanching towards a climactic finish. In the above words from Hebrews, I love the way it resonates with the unshakable promises of God.

The passage came to mind tonight as I read yet another story about how tax dollars may soon be used to finance the killing of unwanted children. I have been wondering about how tax revenues have been put to use over the ages, doubting that the Christians in the Roman Empire (or in most modern-day countries in the world, for that matter) approved of how "their tax dollars" were distributed. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the government out of charity and healthcare and see private citizens neighboring up and opening their wallets to their churches and their acquaintances and to all those in need to the point that organizations have to ask people to stop bringing money.

What I'd love to see more is that level of neighboring up even under a government that is bound to continue raising taxes due to an ever-increasing, ever-more-bi-partisan poor sense of fiscal responsibility in general. To see a call for more federal funding of abortions disappear because the desire to obtain them disappears; to see orphanages and other childcare institutions shut down because people have opened their homes; to see mothers and fathers of children they can't handle cared for and mentored; to see God's people shining as stars out of a darkness that cannot overpower them.

And we have His laws in our hearts,
And He is ours,
And we are His,
And He has been merciful,
And He remembers our sins no more,
And nothing can separate us from His love,
And no trials or earthly treasures can endure eternally,
And no person is too far gone for His healing touch.

Campaign all you want, politicians. Rail all you want, demagogues. Tax us and fine us and even imprison us, if you want. The position of King of the Universe has been filled since before the beginning of time and will be filled beyond its end.

And there is nothing, nothing, nothing impossible with God.

Early New Year Reflections

I know, I know. It isn't even Christmas. But as I worked my last day until January (the day after an auditor told me I should get a raise, the audit went so well...we actually have "good audit" in writing from them), I found myself reflecting on how much has happened over the past year.

A year ago, I had already mostly worked my way out of a job. I was going into the office and searching for things to keep myself busy, waiting to be laid off because obviously there wasn't enough for me to do anymore. Friday I had the first calm day I had in ages, and I worked an 11-hour day this week that was followed by a day when I arrived at about 6:15 (less than 12 hours after I'd left work). And you know what? It's so much better than not having enough to do.

Right now I have the best job I've ever had, and it came after I gave up. After I'd asked God to give me an attitude of service, a love of serving Him that surpassed any drudgery of the task. After I'd found myself in the middle of an interview that was going nowhere and so I just slipped into behaving naturally. After all of this, the people from the "going nowhere" interview hired me for a job that uses my skills at an organization that works to make a difference in the lives of troubled kids. It's been quite a ride.

There were five months of unemployment between those extremes in the middle of the year, months of uncertainty and of relaxation at the same time. Months in which I spent lots of time visiting with my parents (including a trip to Flagstaff), and lots of time with my friends who stayed home during the day. The latter was time that became increasingly precious retroactively, when on my first day back at work I learned that some dear friends would be moving to Missouri.

It's been a year of relational change. Aside from having friends move, I've grown lots closer to my sister-in-law; I've had a friend stop talking to me; I've reconnected with a friend from the past; I've formed maternal-sort-bonding attachments with a new set of first graders and with a teenage boy who says "Hi" every time he sees me since the day he carried a box into my office for me.

For the past few years I've found myself asking God to hone me in particular ways. Somehow this year became dedicated to increasing vulnerability, a time to stop hiding and let God be the one to protect me. And as this has happened I've realized that it is less painful to hurt while trusting God than to hurt while relying heavily on yourself. It is less painful to admit to missing people and leaving that out there even if the sentiment goes unreturned than it is to pretend you don't care at all and letting that pent-up emotion build to volcanic levels. It is freeing and calming to be honest with yourself about what you want and don't want. (Funny thing about telling the truth, to myself and others...it doesn't make me angry.)

It is marvelous to rest in the knowledge that God is shaping you more and more into the person He wants you to be, to be comfortable in your own skin because you know He is at work in all of you.

I feel stronger than I ever did with my guard up. I am quicker to give people another chance. I believe that His ways are right no matter what happens, and that not even the slightest twinge of discomfort is wasted. "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own."--Philippians 3:12

I look forward to seeing what is coming next year.

Perspective on an Audit

This week Thursday is the first audit I'll be part of at the school where I work. Two people from the local district office will be coming to make sure our records are in order. I've been sort of panicking about this off and on since September.

The worst part is not knowing what to expect. The rule book is labyrinthine and can be changed at the whim of any given district auditor. The school situation has changed since last year, so the rules that applied to the women who went through it then may not exactly apply in the same way to me.

Towards the end of his first epistle, the apostle John makes the startling and confusing declaration that God's commandments are not burdensome. I've often wondered how you could say that commands like "love your enemy" aren't burdensome, and it hasn't seemed like enough of an answer to say that it's because Jesus frees us and the Holy Spirit equips us to live in accordance with the will of God. (Though those are certainly amazingly large parts of the answer.)

This week, thinking about the audit, thinking about the rules that keep changing and the subjectivity of the auditor, it hit me that for an unchanging being to lay out commands in writing, with no secrets or loopholes, is a tremendous act of love. God is never going to change the rules. God is never going to show up cranky to work. God is constant, and it is His constancy that makes Him so knowable.

And then today in Sunday School we did a review of the book of Genesis. This morning we pointed out that Genesis isn't a collection of unconnected stories any more than the Bible is a collection of unconnected books. "The Bible is a lot of books, but it's also one book," as one of the girls succinctly put it.

God's promise threads all the way through Scripture. The best part? The book has been finished, but the story isn't over. God's promise threads through countless characters who have come before us and will reach to countless characters after us as our threads overlap and dance and become something increasingly beautiful in a world where the devil's sharpest swords cannot sever these threads that tie us to the Christ who came and is coming.

When we read of epic quests or fairy tales, there are things we know. We know that the evil emperor has to die, that his followers will be scattered. We know the prince will always come for his bride-to-be, that there will be rejoicing and celebration when it happens. We know because they are shadows of the larger tale, whose author has given us the biggest, most magnificent, most welcome spoilers ever.

And in this larger-than-you-and-me story, an audit is coming this Thursday to a small school in Grand Rapids.

It is well with my soul.

When I am afraid,

I will put my trust in You.

In God, whose word I praise,

In God I have put my trust;

I shall not be afraid

What can mere man do to me?

~~ Psalm 56:3-4

Walls

Last night I went to a presentation on a friend's recent trip to Berlin. He and his wife had lived there for over a year while he was stationed in Germany, and he returned as part of an almost-all-expense-paid trip honoring the U.S. servicemen whose presence helped to protect West Berlin from being overrun by the Communists on the other side of the Wall that divided the city in half.

The fall of the Berlin Wall is probably my earliest memory as far as global news is concerned. I remember hearing about people who had tried to come over the Wall from East Berlin and had been killed for their troubles. I had believed, with what I've sometimes seen as a 10-year-old's naivete but now recognize as the general shortsightedness of humanity, that the horrible fact of the wall was inevitable, almost eternal. The evil that had been would always be, or else might become worse. And then suddenly one day it was gone. (The long-boiling things always seem so sudden, so remarkable, when they happen.)

What strikes me after last night's presentation is the same thought that haunted me after seeing The Pianist, a film featuring a man who was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, an area of the city bricked off from the rest that could be entered or exited under only strict military supervision.

People on the other side of those walls watched them go up. Watched as strands of barbed wire tore their city in half and as that barbed wire was replaced by concrete barriers. Watched as a whole group of people were bricked away. Walked by those walls every day, walls behind which their former neighbors were sealed.

People being shut off from the free world watched, too. Watched by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions. In The Pianist, a Jew waiting to board a German train muses, far too late, over the number of Jews in Poland and the question of why they couldn't fight.

It's chilling. And I wonder what people will say about us, fifty or sixty years from now. I wonder if there are any walls going up, right before our eyes, while we keep to ourselves and mind our own business and maybe toss up a few prayers and stay comfortable and safe.

Dear God, keep us awake and unafraid.

Because why?

"The Bible makes this clear. Be as loving as you can, as often as you can, for as many people as you can, for as long as you live. Why should we do this? Because."--Kate Braestrup

Tell any six-year-old child that she should do something "because" and odds are you'll get a response of "Because why?" Hey, tell this thirty-year-old woman, and odds are that even though I've learned to hold it back a little better, my brain still flashes to that question, too.

Why should I bother loving people? They betray me. They ignore me. Sometimes they just irritate me. "As loving as I can" could easily mean "as much as I can be reasonably expected to put up with somebody like this," right?

As often as I can? That makes it better. Because there are days I don't get a lot of sleep, or I have piles of stuff on my desk, or I'm running late, and it's hard to love people on those days, hard to love people who don't answer my emails or who are not driving with any sense of urgency. But if I only love people as often as I can, that excludes days like that.

For as many people as I can...now that takes care of the part where sometimes I run across people I don't like. Sweet. So now the Bible has made it clear that I should love the people I'm naturally inclined to as much as I feel up to whenever I feel like it. I can handle that.

Uncomfortably, the Bible makes it clearer than Braestrup says on...

...who we should love:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." (Deuteronomy 6:5)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." (Leviticus 19:18b)

"If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." (I John 4:20a)

"Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 10:19)

"But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." (Luke 6:26-28)

...when we should love:

"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." (Proverbs 17:17)

...how we should love:

"Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (I Corinthians 13:4-7)

And those passages are just from the highlight reel.

God asks a lot more from us than our best effort. He asks for perfection. (Loving at all times? Bearing all things? Enduring all things?) He also sent perfection, in the person of Jesus Christ: "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (I John 4:10)

And He sent a promise: "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world." (I John 4:15-17)

And He sent a because: "We love, because He first loved us." (I John 4:19)

Queen of Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks (or at least their co-regent)

As a proud card-carrying geeky/nerdy/dorky type (I use all three terms semi-interchangeably), I find myself getting huffy over the presentation of geeks/nerds/dorks in the media. Here's a classic case in point.

I watched 17 Again this week. This is one of those movies that I sense violates my image in some way, and I once told myself I'd never watch anything with Zac Efron in it, but it turns out I really liked the movie despite everything, and was quite impressed with Efron's channeling of Matthew Perry, and that's the end of my apologetic.

In the movie, there are a few characters who are really into The Lord of the Rings, and they have a scene in which they are speaking the language of the elves, and the subtitle for one of the lines came up as, "So where did you learn to speak Elf?" and my immediate reaction was "Elvish!" Then later the man says he wants the woman by his side when he storms the elvish castle of [insert unintelligible name here] and my reaction was, "That doesn't sound familiar at all! That's not in Tolkien! Good grief, do your research, or make it more obvious you're going trans-genre! Or, wait, is this in reference to something in The Simarillon?"

Sometimes I think "awwww, you're such a dork" at myself. That's how serious the state of things is.

Carry me

Somewhere along the line I embraced the idea that it's weak to need anything, especially anything you can't get on your own. People who need people aren't trying hard enough. Nobody wants to do you any favors, so nobody wants you to ask. You die alone, so you should live alone, stand alone except for God who sort of doesn't exactly count because you can't see Him, don't have to look into His eyes to say you need Him.

Maybe this is one of the many reasons God made more than one person, because maybe it takes more courage to ask for help than it does to forge ahead by yourself, more self-awareness to admit confusion and fear and loneliness than it does to sit in the dark alone, more humility to say I need you to another person than it takes, sometimes, to say it to God.

Maybe telling people how you're feeling, asking them to help you, reminds you that God is outside of you, too, not just your personal internal cheerleader but something better, because we want something more than feeling loved by the internal, we want a sacrificial love from outside even when we're too afraid to ask for it.

I have been having a rough couple of months. Good months, overall, but there are ways in which they've been hard, and I crashed hard this past week into illness and exhaustion, which is good for reminding me the world stays up even when my shoulders slump. As I'm rising through the physical exhaustion I'm swimming through a layer of emotional exhaustion, which is good for reminding me I'm not as self-sufficient as I try to be. (I need so many reminders of this.)

I know what I want you to say, and it's this: That God is faithful, and so are you, and that neither of you need me to be perfect and that the world goes along just fine even on the days when I need someone to hold me instead of the other way around.

If you could pray for wisdom and courage in the weeks ahead, I'd appreciate that, too.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows." -- Matthew 10:29-31

"It is vain for you to rise up early,

To retire late,

To eat the bread of painful labors;

For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep."

-- Psalm 127:2

New Assignments

Our mistake, I've heard, is thinking life is meant to be a cruise ship. We set our deck chairs up and try to enjoy the view, but our casual chatting with friends about what we're having for dinner later keeps getting interrupted by loud rumblings and the sound of running feet. It's going to get more and more annoying, sitting there, but there is another option. We can stand up, turn around, and deal with the reality that the cruiser we're on is a battle cruiser; that we're crew members, not tourists; that we have bigger missions than relaxation.

Today I waved goodbye to a vehicle carrying a large chunk of my heart off towards Missouri. Last December my friend Eric was laid off from his job, and he finally got a new job out of state in August. For a few weeks now he's been coming up to Michigan every other weekend to visit his family--Jen and their two kids, Lucas and Katie. They haven't lived like a family in too long, and now they get to do that again. Just further away than before.

Jen is one of my sister-friends. We've shared a lot of life together, especially over this past year, when I was unemployed and would go visit several times a week. (It was a great time to be laid off. I can't think of a better year for that.) I know that this separation is harder because of the amount of time we spent together, but that makes it a good thing. As those of us left on the sidewalk when the car pulled away said, it would be worse if none of us were sad. What a waste of a couple of years it would have been, hanging out with people we wouldn't miss when they were gone.

I'm selfish about these things. I will miss being one of the favorite people in my little friend Lucas' life. I will miss not getting to see some of his sister Katie's first steps (or the very first ones). I will miss hours sitting on right-angled couches talking to Jen. I will miss watching Eric and Lucas throw grapes at each other in the back yard. All that stuff and more.

But the thing is, we're not tourists, they and I. We have a mission that extends beyond what we know, and the commanding officer reassigns as he sees fit. There will be people they need to meet in Missouri, and people who need to meet them. There are lives that haven't crossed yet that will become important to each other in ways we can't foresee. We'll still cross paths ourselves, and then someday our missions will all be completed and we'll be able to compare notes on how our little campaigns affected the broader field.

Part of my heart is with them, but it's only part of my heart, and the rest of me is still here. But all of God is with them, just like all of God is with me, just like all of God is with all of His people. And He loves them more than I do, which means an awful, awful lot.

Take care of my family for me, God. May we fulfill our duties honorably. Here, there, and wherever we go, may it be for and with you.

"I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

~~ Matthew 28:20b

Things I Say to You

Last week in Sunday School prayer request time a boy asked for prayer for his grandfather. "That's always your prayer request," another boy said, and I told him that sometimes we have prayers that we pray for a long time and it's okay, that God doesn't get sick of us.

Lots of times I find that when I'm explaining something about life to kids, I'm talking to myself, too. This is something I've been thinking about lately, this idea that my prayers are repetitive and God is maybe looking for something fresh and different from me.

Doesn't God get tired of it, I thought, me coming and asking Him for things, and so often the same things? "God, please give me patience. God, please redirect my heart. God, I'm sad today, I need comforting." Give, give, give, please, please, please, God.

And then I thought about my little buddy Lucas. He's three, and his vocabulary is expanding but still small. I hear a lot of the same things from him: "Zanne, watch racecars! Zanne, play with me! Zanne, come on!"

Do you know what I hear in that? "I want you to be with me, because I love you." That never gets old. I never get sick of it. I never want anything fresher than and different from it. Do you know why he asks me in the first place? Because I have made myself available for the asking, because I've welcomed it.

I'm going to keep coming, God, and I'm going to ask You a lot of the same things and tell you a lot of the same things, because You have made Yourself available and welcomed my words.

I want You to be with me, because I love You, because You loved me first.

Sarah & I

Sarah had at least heard the promises secondhand: a son, a future. Even secondhand promises were confusing, and she found herself second-guessing, coming up with a good plan that was a little bit self-sacrificial, foregoing her most cherished dream because that couldn't have really been what God wanted for her.

Do you know how long it took Sarah to panic and start working her own plans? At least ten years. Ten. Years.

It took me about three months to start panicking about my job.

Sure, you could say I haven't heard any divine promises, secondhand or otherwise, that the school attendance auditors won't come crashing down on us with the force of a mythological Fury; that all my preparations will bring us into complete compliance; that everything I love about this job won't be taken away because we don't get funding; that I won't be laid off before Thanksgiving.

But it's been three months. At most. Really, it's only been about a month and a half that I've known I'd be good at this, really good at it, and that I'd enjoy the job more than any job I've ever had. And look at me now, paying attention to the little voice whispering in my ear, "You knew it was too good to be true" and "You've got to start looking out for yourself."

Three months. That's ridiculous. I refuse to collapse in terror over this at three months, refuse to lash out at others for not doing their part to keep me employed, refuse to hate the auditors even if they reportedly hate me before we've even met, refuse to let go until I'm blessed. Again. And again.

I want to break the ten year mark on busting out my plans to save myself.

"Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me;
You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies,
And Your right hand will save me.
The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting;
Do not forsake the works of Your hands."
~~ Psalm 138:7-8

Conversations about husbands

The conversation often turns to husbands, being a subject of daily living for many and a point of curiosity for the rest of us. Stories are told and re-told of hesitant forays into interest and first dates, of engagements and weddings. We talk about in-laws and other tricky ground; of the having of children and the yearning for children; of the multiplication and division of problems. Some say their husbands were their first ever experience of mutual attraction; some that in certain ways their husbands surprised them, upsetting what they thought they wanted (“He just kept coming, and coming….” “He said ‘no’ to me and it was so attractive.”).

They are still fairly new to this, these wives, still nowhere near my mother’s thirty-three years, but they are fully committed to the vows they made to God and their husbands, and they are learning, and they are growing (so is their love). It draws me, pulls me to want to be part of that conversation in another way, and I leave feeling joyful because I have seen the Spirit’s blessing on these friends.

I know now what I resisted for years, fearing as I so often do the idea of being like everyone else: I’m a romantic at heart—hopeful, not hopeless, because the best love stories here point to the best love story of all, the one I’m part of no matter what.

After a season in which I struggled with the notion that God probably wanted me to have a series of miserable jobs ended with a job I enjoy, I can’t hold on to the even more ludicrous idea that He is after sending me a man who bores me, who can’t keep up with me, who finds me ridiculous (in the negative sense), who doesn’t want me as much as I want him, who makes the whole endeavor feel like a duty to slog through. It’s a notion that reminds me of my brother, once as relationally ascetic as I have been, pleasantly surprised and amazed to discover even the silly little side things he could have seen himself foregoing in a wife were present in the woman who is now my sister.

I’ve found, after an honest appraisal of self and God, I’m not angry anymore when the topic of singleness comes up. Marriage would be an awfully big adventure. Then again, I’m in an awfully big adventure already. (In all circumstances, to be content.)

What Not to Read

I've read a lot of fanfiction since I first started posting it online way back in 2002. I actually have written it for many years longer than that. For instance, some of my fondest childhood memories involve writing X-Files fanfiction with my brother, except we just called it "writing X-Files stories" because this was so long ago that shipping was known by its original term, relationshipping, and you can see why that got shortened, can't you? Anyway, ask to read one of those stories sometime when you want to be mind-numbingly bored (but don't ask for the Christmas one for boredom, because that one turned out hilarious).

The point is, I've been around. I can save you from a lot of atrocious fics (we fanfic types don't always have time for full words) by a handy reference guide to the most common warning signs.

Many of these warning signs can be found right in the summary:

• AU: Let's establish right now...in general, I don't do Alternate Universe. There are very rare exceptions, such as the time after Star Trek: Generations came out that I wrote a story (pre-fanfiction days then, too) about how Picard, having an infinite range of choices available to him, made the wrong one by coming out of the Nexus five minutes before things blow up. Unless I can see that it's a parody or a version of what should have happened when the writers of the actual book or show just completely dropped the ball (*cough*seasonfinaleofSmallville*cough*), I won't mess with AU.
• 
  
• OC: This stands for Original Character but often means Mary Sue, a fanfic term for a character who is the author's stand-in. She is usually shockingly beautiful and/or talented, has a strange name, and is irresistible to the male character the author thinks is the biggest hottie. (The male version is called the Gary Stu, but the ratio of Mary Sues to Gary Stus is approximately 100:1, which from what I've heard may be due to the fact that most men don't fantasize in writing.) Avoid the OC, especially if the summary says something like, "My OC Izabell and Remy LeBeau have their first date. Fluff!"
• 
  
• Bizarre pairing: Even those who don't write themselves into the story as an OC might have bizarre notions about who on the show or in the book is attracted to whom. In the Harry Potter fandom, for instance, just about every possible combination has been explored, not excepting animals. One of the most squicky (that's "icky," but in a nerdy fanfic way of saying it) pairings: Snape and Hermione. *shudder* Pairings are often represented with a slash mark (Van/Hitomi) or a combination name (Clois). Knowing your combination names can save you from reading fics you don't want to read, and be careful...despite the difference of only one letter in the summary, there is a big difference between Clex and Chlex.
• 
  
• Too many exclamation marks: If I read your summary and it looks like you OD'd ("overdosed," but you already knew that one) on caffeine before starting to write it, I will skip you so fast and nimbly that if you were a flat pebble you could cross the ocean.
• 
  
• Grammar and punctuation errors galore: See above, substitute "not caring" for "caffeine."
• 
  
• "My first ever": Why would you mention this unless you're hedging yourself for failure? And speaking of failure....
• 
  
• "I suck at summaries": Really? Now you've made me afraid that you suck at writing in general. You might as well just come out and say....
• 
  
• "Not very good": Dude, or more probably little 14-year-old girl, you have just flunked Salesmanship 101. I'm moving on.

Now, there are times the summary is deceptively interesting, or you are feeling charitable and think that maybe that author sucks at summaries on the outside but is Tolstoy on the inside (did Tolstoy write the copy for his book jackets? I submit that he did not).

Here, then, are the most common interior signs of a fic you can drop before finishing:

• Bolded words (yes, I see the irony, but this is a semi-comedic essay, not a fic): Italics are okay. Bolded words are over the top. And even italics should be used sparingly. If you don't wince a little when making the italics choice, you're probably taking it too lightly.
• 
  
• Excessive attention to detail: We're not talking descriptions of mountain ranges and ocean views, we're talking what the heroine is wearing and how cute she looks in it, or (worse) what color her eyes are as compared to a food. For instance, if "Suzanne's chocolate brown eyes darkened as she wondered whatever happened to that pair of pink jellies, not the first pair that she wore out because she loved them so much but the second pair, because they went really well with her pink dress with the puffed sleeves and the white polka dots, the dress that sort of made her feel like a princess" looks sparse in the sartorial description arena, you're pretty safe in leaving the fic. (Also, I've said it before and will repeat it again and again, comparing eyes to food is gross and unromantic.)
• 
  
• Out-of-place four-letter words: If you're cruising along through a fic of The Office and Pam starts dropping F-bombs, it takes you out of the moment.
• 
  
• Cut-and-paste descriptions of kissing: Seriously, do you want to go there? Because it'll involve phrases like "tongues tangling" and words like "moaning" and it just gets creepier from that point. Ah, little 14-year-old girl, you have not yet learned of the romance of mystery and half-spoken-of things. And I really have seen so many of these descriptions that look like they've been lifted straight from some other poorly-written scene where physicality is a substitute for connection instead of a means towards it. See it in a fic, skip the rest of the fic.

Those are most of my cues as to What Not to Read when it comes to fanfiction. Ignore them at your own risk.

Rewrite This Tragedy

Peter is with the other disciples after Jesus' resurrection, in the group that follows Him, but he must not really feel like one of them. How could he? Three times he had denied that he even knew Jesus.

Then one day, Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him. Peter responds that he does.

Jesus asks again. Peter responds in the same way, and you have to wonder if he thinks that maybe Jesus just wasn't paying attention the first time, but by the third time Peter catches on, that it's three times, and he remembers another instance he's affirmed something about Jesus three times, and he's grieved by the memory, but then there's this: Jesus has just rewritten Peter's life. Three times the denial, yes, but now three times the affirmation, three times the commission to care for God's people.

"Follow me," Jesus says, for the second time, and Peter takes up this second call with an energy that flows from the magnitude of his forgiveness.

We catch it easily because it happens so quickly, less than a month between the denial and the forgiveness, but this is God's pattern on broader scales, too.

The first woman meets the serpent. She's new to this world, so maybe it doesn't surprise her that he starts talking to her, questioning her, and she can't quite remember just what God said, can't quite convince herself it was worth following through on, and the man beside her is no help at all and the world changes. She is the first to see sin.

And you could blame the woman for this, and you could persecute her and her daughters for being more wicked than men, more prone to error, but there was a promise, a promise quick to follow the disobedience, a promise that one born of a woman would crush the power of the serpent.

Years later, when the angel of God speaks His words to a young woman, they are strange and wildly different from anything she would have expected and instead of questioning whether God really said it or meant it she says "I am the Lord's servant." She is the first to know the Messiah's long-awaited coming will be soon.

Years after that, when the tomb is sealed and the disciples are in hiding, another woman will risk her life to be identified with the man executed as an insurrectionist. She is the first to see Jesus after His resurrection.

In a breath-taking display of the sweeping arc of God's storyline, she thinks He is the gardener.

And the band plays on....

I have always been fascinated by the story of the Titanic. As a young girl I devoured books and documentaries on the subject. Now, years later, the part of the story that still stands out most starkly to me is the choice to course-correct. Had the iceberg been hit full on, the ship might have stayed floating. Instead, several of the many watertight compartments were breached at the same time, and the ship couldn't hold together.

Our brains work a bit like that. Pain will come, but maybe we're meant to face things head-on, to be breached one part at a time, to seal off one compartment so the others can keep us floating. It doesn't help to turn aside as though the iceberg you can see is all the iceberg there is.

We all of us, no matter how shiny on the top deck, hide hull breaches beneath the surface. Eventually, we need to go below decks and deal with them. But sometimes, we need to be sure we've cleared the iceberg first.

Character Growth

once Juliet

loathe to find you for fear of losing you

Penelope now

constancy second only to God's

if you're out there, I promise you this:

after you've found me, nothing you do or fail to do

will ever lose me

"Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking."

Some things I need to hear....

The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.--Deuteronomy 31:8

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.--Psalm 90:1

I lift up my eyes to the hills--

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;

he who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;

the Lord is your shade on your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in

from this time forth and forevermore.

--Psalm 121

You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth,

and called from its remotest parts

and said to you, 'You are my servant,

I have chosen you and not rejected you.

Do not fear, for I am with you;

do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you, surely I will help you;

surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.'

--Isaiah 41:9-10

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.--Jeremiah 31:3

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.--Matthew 28:20b

Me again, God.

I've asked you for a lot. Wisdom, and patience, and courage in new things. I've asked you most recently to take my armor and give me yours, and it's left me raw and closer to the surface and safer than I expected.

It's sinking in deeper and deeper, this knowing that to ask is to receive, and I come more boldly than I used to come. So today I come again, and I'm not ashamed of coming with my hands open, not ashamed of needing something from you, not ashamed that "need" isn't a strong enough word.

Give me peace over your timing, to sit and wait until I know it is time to act, and then to act, not out of grasping, selfish ambition but out of a quiet sense of the rightness of it, that this is the time to speak and these are the words I need to say.

Grant that I not wound you or others, and that any wounds I have already inflicted may heal and not fester.

Send me the broken, neglected, abused, hopeless children. Send me the ignored, the written-off, the "problem" children. Give me a heart to hold them, a double portion of your spirit that it may overflow over their lives, cascading and cleansing and freeing, because I was an outcast and you called me yours.

The kingdom is not noise, but power. God mighty to save, God who hears and answers, God who works out all the details...I leave these requests in your hands.

I look forward to seeing what you will do with them.

I like my job.

There will be tricky bits. There will be awkward training points. There will be lunch and shoe confusion (not confusing them with each other, just that lunch and shoes are my biggest office woes just now). There will be (dare I say it) the odd mistake.

But there will be steady work (STEADY WORK...as in not enough time to sigh over what I could be doing someplace else). There will be new challenges, and new systems to organize and refine, and new people, and my own office space (door and all) to decorate, and a sense that I'm working to further something I believe in (making a place for kids others have given up on) instead of just something that brings me money. Oh, and summers off. And snow days.

I think we're going to be good together.

Now I'm going to sleep. (Turns out being back to full-time work after five months off takes quite a toll.)

Pondering Point for the Day

Why does India, edged by unpleasant neighbors and still prone to some pretty intense squalor and discrimination, produce so much music that makes a person want to dance?

Why does America, wealthy and free as it is, produce so much music about not feeling complete, or about only being complete with another person (please don't ever leave ever no pressure but you're all I have that keeps me living no pressure)?

Is it just that I don't speak Hindi? Are they maybe cheerful sounds about suicide?

*phew*

Today was difficult and exhausting on many levels. (Blessed be the name of the Lord.)

On to the next day.

Now Entering Phase Four

Phase One: I enter this phase crying. I spend most of the next 18 years at home with my family.

Phase Two: I enter this phase crying. I spend most of the next 4 years at college with people who teach or attend there.

Phase Three: I enter this phase without crying. I spend most of the next 8 years at work with my co-workers.

Phase Four: I enter this phase crying. I spend most of the next ?? year(s) at work with co-workers and students (and maybe ???).

Must have been that the only reason I didn't cry for Phase Three was that at the time I didn't realize the momentousness of it.

I've been half-joking with my young friends who are heading off for their freshman year of college, telling them that even though there will be people here they'll miss, there are people ahead who have had a Heather/Andrew/Janessa-shaped hole in their lives and not even known it. Now I realize that it's true for me, too...in the weeks ahead I'll be meeting some people I've been destined to know. Pretty amazing, really. Our whole lives have led to the moment when we meet. (They'll lead on from it, too, but it's the convergence that amazes me most.)

I should maybe check on my outfit for tomorrow and make sure I have all my stuff together, but my brain just Blue Screened and I have to shut it down for the night.

Timmy from Shaun the Sheep

I can't believe I didn't find out about the Shaun the Sheep series until this year.

Pulling Away from Planet "Look at Me, Look at Me!"

Almost every summer a lot of people from my church go out to OPC Family Camp, which is a camping experience for members of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church...and probably their friends...and, um....

Okay, seriously, I don't know the Family Camp rules. I've never gone. It seems to me that it would be a week full of things that make me uncomfortable: bugs, sunscreen, dirt, camping, sleeping on hard surfaces and/or with lots of noise around, barely sanitary bathrooms, and large groups of people who've known each other for all their lives.

It's hard to feel fully at home in a group of people who are talking about all their shared history. Not that I want people to pretend their lives didn't start until they met me, but there are two main ways to tell a nostalgic story. One way brings the "newbie" listeners into the experience ("One time when we went to the beach, she and I were so tired we kept taking turns knocking each other down to give ourselves an excuse to stop walking"), and one way excludes them ("It's like that time at the beach." "With the dunes?" "Yeah." "Oh, my word, that was so funny....").

It's hard not to practice exclusionary bonding with people you've known for a while. It's hard to open up your circle to newcomers. I know this. It's also hard to be the person who feels, after years of knowing you, that she'll never quite make it into your inner circle because of the sheer fact that she hasn't known you since you were eight years old, or worked with you, or gone to college with you, or whatever the secret criteria is.

I don't always feel like this, but I do sometimes. And I know it's not very mature, and I've made progress so I don't go into meltdown over it as often as I used to, but I haven't arrived yet. Sometimes I still expect the world to revolve around me, and when people slip out of my orbit it can still frustrate me.

I'm glad the world doesn't really revolve around me. I'm glad my friends have more friends than just me, that I am not the one thing that gives their lives meaning. I'm glad that God has brought so many people into my life and that I can't sabotage any relationship He wants me to have, no matter on what level it is.

The dying part of me wants to be everybody's favorite, no matter when I came on the scene of their lives. The part that is coming increasingly alive knows that real love is bigger and wider and more mysteriously amazing than favorites or timelines. (The more I love, the larger my capacity for love grows.)

Someday I won't avoid anybody because I don't like being second or third or fourth tier. Maybe someday soon.

"For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure."--Philippians 2:13

Time Lessons from a Time of Unemployment

• Life moves quickly. I was laid off in March, and now I'm thinking "Good grief, I'll be at work in less than two weeks!" Five months gone just like that.
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• No matter how much time you have, you find a way to fill it.
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• I am not more productive with more time. I am actually less productive.
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• Deadlines and schedules motivate me. (I am going to be working for a charter school. Helllooooo, structured school time! I've missed you so....)
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• The discomfort of procrastination lies largely in the denial of the voice in your head reminding you you had better plans for the day than surfing the internet or watching TV.
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• Even though I feel excellent about myself when I'm productive, I often choose to procrastinate instead.
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• You don't really avoid doing things because you don't have time. You avoid doing things because on some level you don't want to do them. Dig down and find your real reasons (if you want), but don't blame lack of time.
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• I have been blessed with a lot of high-quality people in my life. I'm glad to have gotten the chance to see so many of them during the days over the past few months. The ability to call someone at random and ask "can I come over this afternoon?" is what I will miss most when I'm back to work. That and being able to visit with my family for long periods.
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• All times and seasons eventually end. "It always seems soon...afterward."
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Boy Saints and Last Sundays

This morning I asked my first graders if anybody knew what a saint was.

"Someone good?" offered William.

"Not exactly," I said. "I'm looking for another answer."

"Oooo, I know!" Timmy exclaimed. "Girls?"

Now, I try to maintain a straight face when the kids answer questions because I don't want to embarrass them, but I couldn't help myself. The answer caught me so off guard that I burst out laughing.

I was glad to have the opportunity to tell them that the Bible defines saint as anyone who has placed their trust in God, who loves Him and wants to serve Him. God makes saints, and it isn't primarily based in your goodness or your gender. "Boys can definitely be saints," I said.

I have spent far too much of my life striving for female supremacy (actually personal supremacy). At times I have used the otherness of boys and men as an excuse to knock them down--trying to shred egos, trying to wound, and though I hope I have never succeeded to the point I was trying for, it certainly wasn't helping. I still remember the time I complimented a young man I had known for years and he said, "That's the first time you ever said you were proud of me." Ouch. It shouldn't have been.

What I want now, with all the boys I interact with, is to help grow men. To let them know that I love them; that they aren't perfect but neither is anyone else and that's why Jesus came; that I am proud of them when they answer questions, and when they fight against sin in their lives (a 7-year-old apologized to me tonight for his inattentiveness in many Sunday School classes...so, so proud of him and grateful to God for working in his young heart). I've been encouraged so much to see their hearts, and the way they're thinking, and I pray they will be a powerful force for the kingdom.

I want that for the men I interact with, too. To be more supportive than sarcastic (unless it's supportively sarcastic...I don't rule that out as an option), more respectful than resentful, more encouraging than ego-shredding, less and less self-protecting and self-aggrandizing. I'm not very good at it, but sanctification is real and I know that this is a desire of the heart that God will grant as I trust in Him.

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

Today was the last Sunday for this first grade class. We have the month of August off, and then the next time I teach first grade it will be for a new group of kids. One of the girls told her mom this morning that she missed me already...and when her mom told me that, I almost cried, because I miss them, too.

I don't remember my Sunday School teachers from when I was growing up, so I don't expect that many of these kids will remember for long that I was their teacher. But I hope that some of the truths we discussed stick with them. I hope that I encouraged them to think deeper, and to apply what they learn to their lives. I don't care if they forget me, but I hope they caught at least a glimpse of Jesus and never forget that.

Fasting in a Major Key

The elders of my church congregation have called for a fast tomorrow, focusing on prayer for some people facing major health issues. I did a word search on BibleGateway.com for the words "fast" and "pray" in the same verse, and these were some reasons I found for prayer and fasting:

• The state of Jerusalem and the temple (the city of God and the house of God).
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• Confession of grievous sin and petition for the grace of God.
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• The work of God's church.
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• Petition for protection in times of dire need (as in the book of Esther when the Jews were faced with an imminent attack). 
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• Deliverance from accusers and enemies.
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• Guidance and wisdom.
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• Mourning.
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• Preparation for ministry.
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• Healing of the illnesses of others, in one case specifically for enemies, in another case for an illness brought about as a result of the petitioner's sin.

We have a shallow view of prayer and fasting. How often do we progress beyond the Sunday School prayer requests of children, the requests like "I have a lot of mosquito bites and I don't ever want any more again" that boil down to "I'm being annoyed right now and I want it to stop"?

Is it wrong to be annoyed by mosquito bites, or frustrated by bigger things like chronic illness, and wish they would go away? Probably depends on how you're handling the situation, but it isn't necessarily true that the existence of pain means that you have done or are doing something wrong. And there certainly isn't anything wrong with acknowledging the physical needs of the church. 

This is where I come up short: we're praying to the God who created the heavens and the earth, the God who has promised to give us anything we ask for in faith, the God who has vanquished sin and death, and we're praying that we don't get any more mosquito bites.

I confess, I don't pray well. I don't often act like spending time with God is a top priority. Sometimes I can go whole days without even talking about him or what he has done, yet how many times have I been infatuated with people who have loved me far less and not been able to stop talking about even their most insignificant actions? (Harder maybe to talk about the real things.) How many days have I spent more time imagining what I would say to someone who isn't anywhere near me than I have spent speaking to someone who is always near me?

I'm not going to work myself into a lather of guilt over this, Satan, which I know is disappointing to you (good). My guilt has been taken care of on the cross. But here's what I'm trying to pass on, information you don't want sinking into anybody's head: prayer and fasting can thwart the devil himself. I'd trade a ton more mosquito bites for that.

Pray past the now.

Cold Day in July

I know a lot of people are sad on days like these, mid-July with very little sunshine, but I am not one of them. 

When it is chilly I can turn off my air conditioning, which not only saves me money but drops the ambient noise level in my apartment by about 50 decibels. I can wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants. Isn't it nice switching back and forth between seasonal wardrobes? ("Oh, turtleneck shirt! I haven't worn you in so long!") And isn't it nice cuddling up in blankets, no matter when it is? 

When it is dreary outside, everything slows down inside, too. It feels okay to be lazy, to leave things for tomorrow. Tiredness doesn't feel as oppressive on a dreary day as it does on a sunny day. The sun likes to guilt you out if you're sleeping in or watching TV instead of going on walks or bike rides, even though the sun knows perfectly well I am afraid of burning and I really really have to motivate myself to leave the apartment solo with no mission.

It feels like such a lovely, stretchy long day. 

Late night/Early morning ramblings

• Technically it is early morning, but in my vocabulary it isn't morning unless I've slept, so it is still late night for me.
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• I got a job as an office manager for a local charter school. For this job, which was really interesting. I start August 17. The next five weeks are vacation now, not unemployment. Nice.
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• What is it about driving my area of I-196 after dark that makes me forget I'm on an expressway? I have often glanced at the speedometer and seen I am waaaayyyy under posted speed limits. And I'm not the only one.
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• Sometimes people leave reviews on my fanfiction like this one--"Interesting. I wondered if Jacob was there. If so, wouldn't that be a twist?! I liked the story, though"--that make me wonder if they understand what the word "though" means. 
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• I think if you like a fanfiction enough to favorite it so you can check it out again later or recommend it to anyone who sees your profile, you like it enough that you can spend half a minute writing a review. Even just to say "This is going in my favorites." Writers like acknowledgment.
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• Went to a concert last night and one of the singers reminded me of Michael Emerson. High forehead, mostly. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I like high foreheads for physiognomic reasons--they're associated with intelligence. Which is very attractive.
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• Watching so much NCIS lately that tonight I caught myself making a gesture that belongs to one of the characters.
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• I noticed recently that I have a lot of songs on my iPod about men in love with difficult women.
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• I've been with my parents for 20 days out of the last four weeks. I have slept in my own bed 0 days out of that same time...the sofa bed in the room with the air conditioner is getting a lot of use. Speaking of which....
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• Good night.

Imagining and Knowing

Tonight my heart is light and I think it's because yesterday I talked about him and tonight I talked about him and both times I talked not about what I imagined he might be up to or how I see myself in this fraction of time, but about what I knew he had already done, and who he is, past and present and future.

In Sunday School yesterday, someone had a prayer request that mirrored a prayer request I have been keeping to myself, and I comforted her aloud with the truth I know, and in so doing received comfort. (God sends us people broken as we are so we can offer the comfort with which we have been comforted.) 

"Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee," another girl read from Matthew 28:10 during the lesson, and a boy asked in astonishment, "Jesus had brothers?" and it swept over me that yes, Jesus has brothers, and sisters, present and ever after tense, and I am one of them and it is awe-inspiring.

How can I be a sister of Christ? Because he didn't just die on the cross (others had done that), he rose from the grave. He didn't just rise from the grave (others had done that), he rose on his own power. And because only God could do that, then Jesus is who he said he was, and spoke the truth. And because his words can be trusted, we can know that his promises are true, and he promised to reconcile those who believed to God. More than that, he made us fellow children of God, co-heirs of all the blessings and riches of God (Romans 8:15-17). And that, as I told the kids, is why it is important that Jesus rose from the dead.

Tonight I spoke with a friend of deep matters, dark things of the heart, the thoughts and beliefs that entrench themselves. We talked of him then, too, about how he is not the one fighting to increase the hold these things have on me, but the one who fought once for all to release me from the chains I keep helping that other to wrap around my neck again, shadow chains with no power when I walk in the light.

"Do you know why I can't remember very well?" a boy asked me yesterday morning. "Because I forget really easily."

So do I, my young friend. Let's keep reminding each other about the important things.

Whatever He Commands

Maybe I'm the only one who has this problem, but the most draining issues in my life come up with obnoxious regularity. I'll get past something, move on a few years, encounter a similar scenario, try to relate better in it and think of myself less and of God and others more, and eventually crash and burn. Again. I'll see positive changes, but they often seem microscopic, to the point that when I recognize a scenario I practically hear the ticking time-bomb.

What do you want me to learn from this, God? What do I have to change to move past it and deal with something else? Why does it keep happening? Why do my best efforts keep ending in failure even when it seems like I'm trusting in you?

I'm reading Job now, which is pretty appropriate in some ways. On the one hand, I haven't had that level of suffering. On the other hand, I have definitely had the "Would somebody please tell me what on earth is going on" feeling. Yesterday I came across this passage: "Also with moisture he loads the thick cloud; he disperses the cloud of his lightning. It changes direction, turning around by his guidance, that it may do whatever he commands it on the face of the inhabited earth. Whether for correction, or for his world, or for lovingkindness, he causes it to happen" (Job 37:12-13).

You know what that passage doesn't say is one of God's goals for doing what he does? "To screw with your mind. To make you feel like a total failure and a waste of space in God's kingdom." (Come to think of it, I know who does have those goals.)

Job was tormented by Satan, and so was Paul. Paul begged three times for that torment to leave (and from my own experience I wonder if it was that whatever it was flared up three different times), and received this for an answer: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9a).

God, I am tired of this. I don't know what it is for, or what to do with it. This is what I know: Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead and completed his work, and because of that I will not stand ashamed before you on the last day. Keep me from stumbling today. And tomorrow. And the next time.

Help me to remember that even though it seems that life drones on repetitively, drastic change only needs to happen once.

Casting Director

When I sit in group interviews I find myself more interested in evaluating everyone else than in coming up with my own presentation. I think I would like to be an interviewer, or casting director...I'm not great on the other side of the desk. 

Today after the opening "about me" statements, I kind of wished I had been sent home. One of the three of us had a great background in and love of the sort of work in question. My casting director side said, "They'd be stupid if they didn't pick her." Hearing her and the two women who were interviewing us almost made me cry--I so long to be doing something I feel that strongly about, but have trouble believing that is possible. Or if I should be using the energy to try to believe. And then I feel stupid for being so overwrought and melodramatic. (It's complicated up in my head. Sometimes it feels way too crowded up there.)

I'm heartsick.

"Why don't you just tell me...."

In one of my favorite Seinfeld bits, Kramer has been getting calls for Moviefone and has decided to answer his phone as though he were a recorded message. Unfortunately, as he is not really a Touchtone phone system, he can't tell which three letters the person on the other end of the phone is pressing as they try to select their movie. He offers a few wild guesses and finally blurts out, "Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you've selected?"

I kind of feel like that lately. You know, on an allegorical level. I don't know what buttons to press, I don't know what movie you want to see, but if you would just tell me what it is I would at least be able to move on from there. 

Extremes

"The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other the perfection of egoism." -- unnamed priest in Graham Greene's The Comedians

I would argue that imperfections of charity and perfections of egoism exist in both extremes, but in general I am far more likely to choose violence over indifference.  "I don't actually get upset," somebody told me once, and between the words I heard, "Deep down, I don't actually care about anything you could possibly say or do." Sometimes when I have made someone angry, there is a part of me that is happy about it because I'd rather they be angry at me than brush me off. And as I was writing that last sentence, I remembered that in a Harry Potter fanfic I once wrote I fed similar words into the mouth of Draco Malfoy. Nice.

Humans are pretty twisted up inside, aren't they?  Which extreme do you fall towards?

Oh, reality...I only ever wanted to visit you....

I just got back from a vacation with my parents and have been thrown back into real life. I am a bit tired of real life. Don't know what to do with it. On the one hand, I need a job to pay my bills. On the other hand, I have been enjoying all this time off--even on days when I've not turned my air conditioning on because I'm trying not to spend money, and I sit here feeling very frugal and rather sticky. And honestly, looking for a job at thirty was not what I thought would happen.

I wish somebody had told me as I was growing up that the odds of me being married straight after graduation or shortly into my time as a working woman were not as high as I thought they were (maybe especially confronting me on my extreme fear of failure and thus of commitment which I have often seen as a precursor to failure).  I wish somebody had urged me not to wait around for some prince to come rescue me from the tower of the corporate world (it wasn't always a conscious thought, but looking back, it was definitely in there). I wish somebody had challenged me to think about what to do with what I'd been given, to move out of my ruts, to fall on my face a few times and get back up.

This is my fear for the young girls in my church who hear a lot about being good wives and mothers and not a lot about what to do if that isn't in the plan: that they'll end up like me, unemployed and searching job boards and wondering why they spent seven years treading water and if they've doomed themselves to that for the rest of their lives.

But then, the first play I ever wrote outside of a class boiled up out of a period of intense discontentment. Maybe I'm scheduled to write a masterpiece.

A girl can still dream.

Love for me...

Friday morning the two youngest girls I was babysitting came downstairs groggy from just waking up and wanted me to read to them. "Pick some books," I told them, but by then they had climbed onto the couch next to me, or been pulled up onto my lap, and they were sleepy enough still that for the next ten or fifteen minutes I sat with two little girls cuddled up to me and dozing. And my heart was full, and the chorus of the Sara Groves song "One More Thing" was running through my mind: "Love for me is when you put down that one more thing and say 'I've got something better to do.' Love for me is when you walk out on that one more thing and say, 'Nothing will come between me and you--not even one thing.'" (I remembered this later that day as I was filling the dishwasher and heard another of the girls calling, "Are you coming yet?")

It's a chorus I remembered this thirtieth birthday month when my friends made time to be with me on my birthday, even though it was on a "work night" for most of them; or had a picnic for me ("Because she's my friend," Trudy told her grandchildren, who both insisted "She's my friend, too!"); or came along when I redeemed my free birthday meal certificates, even though in one case it might have been expensive and in another their infant son had been cranky that day; or expressed a desire to come even though they live in Austin, and Denver, and the Northwest Territories, and Newfoundland; or remembered it was Thirty Thursday even though I'm no longer a coworker. (My birthday is always a big deal to me, but this year it was an even bigger deal.)

It's a line that comes to mind when my parents ask me to come on vacation with them, or when my brother and sister-in-law ask if I'll make it out to see them soon, or when people find me in a crowded church building, or invite me over just so we can spend time together, or read what I have written on this blog and/or in my fanfiction postings.

Love is in words, yes, but Friday morning I realized that for me words follow time. Which was enlightening in a "you haven't picked up on that yet?" way, but also challenging, because I could immediately think of several definite examples of me being selfish with my time.

To all of you who have made time for me over the years, know that I've noticed and that it means a lot to me. I love you, too.

Bits & Pieces

From the opening line of an AP article on the analog/digital transition: "TV stations across the U.S. planned to cut their analog signals Friday, ending a six-decade era for the technology and likely stranding more than 1 million unprepared homes without TV service." "Stranding"? Really? I think if you've reached the point with your TV viewing that having it taken away can be described in similar terms as being stuck on a deserted island or without gas in the middle of the winter...well, that is a sad thing.

I've been babysitting for a family from church. I was there Wednesday early afternoon through Thursday late afternoon, and am going back for today (someone else is there with the kids now, no worries). I was a little nervous going in, as I have never been in charge of seven children for that long before, but it's been fun. Exhausting, but fun. Hoping for the energy to make it across state when I leave there tonight (I'm bringing Apollo with me so we can leave from there...a lot more than energy to get home without stopping at a rest stop, I'm hoping that the kids all pay strict attention to my injunction NOT TO GET THEIR FINGERS NEAR THE BIRD).

And then tomorrow at about this time I will be awake again, this time getting ready to drive out to the airport with my parents for a trip to Flagstaff. I hope they have karaoke night at this timeshare like they did last time I was out west with them. Even though I won't have my karaoke buddies Jeremiah and Michael. I love karaoke...yet another nerdiness I offer. If they don't have it, maybe I'll get my fix locally when I get back. (I found somewhere to do it a few weeks ago and have the goal of bringing a few friends along next time.)

My June has been very full.

Hello, I must be going.

Romance: Larghetto

"I bribed them. To sing us a song that would drive us insane and make our hearts swell and burst." -- Joe Versus the Volcano

Sometimes I feel this way about songs with no words. Chopin makes my heart swell...and though it doesn't burst, sometimes it gives serious thought to bursting. 

I am glad for the invention of the piano.

Thirty on Thursday!

How cool is it that I get to turn thirty on a Thursday? The answer: very. Bring on the alliteration and even approximate rhyme.

Many people in this age range say they will be staying twenty-nine for a long time, and they usually laugh like they made a really good joke. I often want to tell them what I often want to tell people who make temperature jokes when they hear that my last name is Winter: "You are not funny. And why are you not funny? Well, mostly because EVERYONE HAS ALREADY THOUGHT OF THAT. That is one of the most obvious things to say. You couldn't expend an ounce of effort towards originality?" 

And when Christians say this, well....

Here's the deal. God is sovereign. He has a plan for His people (Jeremiah 29:11), and you can't catch Him off-guard (Psalm 121:4), and He knew me before I was even born (Psalm 139:15-16). So if God knew I would be born thirty years ago, that means that if I am still alive today, this is exactly how old I am supposed to be. However old you are, that is exactly how old you are supposed to be. Trying to hide from it is trying to hide from a very basic, non-negotiable part of who God made you to be. (I am about 5'3". What if I went around telling everybody I was 5'11"? I would look ridiculous. Stop. Consider. Yes, that is in fact the comparison I am trying to make.)

And who knows? Maybe He scheduled my thirtieth birthday for a Thursday because He knew what a kick I'd get out of it. I wouldn't put it past Him.

Good Sunday

Sunday morning at about 3:00 I woke up with a head full of thoughts. I was thinking around a subject I've been on lately, that maybe the negative things in my life are consequences of poor decisions in the past, and yesterday morning the thought crystallized as "Maybe this is God's revenge for the times I've [fill in the blank]." And then, suddenly, the cross flashed into my mind, a vivid reminder that God saw a world full of people hating Him, or avoiding Him, or ignoring Him, and sent Jesus to make a way for reconciliation even though at the time nobody wanted to be reconciled. And that kind of God doesn't take revenge on the people He has reconciled to Himself. Might I experience hard times? Yes. Will they be because God is lashing out at me for past failures and sins of which I have repented? No. Consequences, maybe. Vindictive anger, no.

We talked about Ruth in the first grade class on Sunday morning. We were explaining what a famine was, how it meant your crops weren't growing and how that was a problem because you needed to eat, and one boy said, "But if you're a Christian, you will only starve, you won't die." I'm not sure exactly how he meant that, but it struck me as a good way of expressing that there are things worse than death, that the promise of life lived in the presence of God for all eternity outweighs even the most dire things earth has to offer. I may starve, but I won't die. I may lose friends, but I won't die. I may be confused, but I won't die. Someday, whatever it is I am going through will seem almost laughable by comparison to the glory of God revealed. "Remember when that was such a big deal to me? Remember how torn up I was over it, how much my heart ached? And yet I was never in any danger of dying."

Sunday evening I had nursery duty, so I decided to ride my bike to church. Technically, I could ride my bike more often, but 1) I wasn't sure how hot and sweaty I would be and 2) I am not really comfortable wearing pants in church on a regular basis. (Not that there aren't plenty of women in my church who do wear pants, I just almost always dress up more, so it feels weird for me.) Turns out it took me less than half an hour to ride over, so I arrived quite early. I spent an hour outside, walking around, sitting on the pavement, reading in 2 Chronicles, singing and talking and a little bit of dancing to God, listening, basking in the sun and the wind and the blue sky and green leaves and bird song. For me, there are few things as healing as wind--I've loved it for so long that it reminds me my problems are short-lived by comparison.

I was in nursery with pleasant people, including a woman I get along with very well but don't often connect with, and one little boy who mostly wanted to be acknowledged and snuggled for the evening, which was fine because I was in the mood for that, myself.

And then I went home and opened that book that's been sitting on my shelf for months.

Good day. Thank you, God.

Signs and Wondering

When Gideon is approached by the angel of the Lord, a term which refers to the Lord Himself, the Lord tells him He is with him, and sends him to deliver Israel from their Midianite oppressors. Gideon says, "Since You have appeared to me, I will do exactly as You say."

Um...no. Gideon, like Moses before him, asks how this is going to happen and tries to cloak doubt in humility instead of just doing what he is told. But then after the Lord reassures him "Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man," Gideon agrees. 

Nope. Now Gideon asks for a sign. And that holds him for a little while, but soon he's asking for another sign. And another sign.

To sum up, it takes a personal appearance from God, two reassurances that God is for real going to be with him, and three miraculous signs before Gideon is totally confident to do what God asked him to do in the first place. All I want is one of those.

Yes, I'm a sign-chaser. I see signs just about everywhere (isn't life like a work of fiction? doesn't every small thing Mean Something?), to the point that I begin to discount all so-called signs, to the point that I start wondering if I'm discounting too many and maybe some of those are/were actual signs so let's check again, to.... Vicious cycle, anyone?

Last week in my giant set of interviews, two to four people asked a question like this: "I see from your resume you have a strong interest in writing, editing, and theatre. Why are you looking at administrative positions?" It Must Be A Sign.

Signs are a recurring motif in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. They first appear in a conversation the character Annie has with her mother, in which Annie says "Destiny is something we've invented because we can't stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental." Minutes later, when the wedding dress she is trying on rips at a seam, Annie moans, "It's a sign!" The little boy who wants his dad to meet Annie claims a line from her letter is a sign. Annie's friend claims her unconscious repetition of a movie line is a sign. 

In one of the last scenes in the movie, it is the evening of Valentine's Day and Annie tells her fiance Walter about this man she knows from the radio, who might be at the top of the Empire State Building waiting for her at that moment. She and Walter break up, then look out the window and see the Empire State Building light up with a giant red heart. "It's a sign," gasps Annie. "Who needed a sign?" Walter replies, seemingly the only one who realizes that "it's a sign" can be code for "now I recognize what I want."

General principle: if you find yourself looking for signs, ask yourself why. To support an action? Just act. To put off taking action, like Gideon was? Just act. To get around to something you don't want to do? Maybe this is a time to confront why you don't want to do it, and whether your reasons are valid. (The Pharisees asked for a sign from Jesus and He came down on them hard for not believing the Word they claimed to be teaching, confronting them for hiding behind a request for a sign when what they meant was "I am fighting against this, against You.")

Sometimes looking for a sign is a way of delaying the part of life where you look truth in the face. Sometimes it's a way of setting somebody else up to take the blame if the consequences of your actions are not up to your expectations.

Do I want clarity? Yes. Should I expect to receive clarity in a particular area of my life when I'm dodging it in others? I don't think so.

I feel very adrift on the topic of employment, but there's a book on my shelf that is the first step in research for my first attempt at a full-length play. I have had this book for five months, have been thinking about reading it for maybe a year longer than that, and the basic kernel of the idea that led me to the book has only been growing in that time, pushing more insistently through various events in my life. Every time I pick up another book instead I feel the twinge of procrastination.

Who needs a sign?

No working with an engineering department for me

"Actual life is full of false clues and signposts that lead nowhere," to quote E.M. Forster, "unmanageable because it is a romance."

I had a giant round of interviews last week (8 people, individually, over 2.5 hours) and did not get hired. I did get a lot of interview experience, obviously, and I don't feel horrible about the situation. Not getting hired because of an egregious error on my part would have been one thing, not getting hired because I didn't fit their needs is another. During the course of the interviews, I had two or three people ask me why I was pursuing this sort of career, one that had nothing to do with writing or theatre.

Now, I'm the queen of false clues and signposts and finding hidden meanings where none exist, so I'm not sure, but...I wonder if I'll look back sometime twenty or thirty years from now and be able to see the direction in which God was nudging me in 2009.

I wonder if, in retrospect, it will look rather like a romantic comedy.

Kind of like Italy

When you go to bed all clean, with fresh sheets and pajamas, 

and you wake up with a cool breeze on your skin 

and green, green, green-just-a-hint-of-blue-sky-back-there outside your window, the leaves dancing in the breeze so that your nearsightedness makes it look like a Monet painting in motion, 

and you hear the birds, especially the ones that have made a nest over your air conditioner,

and you can hear cars and lawn mowers but nothing that sounds like hurry,

it's hard to believe that any of your problems are really problems next to this quiet joy

so you leave them 

you take another day off to putter around and play the piano and read and write and sit with friends

you dedicate the day to God not in its bustle of activity but in its restfulness.

Anyway, I do.

Someday I hope to live with somebody who makes me laugh even half as much as I laugh when I'm with Janessa and Jillian. And who has an equal capacity for insightful, encouraging conversation. Even if that person had been horribly disfigured by acid, it would be worth it.

A Room with a View

My book club met last night, so I feel free to blog about this E.M. Forster book now. (It was a little weird when I first arrived last night, because I had just read my version of a book club meeting on this book that I had fanfic'd a little over a year ago. Wanted to refresh my memory on what I had thought then on some of the main points. Lisa says I'm a nerd.)

I love this book. Love it. (I think I've mentioned that.) There was somebody there who pretty much hated it, which is always a little punch-to-the-gut for me because I identify so strongly with certain fictional characters and books and movies that somebody saying they like or dislike it is immediately equivalent in my mind to people saying they like or dislike me. To the point that when people say something like, "My favorite character in the Harry Potter series is Hermione," I have to remind myself that other people do not think like I do and so very likely this is not a compliment or oblique reference to what the person thinks of me. 

A Room with a View is strongly themed around personal honesty. Lucy is a young woman raised in a fairly conventional society, and she has been accustomed to accepting everyone else's view of her. On a holiday to Italy, she finds herself rebelling internally, urged on by a pair of travelers with whom she falls into easy comradeship. This disturbs her so much that she runs (personal honesty is a frightening thing when you're not used to it), but of course you can't run from truth your whole life, at least not often in books, and by the end everything has sorted out, or she has.

Lisa said that a room with a view is a place from which you can see things, thus the title for a book about broadening horizons and seeing things as they are. (She said it better last night, but I didn't write it down.)

Quotes, quotes, quotes, quotes....

"He has the merit--if it is one--of saying exactly what he means. He has rooms he does not value, and he thinks you would value them. He no more thought of putting you under an obligation than he thought of being polite. It is so difficult--at least, I find it difficult--to understand people who speak the truth."

"By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself." 

"She had refused, not because she disliked him, but because she did not know what had happened, and she suspected that he did know. And this frightened her."

"I'm always right. I'm quite uneasy at being always right so often."

"Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not."

"For the only relationship which Cecil conceived was feudal: that of protector and protected. He had no glimpse of the comradeship after which the girl's soul yearned."

"But Lucy had developed since the spring. That is to say, she was now better able to stifle the emotions of which the conventions and the world disapprove. Though the danger was greater, she was not shaken by deep sobs.... Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world's enemy, and she must stifle it."

"She disliked confidences, for they might lead to self-knowledge and to that king of terrors--Light."

"Yes, for we fight for more than Love or Pleasure, there is Truth. Truth counts."

Interview Thoughts

I have an extended set of interviews tomorrow. I may get to work with a bunch of engineers, who I hope would all be quirky and nerdy so I'd feel at home. Speaking of nerdy, I am excited about the possibility of Excel charts and PowerPoint presentations.

I plan to exploit the cuteness. It doesn't feel as wrong as it sounds.

We will see what happens.

Burn on re-entry

I hear good lines in movies, or songs, and I want to put them on Facebook statuses, to have somebody know I heard it and see if maybe somebody else has heard it and picks up on it. Or I want to post another video (how much do I love Rascal Flatts' "Every Day" just now? oh, well, I couldn't find a karaoke track for that anyway). Or I want to send a quick note to somebody and I don't have her email address.

Except....

I still want to pull back a bit. I want to pare down. And I don't know...is there a polite way to unfriend somebody? I mean, we do it all the time in real life without really worrying about etiquette. All you have to do is stop talking. Easy. It's the making time for people that takes work, anyway.

But something about actually deleting them off a screen seems harsher, even if I never talk to that person in real life. Maybe it only feels that harsh because they can tell I'm doing it. I've done my fair share of reassigning people to nebulous categories in my IM programs. "Ha, shows you, person who probably wouldn't even care what I'm doing if you knew, you're not in the 'Buddies' category anyMORE!" (Despite the presence of my mom's genetics, I'm not the sweetest person you've ever met. Nicest thing somebody ever said to me regarding this: "Yeah...sweet doesn't really do it for me.") 

And what happens when I maybe start talking to them more, and want to friend them, and now they're getting a friend request, although they previously friended me? Or what if they think I'm still off Facebook and then they see me post on a mutual friend's wall, and try to write to me and can't? Awkward.

Maybe I should restrict my account to former classmates/co-workers and some other people I don't see on a regular basis. Hm. 

The return plan is clearly still a work in progress.

Things that make me happy

This morning, in my first grade Sunday School class

Me:          "Joshua, any prayer requests?"

Joshua:   "Nope. But you got a hair cut."

William: "Heyyyy, yeahhhh...."

I always like reactions to a hair cut, but this one might be my favorite ever. I love my first graders.

I am excited about this book.

First of all, it is by Kevin DeYoung. Second, it has just about the longest title ever: Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will, OR How to Make a Decision Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, etc. Third, as somebody who's always wanted to wait until she was 100% sure of being 100% right before she actually made a major decision, and who has thus been shoved out of the nest a LOT (e.g. going to college, living with my sophomore year roommate, staying in Grand Rapids, getting a job, leaving the job), I am tired of masking my fear of being wrong or being hurt as "wanting to be sure it's God's will."

I can't take that job. It might not be God's will.

I can't date that person. It might not be God's will.

I can't think about moving. It might not be God's will.

Yeah? For real, Suzanne? You think you're so big and bad you can thwart the will of the almighty God? That maybe He'll have turned His back for a moment, turn around, and be all, "Oh, no, I had the perfect job/man/place for you, and you settled! How could you? I guess there's nothing I can do about it now!"

Here's a quote from the book that a reviewer posted on Amazon.com: "So go marry someone, provided you're equally yoked and you actually like being with each other. Go get a job, provided it's not wicked. Go live somewhere in something with somebody or nobody. But put aside the passivity and the quest for complete fulfillment and the perfectionism and the preoccupation with the future, and for God's sake start making some decisions in your life. Don't wait for the liver-shiver. If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God's will, so just go out and do something."

I'm excited. Let's do this.

English Abroad

Deep down, squelched under as it is by statistics, is the part of me that is attracted to the early 1900s British notion that going on an Italian holiday would bring about life-altering change. Leaving behind familiar things and the people who know you, or who think they do; being surrounded by people who live from the heart instead of the head; coming face-to-face with yourself and discovering what sort of person you really are underneath the dust of routine; being truthful, absolutely truthful, even if it's strange and awkward and frightening; releasing yourself to recognize and to feel all your emotions; becoming so real it changes everything and everyone you run across.

Maybe it's silly and fluffy and unintellectual, but there it is. Beneath all the accumulated life experience, part of me still believes in Italy.

Character Sketch

This is how life works. 

He tells you he is in love with you, and he looks so sincere, so vulnerable, that your heart catches in your throat. This thing you have told yourself isn’t really a flirtation is suddenly on an entirely different level. You retreat, try to make sense of this new development, try to put things back into some semblance of order. You try to get your breath back, and then he’s taking it away again and your brain is worthless for anything. 

You hesitate, and your chance is lost. 

It isn’t him, you tell him, but then for once truthfulness kicks in and you admit that it might be, that you’re not really sure but that you’re sure this isn’t working like this. He asks if there’s somebody else, and you hesitate again, and he knows what that means. Then he asks who he has to be for you, and you say you don’t want him to have to be anything. He cries, which surprises you, but you’re halfway out the door already. 

You can do more than you thought possible.

Every day your cell phone is close at hand, as you wait for messages that never come, wait for him to realize you were just confused, wait for him to try again, wait to be brave. One day he walks back into your life, and you think this is it, but then you see in his eyes that he’s still a few hundred miles away. You smile encouragingly, you hug enthusiastically, you pretend to understand when he brushes you off. You figure he needs time to adjust, too. Then he tells you he’s seeing somebody else, and it seems he’s already found a way to adjust. 

You are absolutely sure of something, and then your world comes down around your ears. 

You sit at home, wondering if he is with her, and how it is he could say he was in love with you, throw your world into confusion, and then get over you so fast. You wonder if he’s really over you, and you tell yourself not to be silly, that he has to be, because surely if he was into you for those years you were unavailable he would be there when he knew you broke things off. Especially since he knew when you broke them off. You think there must be something in him that wanted what he couldn’t have—that maybe that was the attraction. But then if is he with her now, maybe it was really something in you that drove him away. You sit chasing your thoughts around and around, getting nowhere except lower.

You’ll never figure out someone else’s motivations by staying in your own head.

You are tired of living this strange different life, tired of being ignored, or—worse—treated with the utmost politeness. You struggle to remember what being wanted feels like, and when he asks you to dance it feels close enough, so you push aside all the reasons you left and you say yes.

It’s hard to change. 

When you hear them talking about you, hear what they say when you’re not around to know, it’s like meeting yourself for the first time. Late into the night, you stand staring into your mirror, looking for honesty and courage in the pale, tear-streaked face. You haven’t looked into your own eyes this deeply in ages, maybe in forever. Then, behind the passivity towards circumstances and people, behind the fear of change and the fear of your poor pathetic self, somewhere past all of that you see a spark of something more. Of someone more. And in a sudden rush you realize that you are not bound for all time to be what you have been. 

The truth hurts and frees and starts to heal all at once. 

You try for a fresh start, and it explodes in your face. You try to change, and life fights against you. But you fight back, and you look for fresh starts everywhere, and even when things don’t go as you plan you own them, and you know that one day all of these day-to-day sketches and classroom still-lifes are going to break forth as art. And you’re going to be breaking through with them. 

Your life is what you make it.