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