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.

Homesick

I just spent a week at home with my parents. It was a good week, relaxing and yet with an odd feeling of productivity to it nonetheless. I don't know that I could recount a long list of accomplishments, but neither did it feel like I was squandering my time. (Maybe it was something about sharing it.)

I have a Lost viewing planned for tonight, and a meeting tomorrow afternoon, and then an interview, and Smallville tomorrow night (plus Jeopardy, maybe, and I'm going to let my hopes go up for that; forget you, statistics), and lunch with a former coworker this Friday before another evening out. I have friends here. I have a life here. 

Part of me wants to pack up and turn around and go back. I'm happy in Grand Rapids. But then I go to the other home, and that fits, too.

Kind of hard sometimes, having roots and wings.

Two Voices

He doesn't want you to be happy. Can you remember him ever saying he did? No, little fool, he wants you to be holy, not happy. Let's do a quick NASB word search: "happy" appears fourteen times, "holy" appears over five hundred and fifty times. See? Statistically speaking, "holy" wins.

Yeah, sure, you like to say that his glory and your good are the same, but then he talks large scale and so that means good on a cosmic level. Like in a big picture other-side-from-this-life way. For now, holy misery is what he's after. For you, anyway.

Because, really, look around. You know some people with screwed up lives or health problems or whatever, but most people like where they are and what they're doing. You don't get to. You're going to be trapped in mediocrity for years because you're lazy, and you're too late (good grief, almost thirty, how many works of literature had Jane Austen published by thirty?), and you're not better at anything than anybody. There's always somebody better than you, somewhere in the world. Grace, love, blahblahblah, all of life is competition, really, and you're not tier one material.

What he probably wants is for you to take a long series of dead-end jobs, at less and less pay because you're horrible at negotiating and all that business stuff. Then maybe eventually he'll have you break down and get married to the first person who'll have you. This guy'll be boring and uninspiring and passionless and you'll be able to run circles around him in every way and the only reason he'll take you is because you're not the dating kind (the fun kind), you're the marrying kind (the kind you settle for because you're desperate and you're tired of hearing about eHarmony). But hey, that's holy misery for you.

He wants to bless you, sure, sure. Spiritually. Growth is pain. Life is pain, princess. Don't let anybody sell you different.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's. 

Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it. 

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 

Do not be anxious then, saying 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'With what shall we clothe ourselves?' For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. 

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

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 

(Matthew 16:23, 14:27b, 5:4, 5:6, 16:25, 6:19-21, 6:31-34, 7:7-11, 11:28)

I'm not ready for this....

I've been applying to staffing agencies, and today I heard about three different job offers. I refused all of them on the basis of salary/commute issues, but...staffing agencies are going to be calling me. I hadn't even really thought about that, despite my applications. Everybody keeps saying there are no jobs in Michigan, and here I got three offers in a day and refused them all. (All justified rejections under the rules of MI UIA as I understand them.) These jobs can go to three other unemployed people, but am I being reasonably reserved or am I being way too stuck up about jobs? Are the agencies going to start hating me for being picky?

Financially, I'm okay on unemployment for a while. Do I take the first job that comes along (obviously I haven't, but the first job that comes along after I catch my breath), even if my heart is sinking, or do I hold out, knowing as I do that few job descriptions sound exciting to me?

I'm not ready to go back to work. There it is. I feel like I should feel worse about that, but I don't want to be back in an office. 

I'm afraid of being trapped for years doing something that doesn't excite me, or of job-hopping in the hopes of finding something I enjoy (one of those things I internally mocked other people for...figures I'd understand it eventually). I'm afraid of getting a job and finding the environment is as tense as it was at my old place of employment for the past year or so. I'm afraid of picking Door #1 when I should have waited for Door #2, or passing on Door #2 when it turns out there is not Door #3. I'm afraid of leaving a job on purpose more than I am of being laid off, of finding something better a week after I found a job (this happened to me last time). 

Pause. Collect yourself. You're going to have to go back into the trenches sooner or later. Settle. Prepare. 

It is good.

In these last days, it is good to know that people like Brooke and Chelsea exist--women thoroughly in love with God in a way that makes me holy jealous, that pulls me inward and onward--good to drink their faith through their words, to sense peace settling down through the reminders that I am not alone (reminders that I need, huddling Elijah-like in the desert watching dust devils).

It is good to hear you speak of Him, to share your delight in Him and your struggles with Him, Brooke and Chelsea and all of you who speak in this way, as though all of life should be consecrated (it should) and the hugest problems were dwarfed by His surpassing greatness (they are). 

Rest peacefully, heart, in every circumstance. Strengthen your song with every iteration. You are by no stretch of the imagination really truly alone.

Psalm 116 Thoughts

When plans realign in minor ways (something like "can we meet Tuesday instead of Monday?"), the gears in my brain screech uncomfortably. There is often a moment when I barely know where I am, barely know how to react, and I have to reach deep down and do triage. Too many zigzag changes too close together and I whiplash into a decision I regret later.

Being unemployed at almost thirty is a major plan realignment for me. I am not depressed about the mere fact that I will be turning thirty a month from tomorrow. I am not missing my old job. But I am finding, as a friend who turned thirty last year told me then (you know who you are), that unsettling feelings are rising about where I thought I would be now. I don't think I would be dealing with this if I weren't unemployed, honestly. If I weren't looking for jobs, maybe I wouldn't feel so trapped in employment monotony stretching on beyond my line of sight. ("Bend in the road. There's no bend in my road, I can see it stretching straight out in front of me to the skyline." -- Katherine Brook) Or maybe I'd just be...not dealing. After all, repressing and/or ignoring difficult things is a personal specialty of mine.

I'm in mourning for my plans, my vision for my future that hasn't happened. It's easier to bury hope where it can't hurt you, easier to brush it off as a weakness or even a sin (wanting something you don't have? weak, ungrateful, selfish woman!), but I think it's more honest to mourn, and months ago I asked God to help me be more honest, even if it hurts. (Some days it seems like that was a stupid request.)

Psalm 116 balances gratitude that God hears the psalmist's voice with the recognition that the reason it is good to be heard is because life can be distressing and sorrowful. The verse I'm most familiar with is 116:15--"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones." I used to think this was meant just as a verse about how when God's people die they go to be with Him forever, free from sin and sorrow, and that delights God. While that's true, the psalm also says "I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living" (116:9).

It isn't only the physical death that is precious. The lesser deaths (often feeling greater because of the sheer number of times you pass through them) are precious to God, too. The deaths to self in the acknowledgement of brokenness and the cries for help. In surrendering dreams into the hands of God, to be returned if He chooses and maybe even asked for with regularity (to want something you don't have is to be vulnerable; hope can be a death, too). In taking God at His word and clinging to a promise as yet unrealized. In all the deaths you walk through as you walk before the Lord and cast more and more velveteen layers at His feet.

Tonight in choir we sung "Blessed Be Your Name." The lyrics aren't chipper and easy. It's a hard song, about turning all things over to God as praise even when the blessings aren't obvious and when pain saturates the offerings of praise we lift before Him. Here, in this time, this is the song of my heart. When it comes down to it, this is all I have:

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be your name

I love the Lord, because He hears

My voice and my supplications.

Because He has inclined His ear to me,

Therefore I shall call upon Him as long as I live.

   ~~ Psalm 116:1-2