We'll Always Have That

a slow ramp up and it's taking forever

click by click

is this track solid

will the chain hold

trepidation for the newbies

turned bittersweet clinging

for those who've ridden enough to know

the speed of descent

the rush of air and light and excitement

all too soon the car eases to a stop

the occupants scatter

but we had fun while we lasted

didn't we?

No Valentine's Day for me, thanks.

I don't like Valentine's Day.

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

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

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

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

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

Melancholy Dissected

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

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

~~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

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

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

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

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

And now I need to sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why not fund somebody else's passion?

Is it really money we lack?

Favorite Conversation of the Day

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

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

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

Me: What? What would you say?

Dad: Porterhouse steak. From a woolly mammoth.

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

Dad: No, it's from me.

Me: You just came up with that yourself?

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

Me: Why were you even thinking about that?

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

Me: A hardware store.

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

More Scenes from School

Several weeks ago

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

"Can I help you with that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thanks."

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

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

Bring on the married people sermons

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

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

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

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

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

Day by day, more butterfly than caterpillar.

A Scene from School

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

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

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

"I am."

"For all the schools?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love this job.

I Dreamed a Dream

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

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

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

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

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

I will put My laws into their minds,
And I will write them on their hearts.
And I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.
And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen,
And everyone his brother, saying, "Know the Lord,"
For all will know Me,
From the least to the greatest of them.
For I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And I will remember their sins no more.
~~ Hebrews 8:10b-12 ~~


I'm sure there's an official term for it, the repetitive "and" device, but I don't know what that official term is. As far as literary devices go, it's one of my favorites. I love the sense of build, of heightening emotion. I love how it moves you, spiraling and avalanching towards a climactic finish. In the above words from Hebrews, I love the way it resonates with the unshakable promises of God.

The passage came to mind tonight as I read yet another story about how tax dollars may soon be used to finance the killing of unwanted children. I have been wondering about how tax revenues have been put to use over the ages, doubting that the Christians in the Roman Empire (or in most modern-day countries in the world, for that matter) approved of how "their tax dollars" were distributed. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the government out of charity and healthcare and see private citizens neighboring up and opening their wallets to their churches and their acquaintances and to all those in need to the point that organizations have to ask people to stop bringing money.

What I'd love to see more is that level of neighboring up even under a government that is bound to continue raising taxes due to an ever-increasing, ever-more-bi-partisan poor sense of fiscal responsibility in general. To see a call for more federal funding of abortions disappear because the desire to obtain them disappears; to see orphanages and other childcare institutions shut down because people have opened their homes; to see mothers and fathers of children they can't handle cared for and mentored; to see God's people shining as stars out of a darkness that cannot overpower them.

And we have His laws in our hearts,
And He is ours,
And we are His,
And He has been merciful,
And He remembers our sins no more,
And nothing can separate us from His love,
And no trials or earthly treasures can endure eternally,
And no person is too far gone for His healing touch.

Campaign all you want, politicians. Rail all you want, demagogues. Tax us and fine us and even imprison us, if you want. The position of King of the Universe has been filled since before the beginning of time and will be filled beyond its end.

And there is nothing, nothing, nothing impossible with God.

Early New Year Reflections

I know, I know. It isn't even Christmas. But as I worked my last day until January (the day after an auditor told me I should get a raise, the audit went so well...we actually have "good audit" in writing from them), I found myself reflecting on how much has happened over the past year.

A year ago, I had already mostly worked my way out of a job. I was going into the office and searching for things to keep myself busy, waiting to be laid off because obviously there wasn't enough for me to do anymore. Friday I had the first calm day I had in ages, and I worked an 11-hour day this week that was followed by a day when I arrived at about 6:15 (less than 12 hours after I'd left work). And you know what? It's so much better than not having enough to do.

Right now I have the best job I've ever had, and it came after I gave up. After I'd asked God to give me an attitude of service, a love of serving Him that surpassed any drudgery of the task. After I'd found myself in the middle of an interview that was going nowhere and so I just slipped into behaving naturally. After all of this, the people from the "going nowhere" interview hired me for a job that uses my skills at an organization that works to make a difference in the lives of troubled kids. It's been quite a ride.

There were five months of unemployment between those extremes in the middle of the year, months of uncertainty and of relaxation at the same time. Months in which I spent lots of time visiting with my parents (including a trip to Flagstaff), and lots of time with my friends who stayed home during the day. The latter was time that became increasingly precious retroactively, when on my first day back at work I learned that some dear friends would be moving to Missouri.

It's been a year of relational change. Aside from having friends move, I've grown lots closer to my sister-in-law; I've had a friend stop talking to me; I've reconnected with a friend from the past; I've formed maternal-sort-bonding attachments with a new set of first graders and with a teenage boy who says "Hi" every time he sees me since the day he carried a box into my office for me.

For the past few years I've found myself asking God to hone me in particular ways. Somehow this year became dedicated to increasing vulnerability, a time to stop hiding and let God be the one to protect me. And as this has happened I've realized that it is less painful to hurt while trusting God than to hurt while relying heavily on yourself. It is less painful to admit to missing people and leaving that out there even if the sentiment goes unreturned than it is to pretend you don't care at all and letting that pent-up emotion build to volcanic levels. It is freeing and calming to be honest with yourself about what you want and don't want. (Funny thing about telling the truth, to myself and others...it doesn't make me angry.)

It is marvelous to rest in the knowledge that God is shaping you more and more into the person He wants you to be, to be comfortable in your own skin because you know He is at work in all of you.

I feel stronger than I ever did with my guard up. I am quicker to give people another chance. I believe that His ways are right no matter what happens, and that not even the slightest twinge of discomfort is wasted. "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own."--Philippians 3:12

I look forward to seeing what is coming next year.

Perspective on an Audit

This week Thursday is the first audit I'll be part of at the school where I work. Two people from the local district office will be coming to make sure our records are in order. I've been sort of panicking about this off and on since September.

The worst part is not knowing what to expect. The rule book is labyrinthine and can be changed at the whim of any given district auditor. The school situation has changed since last year, so the rules that applied to the women who went through it then may not exactly apply in the same way to me.

Towards the end of his first epistle, the apostle John makes the startling and confusing declaration that God's commandments are not burdensome. I've often wondered how you could say that commands like "love your enemy" aren't burdensome, and it hasn't seemed like enough of an answer to say that it's because Jesus frees us and the Holy Spirit equips us to live in accordance with the will of God. (Though those are certainly amazingly large parts of the answer.)

This week, thinking about the audit, thinking about the rules that keep changing and the subjectivity of the auditor, it hit me that for an unchanging being to lay out commands in writing, with no secrets or loopholes, is a tremendous act of love. God is never going to change the rules. God is never going to show up cranky to work. God is constant, and it is His constancy that makes Him so knowable.

And then today in Sunday School we did a review of the book of Genesis. This morning we pointed out that Genesis isn't a collection of unconnected stories any more than the Bible is a collection of unconnected books. "The Bible is a lot of books, but it's also one book," as one of the girls succinctly put it.

God's promise threads all the way through Scripture. The best part? The book has been finished, but the story isn't over. God's promise threads through countless characters who have come before us and will reach to countless characters after us as our threads overlap and dance and become something increasingly beautiful in a world where the devil's sharpest swords cannot sever these threads that tie us to the Christ who came and is coming.

When we read of epic quests or fairy tales, there are things we know. We know that the evil emperor has to die, that his followers will be scattered. We know the prince will always come for his bride-to-be, that there will be rejoicing and celebration when it happens. We know because they are shadows of the larger tale, whose author has given us the biggest, most magnificent, most welcome spoilers ever.

And in this larger-than-you-and-me story, an audit is coming this Thursday to a small school in Grand Rapids.

It is well with my soul.

When I am afraid,

I will put my trust in You.

In God, whose word I praise,

In God I have put my trust;

I shall not be afraid

What can mere man do to me?

~~ Psalm 56:3-4

Walls

Last night I went to a presentation on a friend's recent trip to Berlin. He and his wife had lived there for over a year while he was stationed in Germany, and he returned as part of an almost-all-expense-paid trip honoring the U.S. servicemen whose presence helped to protect West Berlin from being overrun by the Communists on the other side of the Wall that divided the city in half.

The fall of the Berlin Wall is probably my earliest memory as far as global news is concerned. I remember hearing about people who had tried to come over the Wall from East Berlin and had been killed for their troubles. I had believed, with what I've sometimes seen as a 10-year-old's naivete but now recognize as the general shortsightedness of humanity, that the horrible fact of the wall was inevitable, almost eternal. The evil that had been would always be, or else might become worse. And then suddenly one day it was gone. (The long-boiling things always seem so sudden, so remarkable, when they happen.)

What strikes me after last night's presentation is the same thought that haunted me after seeing The Pianist, a film featuring a man who was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, an area of the city bricked off from the rest that could be entered or exited under only strict military supervision.

People on the other side of those walls watched them go up. Watched as strands of barbed wire tore their city in half and as that barbed wire was replaced by concrete barriers. Watched as a whole group of people were bricked away. Walked by those walls every day, walls behind which their former neighbors were sealed.

People being shut off from the free world watched, too. Watched by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions. In The Pianist, a Jew waiting to board a German train muses, far too late, over the number of Jews in Poland and the question of why they couldn't fight.

It's chilling. And I wonder what people will say about us, fifty or sixty years from now. I wonder if there are any walls going up, right before our eyes, while we keep to ourselves and mind our own business and maybe toss up a few prayers and stay comfortable and safe.

Dear God, keep us awake and unafraid.

Because why?

"The Bible makes this clear. Be as loving as you can, as often as you can, for as many people as you can, for as long as you live. Why should we do this? Because."--Kate Braestrup

Tell any six-year-old child that she should do something "because" and odds are you'll get a response of "Because why?" Hey, tell this thirty-year-old woman, and odds are that even though I've learned to hold it back a little better, my brain still flashes to that question, too.

Why should I bother loving people? They betray me. They ignore me. Sometimes they just irritate me. "As loving as I can" could easily mean "as much as I can be reasonably expected to put up with somebody like this," right?

As often as I can? That makes it better. Because there are days I don't get a lot of sleep, or I have piles of stuff on my desk, or I'm running late, and it's hard to love people on those days, hard to love people who don't answer my emails or who are not driving with any sense of urgency. But if I only love people as often as I can, that excludes days like that.

For as many people as I can...now that takes care of the part where sometimes I run across people I don't like. Sweet. So now the Bible has made it clear that I should love the people I'm naturally inclined to as much as I feel up to whenever I feel like it. I can handle that.

Uncomfortably, the Bible makes it clearer than Braestrup says on...

...who we should love:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." (Deuteronomy 6:5)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." (Leviticus 19:18b)

"If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." (I John 4:20a)

"Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 10:19)

"But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." (Luke 6:26-28)

...when we should love:

"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." (Proverbs 17:17)

...how we should love:

"Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (I Corinthians 13:4-7)

And those passages are just from the highlight reel.

God asks a lot more from us than our best effort. He asks for perfection. (Loving at all times? Bearing all things? Enduring all things?) He also sent perfection, in the person of Jesus Christ: "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (I John 4:10)

And He sent a promise: "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world." (I John 4:15-17)

And He sent a because: "We love, because He first loved us." (I John 4:19)

Queen of Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks (or at least their co-regent)

As a proud card-carrying geeky/nerdy/dorky type (I use all three terms semi-interchangeably), I find myself getting huffy over the presentation of geeks/nerds/dorks in the media. Here's a classic case in point.

I watched 17 Again this week. This is one of those movies that I sense violates my image in some way, and I once told myself I'd never watch anything with Zac Efron in it, but it turns out I really liked the movie despite everything, and was quite impressed with Efron's channeling of Matthew Perry, and that's the end of my apologetic.

In the movie, there are a few characters who are really into The Lord of the Rings, and they have a scene in which they are speaking the language of the elves, and the subtitle for one of the lines came up as, "So where did you learn to speak Elf?" and my immediate reaction was "Elvish!" Then later the man says he wants the woman by his side when he storms the elvish castle of [insert unintelligible name here] and my reaction was, "That doesn't sound familiar at all! That's not in Tolkien! Good grief, do your research, or make it more obvious you're going trans-genre! Or, wait, is this in reference to something in The Simarillon?"

Sometimes I think "awwww, you're such a dork" at myself. That's how serious the state of things is.

Carry me

Somewhere along the line I embraced the idea that it's weak to need anything, especially anything you can't get on your own. People who need people aren't trying hard enough. Nobody wants to do you any favors, so nobody wants you to ask. You die alone, so you should live alone, stand alone except for God who sort of doesn't exactly count because you can't see Him, don't have to look into His eyes to say you need Him.

Maybe this is one of the many reasons God made more than one person, because maybe it takes more courage to ask for help than it does to forge ahead by yourself, more self-awareness to admit confusion and fear and loneliness than it does to sit in the dark alone, more humility to say I need you to another person than it takes, sometimes, to say it to God.

Maybe telling people how you're feeling, asking them to help you, reminds you that God is outside of you, too, not just your personal internal cheerleader but something better, because we want something more than feeling loved by the internal, we want a sacrificial love from outside even when we're too afraid to ask for it.

I have been having a rough couple of months. Good months, overall, but there are ways in which they've been hard, and I crashed hard this past week into illness and exhaustion, which is good for reminding me the world stays up even when my shoulders slump. As I'm rising through the physical exhaustion I'm swimming through a layer of emotional exhaustion, which is good for reminding me I'm not as self-sufficient as I try to be. (I need so many reminders of this.)

I know what I want you to say, and it's this: That God is faithful, and so are you, and that neither of you need me to be perfect and that the world goes along just fine even on the days when I need someone to hold me instead of the other way around.

If you could pray for wisdom and courage in the weeks ahead, I'd appreciate that, too.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows." -- Matthew 10:29-31

"It is vain for you to rise up early,

To retire late,

To eat the bread of painful labors;

For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep."

-- Psalm 127:2

New Assignments

Our mistake, I've heard, is thinking life is meant to be a cruise ship. We set our deck chairs up and try to enjoy the view, but our casual chatting with friends about what we're having for dinner later keeps getting interrupted by loud rumblings and the sound of running feet. It's going to get more and more annoying, sitting there, but there is another option. We can stand up, turn around, and deal with the reality that the cruiser we're on is a battle cruiser; that we're crew members, not tourists; that we have bigger missions than relaxation.

Today I waved goodbye to a vehicle carrying a large chunk of my heart off towards Missouri. Last December my friend Eric was laid off from his job, and he finally got a new job out of state in August. For a few weeks now he's been coming up to Michigan every other weekend to visit his family--Jen and their two kids, Lucas and Katie. They haven't lived like a family in too long, and now they get to do that again. Just further away than before.

Jen is one of my sister-friends. We've shared a lot of life together, especially over this past year, when I was unemployed and would go visit several times a week. (It was a great time to be laid off. I can't think of a better year for that.) I know that this separation is harder because of the amount of time we spent together, but that makes it a good thing. As those of us left on the sidewalk when the car pulled away said, it would be worse if none of us were sad. What a waste of a couple of years it would have been, hanging out with people we wouldn't miss when they were gone.

I'm selfish about these things. I will miss being one of the favorite people in my little friend Lucas' life. I will miss not getting to see some of his sister Katie's first steps (or the very first ones). I will miss hours sitting on right-angled couches talking to Jen. I will miss watching Eric and Lucas throw grapes at each other in the back yard. All that stuff and more.

But the thing is, we're not tourists, they and I. We have a mission that extends beyond what we know, and the commanding officer reassigns as he sees fit. There will be people they need to meet in Missouri, and people who need to meet them. There are lives that haven't crossed yet that will become important to each other in ways we can't foresee. We'll still cross paths ourselves, and then someday our missions will all be completed and we'll be able to compare notes on how our little campaigns affected the broader field.

Part of my heart is with them, but it's only part of my heart, and the rest of me is still here. But all of God is with them, just like all of God is with me, just like all of God is with all of His people. And He loves them more than I do, which means an awful, awful lot.

Take care of my family for me, God. May we fulfill our duties honorably. Here, there, and wherever we go, may it be for and with you.

"I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

~~ Matthew 28:20b

Things I Say to You

Last week in Sunday School prayer request time a boy asked for prayer for his grandfather. "That's always your prayer request," another boy said, and I told him that sometimes we have prayers that we pray for a long time and it's okay, that God doesn't get sick of us.

Lots of times I find that when I'm explaining something about life to kids, I'm talking to myself, too. This is something I've been thinking about lately, this idea that my prayers are repetitive and God is maybe looking for something fresh and different from me.

Doesn't God get tired of it, I thought, me coming and asking Him for things, and so often the same things? "God, please give me patience. God, please redirect my heart. God, I'm sad today, I need comforting." Give, give, give, please, please, please, God.

And then I thought about my little buddy Lucas. He's three, and his vocabulary is expanding but still small. I hear a lot of the same things from him: "Zanne, watch racecars! Zanne, play with me! Zanne, come on!"

Do you know what I hear in that? "I want you to be with me, because I love you." That never gets old. I never get sick of it. I never want anything fresher than and different from it. Do you know why he asks me in the first place? Because I have made myself available for the asking, because I've welcomed it.

I'm going to keep coming, God, and I'm going to ask You a lot of the same things and tell you a lot of the same things, because You have made Yourself available and welcomed my words.

I want You to be with me, because I love You, because You loved me first.

Sarah & I

Sarah had at least heard the promises secondhand: a son, a future. Even secondhand promises were confusing, and she found herself second-guessing, coming up with a good plan that was a little bit self-sacrificial, foregoing her most cherished dream because that couldn't have really been what God wanted for her.

Do you know how long it took Sarah to panic and start working her own plans? At least ten years. Ten. Years.

It took me about three months to start panicking about my job.

Sure, you could say I haven't heard any divine promises, secondhand or otherwise, that the school attendance auditors won't come crashing down on us with the force of a mythological Fury; that all my preparations will bring us into complete compliance; that everything I love about this job won't be taken away because we don't get funding; that I won't be laid off before Thanksgiving.

But it's been three months. At most. Really, it's only been about a month and a half that I've known I'd be good at this, really good at it, and that I'd enjoy the job more than any job I've ever had. And look at me now, paying attention to the little voice whispering in my ear, "You knew it was too good to be true" and "You've got to start looking out for yourself."

Three months. That's ridiculous. I refuse to collapse in terror over this at three months, refuse to lash out at others for not doing their part to keep me employed, refuse to hate the auditors even if they reportedly hate me before we've even met, refuse to let go until I'm blessed. Again. And again.

I want to break the ten year mark on busting out my plans to save myself.

"Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me;
You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies,
And Your right hand will save me.
The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting;
Do not forsake the works of Your hands."
~~ Psalm 138:7-8

Conversations about husbands

The conversation often turns to husbands, being a subject of daily living for many and a point of curiosity for the rest of us. Stories are told and re-told of hesitant forays into interest and first dates, of engagements and weddings. We talk about in-laws and other tricky ground; of the having of children and the yearning for children; of the multiplication and division of problems. Some say their husbands were their first ever experience of mutual attraction; some that in certain ways their husbands surprised them, upsetting what they thought they wanted (“He just kept coming, and coming….” “He said ‘no’ to me and it was so attractive.”).

They are still fairly new to this, these wives, still nowhere near my mother’s thirty-three years, but they are fully committed to the vows they made to God and their husbands, and they are learning, and they are growing (so is their love). It draws me, pulls me to want to be part of that conversation in another way, and I leave feeling joyful because I have seen the Spirit’s blessing on these friends.

I know now what I resisted for years, fearing as I so often do the idea of being like everyone else: I’m a romantic at heart—hopeful, not hopeless, because the best love stories here point to the best love story of all, the one I’m part of no matter what.

After a season in which I struggled with the notion that God probably wanted me to have a series of miserable jobs ended with a job I enjoy, I can’t hold on to the even more ludicrous idea that He is after sending me a man who bores me, who can’t keep up with me, who finds me ridiculous (in the negative sense), who doesn’t want me as much as I want him, who makes the whole endeavor feel like a duty to slog through. It’s a notion that reminds me of my brother, once as relationally ascetic as I have been, pleasantly surprised and amazed to discover even the silly little side things he could have seen himself foregoing in a wife were present in the woman who is now my sister.

I’ve found, after an honest appraisal of self and God, I’m not angry anymore when the topic of singleness comes up. Marriage would be an awfully big adventure. Then again, I’m in an awfully big adventure already. (In all circumstances, to be content.)