Great Proficients

both of us sure

if it weren’t for the people we’d seen

mess it up

if it weren’t for the mess we knew

we could make on our own

if not for those and other

little reasons

if we’d chosen

if we’d wanted

we’d have been there by now

supremely confident

under cover of darkness

overnight

all the ifs boiled down to

if we weren’t so afraid

and can you get an if

much bigger than that

In a Relationship / It's Complicated

For those of you who don't know, the title of this post lists two options under "Relationship Status" in a Facebook profile. If you're Single or Married, everybody probably already knew that. If you're Engaged, people probably knew you were headed in that way. (And I've never seen anybody use the "In an Open Relationship" status. I'm not sure what that even means. "I'm dating fairly steadily but don't worry, I feel okay with dropping him/her at any time if you call me"?) So if you want to create a sensation, your best bet is to change your status to "In a Relationship" or "It's Complicated." 

I've seen this happen multiple times, and I'm always a little surprised by how many people go for it. I've thought about changing my Facebook status to "lonely and bored and need vaildation: please comment on this status," but haven't done it so far. Probably still wouldn't get as much buzz as I would changing my relationship status for the comments, even if the two meant the same thing.

When I first signed up for Facebook, I listed my relationship status as "It's Complicated." I live with a bird who seems pretty sure that I belong to him and who doesn't want to share, so it fit. After I started getting  questions on what that meant, and especially after one of my cousins went to her sister to find out about this mysterious person with whom it was apparently complicated, I blanked out the status.

Realistically, my status should read "In a Relationship," because I am in relationship with every person I interact with--friend, sister, daughter, granddaughter, teacher, employee, co-worker, pseudo-aunt, random acquaintance, etc. But "It's Complicated" would be appropriate, too, because life is complicated and so are relationships. 

I protest being defined by whether or not I'm dating/married/whatever, and I hope that's not for some angsty reason. I hope it is (and/or becomes more and more) for my stated reason. To paraphrase Paul: in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, single nor married. When I draw dividing lines, I don't want them to be based on something as small as relationship status.

Especially the Facebook version.

Bigger requests

Yesterday my pastor prayed "for our singles, that they may resist the temptation to self-pity and covetousness," and of course the first thing I did was start to feel sorry for myself, and I had to pray really hard about refocusing and not being mad at this obviously legitimate prayer request. (Somehow nothing shakes my contentment like being reminded that some people think I'm not content, which in itself is a point to ponder.)

I've been thinking about this issue today, and I don't think prayers that single people wouldn't be self-pitying go far enough. We are worse off than married people think (and vice versa, I'm sure). There are certainly times when I am self-pitying, except by a flaky word like "self-pitying" I really mean "ragingly jealous of 'wanted' people and bitterly angry at people who 'don't want' me." This is idolatry. This is substituting people for God. And this is not something that marriage would fix.

Saying "don't be self-pitying or covetous" has its place, absolutely. But I want to go further than that. I want to hear the "because" statement. "May they not be self-pitying because God loves them like He loves His Son. May they not be covetous because He has promised to be a husband to the unloved (Isaiah 54). May they not be playing in mud puddles because someone is offering a trip to the seashore. May they cherish every trial because through these fires they will come forth as gold."

Do I want contentment? Absolutely. Always. In whatever circumstance. Even if that means that someday somebody rocks my safe little world and I am called into something other than the familiar single life. And I also want wisdom, and I want clarity, and I want so many, many things I feel the lack of now.

I'm often the first person in line for the self-pity train, no matter where it's going or why. Thank God He's bigger than my self-pity, and my covetousness, and my personal temptations, and my righteousness, and my knowledge, and my love, and my everything.

And thank God that truth doesn't change if you're married.

"...but on the other hand, he was a dateless loser."

Tonight I went to see The Government Inspector at Calvin. There was a lobby display about the author, Nikolai Gogol. It talked about the inspirations for the play, and about his other works, and how they got more and more cynical, and that "there is no record of him ever having a lover of any kind," and...wait a minute. 

How does that relate? Is that supposed to explain the increasing cynicism? Is that supposed to undermine his creative efforts? 

I'm just saying. As an aspiring playwright with no past or potential lovers of any kind myself, it caught my attention.

Just Enough

Having fallen well on the bad side of the authorities, what with eliminating the queen's favorites and foretelling a three-year drought, the prophet Elijah went into hiding. He stayed by the side of a brook that God had sent him to, drinking the water from it and eating what food ravens brought him. I doubt they were bringing banquets, but he had enough. 

The brook dried up (drought, remember?), and Elijah was sent to a town called Zarephath to be fed by a widow who lived there. When he arrived, the widow had only sufficient food for a last meal. He asks for her to feed him first, and he gives her God's promise: "The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land." And it isn't used up, and it doesn't run dry.

You know what else doesn't happen, or else not that we read about? The jar doesn't fill, nor does the jug. The widow isn't able to buy vegetables, let alone a luxury item like meat. From the information we have, it seems as though every day there is enough...and just enough.

It's a hard way to live, day to day, reminding yourself of the promise every morning. Targeted remembering is not an easy thing. I wonder if there were days the widow doubted, days she thought, "This could be the last bit of flour for real this time." Even if she ever did doubt, it wouldn't have made a difference in what happened. Because He promised.

I have been thinking about this story a lot in the past few days. I have never been near starvation, but I have been at the edge in many ways (small or not), and there has always been enough of whatever it was I needed.

I want to go to that jar of flour and jug of oil with confidence. I've never once found them empty.

More

This past year God has been giving me wisdom, and patience, and love, and brokenness, and uncertainty.

And I, who won't beg for anything, am begging for this now: more.

More wisdom. More patience. More love. More uncertainty about self, others, and situations if it means more certainty about Him. More brokenness if it means more realization that only He can fix me.

More of everything towards the goal of completion, of fighting the good fight, of keeping the faith.

More cracks in this clay jar self so that God's glory shines through the stronger.

More confidence. More expectation.

Beyond all I could ask or imagine.

More.

Nobody

This Friday is the youth group banquet. It's my theatrical event of the year. This particular year we are doing a madrigal dinner, and there are way more leaders involved than there have been in the past. It's nice not to be the only one who cares how the show runs. 

Tonight as one of our actors was on his way out, the lead director said, "We love you. You're indispensable."

"You're not," I said. "We could do this without you. But don't make us do it."

I was told you can't do that, that you have to stroke people's egos, that actors are touchy, especially teenage actors, blahblahblahblah.

And I split into two personas. 

One said, Welcome to life, kids. Nobody is lost without you. That isn't easy to deal with, and I haven't figured out what it means yet, but it's true. People die, and you feel empty and keep going. People close to you get divorced, and your heart splinters and you keep going. People leave you in a thousand ways, with or without trying, and you want to scream and you want to quit and you keep going. You can live, technically speaking, without anybody, and anybody can live without you.

One said, Nobody bothers stroking my ego. What about me? Doesn't anybody care about my needs?

(Sometimes I get tired of having as many layers as an onion.)

Maybe when Jesus says that people shouldn't swear by heaven or by earth, but should stick with yes and no and meaning them both (James 5:12), that extends to committing yourself to anything. Maybe we should take people at their word when they say "I appreciate you," or "I liked the way you delivered that line," or "I enjoy spending time with you," and not push past that to idolatry, assuming they didn't appreciate/like/enjoy enough or assuming that we have to flatter them in order to keep them happy.

I'm trying to learn to submit myself to Christ and finding there is an awful lot of me in the way. Nobody can fix that except for Him, so I know I'm coming to the right place.

And to all of the people in my life I could do without.... I could do without my legs and my arms, too. But I'd rather not.

Lies I've told myself on Valentine's Day

Next Saturday is Valentine's Day. I don't know how it is for everybody else, but for me every February is a screaming reminder of romantic relational status and of cultural pressure. I have been very whiny about this in the past. I have written anti-Valentine's Day manifestos. I'm still not a fan of Valentine's Day. I could list my reasons why, and every year those years clarify a little more, but I fear that they often come across as sour grapes, even though every year the reasons become less emotional. (One of the annoying things about not being married is that few people seem to believe you at the times when you're okay with that...apparently contentment with where God has placed you is not for unmarried people.)

I have never had a date on Valentine's Day. Or around Valentine's Day. Or ever. I realized this year that I have often hidden that fact, pretended I had my share of that sort of experience, and I started wondering why. I think it's because I bought into a lot of lies about that sort of thing. Here are a few of them.

Lie #1: There must be something wrong with me.

• A lot of women I know, even the unmarried ones, have a string of stories about dates they've been on and men chasing after them. I don't. There's a selfish part of me that sometimes wishes I did, but it's overridden by the part of me that hates the thought of messing around with somebody else's heart. I've had enough grief over unrequited romances myself--I don't want to inflict that on anyone else. So from that perspective, maybe it's not something wrong with me that has kept the men from beating my door down, maybe it's something right.
• 
  
• Anyway, if I have to change in order to attract a man, then it isn't really me attracting a man, it's me misleading a man. Not fair to either of us. The best and most lasting changes are inspired by love that exists without needing the changes. 
  
• 
  
• "I know you love me just the way I am / So I'll change my ways if I think I can" -- Michelle Tumes

Lie #2: Maybe I should be doing something differently.

• This has led me into being too aggressive sometimes. Few people but me could identify when this line had been crossed, but suffice it to say that there comes a point at which I feel that if something were to happen romantically it would be because of my pursuing the man instead of the other way around. Thank God nobody has actually fallen for me in those situations, because I wouldn't have respected him. (I believe that submission as the church submits to Christ implies pursuit as Christ pursues the church.)
• 
  
• This lie feeds into my impatient Sarah heart, the "take matters into my own hands" mentality. (There is a time for taking matters into your own hands. I think a good test of whether or not it's the wrong time is to examine your heart to see how much impatience is seething there.) And I'm not the only one who falls into this mode of living. Someone I know recently entered into a serious romantic relationship. When asked if it was worth waiting for, she said yes, it was. But she wished she had waited more patiently, and not created so many Ishmaels along the way. I like the way she put that. I want to leave my Ishmael count where it is now.

Lie #3: Given enough time, I could drive anybody away.

• I have experienced enough friendships with people I was actively vicious towards to know that when it's meant to be, it's meant to be. True, many of those people have now moved on to the outskirts of my life (how very Nanny McPhee--"As long as you need me but don't want me, I will stay. When you want me but don't need me, then I will leave"--and yes, I did just reference that movie). But they remain good examples of this truth: what God is bringing together, no power on earth can hinder.

Lie #4: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who hasn't dated a bazillion other women before drop significantly.

• As a famous pilot once said, "Never tell me the odds." It's weird, but for somebody who dislikes math as much as I do, I try to turn life into statistics a lot. That is a denial of my stated belief that God holds my future in His hands and knows what He has planned for me. My life is not governed by chance or odds. 
• 
  
• There's also the fact that my dream of meeting a man who has been waiting his whole life for someone just like me could prove to be like my friend Sabrina's similar dream of becoming the first-time wife of a long-time Christian around her own age. Then she met Andrew, a divorced man who had become a Christian a few years previously and who is several years older than she is. And they are beautiful together. God's plans for us are better than what we could ever dream up for ourselves.

Lie #5: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who is actually interested in me personally and not just desperately searching for a wife drop significantly.

• See #4a. 
• 
  
• You may have noticed the C.S. Lewis quote I have on this site: "The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself." I want people to take me as I am, and the fact that I am a woman is part of that, but by no means all of it.
• 
  
• As for what's wrong with searching for a wife? Maybe nothing. I just have a pretty big ego and I want somebody to be searching for me. Maybe that doesn't actually happen. Probably not. Probably it could start out "I need a woman...any woman" and turn into "it is you I have loved all along." Also, come to think of it, I've always been more Beauty and the Beast than The Little Mermaid.
  

Lie #6: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who hasn't been badgered into meeting me drop significantly.

• See #4a.
• 
  
• I don't like the idea of being set up. First, let's think of other connotations of the phrase "set up." If that isn't enough to bring you to my way of thinking, which it probably isn't for some of you, here's the main thing I don't like about it: to me, it reinforces so many of the other lies swimming about in my increasingly conscious mind. 

I have never been on one single date. And I am more than okay with that. I am more than okay with how much God has taught me over the past several years about my twisted expectations, how much He has revealed of my heart (which is much more confusing than I used to think it was), how much He has shown me His sufficiency, how much He has changed my priorities, how many times He has let my heart break and has re-formed it to look more like His.

This year I will not be moping on Valentine's Day. 

Further up and further in.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

The current economic news has not been good. I mention this in case you have been in a cave. On Mars. With your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears.

I don't know about you, but I am a fan of the doomsday scenario. This is when you imagine a worst-case situation and how you would react to it. (I witness a lot of funerals in this way.) Naturally, today's economy fits nicely into gloomy imaginings. 

What would I do, I've wondered, if I lost my job? Who would pay me to do any of the things I can do, in any arena of my life? And why? Turns out that I imagine I'm mostly pretty useless. Yeah, in part I do that so I can have the pleasure of there-there-ing myself (a despicable habit) about how many people really like me and appreciate whatever it is I do and want me around, etc., etc., how much food does this giant ego actually need and when will it just shrivel up and die already.... But in part I do it because I don't understand economics and therefore don't understand exactly why we pay people to do what they do in the first place. How did that all get started? 

If I lost my job, where would I go? I'm already quite good at saving money, although I'm wasting a lot by living alone and not splitting bills. (I'm also a fan of imagining a commune in which I didn't explode at one or more of my fellow commune-ists within the space of six months. Or, you know, days. Ah, a girl can dream.)

I imagine myself sort of like Renee Zellweger in Cinderella Man, living in squalor and barely making rent until my Russell Crowe started turning things around and winning a few for the Gipper. But then, there is no Russell Crowe figure in my current situation, so that wouldn't actually work.

I imagine me living with various friends and feeling super awkward about it all the time because I have a pathological desire to be self-sufficient and independent and who needs parents, brothers, sisters, friends to help? Not I!

Mostly I imagine moving back to live with my parents. I feel like my world has been shaking a lot over the past year and I'm starting to feel queasy. My parents seem to be just about the only people I have whose relationships with me can't be affected by moving or marriage or anything in between. (It's probably not true. But it feels true.)

Sometimes life makes me tired.

Axes

I see them all

like a face in a corner of mirrors

an endlessly repeating line

no end in sight

it's the sameness that cripples me

keeps me frozen

waiting

until the next falls and

the next and the

next

I've tried pulling but

these don't come out

except perhaps by prayer and fasting

never a first resort but perhaps

the one I'm being driven towards

all this time

25 Things

I did this in my Facebook notes and am republishing it on my blog for lack of another post just yet. (Still debating the wisdom of publishing a post or two.)

1. The original version asked you to tag 25 people, but I only tagged back the people who tagged me first. Because I didn't know which 25 people in my friends list would appreciate being tagged with such a note, and thus being expected both to read it and to pass it on. [And/or because I don't like being ignored/rejected and have ridiculously low thresholds for both.] Anyway, I'm not tagging anybody here for the same reason(s). 

2. I do, however, love talking about myself.

3. Seriously, if you think I talk too much about myself, you should know how much I hold back.

4. I once told a guy I had a crush on that I wanted somebody in my life who'd be the type to echo this sentiment from IQ: "No, you're not babbling. If I had a mind like yours, I'd never stop talking." 

5. This guy later, in a different conversation, told me I wasn't babbling. Way to humor me, nice person. [Before we blog-fight on this, Trudy, no, I did not think he was serious. I do not ever assume anybody is serious in this sort of situation.]

6. I have since decided that feeding somebody pick-up lines is a waste of my energy...I'd rather give the lines to a character I'm writing. They're more believable then. 

7. I have experimented with several writing forms and have spent the most time in writing poetry, fanfiction, and (surprise) blog posts.

8. Writing helps me to understand what I'm thinking. It's like thinking out loud.

9. I think out loud. Talking to myself, talking to somebody else, talking to myself in the presence of somebody else....

10. Sometimes I get really muttery and nobody can understand me. Often I don't care because I wasn't saying anything important in mutter-mode.

11. Sometimes after I've walked away from a lengthy thinking-out-loud conversation my thoughts get sorted out and I want to go back for a do-over.

12. I wonder sometimes how many people have formed lasting opinions of me (or of my opinions of them) based on a half-formed thought that I've uttered out loud.

13. I try to remember #12 when I hear somebody say something I think is ridiculous or offensive or whatever, and not to take what they're saying at face value. 

14. I love follow-up questions.

15. For someone who spends so much time writing about observations and working to make characters seem real, I am astonishingly clueless in real life. I would estimate that I score about 15% on women's intuition, but then I'm not stellar at math, and estimating involves math.

16. I love quotes. I have quotes for every situation. 

17. I have a "did you ever see that episode of..." for just about every situation, too.

18. I used to agonize as a young girl over how on earth I would manage to change my name when I got married when I loved my last name so much. This has not yet become an issue.

19. I am no longer opposed to the possibility of remaining Winter forever, no matter what happens (don't flip, family members).

20. If I had to choose right now between two potential futures--supporting myself on my writing or getting married and having children--I would choose writing. This is hard to explain to such people as my mom.

21. Nobody worth marrying would actually make me choose between him and writing.

22. I want to write two full-length plays this year, publish one or both of my children's books, maybe get some poetry out there....

23. Part of this is because I will be turning 30 this year and it's like a race to feel like I've accomplished something.

24. I used to think I was spontaneous and flexible and easy to understand. Apparently, based on accumulated life experience and the comments of others...not so much. I have since found that most other people (especially guys) think that they are the ones who are easy to understand, but often this is not universally true, either.

25. I don't even have me figured out and some of the parts I do have figured out are pretty rough around the edges. It is good to know that God knows me and loves me, and it's somehow even more humbling to me that so many people care about me, too.

The Axe in the Ceiling

It's a story about a young man who is engaged to be married, and one time when he's visiting his fiancée and future in-laws, the girl goes into the cellar to draw a pitcher of beer, and as she's sitting there she looks up and sees an axe in the ceiling. 

"Goodness," she says to herself. "That axe looks dangerous. I wonder if it's wedged in good and tight. What if it isn't? Or what if it is now, but all the pounding from people walking about upstairs loosens it? Why, what if one day, years from now, when my young man and I are married and have a son, we send him downstairs to draw beer, and the axe falls, and it lands on his head and kills him?" She is overcome by grief at the prospect and begins weeping bitterly.

Meanwhile, upstairs they are getting pretty thirsty, and so the girl's mother comes down to see what's the matter. The girl tells her mother the whole story about how someday there might be a boy who might be under the axe when it might fall and thus might be killed, and soon there are two people crying in the cellar.

As nobody upstairs is getting any the less thirsty, the girl's father makes his apologies to the family's guest and heads down into the cellar, but wouldn't you know it, he hears the story and is just as sure of the horribleness of it as his wife before him and his daughter before her, and he sits on down next to them and they're all three of them blubbering like a bunch of babies.

Finally the fiancé comes down to see what all the fuss is about, and he hears the whole story, and wouldn't it be terrible when their son was laid out in the front parlor in his best clothes, dead as a doornail because of that dreadful axe in the dreadful ceiling.

And the fiancé reaches up, and grabs the handle, and pulls, and the axe comes out just as easy, and he looks down at the three people who sit staring at him through puffy red eyes and he says, "I have never met three such ridiculous sillies in my entire life, and if I ever met three more ridiculously silly than you I will be back, but if I were you I would not be expecting me anytime soon."

Well, go out he does and as he does in fact find three more ridiculously silly than he thought possible he does come back and marry the poor girl, and they never have a son but a set of healthy daughters, though send them down into the cellar he will not because he wants them where he can keep his eyes on them so they don't get into their mother's former ways of thinking.

And there's more about the three sillies he finds, and what they do, but the axe is the part of the story that always stays with me, and so that's the part I'm sharing with you.

Interesting phenomenon

Sometimes when I write a blog post specifically about trusting God and why I do trust him, I end up entering a period of time in which I'm strongly tempted to feel very, very sorry for myself for one reason or another (I have learned/am learning not to blog extensively at those times so I don't cringe as often at whininess when reading over old posts). Anyway, then I have to work to put what I just wrote into play in my life.

Sometimes I can't decide if this is a temptation or an opportunity. (That sounded kind of corporate-lingoistic, but I hope you know what I mean.) I choose to believe the latter. Even if things turn out as bleak as I can imagine they will at these sorts of times, I will trust that his ways are just and he acts for my good, because I love him and he says that's because he loved me first (I John 4:19), and ultimate good is in store for those he loves (Rom. 8:28).

Meanwhile, on this side of ultimate good, I've been having a sad sort of week and I'm praying for endurance and patience and perspective. (If you're praying and this happens to come to your mind, I'd appreciate some backup.)

"Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning" (Ps. 30:5b).

It always seems soon. Afterward.

Tomorrow will care for itself

One of my company newsletters had an article/editorial this month on the subject of worry. Several broad claims were made without any citations to back them up, which tends to set my Snopes sense tingling. It made for good blog fodder, though, which is something I always appreciate. Below are the main points of the article and my responses to each.

1) Citizens of the United States are more worried now than they ever were in the history of the country. 

• I'd like to see some serious psychological studies from a cross-section of history to back this up. Because from what I recall of my own studies, our history started with feeling disenfranchised from our rulers (the British Empire) and progressed to all-out war fought between seasoned troops and farmers. We had a war over states' rights, partly because we had "citizens" who didn't legally count as full people. We participated in two World Wars that sandwiched the Great Depression. We experienced a major terrorist attack. Seems to me we've had some pretty tense times in our history. Why be so worried now?

2) Anxiety/depression medications are big business.

• Undisputed. But sad. Aren't wealthy people supposed to feel safe and happy? Don't we have more money per capita than most of the rest of the world. What's going on?

3) The media is largely to blame.

• As a song from a favorite childhood record says, "You don't have to read about everything they write / And you don't have to watch everything that's on tonight."

4) Worry is a bad habit "just like overeating, biting your fingernails, or smoking."

• Aren't many of the latter habits connected to worrying? Moving on, though, obviously even emotional behavioral patterns become habits, but somehow they are "okay" habits. People can warn you about the dangers of smoking or overeating, or the sheer annoyance of listening as you bite your fingernails, and you don't really mind. Tell me I worry too much and I may have to make a conscious effort to keep my back from flying up higher than an angry cat's.

5) You can stop worrying if you try hard enough (the article suggests keeping a "worry journal" and clocking your worry times). 

• Oh, great, I'm just not trying hard enough. Something else to worry about. Also, even if a worry journal weren't another thing to add to my list of things to keep track of, I see a greater potential for it to remind me of things to worry about than to make me feel better.

6) Worry doesn't accomplish anything.

• 100% agreement. Or as the best summation of this that I've ever read says, "Who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?" (Matthew 6:27).

Jesus doesn't just say "Don't worry." He doesn't even say, "Don't worry...be happy!" Instead, he offers a set of "Don't worry, because..." statements. Don't worry, because life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. Don't worry, because your heavenly Father feeds the birds and because you are worth even more than the birds. Don't worry, because you can't add time to your life by doing so. Don't worry, because your Father—your Father, who cares for you—is by no means ignorant of your needs. 

To worry is to forget all of the above. And yet this notion that worry is a good and effective pursuit has sunk so deeply into us that it shows itself in how we speak. How often I've said something like, "I'm worried the echo in the room will make it hard for the audience to hear the actors," when what I mean is something more like, "I've identified a potential problem with our acoustics and we need to address it." I'm not truly worried. It isn't worry that makes me aware of my surroundings. People who aren't worried don't float through life in a blissful state of constant oblivion to the world around them, they choose not to dwell on such potential problems for too long. They choose to dwell on the big picture instead.

Big picture, my Father holds all of the history of all of the world in his hands. And he knows what I need.

Thoughts for a New President

"Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him." (2 Kings 18:21)

You are buoyed by a tremendous amount of public support, Mr. President. For now. People across the country are happy tonight. Some say they are finally proud to be Americans again. Most, being human, are likely prouder to be feeling in the right than they are about an abstract ideal. Be someone they didn't expect and you may find yourself stabbed in worse places than through the hand. The much-vilified former president probably didn't expect all the shoes, back when his approval ratings were soaring (they were, once).

Don't be tempted to place your trust in people, not exclusively. Not enough to lean your full weight on them. None of us can bear that weight without collapsing under the pressure.

"On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, 'The voice of a god, and not of a man!' Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

"But the word of God increased and multiplied." (Acts 12:21-24)

"It's like the biggest church service I've ever seen," one NPR commentator said about the mood at your inauguration. It's become the subject of late-show humorists, this messiah-ship many are trying to foist upon you. 

Watch out; be on the alert. It is a dangerous thing for a human to be venerated. Dangerous both to his worshippers and to himself. Please, please, please, for your own sake...stop and look at yourself once in a while. Look honestly at your failings and remind yourself you are not the god some seem to think you are. And consider that final note, too: a popular ruler died ignominiously despite his way with words, but the Word continued to spread. Quietly. Persistently. 

The rise and fall of kings, emperors, and presidents are none of them as important as we think. Be humble. Know your place, delight in it, and flourish there.

"If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it." (Genesis 4:7)

Seek acceptance from God, not man. Man can't grant it and God won't refuse it when you seek him with everything you have in you. You have so many gifts. Use them well.

I'm praying for you, Mr. President. May God use you mightily.

Something new

I was just listening to a little BNL, which I'll leave abbreviated in case sensitive eyes read this, and thinking about how if I ever get married it will be to somebody who enjoys goofy songs sometimes, and how ridiculously terrific we would be, because anybody who marries me will necessarily be half of the most terrific couple ever, and I realized.... This is new.

Not me thinking about potential marriage in my future, but the way I've been thinking about it lately. (I know I've been writing a lot about this topic lately. It loomed large in my life in 2008 and I'm still sorting through what I've learned.) Here are the main differences:

1) Marriage as one of two equally valid options for the course of my life. Not something to obsess over or freak out about, whether or not I eventually participate in it. Just a potential course God may have me take someday. If I never get married, I will be fine. More than fine. Blessed. Because God doesn't withhold blessings from His children, and it's exciting to see how blessings come in different ways. (If I do marry, no matter when it is, I know I won't regret the wait. And if I never marry, I won't be pressured to give up the best last name in the history of last names. Seriously? Winter? You can't beat that. Apologies to the rest of the world.)

2) Marriage as pleasantly challenging, even when it's difficult. Last Sunday night Pastor Dale spoke of the importance of fighting for unity with each other, of striving to put others first, of choosing to give in for the sake of the relationship. And I found myself smiling and thinking, "Yes. Bring it on." (Dangerous thoughts fully known to a dangerous God.) 

3) Marriage as sharing. Sharing responsibilities, and joys, and sorrows, and frustrations, and interests, and experiences, and encouragement, and growth. Not one grasping for more, but both eager to give of self and of time and of possessions. 

4) This might be the biggest change...marriage as fun. My favorite aunt and uncle got divorced when I was fifteen. Ever since then, I've focused a lot on how difficult a marriage relationship would be. Nothing but work, work, work, all the time. In the past year or so, and especially since certain epiphanies about the true nature of my character, something has been shifting. Now I think that if I were to get married, it would be hilarious on many levels, not least of which would be the radical divergences from my past perspectives. 

But all of this is not primarily about How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Marriage. This is primarily about God pulling me out of myself, leading me though dangerous valleys and beside still waters, feeding my desire for depth by continuing to deepen me in all my relationships. It's about trusting God and taking risks because of it (risks that sometimes involve waiting and patience). About how looking back over my own life increases my faith that God knows what He's doing. About affirming that what He has for me, whatever He has for me, is good. About living as His child in His family: sometimes leaning hard on each other and sometimes smashing up against each other and showering sparks in the process of sharpening us for the tasks at hand, but always pulling towards the same goal. 

I want to get my hands dirty in this glorifying God business.

Romantic Flash Points (Columbus #3)

It's a good thing nobody wanted to fall in love with me in Columbus, because I was on the edge. (You missed your chance, Beth.) There I was, surrounded by intelligent people with similar interests, and even though most of them didn't live anywhere close to me and apparently spent a lot more time listening to NPR than I do, I could barely bring myself to care. I fell in love with the exotic feel of the whole experience, and I felt the pull to transfer that infatuation to a person. 

In one of my favorite posts from his site Stuff Christians Like, Jon Acuff writes about similar feelings in the context of missions trips. The phenomenon extends beyond missions trips to any intense shared experience. Besides the recent arts festival example, I have been to a few conferences in which the group did a lot of communal soul-searching and heart-baring, and I got obliquely asked out in consequence. (Digression: one of the things that turned me off to this oblique request was that this man had previously expressed in a sharing time that a major goal of his future life was to ask more women out. Thank you for making me a check mark on your list, buddy. I feel so special.)

I have certainly heard the siren call of heightened emotional situations. The danger, of course, is that life is not always emotionally intense. In most lives, there are long stretches of boring in there. Nobody is going to be the same kind of shiny in those times as they were at the conference, or at the festival, or on the trip. And does anybody keep in touch on even a casual level with half of the way cool people that you meet in these sorts of situations?

I have my romantic side, but I don't trust it. Look up "romance" in the dictionary. Here, I'll do it for you. Notice that romance, by definition, lacks a firm base in everyday reality. It's all well and good to throw around little romantic gestures, but they aren't what get you through life. Some days you will wake up with bad breath, or come down with a flu, or just be really irritable for no good reason, and romance won't be anywhere around. Love might (should) be, but love is more about sacrifice than showing off. It could be legitimately argued that there is a place for showing off, a place for theatrical flair, but it shouldn't hold the primary place. 

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with drinking in a heightened emotional landscape. I just don't want to get drunk on one.

Maintaining Appearances (Columbus Post #2)

You know that stereotype about women worrying more about their appearance than men worry about theirs? I think that's a lie. I know several men who are balding and sigh over it. Speaking of hair, hair gel for men is a good example of male attention to their appearance. I have several guy friends who are very concerned about their weight (one of the latter, when talking about New Year's resolutions in Columbus, said his "shallow resolution" was: "Lose some weight, fatty"). This isn't to say that women don't worry about appearance, but that in many important ways, men and women are more alike than we are different.

For a long time, I confused humility with self-deprecation. I thought humility meant never accepting compliments, never believing you could be the best at anything, never letting somebody insult you if you could beat them to it. I ignored everything my parents said about how none of this was good for me. Then I ran into some girls who were doing the same sorts of things I was doing and I found those behaviors to be hugely annoying. Why? 

As strongly as self-obsession does, self-deprecation implies that you are the one who gets to defines yourself. Beware how you go about such work: "For the most part we do not see first, then define; we define first and then see" (Walter Lippmann). Usually, until my friends point out that they've gained weight, or that they haven't had anything interesting to say all night, or that they haven't cleaned in too long, I don't notice any of those things. Once they've been pointed out, even if I don't agree with the statement, I'll spend some time thinking about it. Waste some time. Previously, I was thinking about things like how great their band sounds, or how we can talk about anything, or simply how it's nice to see them. A self-deprecating remark derails the easy relational flow that we had going...or that I had going. It reveals pain I didn't know was there, and it opens up my own insecurity.

Because if something like a little weight fluctuation or a lull in the conversation or a few dirty dishes are important to my friend, then what do they notice about me? I'm not perfect, either.

None of us are. We know it. Somewhere below the worrying over what other people think is the knowledge that none of us is perfect enough to be loved for everything we are. We cover up, praising or shaming ourselves in turn, trying to distract others from our real problems, foolishly imagining that our problems preoccupy everyone else the way they preoccupy us, when in reality everyone else is busy looking for cover, too.

When Adam and Eve chose to partake of the forbidden and found it wasn't all the serpent promised it would be, they went looking for fig leaves to sew into clothing. I wonder if they searched in separate directions. I wonder if they could stand to make eye contact before God came looking for them.

When He came, He didn't tell them they were wrong to seek covering. He showed them they had chosen the wrong way to go about it, that He was the one who covers in a meaningful way. Later, He would send perfection personified, a person who wasn't all that much to look at but who brought perfection as clothing for those who saw how much they needed it and that He was the only one who could give it to them.

Here's the bad news: We can't ever be pretty enough, or thin enough, or smart enough, or charming enough, or enough enough, to merit or hold onto love.

Here's the good news: Grace abounds. Real love covers a multitude of all kinds of failings, from a bad hair day to harsh words hurled in anger. "We love, because He first loved us" (I John 4:19). You can't earn it...but you can't stop it, either.

As for me, I have repeatedly found that when I choose to define by love instead of looks, I get the fringe benefit of that choice thrown in: love makes people beautiful like nothing else ever can.

Places old and new

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place," Azar Nafisi recalls telling someone in Reading Lolita in Tehran, "like you'll not only miss the people you love, but you'll miss the person you are now, at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way again."

This idea was on my mind this morning as we held our first church service in our new building. Many people, if not most of them, were excited about it. I was a bit trepidatious. There are new rhythms to figure out, especially in regards to the movements of my first grade class but also for things like how I sit in the chairs and where I will find people and how I can try to pick out the best hymnal without a hymnal cart. 

The transition will be made easier by the fact that the people are the same. Mostly. We're not the same, not entirely. An era has ended. A period of my life—of our lives—is over. A new chapter has opened. Still, we're heading into it together, and that's no small thing.

I feel strangely about this coming year. It swirls with half-seen possibilities (good and bad alike) in a way previous years haven't for me, in a way that make it seem appropriate that I have already done so many things I've never done before. I've eaten a goat cheese omelet. I've talked to several people I didn't know well, and purposely sat by someone I didn't know at all. I've worshipped at the new building, where I shared a hymnal with somebody whose name I didn't know. (These might seem like small things. Unless you know me.)

I loved the old building. There are certainly things I will miss. But I'm ready for the new one.

New Year's Resolutions (Columbus post #1)

[Going to Columbus for the Wild Goose Creative New Year's Festival (henceforth to be known as the NYF for short) was like going to Harrisburg for Jeremiah and Dorothy's wedding in that there were a lot of post ideas that came out of it. That's why I'm using the same title format I did for the wedding, which I'm not done blogging about yet.]

When I was a kid, I used to try to make New Year's resolutions, just because everybody else did it and I thought maybe I should give it a try, too. I can't even remember one that I made, though, because my heart was never really in it. As I got older, this solidified into the thought that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing now. I don't store up resolutions for a calendar date.

In Columbus we made New Year's Resolution pendants, two small pieces of felt sewn together around a piece of paper on which you were encouraged to write a New Year's resolution. A lot of ideas for this were rattling around in my head, things I had already "resolved" to do before January 1. I went with the most traditional option, the one for which I most felt the need of a deadline.

Afterwards, as we were standing around before the next event, Morgan was asking people what their resolutions were and getting a little annoyed that most were responding that they couldn't tell him, as if they were birthday wishes. So much for accountability, he said.

We have a love/hate relationship with accountability. We know it's good for us, and sometimes we feel motivated by it. But on the other hand, what if we are feeling lazy and want to slack off? What if we declare an intention and fail to turn it into an accomplishment? What if, perhaps worst of all, we reveal something of our hearts and are laughed at, or looked down on?

Well, what if we do? The potential positives outweigh the potential negatives, don't they? Why live like we're in a Thomas Hardy novel, governed by "chance" that is always malicious?

On my slip of paper I wrote: "New Year's Resolution 2009: Pursue publication."

Feel free to check up on me.