Did you say pig, or fig?

Learning from work

2011-11-19T19:13:00.003-05:00

It has been very intense at work since July. And most of the kids who would stop by to talk to me are gone now. And I work in a cinderblock room with no windows (or as I call it, the Batcave). So it has been very intense without much human interaction.

It is not good for the woman to be alone. I am a highly individualistic person. I have often thought this office setup is perfect because then I don't have to deal with people much, but without dealing with people much at all, it is very easy to forget that anybody besides me is working. Doubly so on days when it seems like nobody is answering my emails or voicemails. It is good for me to get out and talk to people and remember I'm not the only person left on earth. (Especially after I found myself thinking about what is possibly the most classic episode of The Twilight Zone, "Time Enough at Last," and thinking that in a post-apocalyptic world you would surely be able to find another pair of reading glasses without too much trouble.)

This job, with all its busyness, is also bringing out the messiah complex. In a pre-apocalyptic world, there are a lot of things that need to be done and a lot of people who have different perceived needs than I do about what those things are. Frustrating though it has been, there have been moments of realization and growth in this, too. Here are a few that stuck out.

1) I have been doing a lot of seething over the fact that people haven't been listening to me, not doing what I told them to do even though I've repeated it over and over and tried to impart the urgency of the situation, the negative consequences of NOT doing what I tell them, and the sense that I am only telling them because it is so important. And it's not like I just stood up in meetings and told them what needed to be done (I have), I've told them in writing, so they have that to reference. But sometimes even when they want to reference it, they can't seem to perform a search of their emails.

On some of these days I get angrier and angrier, less and less friendly towards even the people who are following my directions. And I am so glad that God is not like that. I think part of the problem people have with believing that a loving God would ever send people to Hell might be that we often think that we are loving people. When push comes to shove, though, how many people have been saved from our wrath?

Give me a few days of people forgetting or ignoring what I say and I have to be praying really hard not to blow up at them. But God is not like that. God is patient. God does not give up on me when I don't follow through on what He asked me to do. God does not throw lightning bolts at people who ignore Him ("not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance"--2 Peter 3:9). He not just okay with telling all of us, again and again, what we need to be saved from the negative consequences of ignoring His words, He is passionate about it. The lightning we need is the lightning of God's face (Daniel 10:6)--it strikes and it saves, and the ones who look to it are blinded only to see more clearly, like Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9).

2) What has been frustrating me the most this year is that a lot of people who have no idea what they are doing are rarely asking me about how to do it, or if I could help them. Sometimes they have been asking other people for answers, people who don't know or who have requested that questions come through me. The ones who do ask are apologetic about it.

"For everyone who asks receives," Jesus says in Matthew 7:8, and because He is patient He doesn't add what I would have added, "so for crying out loud, stop trying to figure it out yourselves and do it all yourselves when I want you to ask, when I love it when you ask!" He does want us to ask. And He does love it.

We will never, ever bother God by asking unabashedly for His help, and by doing it through Jesus, the appointed mediator for all our questions and requests.

3) I'm no Jesus. If I don't have a pristine office and a clear inbox and a fully checked off to-do list, do you know what happens? I come back tomorrow. You know what would happen if I couldn't come back tomorrow? Somebody else would pick up where I left off and figure out how to do it.

There is already a Savior for the world, and it isn't me. I don't have to rush around like crazy trying to make everything perfect. I can't even when I try.

4) I need Jesus as much as I ever have, and more than I will ever know.

Oh, help....

2011-11-07T19:58:00.003-05:00

Today, 12 hours at work. Tomorrow, a stack of confusing paperwork and a glut of emails to tackle before my 5:00 PM departure deadline, in the hopes that when I leave I will be more prepared for the Wednesday due date of the Giant Count Day Project.

I am feeling completely overwhelmed and like an idiot for many reasons, not least of which is that I put an offer on a house now, of all times.

I'm torn between thinking that I rushed into this whole thing, and thinking that God just isn't on my schedule. On the one hand, I may be making a terrible mistake in taking action. On the other, the mistake could be in not trusting God enough to be involved enough to thwart ill-conceived plans.

Or maybe I think that God is a lion and I am a mouse, instead of a lion cub.

(Maybe you should just sit and stop thinking so much.)

I put an offer on the house last Tuesday, the owner countered on Wednesday, and I sat on it over the weekend. My mom and I spent Saturday packing, just to get a start on things. We packed for five hours and there is a ton more to pack. Then we looked at paint tip cards to get ideas for what I might paint a future house, and there are a lot of decisions there.

I counter-countered today, and he accepted the counter-counter. Next steps: signing it, then inspection.

And packing. I'll need boxes for that.

And cleaning and painting and figuring out furniture placement and breaking my lease and still working and having two major holidays coming up and snow coming soon and....

And breathing.

Breathing would be good.

Things I Am Wondering This Morning

2011-11-05T09:29:00.003-04:00

1) Proper capitalization of small words in titles (not that I care enough to check...this is one of my few grammar blind spots).

2) Why my allergies seem to have gotten worse after the frost.

3) How much effort it will take to dismantle and thoroughly clean a bird cage of approximately 5'x6'x6', and where the inhabitant of the cage would stay until that was done and the cage reassembled.

4) How much it would cost to have Squeaker's old cage shipped from Pennsylvania, and if it would just be easier to do that than to deal with Frodo's current cage.

5) If my insurance would be at all helpful for a tonsillectomy.

6) If constant dull tonsil irritation outweighs the inconvenience and cost of tonsil surgery (the laser kind, not the cutting kind).

7) How much I should counter the owner's counter on the house I put an offer on last Tuesday. (Or his three counters, each lower than the last, that have come as I have been thinking about it.)

8) If anybody else besides me is planning to do laundry on a Saturday morning. (And now I should go so I can get there before other people. Something I won't have to do when I have a house.)

Introducing Mr. Frods

2011-10-10T17:44:00.004-04:00

This is Frodo, often known as Mr. Frods.

He was my dad's bird. Technically, of course, he belonged to both parents, but pretty much ever since his cagemate died over ten years ago, he bonded with my dad.

Dad would get him out and sit with him while watching TV, or take a walk around the property with him, or play tug-of-war with him with a pair of old socks. Frodo bit through more than one button on Dad's casual shirts, and bit through skin a few times, too.

Mom doesn't get along with Frods so well. She was talking for a while about getting rid of him, finding him a nice place with somebody who would pay more attention to him.

Every time she did, it felt like she was talking about giving away a piece of my dad. And I feel I've lost more than enough of him. So once this plan to buy a house became more solid in my mind, I decided I would take his bird with me when I moved.

I started spending more time with Frodo, talking to him while he was in his cage and sitting with him after tricking him off Mom's hand. Once I took him over to the refrigerator to show him the picture of him with Dad, and he started moving up and down excitedly. Even after a year, he still got hyper seeing his old friend.

There was one thing I was curious about. Would I be able to get him up off the floor in the middle of his playtime? To test this, we let him down on the ground for the first time in months. He went running straight to my parents' room, where he usually played, and stopped in front of the closet, out of which Dad had sometimes come to surprise him. He waited for a bit, but nothing happened.

He walked down to the bathroom, stopping to say, "Hi, Frods!" to his reflection in the hall mirror a few times. He turned the corner into the darkened bathroom, and Mom and I heard him start talking to himself under his breath.

Frodo has done this for years, this muttering that seemed ALMOST like words. We've never been able to figure it out.

We heard the click of nails against tile as he climbed onto the step of the shower.

"Hi, Frodo," he said quietly. "Hi, Frods." And he started his mumbling, which echoed in the enclosed space.

As I sat there listening, I thought I must be hearing things. But when I made eye contact with my mom, she looked startled, too, and she said what I'd been thinking: "He sounds like your dad!"

All this time, he has been trying to copy the voice of his favorite person. (We should have known earlier. My dad was always mumbly.) It was still indistinct, still like hearing Dad from across the house...but it was like hearing him.

This past visit, we let him go talk into the shower again, because the sound is enhanced in there, and we tried to pick out phrases. This time, I caught a few.

"Frodo. We're gonna go outside, Frodo. We're gonna go outside."

"What's in here? What's in here, Frods? What's in there?"

My dad used to say those things to him.

No way this bird ever leaves the family now.

Are There House Yentas?

2011-10-03T20:27:00.003-04:00

After ten years of renting and mounting frustration with the apartment complex staff, who increasingly remind me of Dolores Umbridge, I am in the market to purchase a house. I've done a little looking around on GRAR.com, but am overwhelmed by options. And nothing jumps out at me. No house has been love at first sight (except maybe the one that turned out to be on the corner of a busy street...alas).

I want a real estate search site like eHarmony. I can't stand the thought of the latter in general, but I could go for the real estate version.

"Crazy bird lady seeking home for future years/decades. Nice neighborhood, off main roads, within 15 minute radius of both work and church, and with adequate driveway and street parking. As much brick and/or character as possible. House cannot smell like mildew, mold, smoke, or cats. Need good plumbing, insulation, and HVAC, basement should be dry as possible, if not dry AND finished. Prefer attached garage, neutral decor, few needed repairs, limited use of tile in bathrooms, no sliding doors or deck (may be willing to consider houses outside these preferences). May consider condominium if the price is right and the parking/neighborhood/insulation criteria are met (house will be home to two crazy birds as well as the crazy bird lady). Please send pictures with your response, as well as compelling arguments for why she should choose you."

Failing eHousemony (which doesn't even make sense), I would accept any recommendations from local house yentas.

Young people can't decide these things for themselves.

Recharging

2011-09-17T19:19:00.003-04:00

I once read that the main difference between an extrovert and an introvert wasn't in how they related to people, but in how they recharge: extroverts feel energized by company, introverts by solitude. I enjoy people, and have a lot of great friends I want to see, but every once in a while it is nice to have an evening or a whole day completely to myself.

It is also nice to have time to myself because when I am at work or church or out socializing there is nobody cleaning my apartment or doing my ironing or dishes or reading the books I want to read or writing or anything. And physical disorder eventually catches up with me and adds to mental disorder.

Today was a nice long Saturday with nothing in it.

I woke up at 8:00, thought "I can sleep a bit more," and woke up again at 9:30. I finished reading a book and by 10:30 had started moving. There were three straight hours of accomplishment, followed by a few hours of more reading, and then a few more hours of accomplishment, and no computer until after 6:00. (Much more relaxing that way...why don't I leave the computer off for longer periods of time?)

So it was a good day, but it's been a sad day, too. I really wanted to call my dad and tell him how much I'd gotten done in those first three hours, hear him say something like, "Well, don't just keep yammering to me, you have 8 more hours to accomplish things before you have to go to bed." And then I went to take some trash out, and it was a nice day so I walked to a dumpster one building over from the one I usually go to, and I had been thinking about also taking a walk out to the recycling, but just the extra walking-for-the-sake-of-walking made me miss him so much that I didn't do it. (Walking often makes me sad now because I think about how great it used to be to go walking with him. He probably wouldn't like that.)

And now I'm going to turn off my computer again and get back to...whatever else I feel like doing around here. Lovely.

Even with the sad parts, I wish I had more days like this.

Endless is not pointless

2011-08-17T00:24:00.003-04:00

It's been three months since my last post.

Writing is difficult. It seems both momentously weighty and vastly less important, somehow, since last June. My heart is full, and the field is crowded. Everybody with anything to say, or nothing to say, has a forum in which to say it. Other people write better than I do, and more frequently (or at least as well as and as often), and what is the point of adding my words to the towering stack when there is so much to be done in life and so little time to do it?

That's how I feel about a lot of things, lately. So much to be done...so little time...what's the point in doing them? Which things are important? If I die as suddenly as my father died, or my cousin, or countless others, what will be the things I should have done?

Realistically, I know I can't figure that out. But maybe a desire to do something factors in there, and when I'm not writing something, I don't feel right. No matter if it's been said before, no matter if nobody reads it except for me, I miss it when I'm not writing.

("The writing of many books is endless," the Preacher pointed out in Ecclesiastes 12:12. But he wrote it anyway.)

"I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep."--Charlotte Bronte

2011-05-16T20:21:00.004-04:00

You know That Person who always has drama going in her life, who always has a set of stories that are irritating because they make you feel like she doesn't care about whatever you want to complain about, or because it seems like she's just trying to pull sympathy out of everybody around her? I'm kind of afraid I'm in danger of turning into That Person.

My dad died a little over 11 months ago, and although nobody's told me that I should be over it by now, I feel like there must be something a little boring about somebody whose honest answer to "How are you" hasn't been "everything is going great" for a while. Maybe there isn't. Maybe I just miss being able to say it.

I don't know if I haven't read enough grief books to come across this, or if this is actually a weird thing, but I'm tired of it. Grieving. Let's be done. I feel like the way it should work is that on the anniversary of my dad going into the hospital and our lives changing forever...he comes back. That's how it should work. Way to stick it out for a year, everybody! Back to normal!

Or if that doesn't work, at least grieving should be uncomplicated. One thing at a time. No dragging up memories of past losses. No adding losses or adding complications. I wanted a year off from everything, and what I got was a year of "Suzanne, you are not in control." Of anything, on the most basic level, and especially not of hearts.

I couldn't keep my dad's heart beating.

I couldn't change the hearts of the young kids in my school.

I couldn't keep my own heart on track.

In fact, right about now my heart feels like it's been turned upside down and shaken for a year. I feel empty. I have nothing to give anybody.

And I know that if I'm empty it is a great opportunity to be filled with the fullness of God. I know it will be good. I am not excited about it now, but I know it will be exciting and beautiful, and I strain against my present feelings into the overarching reality of that knowing. (Hope is a thing with battle scars.)

I don't believe in Christ because He makes my life fluffy and simple. "How hard could it be?" Pastor Dale asked of following Christ, and answered his own question: "It's as hard as dying--and if you think that can't be true, you haven't tried it."

I believe that His dying, and this dying of ours that follows, is the only way to what it really means to live. (I want to be that Person.)

Sobering Reminders and Thrilling Promises

2011-05-02T18:22:00.003-04:00

I was thinking about Ezekiel 33:11 today, after I read of so many people excited about the death of Osama Bin Laden. (This is not really going to be a post about the pros and cons of a standing army, or the war on terror, or whether or not it is ever okay to be glad about a military victory. This is a post inspired by the verse that popped into my head after reading the news.) Since I didn't know it was Ezekiel 33:11, and just remembered part of it, I looked up the passage this evening.

I saw that it contained more than a statement of truth about the heart of God--there are some sobering reminders to people who claim to follow Him, and some thrilling promises to those who turn to Him, no matter what they've done.

I was going to post the verse, but found I couldn't post anything less than Ezekiel 33:10-20. (I've bolded some of my favorite bits, but I love it all.) The speaker in this passage is God, addressing the prophet for whom the book is named.

____________________________________________________

Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, 'Thus you have spoken, saying, "Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?"

Say to them, 'As I live!' declares the Lord GOD, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?'

And you, son of man, say to your fellow citizens, 'The righteousness of a righteous man will not deliver him in the day of his transgression, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he will not stumble because of it in the day when he turns from his wickedness; whereas a righteous man will not be able to live by his righteousness on the day when he commits sin.'

When I say to the righteous he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. But when I say to the wicked, 'You will surely die,' and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes which ensure life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he shall surely live.

Yet your fellow citizens say, 'The way of the Lord is not right,' when it is their own way that is not right.

When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, then he shall die in it. But when the wicked turns from his wickedness and practices justice and righteousness, he will live by them.

Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not right.' O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways.

____________________________________________________

I want to meet people in heaven who used to be like Osama Bin Laden--people who hated Jesus Christ passionately, and perhaps persecuted His people just as passionately, but who turned from enemies into family. (Besides the one I know is there, whose name is Paul.)

"We were wretched excuses for human beings," they will say. "We squandered so many opportunities to do good. We are utterly amazed at the undeserved grace and power of our amazing God."

"Me, too," I'll say.

To all of it.

What Will Be, Is Now

2011-04-22T17:20:00.007-04:00

Nobody called it Good Friday that day, of course. That day was the worst day ever. Many of them had spent three years as this man's constant companions. At least one had known him his whole life. That day they watched him, their friend and son and teacher, the man who they were hoping was going to be the redeemer of Israel...die. Horribly. They listened to his enemies mock him, heard his cries of anguish, saw the pain on his face and were not able to do anything. Anything but stay there with him. (They probably didn't think until later about how much had already changed since Gethsemane.)

The holy week calendar just calls the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday "Holy Saturday." To them, it must have been Blank Saturday. Or maybe "What now?" Saturday. It was the Sabbath, so they gathered together, and they rested, but the excitement and promise and life were gone. God only knew where they would go from here.

He did know. He had even told them this was coming. When Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus, he laid the whole story out for them, and they must have felt like the fools he called them when they realized they'd just spent three days mourning when they should have been waiting with bated breath in expectation of the great things to come.

The fact that Good Friday once felt like the most soul-crushing, dream-dashing day ever bodes well for all of our bad days from here on out. The fact that Holy Saturday was a confusing blank frees us from having to know exactly how God is going to act, because the main thing is that he's going to act.

Offer your pain and your frustration and your confusion as a sacrifice to God, and rejoice even when it feels like you're being burned with the sacrifice. Because Easter Sunday is a fact, too.

Christ the Son of God rose from the grave in triumph over death, to lead those held captive to the fear of death out of that prison (don't cling to the prison instead of the person). He fulfilled the promises entrusted to the prophets, proving that God is trustworthy. The promises entrusted to the apostles built on those of the prophets, and all point to the fact that God is active in this world, and that horrible things precede things so glorious that they transform the ugliest past into something beautiful. Do you believe this?

Faith is looking at the world that is now through the filter of the world that is promised.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."--Romans 8:18

An Honest Mistake

2011-04-09T09:37:00.003-04:00

Imagine you're the king of a region in the Middle East. You are married, but you've also got a bit of a harem going. You've heard rumors about a woman in a group of nomads who settled within your territory. Rumor has it she is beautiful, and better yet, beautiful and unmarried. Seems the leader of the nomads is her brother.

In addition to being somewhat of a connoisseur and collector of beautiful women, as a ruler you know the value of creating alliances. Taking this woman into your harem? Win-win.

Something starts feeling a little off, though. While the women of the harem are putting the new recruit through orientation on local culture and household expectations, which can take a while, there are no new pregnancies. This is against pattern in an unsettling sort of way, but you don't connect it to the woman's arrival.

That is, until you dream that God Himself is issuing you a warning. "Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman you have taken, for she is married."

This is a shock on two major levels. 1) You were repeatedly told she was not married. Even the leader of the nomads, her brother, reported that she was unmarried, and shouldn't he know? 2) You haven't even touched this woman. Which is also against pattern, now that you think about it, but for some reason it's been enough just to look at her as she walks around your house...somewhat mournfully....

Suddenly the final goodbye between that leader and his "sister" rises into your mind and you have never felt so duped.

"Lord, will You slay a nation, even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, 'She is my sister'? And she herself said, 'He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this."

In the dream God replies, "Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her."

And everything starts to work itself out from there.

Why is this story in the Bible? (Genesis 20, check it out.)

Yes, it shows Abraham's lack of faith in God's protection, and God's persistence in protecting Abraham and Sarah anyway. Yes, it shows that the child to come, Isaac, was definitely the son of Abraham and not some foreign ruler.

But it's also about the king, Abimelech. And it's mostly about God.

A God who lets us make mistakes, even grievous mistakes, but keeps us from sinning in them. A God who responds to honest cries of "I didn't know this would happen" and "I thought I was doing the right thing" with "Yes, I know; and I was protecting you the whole time."

Which makes it a story about us, too. Thankfully.

Breaking and Burning

2011-03-30T21:25:00.004-04:00

This weekend my mom was in the hospital. She's out now, but it was a rough weekend. Yesterday when I got back in to work, I was exhausted and emotionally fragile.

The big thing that kept me breaking into tears at intervals throughout the morning was that people kept asking me how I was doing, and how my mom was doing, and meaning it. This afternoon, two coworker-friends who have been keeping tabs on me closely since Sunday came in and sat in my office, which they had never done before. A voice inside my head said, "You don't have to keep checking on me. I'm not broken." And then another voice said, "Yes. I am."

Laurie R. King writes of a woman who has been carrying a weight of grief and snaps, completely breaks down in front of someone she was trying to look good for. In looking back on the incident, the woman says that "[he] had seen me in that despicable state and burnt me with his compassion." That's how I feel when people keep coming, even when I have nothing to give them.

I hate being burnt. I hate being broken. Tonight at prayer meeting, I thought of this verse: "As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down" (Luke 21:6). I feel like that's me, like one stone after another is being knocked over. Part of me grieves that, but part of me is waiting to see what I will be afterwards (1 John 3:2).

When my dad was in the hospital, I felt like I was doing really well, really praying it out of the park and exercising faith like nobody's business. When my mom was in the hospital, my internal prayer went more like, "God, I have no idea what you're doing. I don't even know what to say to you right now. I'm a little afraid of you, and a little angry about this, and I just don't know." But that's a prayer the Spirit translates (Rom. 8:26).

I have nothing. But everything.

"For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."~~2 Corinthians 4:6-7

The more chips there are in a jar of clay, the more worn out it is with use, the more what is inside of it is revealed. So I want to stop trying to seal the broken places, trying to distract everybody from seeing them, trying to pretend they aren't there. I want people to see that light.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted

And saves those who are crushed in spirit."

~~ Psalm 34:18

"How are you?"

2011-03-13T21:49:00.002-04:00

Tonight our associate pastor preached on how Christians should pursue honesty, even in the answering of socially conventional questions like "How are you?"

I've always had trouble with that question. It's always been much too complicated to answer. And on Sundays, it's even harder. It's not that I'm trying to hide so much as that I feel too confused by the transition-between-weeks nature of Sundays to be able to answer "How are you?" with any clarity. Especially on Sunday nights, when my brain has started to process what I need to do in the week ahead, I am likely to stare at you blankly if you ask how I am.

Also, "missing my dad" will be a given for any answer to that question for the rest of my life. Even if the rest of the answer is "really excited/happy," I'll still be wishing Dad could be part of it, too. But who wants to hear that all the time? That's not new or fun. And although lately I've been missing him more, for several reasons, there have already been and there will be more times when missing him isn't something I'll be distraught about. It'll just be there, a reality to live with. (C.S. Lewis aptly compared the death of a close loved one to the amputation of a leg.)

There's some good stuff coming up this week. The completion of my giant work project that took up last week; visits with friends; my mom coming to town and in to work with me (I know one boy there who is looking forward to this about as much as I am); possibly bringing Apollo it to work for show-and-tell of sorts; seeing a play.... I'm looking forward to it. It should be a good week. I miss my dad.

(When I was with him in the hospital, I would tell him that even though he might be wishing I would stop talking for a minute, I was just going to keep talking to him until he was able to talk back to me. When I see him next, I should keep that promise. No matter how much I have stored up to tell him by then.)

Pressed, but not crushed. That's how I am.

Crying in the darkness

2011-03-07T21:46:00.003-05:00

Words stick in my head even if they aren't set to music, looping over and over, especially when they seem relevant to my current situation. This afternoon on my way home, these were the words on repeat: "You have removed lover and friend far from me."

It is the penultimate line of Psalm 88, the bleakest song in the whole book of songs.

"You have removed lover and friend far from me." Not circumstance. Not fate. You. You, the God I have been serving all of these years. You, the One I love above all, deny me other loves. You have removed my dad far from me. You are slow, as some count slowness, to come to the aid of children I have grown to love. You confound me, in more than one sense of the word.

God doesn't sweep in at the end of the psalm to deny any of it. Not His agency, not the pain of the supplicant. In fact, elsewhere He confirms it: "When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?" (Amos 3:6); "The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these" (Isaiah 45:7).

And in case that should be mistaken for an Old Testament God-of-wrath thing, centuries later Jesus confirms that "In the world you have tribulation" (from John 16:33, NASB), which is translated in other versions as "you will have tribulation" (ESV) and "you will have trouble" (NIV). Will. For certain. And God is sovereign.

I love God for standing while the psalmist pours out the darkness of his heart at His feet, and I love Jesus for not saying, "In the world you have tribulation, but keep smiling."

Instead, He says, "In the world you have tribulation, but take courage ["take heart" (ESV); "take heart!" (NIV)]; I have overcome the world." He gives us a reason to keep going, while not discounting the pain. He tells us that this world is a place of tension: tribulation and the victory of Christ coexisting.

The psalmist of Psalm 88 isn't forgetting the victory. The psalm that ends "You have removed lover and friend far from me; my acquaintances are in darkness" begins "O Lord, the God of my salvation, I have cried out by day and in the night before You."

And I am not forgetting the victory. It is because of the victory that I can be sure that when I cry in the darkness, there is somebody who hears.

O Lord, "my soul has had enough troubles" (Psalm 88:3a).

Letter of Comfort from Guido de Brès to His Wife

2011-02-06T19:40:00.003-05:00

Pastor Dale read part of the letter below in church tonight. It was written more than 450 years ago by a Belgian who was in prison and about to be martyred for his faith, but in many places it feels like it could have been written by my dad. I guess that's because, even though separated by centuries and an ocean, my dad and this man were brothers. So it's not a surprise that they resembled each other.

I didn't get to hear my dad say goodbye, or to hear him explain what was going through his head as he lay there in the hospital, knowing that life would never be the same and then knowing that he was going to die. My dad wasn't the sort of person to write long letters as a general rule, but I believe he would have assented to this letter as heartily as he would assent to that more famous work of which Guido de Brès was the main author, the Belgic Confession.

Thank you, God, for allowing the words of your servants to comfort others throughout history.

_____________________________________________________________

The grace and mercy of our good God and heavenly Father, and the love of His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, be with you, my dearly beloved.

Catherine Ramon, my dear and beloved wife and sister in our Lord Jesus Christ: your anguish and sadness disturbs somewhat my joy and the happiness of my heart, so I am writing this for the consolation of both of us, and especially for your consolation, since you have always loved me with an ardent affection, and because it pleases the Lord to separate us from each other. I feel your sorrow over this separation more keenly than mine. I pray you not to be troubled too much over this, for fear of offending God. You knew when you married me that you were taking a mortal husband, who was uncertain of life, and yet it has pleased God to permit us to live together for seven years, giving us five children. If the Lord had wished us to live together longer, he would have provided the way. But it did not please him to do this and may his will be done.

Now remember that I did not fall into the hands of my enemies by mere chance, but through the providence of my God who controls and governs all things, the least as well as the greatest. This is shown by the words of Christ, “Be not afraid. Your very hairs are numbered. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And not one of them shall fall to the ground without the will of your Father. Then fear nothing. You are more excellent than many sparrows.” These words of divine wisdom say that God knows the number of my hairs. How then can harm come to me without the command and providence of God? It could not happen, unless one should say that God is no longer God. This is why the Prophet says that there is no affliction in the city that the Lord has not willed.

Many saintly persons who were before us consoled themselves in their afflictions and tribulations with this doctrine. Joseph, having been sold by his brothers and taken into Egypt, says, “You did a wicked deed, but God has turned it to your good. God sent me into Egypt before you for your profit.” (Genesis 50). David also experienced this when Shimei cursed him. So too in the case of Job and many others.

And that is why the Evangelists write so carefully of the sufferings and of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, adding, “And this was done that that which was written of Him might be accomplished.” The same should be said of all the members of Christ.

It is very true that human reason rebels against this doctrine and resists it as much as possible and I have very strongly experienced this myself. When I was arrested, I would say to myself, “So many of us should not have traveled together. We were betrayed by this one or that one. We ought not to have been arrested.” With such thoughts I became overwhelmed, until my spirits were raised by meditation on the providence of God. Then my heart began to feel a great repose. I began then to say, “My God, you have caused me to be born in the time you have ordained. During all the time of my life you have kept me and preserved me from great dangers and you have delivered me from them all – and if at present my hour has come in which I will pass from this life to you, may your will be done. I cannot escape from your hands. And if I could, I would not, since it is happiness for me to conform to your will.” These thoughts made my heart cheerful again.

And I pray you, my dear and faithful companion, to join me in thanking God for what he has done. For he does nothing that is not just and very equitable, and you should believe that it is for my good and for my peace. You have seen and felt my labours, cross, persecutions, and afflictions which I have endured, and have even had a part in them when you accompanied me in my travels during the time of my exile. Now my God has extended his hand to receive me into his blessed kingdom. I shall see it before you and when it shall please the Lord, you will follow me. This separation is not for all time. The Lord will receive you also to join us together again in our head, Jesus Christ.

This is not the place of our habitation – that is in heaven. This is only the place of our journey. That is why we long for our true country, which is heaven. We desire to be received in the home of our Heavenly Father, to see our Brother, Head, and Saviour Jesus Christ, to see the noble company of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and many thousands of martyrs, into whose company I hope to be received when I have finished the course of my work which I received from my Lord Jesus Christ.

I pray you, my dearly beloved, to console yourself with meditation on these things. Consider the honour that God has done you, in giving you a husband who was not only a minister of the Son of God, but so esteemed of God that he allowed him to have the crown of martyrs. It is an honour the like of which God has never even given to the angels.

I am happy; my heart is light and it lacks nothing in my afflictions. I am so filled with the abundance of the richness of my God that I have enough for me and all those to whom I can speak. So I pray my God that he will continue his kindness to me, his prisoner. The One in whom I have trusted will do it, for I have found by experience that he will never leave those who have trusted in him. I would never have thought that God would have been so kind to such a poor creature as I. I feel the faithfulness of my Lord Jesus Christ.

I am practicing now what I have preached to others. And I must confess that when I preached I would speak about the things I am actually experiencing as a blind man speaks of colour. Since I was taken prisoner I have profited more and learned more than during all the rest of my life. I am in a very good school: the Holy Spirit inspires me continually and teaches me how to use the weapons in this combat. On the other side is Satan, the adversary of all children of God. He is like a boisterous, roaring lion. He constantly surrounds me and seeks to wound me. But he who has said, “Fear not, for I have overcome the world,” makes me victorious. And already I see that the Lord puts Satan under my feet and I feel the power of God perfected in my weakness.

Our Lord permits me on the one hand to feel my weakness and my smallness, that I am but a small vessel on the earth, very fragile, to the end that he would humble me, so that all the glory of the victory may be given to him. On the other hand, he fortifies me and consoles me in an unbelievable way. I have more comfort than the enemies of the gospel. I eat, drink and rest better than they do. I am held in a very strong prison, very bleak, obscure and dark. The prison is known by the obscure name “Brunain.” The air is poor and it stinks. On my feet and hands I have irons, big and heavy. They are a continual hell, hollowing my limbs up to my poor bones. The chief constable comes to look at my irons two or three times a day, fearing that I will escape. There are three guards of forty men before the door of the prison.

I have also the visits of Monsieur de Hamaide. He comes to see me, to console me, and to exhort me to patience, as he says. However, he comes after dinner, after he has wine in the head and a full stomach. You can imagine what these consolations are. He threatens me and says to me that if I would show any intention of escaping he would have me chained by the neck, the body and legs, so that I could not move a finger; and he says many other things in this order. But for all that, my God does not take away his promises, consoling my heart, giving me very much contentment.

Since such things have happened, my dear sister and faithful wife, I implore you to find comfort from the Lord in your afflictions and to place your troubles with him. He is the husband of believing widows and the father of poor orphans. He will never leave you – of that I can assure you. Conduct yourself as a Christian woman, faithful in the fear of God, as you always have been, honouring by your good life and conversation the doctrine of the Son of God, which your husband has preached.

As you have always loved me with great affection, I pray that you will continue this love toward our little children, instructing them in the knowledge of the true God and of his Son Jesus Christ. Be their father and their mother, and take care that they use honestly the little that God has given you. If God does you the favour to permit you to live in widowhood with our children after my death, that will be well. If you cannot, and the means are lacking, then go to some good man, faithful and fearing God. And when I can, I shall write to our friends to watch over you. I think that they will not let you want for anything. Take up your regular routine after the Lord has taken me. You have our daughter Sarah who will soon be grown. She will be your companion and help you in your troubles. She will console you in your tribulations and the Lord will always be with you. Greet our good friends in my name, and let them pray to God for me, that he may give me strength, speech, and the wisdom and ability to uphold the truth of the Son of God to the end and to the last breath of my life.

Farewell, Catherine, my dearly beloved. I pray my God that he will comfort you and give you contentment in his good will. I hope that God has given me the grace to write for your benefit, in such a way that you may be consoled in this poor world. Keep my letter for a remembrance of me. It is badly written, but it is what I am able to do, and not what I wish to do. Commend me to my good mother. I hope to write some consolation to her, if it pleases God. Greet also my good sister. May she take her affliction to God. Grace be with you.

At the prison, April 12, 1567.

Your faithful husband, Guy de Brès, minister of the Word of God at Valenciennes, and presently prisoner for the Son of God at the aforesaid place.

Muzzled Roaring

2011-01-31T18:09:00.003-05:00

today's lunch visits were punctuated

with territory squabbles

the larger stepping in front of the other

(kicked from behind)

moving off and back moments later

in front of a still larger this time

(body checked into the door

before both were bustled out

for everybody's safety)

I love to be loved fiercely,

albeit selfishly and thoughtlessly, too,

and oh, my young lions,

there are days I also

feel trapped

and powerless

The Same Old Jesus Stuff

2011-01-22T20:23:00.003-05:00

For me, the Sunday School lesson book about the life of Christ is the hardest book to teach through. By the age of six, many of these "church kids" may have already heard the story of angels appearing to shepherds dozens of times. And of course, at six, you're beginning to be old enough to know how much you know, and not yet far enough along to realize that it really isn't everything.

"Today's lesson is about Jesus...." I began once, only to have a student cut me off with, "Boring!"

The journey, the inn, no room, the manger, the baby, the shepherds, the angels. "Church adults" have heard and read all this even more often than the kids have. How do we keep from echoing that student's statement, at least in the privacy of our own minds?

I am not the best teacher. I do not have the best ideas on how to reach these young students. But I know the answer to how we keep the Bible from boring us.

Love Jesus.

That's it. That's really it. Sound too easy?

Think back to the start of a romantic infatuation, no matter how lasting it was. Do you remember how everything about that person was significant? Every word, every glance, was fascinating? How many times could you hear the same story from that voice? How many times could you read over a letter in that handwriting?

Love Jesus!

Love makes empathy easier, and empathy is a form of imagination. So start imagining....

Imagine being a young woman about your ordinary, everyday chores (likely not lounging on a settee as the paintings more frequently depict). Maybe your hands are full of laundry or covered in cooking grease (doesn't God love to catch us off guard?), and you turn around and are having a calm conversation with the archangel Gabriel about how your life, how every life, how the world changes now. And then when he's gone, maybe you have to finish making dinner for the family before asking for permission to visit your cousin for a while.

Imagine being a man getting a summons to register for a census, and it isn't a neat little form mailed to your house to send back or people will knock on your door, it's a command to go back to your home town and sign yourself in (and you'd really better not dodge this, the Roman government gets especially touchy about conquered people groups ignoring them). Maybe for a while you're too busy worrying about your very pregnant wife to feel anything but annoyance at Caesar's horrible timing, and then maybe when you hold the baby in your arms for the first time you remember the prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, and you laugh because God is using a government you heartily disagree with in ways they could never suspect.

Imagine being on the outside as an enemy and invited to lay down your weapons and enter the house as a much-loved child.

It's the "same old Jesus stuff" that still, every day, makes people like me new, morning by morning. And it's His power, not mine, that reaches to the hearts of His children.

Great is His faithfulness!

Whose message?

2011-01-08T00:23:00.001-05:00

Peter is on the roof, probably enjoying the coolness and snoozing as he waits for lunch, when the sheet comes down from the sky, filled with all types of unclean animals. A voice asks him to choose his dinner from amongst them, but Peter knows that God had forbidden His people from eating such things, so he is ready with a swift and confident refusal to comply. Test complete, right? But the voice asserts that Peter is not to call unclean what God has called clean.

Maybe he could have written it off as a weird dream if it had just happened once, but it happens three times, and Peter has a thing with the number three.

So after the third time, Peter, an apostle who had walked closely with Jesus, who has been visited by the Holy Spirit, who will write words inspired by God himself...is really confused.

How can he tell who sent this vision, and why? Is it a trial from God to prove Peter's steadfastness one more time, or is it a temptation from Satan, who may have seen Peter inhale a little more deeply as he walked by a Gentile dwelling in which pork was being prepared?

Is this a legitimate extension of freedom (there is precedent for this [Matt. 12:1-12]), or the chance to prove that following God was more important to him than following his baser instincts (precedent exists for that, too [Matt. 26:69-75])?

Would Peter have ever figured it out if visitors hadn't shown up that very afternoon and made it clear that vision wasn't mainly about food, after all?

Through my whole life, no matter what thoughts and feelings swirl in my head, may I always receive such clear guidance when I am meant to move on them, and may I be willing to sit on confusion on the roof forever if such clarity does not present itself. (God grant me the grace and wisdom for both.)

Fathers

2010-12-16T21:34:00.004-05:00

When it first happened, I kept wanting to tell him things. Even at the funeral home, fresh from picking out his casket, I almost took out my phone to call him and tell him what we got for him.

I thought it was going away, that I was getting used to not picking up the phone, but in the past week or so it's been happening more again.

"Dad will love to hear about...."

"I need to ask Dad...."

"This'll be fun to see/do with...."

And every sentence trails off into the word "No."

There are things he told me that I didn't bother to remember because he'd tell me over and over again--about the solstice, or taxes, or how long to keep paperwork. Part of my brain left with part of my heart.

I don't just miss Dad. I miss Mom. I miss Jeremiah. I miss me. I don't know who we are anymore, the three of us who are left who knew him the most closely over the past thirty-four years. We're feeling our way forward in the darkness, and part of me expects another cliff soon, like the one we fell off in May, except can you fall again when you haven't hit bottom yet?

So much not knowing, in so many areas. (Should I just sit here, God, motionless? I'm afraid to move.)

What kind of God are you, anyway, who asks so much of us and yet accepts us in our confusion, our worthlessness, our fear? What kind of God are you, who sets your great faithfulness against our utter desolation (Lamentations 3)? What kind of God, who devastates us and keeps coming after us instead of leaving us alone to recover in peace? What kind of God could instantly turn stones and trees into children and worshippers, but settles instead for achingly slow sanctification that seems to stay just out of our grasp?

God, you know all things, you know I love you. And you know I can't, can't, can't love you alone. My hands and knees could use some strengthening, and my feet some smoother paths.

When I talked to Dad, he would answer me. This week, Father, I can't hear you.

"You have heard my voice--do not hide your ear from my prayer for relief, from my cry for help."--Lamentations 3:56

Highlights of my day

2010-12-10T17:27:00.002-05:00

1. The vice-principal brought me a bag of chocolates somebody left at the front office for me because she knew it could be a stressful day due to the audit. When he arrived at my office he had to displace two middle school boys who had stopped in for a visit on their way to class.

2. Our school attendance audit went well. The auditors were very informative and helpful. Also, apparently when they arrived at the main building to meet up with the principal so she could walk them back to where the audit would be held, they started asking, "Is Suzanne here? Will we get to see Suzanne?"

3. Post-audit I had to cart all the attendance materials back to where they belong. As I struggled with my key in the lock, one of my high school boys was in the hallway on the other side of the door watching. When I entered, I said, "I do work here, I promise. I sometimes just have trouble with the keys." He responded, "Do you want me to get the other door for you?" (This from a boy who gets kicked out of class for disrespect on a regular basis.) "Yes, I really would, thank you," I said. (This from a woman who once resented any males holding doors for her as if she needed the help.)

4. Thinking "I will miss this place when I'm out for two weeks," and realizing I've never thought that about a job before. Have I mentioned that I love it there?

Encouragement and Discouragement

2010-12-07T20:41:00.004-05:00

My friend Janessa wrote a blog post today about the reality of discouragement in the life of believers. I started to write a short comment and ended up writing a blog post, myself (see below).

Discouragement is part of the war we are fighting. When I am most spiritually awake, I pay attention to the voices in my head and hold them up against two possible camps.

"Suzanne, you should be better at this by now. I can't believe you're in this same situation again."

"Good Christians don't have struggles."

"A really strong Christian should be able to go it alone, without bothering people who probably have enough problems of their own."

Who's more likely to be telling me those things, God or Satan?

Some days, discouragement is even encouraging. Think about all of the trials of Job. What got Satan's attention? God was boasting about Job (Job 1:8).

Think about that again. Boasting about him. And Job was a regular human like any of us.

What if, when we're attacked with discouragement, it's because God's just been telling Satan about how much we're doing for Him? I don't mean that in a "look how great we are" sort of way, but in a "look how great the God who's got our back is" sort of way.

What if God is saying, "Have you considered my servant Suzanne?"

I don't know why God allows Satan to come at us, why He allows the trials of our lives. Job never knew why, either, but hearing about who God was quieted his desperate complaints. And we know a lot more about God than Job did. We know Jesus.

I love that when Paul is begging the Lord for the removal of his weakness, the response he gets back isn't "Absolutely, you can have a much greater impact that way" or "If you'd just buck up, you could do it yourself." That's where we want to go. Or I do, anyway.

Nope. Here's what Paul hears, and his response to it: "And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong." — 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Expect depression like you accept the reality of Satan. But claim the reality of the protection of Christ and fight with every ounce of strength He gives you to throw the devil's lies back in his face. The trials are real, and life can seem too long and too hard, but the fact is that this war has been WON. Christ empowers us to stand against the onslaughts of Hell itself.

And on the days when the only sacrifice we have to offer is a broken spirit (Psalm 51:17), even that sacrifice makes the demons cower and the angels dance and the Father proud of His children.

Amazing love, indeed!

God in the Details

2010-12-03T17:51:00.003-05:00

It's been a fairly low-interaction week at work. This morning as I got ready to leave I was feeling a bit pitiful about it, and it hit me that I was coming back off a rough holiday weekend expecting to find solace in the people there, and that instead I had found solace even without them. "Thank you, God," I prayed, "for not letting people come to me, so that I wouldn't think my comfort came from anyone but you."

Today at work, I had quality interaction with every single person on my list of those I had been especially relying on to cheer me up. And a new kid, too.

This past Wednesday I had a doctor's appointment, because I've been unusually tired and some people urged me to get that checked. I felt weird when people said they were praying for me...I was just tired, it was nothing major. This morning when I got the blood work results back and everything was okay except for a dip in Vitamin D, I thought, "See, they didn't need to pray because that result was so benign," and then a quick whiplash thought of "what if that result was so benign because they prayed?"

One of the staff members at the residential home that houses my most frequent student visitors gets irritated when they come see me. "Why do you have to go in there all the time?" he snapped at one of the boys today. I think he's under the impression that they're pestering me, whereas in reality their visits are usually the highlight of my day.

It made me think of the disciples, zealously guarding Jesus from annoyances like small children. It made me think, for the first time, about those children. The Pharisees, cream of Jerusalem society, probably wouldn't have let their kids follow Jesus around. And it made me look up the story. In none of the three tellings does it once specify that the children people were bringing were their own flesh and blood.

"Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it," Jesus said. I have often thought that meant that we had to trust like children, with as quick of a readiness to believe what someone they love tells them is true.

After today, I think there's more than that. Because maybe those children being brought to Jesus were not the most well-cared-for and well-educated children. Maybe some of them were the troublemakers of their neighborhoods, and knew it. Maybe some of them had trouble with trust.

But I think if you can tell someone loves you, you want to keep coming back even if you don't understand why.

To enter the kingdom of God is to enter the presence of God. One way we receive it like children is to just keep coming to Him.

It was a good day.

Heaven and Resting

2010-11-29T18:02:00.003-05:00

I've been reading Heaven, by Randy Alcorn. One of the things he has been talking about is that in Heaven we will be active, employed in the creative exercise of our gifts.

Right now that thought is depressing.

The book of Revelation states (twice) that God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. I wonder if we have to cry them all out first. Because right now, my idea of Heaven is sitting in my Father's lap and sobbing and having Him hold me like He won't ever let go.

Not that He does, even down here. But I really miss the safety of my dad's hugs, and since God calls Himself our Father so often, that must mean something.

Whether or not we have to cry all our tears first, perhaps when God wipes them away He will say something like, "My child, your life was difficult, and it was full of affliction and sorrow, just as I promised it would be." Then He will turn us around and say, "Just as I promised, look what I have made out of it." And that is when we will begin to see the first things made new.

Until seeing Him, nothing in Heaven will be worth seeing. After seeing Him?

I think I will be ready to be active again.

"Lord, if you had been here"

2010-11-27T10:59:00.004-05:00

They must have been discussing it, going over and over it in their minds and in their conversations, because although the first story presents Mary and Martha as women with different focus points, that day both sisters come to Jesus with the exact same statement: "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died."

Jesus, knowing the hearts of all men and all women, hears the questions behind these words. "Why weren't you here? Where were you?"

It was a math problem they had likely gone over again and again: "A man must travel from Jerusalem to Bethany. It is a distance of two miles. Given that he has an entourage of people who travel with him, and the likelihood that word reached him as he was in the middle of speaking to a crowd or performing a work of mercy that should not go interrupted, how long will it take him to arrive in Bethany?"

Surely not two days. Although, as it turned out, it had taken the messenger too long to locate him in the busy capital city. Even had he come the very day he received the message, Lazarus would already have been dead.

"Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." They don't really believe that Jesus needed to hear the news of Lazarus' illness from a messenger. But he wasn't there. Why wasn't he there?

This time, it is so that Lazarus can be brought back from the grave. Yet there were others who died that year in Bethany, other believers, even, who were not miraculously restored to their families. Where was Jesus?

I wonder if the sisters remembered, afterward, perhaps as they stood at the grave of Lazarus for the second time, that one of the names of the promised Messiah was Immanuel.

"God with us."

Which would have answered their question.

Thinking About You

2010-11-11T20:00:00.005-05:00

My Communication Arts & Sciences senior seminar class was notable largely for being the class to which I paid the least attention. I sat with two friends (they know who they are) and we passed a lot of notes. I have a very clear memory of the time before class began when one of my friends started a sentence, "So we were talking about you the other night...."

It kind of blew my mind. I talked about people a lot, often repeating fun conversations I had with friends throughout the day, but it threw me to think that other people might be talking about me when I wasn't around. It was like I thought I disappeared from their lives the instant they walked out of sight of me.

Sometimes I still think like that. It's hard, isn't it, imagining what other people's lives are like? They are so separate from you, so different. But you and I should both try to remember these things I've stumbled across since senior sem:

A lot of times when you are afraid that someone doesn't want to talk to you, they are not talking to you because they are afraid you don't want to talk to them.
Many, many people see you through eyes of grace. You are not the only one who can see someone's faults and love them like crazy anyway. God didn't stop His grace with you, more praise to Him for that.
You are both more important and less important than you could ever imagine, and both in very good ways.
If other people are going to talk about you after you leave, set the tone for how they do it by the way you talk about other people when they are not around.

Today I heard a couple "we were talking about you" sorts of comments. Even almost ten years after senior sem, I still don't really know what to think about it. I think I feel humbled, and gratified, that people make space in their lives and thoughts for me. It makes me want to be worth it.

I aspire to be remembered in the Philippians 1:3 sense, the way I remember so many of you--how great God is to fill my life with such wonderful people, and how thankful I am for you!

Sparrow Musings

2010-11-08T17:33:00.002-05:00

Outside my library, in front of the handicapped and fifteen-minute parking spaces, there is a grassy strip with a few bushes and some ornamental trees. When you come at about dusk, you are greeted with a cacophony of sparrow sound.

By the time I had reached the library from work, I was fairly miserable. It's been almost six months since my dad went into the hospital and on some days, like today, it's hard to imagine ever being really happy again. And on some days, like today, when there are other things on my mind, too, failings and weaknesses, it seems like too much, like that one giant event of late spring should give me a get-out-of-jail-free card for the next year, at least. That I should be able to hold on to the perspective I had at that time. But here I am, still struggling with the same old sins as before, and it's that more than the death of my father that seems unfair, somehow.

So after picking up my hold, I had to go stand by the trees and listen to the sparrows. It's amazing. They aren't really being any louder than they are on their own, but together they all seem louder. The trees shake as they jump around on the inner branches, and fly from tree to tree. They are not still, they are not silent.

I thought about what Jesus said, about how we are more valuable than many sparrows, about how our heavenly Father watches them all. I thought about how He called us His sheep. And I thought about how sheep and sparrows have this in common, that they aren't known as the brightest or bravest of God's creatures. They're pretty useless and defenseless individually, but together they can be oddly scary. "Two are better than one," says the Preacher (Ecc. 4:9), and how much better still are hundreds, thousands, millions, clouds of witnesses.

(If your power is truly made perfect in weakness, Father, You have an awful, awful lot to work with right here with me. Please don't leave me to disgrace You.)

Tomorrow from 6:45 until about 7:30 will be the first prayer meeting for the residential program I work with at my school. It will generally take place the first school day of every week. I don't really know if anybody else will come, but we need to pray because we are at war, and because the devil is roaring around these children and hissing in the ears of those who care for them, and because it's ludicrous to act as though these things aren't happening.

If you are awake around that time, and you think about us, we could use other sparrows to shake this tree.

“Because God loves us, He thwarts us.”—Pastor Dale

2010-10-16T21:23:00.003-04:00

Single people don’t get to have interpersonal tension prayer requests.

If you are married and you say, “Listen, I’m having romantic feelings for somebody other than my spouse,” everybody’s radar goes off and everybody swoops in to pray for you and support you in faithfulness to your marriage vows. If you are single and you say, “Listen, I’m having romantic feelings for somebody and I don’t feel right about it,” the swooping will mostly be from people telling you you’re probably just afraid and offering to help you pick out a wedding venue.

Because the thing about being single, at church anyway, is that married people tend to assume that your biggest problem is a desperate, gnawing sense of profound loneliness. It isn’t. It’s not even what every single single person feels is their biggest problem.

I feel like my biggest problem as a single person is that I’m attracted to the Wrong Sort of man. This is largely based on internal categories that I won’t go into, because this isn’t a personal ad, but suffice it to say that I have often, often asked God to take away feelings for some man or other because they have thrown off my focus and my sense of perspective. And despite the testimony of a male friend who says that in those situations he always just prayed and the feelings departed, and despite my struggling with the whys of my prayers not being answered, it has not ever been that easy for me.

I always loved the Vulcans. (This will connect amazingly soon, I promise.) At first I loved them because they didn’t have to deal with emotion, and I thought that would be extremely convenient. Then I got really into Star Trek and learned that they did deal with emotion, exceptionally strong emotion—and they dealt with it through techniques and amazing self-control. I loved that even more.

My biggest problem as a single person is my biggest problem as a person—I would like to be in control of my own life. In pretty much every way. I want to keep my emotions in check; I want to hold back from blushing; I want to read people with the exactness of a telepath. Even in the times I want to give up control, it’s usually just wanting to give it up in specific ways that enhance my comfort.

What if this isn’t God toying with me, but simply reminding me, all too frequently for my liking, that I’m not Him? What if God likes to show me, misconceived attraction after misconceived attraction, that He loves me too much to give me everything I ask for in the instant I ask for it?

What if wrestling to surrender is more precious to Him than placid assuredness?

Openness to the Tangential

2010-09-18T00:08:00.006-04:00

The first response to the latest chapter of a fanfiction I had last updated on May 2 read, "YOU ARE BACK! Looking forward to the upcoming season premiere?"

In the lifetime that skewed off from my old life on May 19 when my mom took my dad in to the hospital, I've wondered: What do you say about it to the casual observers, the tangential people in your life? How do you explain falling off the map for months, or being confused and tired so often? Do you explain at all? Do you just muddle through, letting them see the effects but not the cause?

As I drove to work for the first time after the worst-case scenario became reality, I was sobbing, thinking how bizarre it was that I was so miserable and everyone around me was just driving along as usual, and then it hit me that I had no idea if that were true. I could only speak for me. Who's to say the person in the car next to me wasn't at least as miserable as I was?

It is a paradox—how deep we are, yet how exposed. We carry our pain below the surface, but only barely. We can look like we're happy, like everything is fine, but brush against us and you will see that we are raw bundles of nerves, scars only half-healed. Scars not just from death, but from life, life here in this place where suffering got itself invited in disguised as knowledge. Life where we hide from each other and from God and then lament that nobody finds us.

I make a lot of excuses for myself, especially right now. I want to extend to others that quickness to overlook irritation and wrongs. When they snap at or ignore or disappoint me, I want to wonder first if everything is okay with them instead of feeling aggrieved. I want to assume that they are messed up and imperfect and in need of compassion, just like me. (And I will, God helping me.)

Death is a certain thing. It is coming. If you or I might easily die tomorrow, is it worth being angry with you today? Can't I put aside my issues with you, just for today? And then just for the next day? And the day after that? Not to pretend we have no differences, not to pretend that there aren't things that need confronting, things we need to work out. That's passivity, not love. Just that if death isn't quick, but leaves enough time for thinking, I would want you and I both to feel confident that everything was clear between us, that you knew who I was and what I believed and that I cared about you. Or that at least if you didn't, if we missed each other somewhere, it wasn't because I wasn't willing to go more than halfway to meet you.

I am not back. There is no "back." But I am looking forward, and to something far greater than the season premiere of any television show. "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:14)

And I hope that along the way even the tangential people will know more about Him because of me.

Last Night's Dream

2010-08-26T07:13:00.002-04:00

I was in my church (really NOT my church, and much more mega-church-sized, but it was my church in the dream) looking for my first grade Sunday School classroom, but when I found it, it was the 12th grade room, and there were a lot of adults in there, too, including my cousin who goes to my church and her sister and mom. My cousin who is a high school teacher jokingly volunteered to lead the class and I figured I'd let her do at least part of it. The children's singing time leader was there leading them in songs before the lesson. She asked me to lead in singing something, but I was totally unprepared and couldn't remember how the song started, anyway.

I kept trying to figure out a good way to tell them the story of an experience I had recently had. I had looked out the window of the house in Metamora (really NOT the house, but the house in the dream) and seen a few hawk feathers on the lawn. "A hawk was in a fight recently," I thought, and then the next day there were dozens of hawk feathers there and I pointed them out to my mom, and then I went outside and saw a hawk chasing a smaller bird, except as they got closer I saw it was a perspective issue and it was really a bald eagle chasing a hawk, which it snagged out of midair in a burst of feathers. The eagle had greyish feathers in with the white, so I assumed it was a younger bird. When it landed, it was as tall as the house, so mom and I went inside. (I had just been thinking "Wait, bald eagles aren't that big" when the dream shifted to the Sunday School scenario.)

Before I could tell this story, I figured out that there was a room mix-up, and went to find my real class. On the way I ran into somebody asking how to use the copier ("How do I size it? How many copies? Where do I put the soap?"--but when I turned around quickly to tell him NOWHERE, he was grinning, so he was just kidding about that last one).

When I reached the first grade room I found it was massive and had theatre-style seating. There were about a hundred first graders there, most of whom I didn't know, and although there were a lot of adults in this case, too, about half of the kids were jumping up and down the stairs unhindered. The teacher wasn't my usual helper, but the elementary school teacher from the school where I work.

I was just starting to chase a few of the kids and trying to figure out how to make them behave over long range and trying not to crush anybody as I fell backwards over a set of the chairs when I woke up.

The Gift of Dialogue

2010-08-24T18:00:00.002-04:00

I've often been told that my fanfiction characters sound just like the characters do in the books/films/movies I've borrowed them from. (In my favorite example, a friend clearly remembered watching a LOST scene that I wrote.) As far as imagined dialogue goes, I have a gift...and a curse.

The curse part is that I've sometimes had whole arguments without even being in actual contact with my opponent at the time. Or I've imagined that they will say something nice that then they don't say and I'm upset at them for not saying it. So mostly I try not to have imaginary conversations with real people.

Sometimes, lately, I give myself a pass where my dad is concerned. Because sometimes I really do think I know how the conversation would have happened. Today, for instance, if I had been able to call him on my way home like I wanted to, we would have had a conversation like this one.

ME: "So today I learned that saving money on gas probably means investing it on better shoes."

DAD: "How's that?"

ME: "On the way out of work I had to drop something off at the main office, so I walked across campus in heels and had to walk all the way back to my car, which was much closer to my office, and I was wearing sandally shoes that try to be leather but really aren't, and they don't really have a lot of bend to them. So now my feet feel all pinched."

DAD: "Well, that was pretty stupid, huh?"

ME: "Yeah. I'll probably do it again. I'm too cheap to buy nice shoes considering the amount of time I spend sitting at my desk is so much greater than the amount of time I spend walking around."

DAD: "You have a rolling chair, right? You can ride it across campus."

ME: "That wouldn't look weird at all."

DAD: "Less weird than you'd look with your feet falling off from wearing cheap shoes."

And although imaginary conversations like this can make me sad, because I miss really talking to him, they make me happy, too. Because I'm so thankful I talked to him enough to have established a father/daughter conversational style that stuck in my head. I hope it stays stuck there until I get to use it with him again.

Quarters Not Accepted

2010-08-11T19:39:00.003-04:00

Two months ago today, I woke up confident that my dad was going to recover. I heard about the white blood cell count dropping while I was still at work, but I didn't think it was too big of a deal. He'd made it through major brain surgery. He'd gotten the meningitis out of his system. He'd been expected to die several times before and hadn't.

Two months ago at about this time I was visiting him. He said "Happy birthday late" and he smiled at me and we watched an episode of the 1960s Batman together and I thought there would be more greetings and more smiles and more Batman viewings and I was happy, and it was the last time I'd ever be that kind of happy again.

Two months later, I am smaller. So much smaller.

Two months ago, I thought that my words to God's ears were something special. Not just that He heard and cared about them, but that He was swayed by their eloquence, their fervor, their sincerity. ("Doesn't Suzanne have a way with words?") I thought that the prayers of thousands would give us a statistical advantage. I thought I had seen signs of healing. I thought we all still needed him here, that I could figure out what God would do because I was so spiritually attuned.

I thought God was a vending machine.

I know what I thought then because of how I've been feeling since, how confused, especially about prayer. How hesitant to tell people I'm praying for them, because surely they must see how high my prayers rank based on what happened just a day over two months ago. How distressed to read of people rejoicing at answers to prayer that tumors would prove benign or such. (I truly am glad for them, but at the same time....)

At some point after my cousin Heidi told her three-year-old son Landunn that Uncle Bill was dead, he had a question for her: "Did Jesus make Uncle Bill all the way better, like we prayed?"

She started crying as she answered, "Yes. He's all the way better."

"That's awesome!" Landunn exclaimed, and his prayers for healing turned that night to prayers of thanksgiving to a God who made his great-uncle all the way better.

As limited creatures of an unlimited Creator, we have no grounds to consider prayer answered only when God provides us with the answer we imagined would suit us best. We have no grounds to imagine ourselves influential with God in the same way that a good salesperson is influential with a customer on the fence about making a decision. If Suzanne has anything, even a way with words, it has been given. And though we can give gifts back to God in love and gratitude, we cannot buy Him off with what He has given to us.

"Once more through the fire," I wrote of my family after my cousin Bridgette died, "might bring them out as diamonds."

Which are also bigger before the pressure begins.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

"In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls."

--I Peter 1:3-8

Advice

2010-08-07T21:04:00.003-04:00

Sometimes, like Lois Lane in Smallville, I'm not comfortable with uncomfortable silences. I'm growing in that respect, but it still happens too often for my taste that I find myself halfway through a conversation before I realize that I barely know what I'm saying, let alone why. (No surprise that most of my worst miscommunications and arguments have come out of those moments.)

This quote that I just saw on Kevin DeYoung's blog is excellent advice:

"Above all things beware of letting your tongue outrun your brains. Guard against a feeble fluency, a garrulous prosiness, a facility of saying nothing...My brethren, it is a hideous gift to possess, to be able to say nothing at extreme length."

--Charles Spurgeon in Lectures to My Students

I was looking through my quote collection today

2010-08-06T10:13:00.002-04:00

"Sometimes when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated."—Lamartine

“We don't measure the outrage of our suffering by how insignificant we think sin is; we measure the outrage of sin by the scope of suffering.” —John Piper

“If I don’t ask ‘Why me?’ after my victories, I cannot ask ‘Why me?’ after my setbacks and disasters.”—Arthur Ashe

“All my worries may come true, but God will never be untrue to me.”—Kevin DeYoung

“I have to remember that the core of God’s plan is to rescue me from sin, even up to my dying breath. My pain and discomfort are not His ultimate focus—He cares about these things, but they are merely symptoms of the real problem. God cares most not about making my life happy, healthy, and free of all trouble, but about teaching me to hate my transgressions and to keep growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus.”—Joni Erickson Tada

“What are we to make of a world where stars shine bright in the midst of so much darkness and gloom?”—The magician in The Magician’s Elephant, by Kate DiCamillo

"Among the daily chances of this life every man on earth is threatened in the same way by innumerable deaths, and it is uncertain which of them will come to him. And so the question is whether it is better to suffer one in dying or to fear them all in living."—St. Augustine

"If there's anything I'm sure of, it is that heaven is a coming home."—Sheldon VanAuken in A Severe Mercy

"We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him, throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it."—C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

"I came out of the church and saw the crucifix they have there, and I thought, of course, He's got mercy, only it's such an odd sort of mercy, it sometimes looks like punishment."—Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

"I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep."—Charlotte Brontë, Villette

"In the desert all we have to cling to is the promise."—John Ortberg, Love Beyond Reason

"The good of God, the joy of God, is going to infinitely outweigh all of the sufferings—and even the joys—of this world."—Peter John Kreeft

"'I mean that we are here on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else."—G.K. Chesterton

"As Isaac Watts reminds us in his famous carol, 'He comes to make His blessings flow--far as the curse is found!' If you don't know how bad things are, you can't possibly know either how good things are going to be."—Joel Belz

"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."—Jewel in The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis

People are far away

2010-08-02T16:53:00.002-04:00

Nobody human can be here where I am now. Not my brother, not my mom, not my grandma, not my really good friends.

That's okay. Nobody can be where I am even when I'm doing something fairly trivial, like watching television. Nobody else is me. I'm past wishing that they were. People can empathize with me, can love me, without knowing what it's like to be me. (So you can stop saying you can't imagine, but know that when you slip and do say it I translate it to "I am so sad for you, friend," which I think is mostly what you mean.)

It's hard when people ask, "How's your summer going?" and they're light and cheerful and even when I say, "It's the worst summer of my life," they forget that I already told them why. (Some of us are farther apart than others, aren't we?) It's not malicious, forgetting, no matter how much it hurts. I've done it, too.

We're all so stuck here, wherever here is for each one of us.

God knows.

Firefly, Fireflies, Fireflies, and Fireflies

2010-07-27T21:55:00.005-04:00

Tonight I watched the first episode of Firefly with a friend, and it had this exchange:

Mal: I had a good day.
Simon: You had the Alliance on you, criminals, and savages; half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded, including yourself; and you're harboring known fugitives.
Mal: We're still flying.
Simon: That's not much.
Mal: It's enough.

Struck down, but not destroyed. Still flying. It's enough.

After I drove home, I sat in my car and watched fireflies outside and listened to the first few tracks of the Sara Groves album Fireflies and Songs, and in the title song there is this verse:

We're looking for a firefly
Moving through the night
Staring at that one place
Swear it never lights

Three ways to watch fireflies: 1) staring at one place and finding the firefly has moved on; 2) following one firefly and catching the times it lights; 3) trying to see everything in front of you at once. The firefly moves, and goes dark, but is never alone.

Years ago I wrote a poem called "Fireflies" that goes like this:

Firefly glints in the night—

beauty and longing,
joy and urgency meet
and mingle and this
is and is not
where I most want to be,
most of all places.
I too live a firefly life
here in the night,
striving for greater brilliance,
greater intensity,
sustained in my dark times by
the lights of others,
knowing that after
the final flicker into obscurity comes
the consummation,
for which all beauties
are a preparation.

Someday—the day my dad knows now that he has passed beyond the grip of time into the eternal now of God—the lights won't keep going out. "Someday," as C.S. Lewis wrote, "God willing, we will get in."

Fireflies remind me.

I miss email exchanges like this. But I'm so glad to have had them.

2010-07-26T19:07:00.003-04:00

From: Suzanne Winter
Sent: Wed 2/20/2008 5:15 PM
To: Winter, Bill
Subject: Poor sick Dad!

Mom told me you were sick. I'm thinking about you (etc.). Hope you feel better soon!

Love,
Suzanne

________________________________

From: Winter, Bill

Sent: Wed 2/20/2008 6:00 PM
To: Suzanne Winter
Subject: RE: Poor sick Dad!

thanks. i am a little weak and can't even do uppercase.

love,
dad

Old journal entry

2010-07-23T16:42:00.001-04:00

Thursday, June 23, 1988

Went to Walden Books, then drove over to Sears. Went to B. Dalton's and Circus World, all just with Daddy. We bought nothing. Daddy says that's good to buy nothing.

[I'm still your little girl, Daddy.]

Woman of Words

2010-07-17T09:01:00.003-04:00

My mom can write thank you notes already, to all the people who have done and been so much for us over the past few months. It helps her, putting words on paper and crossing things off her list.

I can't even catch up on my emails. I've tried. I sit down and begin to answer correspondence and I get through a few and run into...blankness. My writing is and always has been not just part of what I do, but part of who I am. And now those words have pulled down, deep down, and the times when they have surfaced they have sometimes felt like shrapnel pulling through me.

I don't know that I want them yet.

So many people have said, "I can't imagine what you must be feeling." In the past, some have told me that when they read what I write they feel themselves there.

I don't know that I want those two things to come together.

There is a lot about my life at this time that I want and don't want to put in writing, want and don't want to share with everyone.

I'm a woman of words and at this time words are often failing me.

(If you wrote to me and expected an answer and didn't get one, this is probably why.)

Prayer and Fasting

2010-06-29T23:26:00.006-04:00

My dad died on June 12.

Those first three words....

This Wednesday is the monthly day of prayer and fasting for my church. Last month I observed the day from a distance, praying and fasting in Detroit and channeling much of the energy of my prayers into praying for the restoration of my father's health and the upholding of his spirit.

I will never again pray for my father.

This is the poison in my ears tonight: To what end did you pray and fast? To what end did you and thousands of others pour out your prayers over a period of weeks, asking God to heal your father? Haven't you experienced God as capricious and deaf to your pleas? Haven't you seen that He thwarts the desires of His people? Isn't it dangerous to ask God for what you want if He is going to give you the reverse?

Oh, God....

This is the antidote: Jesus Christ suffered throughout His life, and at the end of His life He suffered the crushing weight of alienation from God so that my dad could bear an eternal weight of glory instead (1 Peter 2:21-24; 2 Corinthians 4:17). Jesus wept (John 11:35). Jesus prayed to God asking for the worst suffering to be taken from Him, and God didn't do it (Matthew 26:39ff). Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty, Who has called His children to hear His voice and come to Him (Hebrews 12:2; Hebrews 4:7b).

Jesus told a parable about how God relates to us when we ask Him for things, how even an earthly father doesn't give his child a snake if asked for a fish or a stone if asked for bread. "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children," He says in Matthew 7:11, "how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him?"

I asked for my dad's life, and did not receive it.

But it's "children." Plural. Not just Suzanne.

If in withdrawing a good gift from one of His children He extends a lasting inheritance to others, it is good.

If my dad's death is used to spark or strengthen your faith, it is good.

On June 30, my dad lives. Just not here anymore. The next time I meet him, it will be as a brother, and we will see God our Father face-to-face, along with our brothers and sisters through the ages. What a family reunion that will be!

I fast and pray because life is short, because God exists and is active in this world, and because everything about the way I live--and the way you live--should be affected in light of those two things. Tomorrow I fast and pray because I want you to join us at the family reunion, and because when we're reconnecting there I want to hear that you lived a life of power and purpose.

I am not my own, but belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. Body and soul, in life in this place and in earthly death and in the life to come.

What about you?

"Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it."--Hebrews 4:1

Tired doesn't cover it

2010-06-04T22:42:00.003-04:00

My father is still in the hospital. I think almost anybody who reads this blog knows that from Facebook or the Harvest prayer chain. I've posted the CarePage link to both of those places, and I'll mostly be blogging there for a while, I think. I’ve had a rough week. Feeling very spiritually vulnerable. Please pray for bolstering in the faith for all of us, Dad and Mom and us kids and everybody else close to Dad.

I read something today about how when the immediate fear of death is gone, it immediately becomes easier to complain. Small things are getting to me again, which I suppose might be a "good" sign. But you'd think that we'd learn, wouldn't you?

I'm glad God remembers for us.

(And you have no idea how helpful it is just to get a hello. Thank you, thank you, thank you.)

Living this story

2010-05-20T14:15:00.003-04:00

I can remember one time, last December, that my dad was sick for more than two days in a row. I cannot remember any other time. He eats healthy foods, he gets enough sleep, and he hasn't gone more than a few weeks without exercising since he was seventeen.

If I were going to get a "we're going to the hospital" call, I would've expected it to be because of Mom. All the weird stuff seems to happen to her.

But when his wildly vacillating fever wasn't responding well to the drugs he'd been given by the doctor who pronounced his ailment a bad sinus infection, it was Dad who was on the way to the hospital, and Mom who was driving, and Dad who would be diagnosed this afternoon with life-threatening bacterial meningitis.

Life is surreal, have you noticed?

At times like this, my mind goes into frantic re-write mode. We rewind, we do something differently, we avoid the situation, and it never happened, not really, that was a horrible thought but not a true one, everything is really just like it was.

Life is not really up to us at nearly the level our practiced denials tell us it is.

There you are, doing your own thing and making your own plans and carefully, carefully, carefully scheduling your time, and all of a sudden catching the finale of LOST is blasted from the top of your most-important-things list. I wish I could trade never seeing the finale of LOST ever, never even hearing somebody talk about it, never knowing what it's all about, for my father making it through this just as healthy and whole as he was before.

Because that's where you go, or where I do: denial and bargaining. God, tell me this never happened. God, what can I do to fix it?

Yesterday, before I could even get there, He headed me off. "I can't believe this," I was thinking. "Dad's immune system has always been so amazing." And then I thought, "The same God who gave him such an amazing immune system is in charge of his health right now."

We don't get to barter, which is good because we make really bad deals. Esau sold his birthright for a meal. Jacob sold his dignity for a beautiful woman. Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver. And those are just the people I know from ages ago, not the people from within my lifetime who've sold their marriages for a redefined happiness, sold their freedom for notoriety, sold their long-term health for a life of instant gratification.

Foolish and slow of heart. That's what Jesus calls even His own disciples. And then He starts to explain, because He knows that until He explains we can never be more than foolish, more than slow of heart.

This is God's deal: you can't exchange your life to save anybody else's from anything, least of all from damnation in hell (infinitely more life-threatening than bacterial meningitis). That deal has been made. That life has been exchanged. He gave His only Son for that. You can't rewind. You can't re-write. It's been done. Don't try to live another story.

God's deal is the answer to how to react when bad illnesses happen to healthy people (why are there healthy people in the first place?). "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)

The Father of Jesus Christ is the Father of my father, and loves him more than I do, and I can't wrap my mind around how much that is.

Life is in the hands of a loving Father. Have you noticed?

Too old for this

2010-05-11T18:27:00.002-04:00

Within the past year, I've been getting tired of the will-they/won't-they long-drawn-out romantic tension stuff. I used to love it (I cut my adult fangirl teeth on The X-Files), but now I keep thinking, "Say what you want to say. Life is so short."

Maybe it's the accumulated life experience talking, but watching two people dance around each other for years without either having the courage to speak is more depressing than it used to be. And maybe there's the risk of rejection, or the scarier risk of acceptance, but for crying out loud. Just say something.

If I'm going to hyper-invest in fictional lives, they should probably be less angsty.

Scenes from School: Boys and Pictures

2010-04-30T18:36:00.004-04:00

Today I took pictures of some of our kids who didn't have pictures on file yet.

I started out with the elementary school boys. At that age, even if they're in for anger management problems, they hear the teacher tell them to go stand in the hall and smile and they do. One boy smiled with such a surprising flash of brilliance I'm surprised my retinas are intact.

The teenage boys aren't so eager to have their smiles preserved for posterity. They're trying to save face, to be tough. "I don't smile for cameras" I hear, over and over again, and I heckle them about it and most of them give a little. Some break into laughter and hide their faces in their hands. "Wait, wait! Don't take it yet, don't take it yet!"

Maybe while they've been here they've knocked over chairs and started fistfights and threatened teachers, and maybe if they'd been a few years older when they did whatever landed them here they'd be in prison, and maybe they're still on the way there. Picture day reminds me of the hungry hearts beneath the bluster and bravado.

"The young lions do lack and suffer hunger;

But they who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing."

-- Psalm 34:10

"Seek the LORD while He may be found;

Call upon Him while He is near."

--Isaiah 55:6

"The LORD is near to all who call upon Him,

To all who call upon Him in truth."

--Psalm 145:18

Pray for my boys, and pray for lionhearted men to walk beside them and teach them how and Whom to seek.

Positive Self-Talk

2010-04-27T16:39:00.003-04:00

It's been a long time coming.

Living in the same house

we turned strangers,

me not knowing what was in his head,

him not caring what was in mine.

We moved from holding each other

to holding each other back,

and I didn't like who I saw

in the mirror every morning,

settling for a life more ordinary.

So I packed a pipe with

gunpowder and nails and

lobbed it into his car window as

he drove onto our street, which was

messy, of course, and who likes messy,

but free, too, so much more free.

It's for the best.

It's a shame the kids were riding with him

but there's a lot of socially well-adjusted people

who've grown up blind in one eye, and surely it's

better this way than living with tension so thick

you could cut it with a butcher knife, which

can't be good for anybody.

Most of the nails are out of the street already,

nice because I'd hate to pop a tire

on top of everything else,

like washing my carpet because for the fifteenth time

a visitor showed up with bloody feet and

I let people keep their shoes on now.

God will get me through this.

Scenes from School: Some of the Girls

2010-04-22T16:35:00.002-04:00

She came in one day all bright clothes and big eyes and chatter. A door down the hall was closed and she wanted somebody to talk to, somebody not one of the other girls waiting for the class transition. I barely had time for a word in, and when she left I felt as though I'd just had an encounter with a butterfly turned human.

In the few weeks remaining before she left she came by several times, after that. All she needed was an open door.

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

She comes by almost every day at least once, not to talk to me but to look in the mirror that hangs outside my office. It's one of those convex mirrors like the ones you see in drug stores, and I like it because I can glance out the door and see who's rustling around in the storage room. She uses it to check herself out.

I wonder what she sees, looking in that distorted reflection. What I see is someone who's always stylish, trendy yet classy at the same time (none of the plunging necklines or tight shirts designed to distract). There are looks of concentration, sometimes smiles as she turns back to her friends. When she moves on, I'll miss her visits to the mirror.

I wonder why I've never told her.

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

I'm in administration and I know their names even if I've never seen their faces. I know hers when I see it on the poem she submitted for the art contest. It begins in a deceptively simple style and grows in complexity, and it has a twist that grabs at me, and I read it again and decide I will ask her social worker to ask her if she'd give me a copy.

She doesn't know me. Or herself, judging from what she's written, but that's all right. She's only thirteen. I was twenty when I put the same sentiment to paper.

May the God whose purpose she invokes in her poem show her who she is, more and more, every day. As He is doing with me.

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

Pray for my girls.

Suzanne in the Auditor's Den

2010-04-20T17:35:00.003-04:00

Today was another audit day. This morning I came in to find that the documents I requested far too late to be reasonably expected before the auditors arrived had come, after all. The teacher who called in sick today had corrected her attendance binder before she left last night. All was well.

After a phone call from up front warning me that everything was going horribly and that the auditors were picking on little tiny things that they hadn't ever told us about before, the serene feeling wasn't so strong. After the second phone call, it occurred to me that I hadn't really prayed much about this audit. I'd been feeling so much calmer and more confident and prepared and I'd not been praying. That was it. That was why the whole audit was failing. I hadn't prayed, I hadn't been asking other people to pray, and now I was taking the whole school down with me.

"Do you hear yourself?" another voice in my head spoke up. "What is this, an equation? 'God's favor = Perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ + Number of prayers Suzanne throws up / 2'? You do realize what part of that is unnecessary, right? Everything after Christ."

In long-ago Babylon, three men of God were called before an angry ruler and given a simple choice: worship him or burn to death. Their response, recorded in Daniel 3, is one of my favorite testimonies in all of Scripture, and the words in bold are my favorite part of it: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or to worship the golden image that you have set up."

When the auditors came to my building office after nearly three hours with the community program, they were smiling and laughing. I was remembering what I've heard about them, about how they're out to get us and make our lives difficult, and remembering what I've heard about all of us, that we are all sinners in need of grace and that once God has granted it there is no audit, from a school district review of our paperwork to the devil's review of our daily lives, that can ever take that grace away.

The auditors found we'd changed a section of schedule in the middle of the year. For about twelve kids. Which is not allowed. I saw us losing the funding on all of these kids in a single swoop, but instead of pressing the point they gave us a chance to make up for it. And when they left, less than an hour after they arrived, they were thanking us for our help and congratulating us on being so well prepared.

I know I was well-organized, and I know that to the auditors (all either at or approaching retirement age) I likely have the granddaughter aura, and I know that when it comes down to it, neither of those are the primary reason why the audit went well. God delivered me from the wrath of the auditors.

But even if He had not, God would still have been God.

I went out with joy and was led forth in peace.

The Highest Calling

2010-04-11T12:55:00.003-04:00

Quite recently I read of the struggle of a sister in Christ who has been wrestling with the idea that she has to work outside the home to be a fulfilled person. She has a young daughter and a new child on the way, her husband is gainfully employed so that from an economic perspective she doesn't have to work, and she thoroughly enjoys all the mothering tasks that are hers now and anticipates those to come, but there are people in her life who have been questioning her growing desire to stay home with her children instead of finishing her education and becoming an R.N. She wrote eloquently of the emerging realization that as long as she is following Christ with her whole heart, no one can stand in condemnation of her career choices.

Another sister in Christ wrote this in comment: "Motherhood is a woman's highest calling." While I appreciate this woman's supportiveness and her assertion that there is nothing wrong with staying home to raise the kids God gave you and that you shouldn't let the world tell you what to do about it...well.... Can we please retire that phrase?

I'm good with kids. Through nature and nurture and the gifts of God in each, I enjoy interacting with small people, especially one-on-one. And I thoroughly support mothers staying home with their children where it is possible. It's how I was raised, and I'm grateful to my mother for it. It's how many of my friends have raised or are raising their kids, with or without taking on additional jobs for the love of the work. So it's not that I think motherhood is a lesser calling than being a nurse or anything else.

But what about those of us who don't have children? What about those who not only don't have children because they are infertile or currently unable to adopt, but those who are unmarried and don't want to raise a child alone? What about those who have had miscarriages, or have lost a child after birth? Are we all missing out on the highest calling? Would God really create a highest calling for women and then bar some of us from it?

No. He wouldn't. He doesn't.

The highest calling is not to a position, but from a person. "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-29)

It's for women with children and without children. For women and for men. For everyone.

Walk towards the person of Jesus Christ and you can be certain that you are on the right path, wherever life takes you. Because it isn't really life that's taking you, bleak and impersonal. It's God. The God who says, "I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand." "I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them." (Isaiah 42:6a, 16)

May we follow You with willing and undivided hearts wherever you lead, O Lord.

Fads of Attraction vs. Imperishable Beauty

2010-03-20T18:03:00.003-04:00

"Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear--but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious."--I Peter 3:2-4

"Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."--Proverbs 31:30

Something inside us wants to turn the descriptive into the prescriptive, the restrictive. What's wrong with braiding hair? What's wrong with gold jewelry and nice clothes?

But neither Peter nor King Lemuel actually says that women shouldn't wear jewelry or braid their hair. They don't say that women should hide themselves away or cover themselves from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet. They don't say that the way women dress forces men to sin, as if sin were as external as braided hair.

I thought of these two verses today when I was listening to Helen Kane on Grooveshark. Kane is a singer most commonly known now for providing the look and voice inspiration for the Betty Boop cartoon character, which first rose to popularity in the 1930's. Have you ever heard her sing? Go check it out. That was a top-level attractive voice back in the day.

Are looks a steadier indication of attraction? A hint of ankle in Iran. A lot of cleavage in the United States. Twiggy from the 1960's. Baroque models of the 1600's. There is no standard for physical beauty across cultures, let alone across the ages.

When you near the end of your life and look back on your photos, I will guarantee you that you will find a lot of goofy-looking images. Some of them will be of you sporting looks that were super popular at the time. My cousins, trendier during the 1980's than I was, already look back on their school pictures and roll their eyes over their hair.

You will never look back and roll your eyes because you were kind to someone, or didn't say the first thing that came into your head when it wasn't the best thing to say, or gave your time and money and energy to help someone besides just yourself. Not when you're doing it for God.

Because that's something else Peter and King Lemuel don't say. They don't say "Do these things because men don't care about how you look." They say "Do these things because God cares about your heart." Do men who are bending their hearts towards God prize godliness more than trendiness? Absolutely. Are we working to be beautiful for men? Absolutely not.

Put your hand into the fire and you will be burned. Wade in the ocean and your feet will get wet. Be beautiful for God and your beauty will never die.

It's just how it is.

The content of their what-now?

2010-03-16T17:49:00.002-04:00

I got my census form today. As advance information for any of you who haven't seen yours yet, here are your choices for race:

White
Black, African Am., or Negro
American Indian or Alaska Native--Print name of enrolled or principal tribe.
Asian Indian
Chinese
Filipino
Japanese
Korean
Vietnamese
Other Asian--Print race, for example, Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian, and so on.
Native Hawaiian
Guamanian or Chamorro
Samoan
Other Pacific Islander--Print race, for example, Fijian, Tongan, and so on.
Some other race--Print race.

Oh, and these all come after the Hispanic section, where you can choose Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano; Puerto Rican; Cuban; or another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin, such as Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on.

It seems we have too many Hispanics, Asians, and Pacific Islanders in the country and we're trying to figure out which group should get voted out first. (I'm guessing it won't be the Spaniards because they can hold grudges at least ten times as well as they can sword-fight ambidextrously, which, as I'm sure you're aware, is freakishly amazingly well.) I am as horrified by this as you are, but what other conclusion can we draw from such a detailed query?

White people like me are the safest. They don't ask anything about my origins. I could be anything from English to German to South African to Russian to Italian to French and nobody would know. As far as the excruciatingly detailed race section of the census is concerned, I'm in stealth mode. Flip the jackal switch.

I did think the census people could use a little help, though. They clearly care about what is important to us. So I checked the box next to "White" and then under "Some other race" I put down the race I really identify with most.

Human.

Who's with me?

The Nearness of You

2010-03-14T20:03:00.005-04:00

"What exciting things happened while I was gone?" I asked this morning, back in my first grade class after two weeks away.

The children, garrulous with each other, began "um-ing" and looking at the ceiling, trying hard to think of something, but one hand flew up.

"You came back!" she said, and as if that wasn't enough, she added, "And you're coming to my house tomorrow."

The fact that she doesn't stay up when company is there, that she will spend most of the time I am at her house in bed, made this "exciting thing" hit me harder.

To be glad to share the same space, even if you don't get to speak to each other, even if you're not in the same room. It is what I was trying to convey to the friend I visited recently, the one who was half-jokingly afraid that maybe I didn't have enough fun during my visit to return, that maybe I was bored.

Acquaintances care about you when you are fun, when you are shiny and new, when you are amiable, when you are healthy. But that isn't really caring about someone else, is it? That's caring about self. "Anyone could be attracted by the beautiful and charming. But could such attraction be called love? True love was to accept humanity when wasted like rags and tatters. Theoretically the priest knew all this" (from Silence, by Shusaku Endo).

Love rejoices in nearness. No matter what. Thanks for the reminder, Chloe.

(Holy Spirit, come near and draw us past the theoretical.)

The Safer Road

2010-03-04T17:34:00.003-05:00

To put it kindly, she is a leader from the moment she enters the classroom. ("She's a poison," one teacher says, and the others agree.) She sets the tone for the rest of the group, especially the girls. Even those who haven't been particularly disrespectful before follow her.

She singles out the assistant teacher for special torment, cussing him out and branding him with a name so ludicrous and yet oddly fitting that he bursts out laughing even as he sends her back to her unit. Neither he nor his co-workers will forget it, and some of them wonder if it's why he shaves his beard, because without it it's true he doesn't look as much like the name suits him.

The day she leaves she asks the unit staff to call Mr. Leprechaun so she can say goodbye. She hugs him and cries and he is surprised because all she's ever done since the first time she came to class was call him f-ing this and f-ing that.

Sometimes it feels safer to make someone hate you from the start than to wait for their inevitable disappointment in you.

We'll Always Have That

2010-02-20T00:17:00.003-05:00

a slow ramp up and it's taking forever

click by click

is this track solid

will the chain hold

trepidation for the newbies

turned bittersweet clinging

for those who've ridden enough to know

the speed of descent

the rush of air and light and excitement

all too soon the car eases to a stop

the occupants scatter

but we had fun while we lasted

didn't we?

No Valentine's Day for me, thanks.

2010-02-14T12:48:00.004-05:00

I don't like Valentine's Day.

This isn't a singleness manifesto like the many I've written before. I've come to terms with the fact that I like romance and pursuit and all of that (in theory). But I don't like Valentine's Day.

I don't like being like everybody else. Part of my resistance to admitting that even sometimes I want to be married was/is that so many other people want that. Good grief, am I a follower? (And just how many people have shared that, I wonder, the desire to be singular amongst the trillions of people who have ever lived?) While there are aspects of wanting to stand out that are prideful and a little shortsighted, there are some that are just part of being the sort of person you are.

Sharing a manufactured holiday with the whole country? Not the sort of person I am. If I'm ever in the kind of relationship where Valentine's Day observance might come up, it may be more in the breach than the observance. (For instance, it could be funny not to talk to each other at all for that day...clearly this wouldn't work if I were married, as anybody who has ever lived with me knows, but before then.)

So if there's somebody out there and we're working on our way to each other, I hope he's the sort of person who likes in-jokes and days that mean something just to us, because I'd rather celebrate the relationship I am in than the day the whole country is selling stuff for. I know, I know, not supporting the economy by throwing money away? How un-American.

We could celebrate "I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the galaxy day." I'm open to that.

Melancholy Dissected

2010-02-07T20:52:00.004-05:00

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

~~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

If you pay attention to your life, you will notice a lot of patterns. A lot of things that seemed confusing and frustrating to unbearable levels as little as five years ago make a lot more sense to me now.

Case in point: random bouts of melancholy, such as the one I've been in since about 3:30 this morning. Five years ago, I would probably just angst a lot about it. Now, I can recognize some contributing factors. These include:

Being tired. Not getting enough sleep makes me mopey and/or cranky, and then if I wake up mopey like I did quite early this morning I can't get back to sleep because I'm focusing on turning off the sad or, worse, letting it run off with my head as I remember all the things that are not going Suzanne-perfect in my life. And I know part of the mopeyness is connected to...
Feeling disorganized. My apartment is a mess right now. Not a horrible, horrible mess, but I need to take out the trash, and I need to vacuum, and I need to organize my kitchen cabinets so I can put dishes away properly again, and I need to organize my larger closet so things fit in there as they should, too, but I'm sooo busy. Which leads me to the next factor...
Feeling too busy. Okay, seriously, lots of people do way more than I do. Lots of people have jobs and household tasks and evening plans and food needs and more evening plans and working with youth group and teaching Sunday School and all that. I don't know why I feel so overwhelmed so quickly at my busy points, but often I do. Which can lead to...
Spending too much time surfing the internet or watching TV. In small doses, both of these things can feel productive (especially because there are a lot of things I can do while watching TV, like spreadsheets or ironing or folding laundry), but they can definitely slip over into rampant procrastination. Sometimes I get a late-night second wind, stop procrastinating, and launch into the tasks I should have completed hours ago. Sometimes I keep surfing mindlessly until really late in the desperate hope that morning will take longer to come if I am awake longer. But either of those options lead me back to...
Being tired. And then being scared of being tired. Which tends to wake me up in the night, which tends to make me tired. (Wow, it's obvious that physical and mental well-being are entwined.)

It's not an exhaustive list, but those are the major melancholy triggers I have the most direct influence over. Pay attention and you might catch yours out, too.

And now I need to sleep.

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (It's Already Where Your Heart Is)

2010-01-25T22:23:00.004-05:00

We had our annual church meeting tonight. As usual, we got hung up on the budget. "It's not personal," somebody said as he started his comment wondering why a line item was being increased, and of course that was just rubbish. Money is totally personal. Somehow money reaches its little tentacles down into our hearts and tries to pretend it's something important. Something like love, or happiness, or security. (It isn't, really. It's none of those things.)

I tend to feel dirty talking about money, or hearing people talk about money. I feel those tentacles tightening--"Why would they think that's a necessary expenditure? Why would they want to put my money out for that?" And when I hear other people make arguments on money, I start judging them like crazy, catching myself questioning their every motive--"Trying to keep more money in your own pocket, huh? Trying to make me fund your passion?" Which is just the flip side of the first question.

Maybe we keep our giving too personal, in a way. Not like we need to be flashy about giving, to flaunt how much we give and how many causes we support as if that makes us special somehow. But why can't we be extravagant in our excitement about it? Excitement is contagious, you know.

One of the things I like about writing a check to my church, or to another ministry, or to a charity, or even as a gift, is the sense of weight being lifted off of me. Every gift is a kick in the teeth to the slave-master called wealth. Watch this, bank account. You don't own me.

Why can't we in the church plan our giving not to meet a budget standard, but to exceed it? Not see things as how much we want to spend, but how much we want to give? Why can't we see a tithe of ten percent as a ridiculously minimalistic goal, and try for a new personal best every year as far as how much we give away? I'm not taking that money with me when I die, so what use is it here? If a few extra income percentage points a week make someone else's life richer, in whatever way, why begrudge them that?

Why not fund somebody else's passion?

Is it really money we lack?

Favorite Conversation of the Day

2010-01-23T20:15:00.003-05:00

Dad: What would you want your last meal to be? Like if you were on death row.

Me: For all my crimes against humanity? I'm not sure. Depends on my mood. Maybe...I don't know...ice cream?

Dad: You have no imagination. "Dear Dad, I have no imagination."

Me: What? What would you say?

Dad: Porterhouse steak. From a woolly mammoth.

Me: What, is that on a show you're watching?

Dad: No, it's from me.

Me: You just came up with that yourself?

Dad: Yeah, I did. I'm creative. I'm not just an engineer.

Me: Why were you even thinking about that?

Dad: If it's from a woolly mammoth, they can't kill you, because they'll be looking all over and can never find your last meal. You, you're dead. You can get ice cream anywhere. You can get ice cream from a hardware store.

Me: A hardware store.

Dad: I was thinking it was either that or pterodactyl wings...maybe pterodactyl toenails, but then they can probably find the toenails. It'd have to be meat....

More Scenes from School

2010-01-21T21:46:00.003-05:00

Several weeks ago

I'm carrying a large heavy box and hoping that someone will be there by the door, someone I could ask for help, when two people start heading in the same direction I am. The staffer has spoken to me before, so I would feel comfortable asking him, but his attention is currently engaged by the complaints of the teenager walking alongside him. I'm waiting for the student to pause long enough for me to ask if somebody could open the door for me, and then suddenly the boy turns, sees me, and the switch is thrown. Just like that, he goes from irritated to solicitous.

"Can I help you with that?"

"Yes," I say, "thank you."

He takes the box and I step ahead, keys ready for the door.

"It's hard to get into this door while I'm carrying a box," I say.

"Tell me about it," he agrees. "One time I had my suitcase and it was icy."

I hold the door for him and then walk around the corner to my office, where he puts the box down and I thank him by name.

"You know my name?" he asks, surprised, and I remind him that I took his ID photo back in September, which he remembers, and that his name reminds me of a friend's, which he finds interesting. "You work here?" he clarifies.

"Yes."

"I walk by here every day," he exclaims, and I almost laugh because he is so sincere and because it's so obvious that he thinks I didn't notice him, even though all the boys walk by my office several times a day on their way to and from class. "I'll say hi."

"I'll say hi back," I say.

And we do, and once he stops to see my tack board full of lighthouse pictures and is amazed that the colors of the sky could be real, not computer generated.

"You see a lot of strange things outside," I say.

"At the ocean?" he inquires, excitement on his face, and I get a little twinge when I think about anybody not knowing that the sky can look like that even here in West Michigan. I tell him about the lizard in Flagstaff that looked like it was from a science fiction movie, and his eyes sparkle with secondhand enthusiasm.

Today

"I'll be leaving tomorrow," he says. His eyes are full of trepidation and my mouth is full of trail mix. I have to stop putting handfuls of this stuff in my mouth when people are coming by.

I hold my hand in front of my mouth as I talk. "I'll miss seeing you around," I say, thinking about how tragicomical life is and how ridiculous I must look.

He acts like he doesn't notice anything, but he latches on to my words. "I'll miss you, too."

"Have a couple M&M's," I say inanely, putting two M&M's from the trail mix left on my napkin into his hand as he heads off to class. "Come by again before you go."

"I will," he says, so when he passes me--once, twice, three times--I wonder if he meant tomorrow when I meant today. But I stay anyway, waiting, and just as I'm reaching down my coat he's there in the doorway.

It's awkward, saying goodbye to someone you're fairly sure you'll never see or hear from again, someone you care about but are not exactly friends with. That sense hangs in the air between us as I ask how much packing he has left to do and tell him I'm a last-minute packer, myself. He doesn't know when he's leaving (it could be tomorrow morning or afternoon), he doesn't know if he'll be going to any classes. So much of their lives is uncertain like this, strange considering how much else is scripted for them.

Silence falls and we stare at each other. He holds out his left hand. "It was nice to meet you."

I take his hand and shake it. "Nice to meet you, too," I say. "Good luck out there," I add, not sure what it is you say to somebody leaving a locked residential program but knowing I hope he never lives here again.

"Thanks."

And he leaves. Even though I've only spoken to him a handful of times, my heart twists and some tears fall. Yet still, underneath that, a steady voice inside tells me I want to love children like this, this readily. To take the hard-luck cases under my wings as God took me under his, to nurture them for a lifetime or only a few months. Perhaps to have my heart torn to a thousand pieces, if each piece I give away makes one of them stronger. (Funny, in leaving myself open to break I find myself more ready to be broken.)

It is in these times I most want a partner to love with me.

Bring on the married people sermons

2010-01-17T23:58:00.003-05:00

This morning the tentative title of the pastor's sermon was "Faith Finding a Wife." (It wasn't the title by the time he started, which is not unusual.) Tonight the title of the associate pastor's sermon was "Grace-Touched Husbands." A year or so ago, I would have had to invest serious prayer time into not being bitter just at reading those titles.

My favorite part about this "being more vulnerable before God" journey is discovering the freedom of honesty. (What? Honesty is a good thing? Confusing, right? No wonder it took me thirty years to figure out.)

Honestly? Sometimes I want to be married. And sometimes I don't. But the longer I lean into this vulnerability before God, the safer I feel, no matter how things end up. They feel increasingly old, increasingly laughable, these notions that I could derail any relationship of any kind that He wants me to be a part of, that any marriage I'd be in would be a slog of an effort and no fun at all, that I'm undesirable and hard to get along with in a much more difficult way than anybody else is.

I love that I can read those phrases and not believe them. They boiled up from deep, deep down, but then they were skimmed off and thrown away. (He is making all things new, remember?) What I believe now, right this moment, is that He's got it, all of it, under control, and that the direction of my life is not something I need to agonize over. Although I still have my anxious moments, they're feeling foreign more quickly than they ever did. On the whole, I'm living more now than I ever have before.

So now, instead of expending so much effort on a masking anger that's supposed to protect me, I can hear about husbands and wives in church and not feel excluded. The story is not about how Suzanne doesn't have and will never have a husband, insert her favorite conjecture as to why here. The story is about the God who does the work and ordains the instruments and puts us all into relationships of all kinds and whose commands for one are not so narrow as to exclude any. The God whose love shines so brightly in Christ-focused marriages that I want to be near them, want to hear about them, no matter if I'm never part of one myself. That God and His children (one of them a slow-learning but increasingly joyful writer from Michigan).

Day by day, more butterfly than caterpillar.

A Scene from School

2010-01-13T23:42:00.005-05:00

"Are you always here?" he asks. It's 2:00 p.m. and school has been out for all of six minutes.

"I'm here a lot," I respond.

"It seems like you're here all the time," he says, his eyes flicking from the desk to the filing cabinet to the bulletin board, taking it all in with frank curiosity. "Are you the school secretary?"

"I am."

"For all the schools?"

I don't know what this question means, so I phrase my answer carefully, telling him I'm the secretary for three of the four buildings on campus.

"It just seems like you're a different secretary," he says, and I only have an instant to wonder what this means because he elaborates. "Most school secretaries are gone as soon as school is out and the kids are gone."

His range of experience with school secretaries may well be broad, but then he may never have been in the building after school let out himself. It could easily go either way as a teenager, his perception of school secretaries formed from knowledge or imagination.

I'm without a response, so I laugh, one of those appreciative gestures that doesn't mean "you're funny" as much as "you're making me happy."

"That's okay, though," he says, giving me permission to stay late if I want to do so. "You're a hard worker. That's a good thing."

Four months into school and this is the first conversation we've had, he and I, and it might be the last, but in two minutes on a Wednesday afternoon in January he connected himself to the name I type into my forms. I laugh again, and say "Thank you" (which is redundant), and am glad for those two minutes.

I love this job.

I Dreamed a Dream

2010-01-06T18:31:00.002-05:00

Last night I had to step away from a teacher from where I work because Ben Linus needed me to do a favor for him. He had a cardboard box that he wanted me to return to a shelf in a warehouse. I kept watching my co-worker to make sure she wasn't paying attention because I didn't think she would understand why I was talking to him. She would probably take it the wrong way and think I was a traitor or something.

I was torn, because he was looking incredibly sincere and when Ben does that he's usually lying to you, but then again I'm about the biggest Ben fan ever and you never know when he's actually asking you to do something for a really good reason. Just because he's cried wolf a hundred times doesn't mean that the box wasn't perfectly innocuous and just needed to be reshelved, right? But then, why wouldn't he do it himself?

He could sense my hesitation and was becoming even more urgent and sincere in his arguments, which was making me more sure that I did not want to go along with this plan, and I was trying to figure out a way to say, "I don't think I trust you at this moment" without hurting his feelings too much.

And then my alarm went off. So I'm not sure how it ends. Awwww, man....

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

2009-12-28T22:30:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-18T23:22:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-13T20:39:00.005-05:00

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

2009-12-05T09:20:00.003-05:00

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?

2009-11-22T07:41:00.006-05:00

"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)

2009-11-15T17:00:00.004-05:00

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

2009-11-06T12:34:00.005-05:00

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

2009-10-24T12:39:00.003-04:00

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

2009-10-18T13:11:00.003-04:00

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

2009-10-15T17:52:00.002-04:00

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

2009-10-04T12:02:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-30T07:11:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-27T12:40:00.003-04:00

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....

2009-09-20T12:34:00.004-04:00

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

2009-09-07T19:10:00.002-04:00

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."

2009-09-07T07:51:00.002-04:00

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.

2009-08-30T12:16:00.002-04:00

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.

2009-08-23T21:33:00.002-04:00

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

2009-08-20T17:28:00.003-04:00

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

2009-08-17T21:53:00.003-04:00

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

On to the next day.

Now Entering Phase Four

2009-08-16T20:11:00.004-04:00

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

2009-08-15T10:10:00.002-04:00

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!"

2009-08-13T00:06:00.003-04:00

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

2009-08-05T13:27:00.004-04:00

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.
No matter how much time you have, you find a way to fill it.
I am not more productive with more time. I am actually less productive.
Deadlines and schedules motivate me. (I am going to be working for a charter school. Helllooooo, structured school time! I've missed you so....)
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.
Even though I feel excellent about myself when I'm productive, I often choose to procrastinate instead.
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.
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.
All times and seasons eventually end. "It always seems soon...afterward."

Boy Saints and Last Sundays

2009-07-26T20:04:00.004-04:00

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

2009-07-21T08:32:00.005-04:00

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).
Confession of grievous sin and petition for the grace of God.
The work of God's church.
Petition for protection in times of dire need (as in the book of Esther when the Jews were faced with an imminent attack).
Deliverance from accusers and enemies.
Guidance and wisdom.
Mourning.
Preparation for ministry.
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

2009-07-17T12:46:00.002-04:00

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

2009-07-12T00:52:00.004-04:00

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Watching so much NCIS lately that tonight I caught myself making a gesture that belongs to one of the characters.
I noticed recently that I have a lot of songs on my iPod about men in love with difficult women.
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....
Good night.

Imagining and Knowing

2009-06-29T23:35:00.004-04:00

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

2009-06-28T19:37:00.004-04:00

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

2009-06-26T15:53:00.002-04:00

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...."

2009-06-26T10:42:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-24T14:56:00.003-04:00

"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....

2009-06-23T11:06:00.003-04:00

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...

2009-06-13T19:55:00.001-04:00

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

2009-06-12T05:52:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-08T22:21:00.002-04:00

"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!

2009-06-04T09:08:00.002-04:00

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

2009-06-01T12:29:00.003-04:00

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

2009-05-28T09:39:00.002-04:00

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?