Internet Friends and Other Methods of Classification

One of my friends is very up front about the fact that he classifies his friends. He will tell you to your face that you are a level 4 friend, or whatever. I'm not sure how solid the classification methodology is, and actually "methodology" might be a strong word considering the source, but the basic principle is there.

At a conference I attended a few years back, there was an exercise in which we moved from one person to the next in line and voted them on what was essentially a scale of 1-4, with 1 being equivalent to "I don't even want to talk to you" and 4 being more like "I want to be best friends." Considering we were doing this publicly, everybody was voting other people in at 3s or 4s, but meanwhile the conference leader was saying, "This is what you do every day."

I hate this. I hate being classified on a friendship ladder. I hate that we can't all just be friends. What I hate most is that the conference leader was right. We're ascending and descending relationship ladders all our lives. And I have classifications, too. They're just not numerical because one of my most constant relationships is my uneasy relationship with numbers. 

I don't rush into friendships, and my hesitance comes through verbally. Words are important, and I don't throw around the word "friend" about everyone I ever meet. The progression goes something like this. 

The Pre-Friend

When this person comes up in conversation, she is referred to as "someone I know" or maybe, if she's hovering on friend status, "an acquaintance of mine." Generally I haven't known her long, or maybe have known her but not spent much quality time with her. Sometimes I use this phrase because I'm not interested in knowing her any more and am cutting off friend potential, but usually there is a good chance of upward mobility. After all, to refer to her as "someone I know" means I'm talking about her when she's not around, and usually that involves some friend interest.

The Qualified Friend

This is the most basic level of friendship. This is where the word "friend" first comes into play, and there may be a few gradations in the qualification. For example, Jen started out as "Lisa's friend Jen," then became "my book club friend Jen," and then finally graduated all the way to "my friend Jen." If you only interact with somebody in one arena of your life, that person is a qualified friend.

The Internet Friend

This isn't a level of progression, but it's such a specialized form of qualified friend that it needed its own heading. There are two main types of internet friend. The Solely Internet Friend is easy to deal with. Problems may arise, however, with the Primarily Internet Friend, who is a person you see in real life. A Primarily Internet Friend is often confused with a real life friend of some other category. You may have friends you talk to via the internet who do not fall into either of these categories, in which case the internet is a tool to further your relationship, not the main vehicle for the relationship. I repeat, do not be confused into thinking that because you talk a lot online you must necessarily be A-List friends (we'll get to this one). You may really just be casual friends.

The Casual Friend

Otherwise known as the "Oh, there you are" or "While you're here" friend, the casual friend is somebody who is fun to hang out with when she's right in front of your face, but not somebody you'd go out of your way to hang out with. You do not make plans with casual friends, unless they're of the sweeping group invitation variety. If a casual friend invites you somewhere, you ask who else is going to be there before you make your decision. You would never go just to see this person, but she's okay in crowds.

The Fallback Friend

Sometimes your A-List friends (almost there) are busy, but you are still feeling social. The fallback friend is someone you hang out with at these times. You like them, they just haven't made it all the way into the A-List. This could be a transitional stage or one that you end up staying in, whether because of a disparity in social circles or because your paths don't cross naturally all that often. Again, you like these people, they just wouldn't be the first ones you call if something big and important happened in your life.

The A-List Friend

These are the friends you have standing plans with, the ones you see every week and start missing if it's been longer, the ones you could spend time with four or five evenings in a row and still feel ready to say "yes" if they ask you to do something tomorrow night, too. You've seen each other at your best and worst times and love each other through all of them. You can talk about everything or nothing. You can sit companionably without needing to talk, because you don't need to fill an uncomfortable silence if silence isn't uncomfortable. You can disagree (sometimes passionately) and then be joking around the next minute. These are the people who encourage you the most.

The Trump Card Friend

If an A-List friend moves away, she becomes a Trump Card friend, a friend you would rearrange plans for if she were to suddenly be in your neighborhood. Generally Trump Card friends don't mix well with other friends without concerted effort, because there is a lot of history there that is hard to translate for people who haven't known you as long or in the same ways.

Like I said, people move up and down the friendship ladder. It's not always solid. I wish any two participants in a friendship were always on the same rung. I wish I never lost contact with anyone I ever cared about. I wish I had time to be friends at a deep level with all of the people I've met who I feel a spark of friendship with...I can think of so many people right now who I enjoy very much but don't spend much time with at all. I'm grateful for the time we had and the time we have.

One of the things I'm looking forward to about heaven is having an infinite amount of time to become friends (or better friends) with people. I guess I don't know if that's really a part of heaven, but from all the "one anothers" of Scripture it seems it would be God-glorifying to sit down and share the stories of our lives with each other. As a matter of fact, I think it already is.

I'm grateful for all of you who have shared your lives with me. No matter what friend ranks we attained.

Good good-byes

Tonight I said good-bye to my friends Abby and Ryan, who will be moving pretty far away for the foreseeable future (the foreseeable future being two years). I thought I was prepped for this, but on my drive home the good-bye sadness hit me. 

I'm glad that good-bye doesn't feel natural, because it isn't. We weren't made for separation; in fact, that's the opposite of what we were made to experience. 

I'm glad that this good-bye is bittersweet, and that the sweetness comes from parting on good terms, with no regrets and nothing standing between us.

Most of all, I'm glad that all good-byes between these friends and I are only temporary, no matter what happens.

I'm sad, too. But it's a sadness with joy undergirding it.

Et tu, MacGyver?

When you're a kid, you don't notice everything they put in TV shows. As I remember MacGyver, it was about a clever, laid-back, quick-thinking guy who could figure his way out of any tight spot using whatever was at hand. Many is the time I myself have been inspired by MacGyver to look for unconventional solutions to practical problems.

Watching MacGyver again now (Jeremiah and I bought some seasons for my parents' birthdays, because these are the sorts of gifts we buy in my family), I notice something else, something a young friend of mine at church noticed before I did: "In every episode, he fixes things, and at the end he kisses the girl."

Alas, it's true. MacGyver turns out to be quite the ladies' man. He doesn't come on James Bond strong (don't even get me started on James Bond), but he does throw out really corny lines and grins at the women like they're something special. It's kind of hard to believe they really are, both because there's a new one every week and because nobody in the 1980s was as good-looking as they thought they were, but the women go for it. Most times they are the ones asking him to kiss them, or making the first physical move, and MacGyver just responds with a polite "aw, shucks" demeanor that almost makes you forget, again, that this happens EVERY EPISODE.

Top ten signs that MacGyver was not written by women, you say? Possibly true. But still kind of disappointing.

Peaks and Valleys

It is incredible how much better about life I feel when I get enough sleep. This weekend, for example, was mostly amazing. I got about eight hours of sleep each night, and I think that helped a lot.

Last night I was tossing and turning for a while and then awake for an hour in the middle of the night because I couldn't handle the humidity. Today I am feeling...not amazing.

Sleeplessness greatly impairs my perspective. I forget who I really am and where I really stand and start to define myself by societal labels and the imagined opinions of others. I feel all of my flaws more keenly and every thoughtless word heard or remembered cuts deeper than usual.

Thank God that today I have not been lashing out at other people. More and more, I would choose to cry at my desk instead of guarding myself with anger (a false protection and one more thing to regret later). Not that I did more than almost tear up at my desk today. Once I was out of the building, of course, it was another story. Considering I was praying for protection at work, it's interesting that I started crying almost as soon as I left the building. Thanks for holding that back until then, God.

Here are some things I was/am fighting to remember today:

I am more than a census statistic.

I am more than what I appear to be.

I am more than my feelings.

I am more than my thoughts.

I am more than any definitions imposed by others, even those who love me.

I am more than this moment, this day, this year, this lifetime.

I am more becoming less for the sake of something and someone who is.

I AM is watching over me.

Coincidence? Absolutely not.

A long time ago I starting work on a play that I never finished. It was very much a "someday I'll get around to this" sort of project, but I didn't have sufficient self-motivation to complete it.

Until this week, when a friend of mine asked if I had anything to submit for consideration in an upcoming performance of short plays by Calvin grads.

Which led me to research on the time of the Exodus, then more specifically to the craftsmanship in that era.

Which led me to the passage on the tabernacle.

Which also contains a beautiful story of how the Israelites had to be stopped from bringing their gifts for the construction of the tabernacle, because they were bringing too much.

And this morning in the meeting on our church's very low general fund balance, this is the story I felt compelled to share when somebody asked "How do we live with a giving spirit?" (We remember we were slaves, and now we are free, and we give in celebration of that fact.)

Meanwhile, in the same week I was reading about the tabernacle, a couple who doesn't even attend our church made out a check for $20,000 to be put towards our general fund, an amount that matched almost identically with the worst-case scenario end-of-year deficit number the church leadership had forecasted.

I was shaking and in tears by the end of the meeting this morning, in sheer awe of this God who created time itself and still times things so exactly in our lives. 

What plans are in motion at this very moment?

Get Smart about Shopping

Last night I went into the Barnes & Noble DVD section. I know what you're thinking: "What, a savvy shopper like Suzanne looking at DVDs in a bookstore?" I had made the mistake of looking at their online site after they sent me a sale notice, and I had seen that they featured the first season of Get Smart for only $0.50 more than the Amazon.com price. I had also received a 15% off coupon of theirs via email.

This was the plan: to go into the store, see if the price was low enough that by combining it with the coupon it would be cheaper than buying from Amazon sometime in the future, and make my decision from there.

What actually happened was that I made a classic hunter mistake: forgetting the territory. (It isn't just salesmen who gotta know it.) I sped into that DVD section with purpose. I didn't browse. This allowed me to fall victim to the Shopping Ambush, which is when you are trying to hunt and suddenly a salesperson appears. Sometimes this is a mere distraction, sometimes it is a complete diversion from your goal.

Last night, I was taken completely off guard. Behind a display one second, face-to-face with a salesperson who had been cleverly disguised as a cashier the next. Before I knew it, I was telling him what I was looking for, being shown to it, and having my purchase rung up...for $2 more than I had planned to spend. (As my fellow hunters are aware, in the game of shopping, every cent counts.) 

Out of my mistake comes this addendum to the hunter advice I've already given you: when in territory dominated by salespeople, you must appear to be browsing. No matter how many years you have been waiting for a TV show to come on on DVD, no matter how sort of jealous you are of your brother getting it first even though he said he wasn't going to, no matter what, you must look as though you are there for no specific reason. Look as though you're waiting for somebody in another location in the store and are just in this section out of extreme boredom. Look standoffish. Look as though you have no money. When the salesperson approaches you, don't make eye contact for more than 5 seconds as you throw a "Thanks, just looking" over your shoulder. 

I was consoled in this blunder by the knowledge that I have indeed been anticipating the DVD release of this show for years now. Also by the fact that when the salesperson showed me where it was, it turned out to be right by the entrance to the section.

"Walked right past it," I said, then chuckled and added, "Missed it by that much."

The cashier/saleman chuckled politely, but I could tell he was really just plotting his next ambush.

Bisy Backson

I'm taking a week's blogging hiatus to work on other forms of writing (specifically, one form).

"See" you soon.

Advice from a Shopping Champion

I don't like shopping, in general. I don't like to spend a lot of time in stores, and I don't like to spend money in them if I can avoid it. I used to get really fidgety in stores when I was younger, waiting for my mom (who is something of a browser) to get on with it. Once, when my dad and I had taken part of the list and headed off on our own, he said: "There are hunters, and there are gatherers. Your mom is a gatherer."

Suddenly I wasn't fidgety just because I was bored. I was a hunter. 

I have developed a fondness for grocery shopping since then. Every trip is a reconnaissance mission, a personal challenge. Grocery shopping has become a personal competition. I'm not much good at racing or volleyball or games involving any kind of math, but I win grocery shopping almost every time I compete. (And yes, you can compete with yourself. I do it all the time.)

Below are the main criteria of a winning shopping trip.

1) Speed: The most important factor. The goal is to get out as quickly as possible. You don't want to stay in that store any longer than necessary.

2) Planning: Stick to your list. You lose extra points for deviating for luxury items like ice cream (which is okay if it is on the list), but you lose points even for something like "milk" that you "just forgot" to write on the list. "Just forgot"?? What do you not understand about reconnaissance?

3) Costs: Meijer receipts have little asterisks next to all of the items on sale. The goal is that these asterisks would appear by every item on your list. (Bonus points if you have coupons for things on sale, especially if you're strategic and buy exactly as many sale items as the coupon covers and no more.)

4) Efficiency: Start at the back of the store and work your way to the front. Points will be lost for every aisle you go down unnecessarily. Extra points lost any time you have to double back.

Perhaps some of you have recently found out that you are hunters. Perhaps some of you are seasoned hunters looking for ways to hone your technique. Perhaps some of you are gatherers just trying to get in on the game. Never fear. I have some helpful hints for you in your quest for the Grocery Gold Medal.

1) Weekly ads: Whether in your newspaper or online, these will tell you what's on sale before you get to the store. This is the most helpful way to build your list.

2) Getting in the zone: If outside distractions like too many people start throwing you off, funny-looking "framing" or "wizard" hand gestures will not only help you re-focus, they will signal to all other shoppers that you are to be avoided.

3) Rapid visual scanning: If you have played video games, you should have this down already, but this means taking in labels and packaging and such without lingering. If Frosted Flakes aren't on your grocery list, it does not matter to you what the giveaway is. Do not be sidetracked.

4) Comfortable shoes and socks: My mom told me not to post the cautionary tale that follows, as people might think I don't know how to dress myself. But I will not let pride stand in the way of improving the shopping experience for the dozens of people who may read this. Last Thursday night, I went shopping in work shoes and socks. My work shoes are less fitted than my athletic shoes, and most of my work socks tend to lose all elasticity as soon as I put them on, which means my socks are constantly trying to slide down into my shoes even when I'm walking around the office. It gets worse when I'm hustling around a store. (For those of you wondering why I don't just buy new socks, please go back and read the first two sentences of this post.) The lesson in this story: wear comfy shoes and socks so you can move more rapidly with less distraction.

There you have it, folks. The secrets of my shopping success. Use them wisely and well.

Caught out again....

You know how sometimes you get really passionate about how some thing or other that you do is not good and you should stop, and then the next day you do exactly what you said you hated doing? Yeah. Today was one of those days.

Go ahead and read my blog post from yesterday and then come back to this one. Ready? Okay.

I talked way too much today. I was mad at all kinds of people/situations, and I talked. Very few of the "Why can't so-and-so give me a break?" and  "This is the problem with that...." and "Wait until you hear what so-and-so did" sorts of questions and comments I had were stopped. I let them keep pouring out.

I am thankful for Peter. Talk about a guy who didn't know when to shut up. He talked big, his verbal filter was missing, and he contradicted Jesus. "Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away," he vowed. (Rashly, of course.) And when Jesus gently prophesied that in fact Peter would deny him three times, Peter asserted, "Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you."

I wonder what Jesus did then. I wonder if he stared at Peter and thought about how typical it was for Peter to make grand pronouncements and fall flat on his face. I wonder if he changed the subject and moved on with the conversation, knowing that soon enough Peter would have to see himself. Or maybe his heart, heavy as it was with the weight of what was to come, lifted slightly. Because it was so obvious that Peter needed this sacrifice.

I do, too.

Speech Problems

"For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so." (James 3:7-10)

This year I've been under a lot of stress, from one quarter or another. I've felt unappreciated and invisible, abused and neglected. Whether or not I have been isn't really the subject of this post. This post is about how I handle it.

I talk too much. I tell people things that are none of their business. Not in just an internet forum way. Here I work on distilling my thoughts, on sharing what's going on with me in the hope that somebody might benefit from some of it. No, I mean the sort of way in which you start talking about personal things to people you barely know, and the voice saying, "Why should they care?" in the back of your head is probably not a self-deprecating question, but a legitimate one.

I'm verbally fierce. For instance, I work customer service. All too often, people on the other side of a phone or a computer connection get called out...well, called out to other co-workers, anyway. Everyone is going to know that it wasn't MY fault that such-and-such didn't happen, because so-and-so was incompetent. My knee-jerk reaction certainly isn't grace, that's for sure.

My mom says I should learn to speak the above sorts of thoughts to God instead of spouting them off to anybody who would listen. I agree, but from past experience I'm a little afraid of taking them solely to God. (See my post from July 16 on subtle idolatry.) My quandary, then, is this: When does explanation cross over into complaining? When does a prayer request become gossip? How much do I need to say before it becomes self-justifying?

It seems many of the answers lie in self-sacrifice, in seeking to elevate others above myself, in trusting that God has my back even if nobody else knows the trouble I've seen.

I can see why so many people in religious orders around the world take vows of silence. And why so many moms say, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." 

Projection Screens in Church, or A Little Piece of Me Dies

Last Sunday I was invited over to the TerHaars. There was some reason thrown out about something I can't quite recall, but mostly Sandra loves me. (Hi, Sandra! The feeling is mutual! Thanks for the awesome broccoli salad!) After lunch, we gathered around the piano for singing. Because this is what the TerHaars do. (I think I like that even more than the broccoli salad, because I know other people who do the salad thing.)

Anyway, enough TerHaar love for this post. This post is about projection screens in church.

After we were finished singing some Trinity Hymnal favorites, we sang a "praise song." (At my church the distinction between a hymnal song and a praise song is, apparently, whether or not it's in the hymnal.) A discussion ensued about how we were going to get the lyrics into everyone's hands when we sang the song at church. Someone mentioned (ah, here it is!) using the projection screen. We'll be using it at the new building anyway, they reasoned.

I yelled louder about this than I maybe should have in a small room full of people who are mostly not me, but there you have it. I hate projection screens in church. It's not that they don't come in handy sometimes, but they're the bare minimum version of something more substantial.

I am a very tactile person. (Take me through the clothing section of any store and see how many things I touch if you need empirical proof.) And one of the things I hate about projection screens is that they deprive me of the heft of a book in my hands, the feel of the crisp pages, the smell of it. They deprive me of all that goes into sharing a hymnal with somebody who forgot to pick one up for themselves: finding the right height (the person next to me is rarely my height), tilting it at the right angle, and in general sharing the song with someone in a way I don't when I sing from my own solitary hymnal, or (worse) from a screen.

My hands feel so empty without a hymnal. I don't know what to do with them when I'm singing if I don't have one, and often grip the chair back in front of me to keep from breaking into sweeping arm-dance gestures. (The fact that my hymnal or the chair in front of me or the presence of other people is/are sometimes the only things that keep me from dancing during worship is another subject entirely.)

I am not the best sight-reader, musically speaking, but I am getting better. I like to be able to sing the harmonies. Without a hymnal, I would still sing harmony, but it would be a harmony I found by myself. And sometimes it would fall off the harmony wagon.

With all that said, I could live without hymnals. I would be very sad, and it would feel like there was a hole in my heart that would never be mended, but the human heart is like Swiss cheese anyway, so I would live.

But I will take it up with the elders if we have Bible verses onscreen. I don't think the Bible is a book any of us should learn to go without...no matter how convenient that might be.

Things I needed to hear today

"Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" (Luke 11:11-13)

I've been wrestling again with what it means to want things I don't have. Isn't that covetousness? Over and over again, God tells us to ask. But should I ask God for anything besides the Holy Spirit?

"And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, 'My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.'" (Matthew 26:39)

The fact that Jesus Himself asks for something that doesn't happen is immensely comforting. It means requests aren't denied because of a lack of faith, or because certain hurdles haven't been leapt, or because God doesn't love me that way. It means it's God-glorifying to simultaneously pray for something you strongly desire and lay it at the feet of God in sacrifice. We don't have to be ascetics. As my friend Lisa has told me repeatedly, "We're not Buddhists. It's okay to want things." It's only a matter of which desire is to be master.

"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me." (2 Corinthians 12:7-8)

I think Satan would be thrilled if I settled into the lie that God is in the business of ambushing me, of setting me up for a fall. If it weren't for the fact that I grew up in a Calvinist denomination that didn't talk much about him, I'd say with greater confidence that I can hear his voice at times (one of two voices calling for the same sheep).

"You can lower your expectations," he says. "Stop wanting the things you're wanting. Isn't it a waste of your time? You'll never be worth them. You're not trying hard enough. Look at all the people around you who've got things figured out. They certainly seem to be content in every circumstance, don't they? They ask for God to remove temptation, and it disappears! They plead for clarity and receive it. Their prayers have greater efficacy. Why do you suppose that is? Suzanne, have you seen yourself? You keep thinking you're trying to follow God, but you end up disappointed again, and again, and again...does God treat His children that way?"

But every time I fall down in disappointment, "Not my will, but yours" comes faster to my mind. (Not easier, exactly. But faster.) Every time people and places and situations and things and my own foolish flesh and heart fail me, I want to be wholly His even more than I did before.

He's good, but He's not safe. And through all of these everyday trials He's making me dangerous, too.

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Closed Windows

Despite how hard my mother has tried, I'm not that great at eye contact. Here the top three scenarios that throw me off:

1) Spotting someone walking towards you. You see her. She sees you. You are both thoroughly aware of each other's presence...in fact, painfully so. Do you sustain eye contact, even though that might mean staring at each other for 45 seconds before you're even within proper hollering range? Do you pretend there is something else that has suddenly caught your eye off to the side? Do you look down at your feet as though suddenly afraid that the terrain in, say, your office building is treacherous and takes careful attention to navigate? 

2) Catching somebody's eye while sitting at church. There you are, casually glancing around to see who's there, and you've accidentally snagged eyes with somebody doing the same thing. If you're close friends, you can smile and wave or nod, almost as though you were looking for them. If you don't know them that well or are currently feeling a strain in your relationship or have simply been caught off-guard in the middle of clandestinely perusing a room full of a people when you're "supposed to" be meditating on the service (ahead or in progress, depending on the seriousness of the offense), it's more likely you will break eye contact awkwardly and go back to staring fixedly at your bulletin. (This is where it helps if your church has a large bulletin with lots of coming activity notes or prayer requests. Our church's evening bulletin is a flimsy subterfugeous refuge. Yes, I just adjectivized the word "subterfuge.")

3) Having a one-on-one conversation. This is the most pulse-pounding form of eye contact, and is why my favorite conversations are conducted in cars, on bike rides, or on walks. It is easier for me to talk to you if I don't have to make eye contact with you. Seriously, I love you and everything, but I like my secrets. I've been told I have a very expressive face and I don't want to accidentally say something with my eyes that I didn't want you to know. In small group conversations that vary the eye contact, it's a little better. You can dodge eyes around from person to person fast enough that (hopefully) people don't get any unwelcome glimpses into your soul. However, I still do a lot of staring at random points on the ceiling/floor/wall/etc. when I start talking about important stuff, or when I'm nervous. 

It's not that I don't appreciate everybody's eyes, or realize that making eye contact is respectful and shows interest in the other person and that talking to a person with shifty eyes is both distracting and a little bit disturbing. I do know all of that. I hate when I'm trying to make eye contact with somebody who is studiously avoiding it, so I know I'm a hypocrite on that point.

How about you? How much eye contact can you handle?

Good day, milady!

Today I went to Ren Fest with some Tjapkes friends (Lisa, Tim, Nate, and Tad). "Ren Fest" is what you can call a renaissance fair when you're nerdy enough to have gone to several of them. Kind of like in My Fair Lady when Eliza sings that she will "go to St. James so often I will call it St. Jim."

Ren Fest is a splendid opportunity to dress up in costumes, to fake accents, and to wander around talking to people who are a little off-base themselves. We went to the Silver Leaf Renaissance Faire in Kalamazoo, which is the one I've been to most often. It wasn't as large as it has been in previous years, but it was still several hours of fun. 

My favorite part? Staring at the birds that appear in the falconry show. They are all dangerous, but they look so cute and cuddly (I suppose this is true of many things). I am fascinated by birds. I could simply sit staring at them for hours.

I love these broadly theatrical events. I wonder if I would get even further into them if I went alone, or if I would still hang back a bit. (This mirrors a larger question I have sometimes: how much is introversion self-censoring, and how much is personality-driven?) It's rather a moot point, as going alone would be sad and probably not something I would do. I might converse a bit more with strangers, but every two minutes or so I would be thinking about how much I wished one of my friends was there.

After Ren Fest the Tjapkes group and Brittany and I hung out for the evening, and Lisa worked on getting some of the knots out of my back, and we laughed ridiculously hard at all manner of ridiculous comments.

All in all, an enjoyable day.

Turtling Up

I am having a hard time keeping my shoulders down today. Every ten or fifteen minutes I notice that they're pulling up again. I've been at just about chin level a couple of times.

I don't know why this happens, biologically speaking. It's not like I'm more ready to attack the problems in front of me with my shoulders to my ears. My best guess is that it's a subconscious turtling up. Subconsciously, as you feel more and more vulnerable from the pressures of the outside world, you attempt to save your own neck by pulling your shoulders around it.

I like the general principle there. That in tense times it's instinct to save your own neck, and takes conscious thought to relax and take a long view of the situation. (Is my eternal soul in jeopardy if I don't finish entering all these numbers into the spreadsheet? No. Do the people I send the spreadsheet to even look at it anyway? Quite probably not.)

I'm also trying to relax my heart rate and slow my breathing. Those don't seem to be as connected to turtles as the neck bit, so maybe they don't even belong in this post.

Mostly I'm glad it's Friday afternoon.

Annual Spiritual Review Time

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Laundry List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Mom and the Superpower of Niceness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy birthday, Mom!

Slow down, you move too fast

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

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

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

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

4) It is fun to say “Blood Bus.”

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

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

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

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

Baby, It's Cold Inside

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want to believe...in the right things

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

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

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

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

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

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

I choose to be pretty geeked about it.

Hooray for this week!

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

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

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

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

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

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

All in all, a good week.

The status is no longer quo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filler

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

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

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

Even if I only say it to myself.

The "what, huh?" moment of the day

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

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

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

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

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

Tonight and the week to come

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

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

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

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

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

Secret Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm totally against the Poles

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

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

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

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

*sigh*

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

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

...and speaking of idolatry

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

-- Brooks & Dunn

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

God save us from our own twisted vision.

Subtle Idolatry

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

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

I notice two things from this. 

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

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

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

God in the mirror? What am I talking about?

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

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

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

Too Many Curves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Evening with Trudy: A Casual Post

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

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

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

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

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

So much better than spending the whole evening online.

False Expectations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stealth Prayers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What have you been up to?

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

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

Same job for seven years.

Same church for seven years.

Same apartment for seven years.

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

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

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

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

The death of a beloved grandfather from a long illness.

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

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

A struggle with depression.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What have I been up to? 

Living, mostly.

Today these lyrics made me cry

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

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

~~ Rascal Flatts

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

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

~~ Hosea 11:8a

Ten Things to Do Before I Die

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

10.   Have a few books published

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

8.    Figure out how to use GarageBand properly

7.  Sing karaoke in public

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

5. Start a writers club meeting at least once monthly 

4. Go tandem biking

3.     Finish my fanfics 

2. Chase fireflies

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

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

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