Tonight and the week to come

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

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

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

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

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

Secret Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm totally against the Poles

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

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

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

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

*sigh*

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

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

...and speaking of idolatry

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

-- Brooks & Dunn

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

God save us from our own twisted vision.

Subtle Idolatry

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

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

I notice two things from this. 

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

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

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

God in the mirror? What am I talking about?

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

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

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

Too Many Curves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Evening with Trudy: A Casual Post

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

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

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

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

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

So much better than spending the whole evening online.

False Expectations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stealth Prayers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What have you been up to?

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

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

Same job for seven years.

Same church for seven years.

Same apartment for seven years.

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

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

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

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

The death of a beloved grandfather from a long illness.

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

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

A struggle with depression.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What have I been up to? 

Living, mostly.

Today these lyrics made me cry

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

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

~~ Rascal Flatts

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

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

~~ Hosea 11:8a

Ten Things to Do Before I Die

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

10.   Have a few books published

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

8.    Figure out how to use GarageBand properly

7.  Sing karaoke in public

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

5. Start a writers club meeting at least once monthly 

4. Go tandem biking

3.     Finish my fanfics 

2. Chase fireflies

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

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

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

Trench warfare

I spent most of today praying against various personal demons and besetting sins that are besetting something fierce this week—things like discontentment, and irritation, and selfishness, and cowardice. And then...well....

Sometimes it seems I live my life on such a small level. For instance, I got my hair cut tonight and am unpleased with the result, and do not want to go back to have more taken off, and regret soliciting opinions and listening to them instead of going with what I wanted, and regret backing down so easily, and...and it's a HAIRCUT. And I'm going a little nuts about it.

So often the big things show up in how I deal with the small things. And even the big things, like the personal demons and besetting sins, seem bigger than they used to. Really? A haircut I don't like? I'm THAT vain? THAT insecure? THAT clueless about my actual place in God's world?

I'm tired of fighting off who I am and striving for what's ahead. Not that I want to stop striving, but it's disheartening to think of how much longer I'll have to do this. On the one hand, I can't wait until I'm not so confused and so disoriented on such a regular basis. On the other hand, there's nothing I can do but wait.

All of this digging in for the long haul is wearing on me. As is the sense that I'm having such a rough time, and I'm not even doing anything important.

Or maybe that's the Enemy talking...and maybe it's the Enemy trying to trick me into thinking I'm fighting off who I am. Because maybe who I am now, through grace, is just the person who's doing the fighting off. And maybe the reason these "little" sins seem so much bigger is not that they're looming larger in my life, but that my eyesight (and my aim) is getting that much better.

Constant vigilance (1 Peter 5:8). Even in these deep-down, day-in-and-day-out trenches.

Hovering

Today I have that annoying sense that there is another, better way to do things than the way I am doing them now. I've had that at work (has to be a way to catalogue these tasks coherently), and I had it at church tonight on two levels (has to be a way for teachers to focus on Jesus and Scripture over points and stickers; has to be a way to encourage young boys to calm and stillness without forcing them to look just like young girls).

I'm very much a "right answer" sort of person, but the answers aren't in a key at the back of some book. I have to puzzle them out myself, reason from Word and Spirit, live them until I fall naturally into the answers.

Which notion was never as strangely exciting as it is tonight. And I do mean "strangely." I didn't even feel it until I started writing this. But I realized that I know something about the way God works. And that tonight the following verses resonate in a way they never have before:

"The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness." (Genesis 1:2-4)

Maybe that hovering at the edge of my consciousness is something more vital than I thought it was.

Okay, here's what I want:

• I want to clarify and communicate in my business writing, not create more confusion or tension. Wait, why settle? Let's make that ALL my writing.
• I want to speak of Christ to and with children, not just check things off a to-do list.
• I want to encourage brothers (and I do mean males specifically) of all ages out of love for them and faith in what God is doing in them, not harangue them out of frustration that they aren't what I think they should be yet.

And now I can sleep in peace. God will work out the details.

Laughter

They called him laughter

for he came after

the Father had made an 

impossible promise come true

~~ Michael Card

Tonight I am grateful:

• for a year and a half of depression, of anxious not-knowing, of mortally wounded self-certainty.
• for the countless times I have clung to the past and He has pulled me unwillingly into the future.
• for the relationships I sabotaged repeatedly and He preserved over and beyond my expectations.
• for that day in England last year when just about every one of my plans went wrong.
• for a work environment that's still up in the air, over a month after we've moved.
• for a brother who is getting married this November, and for his as-yet-mostly-unknown fiancee.
• for so much more that I wouldn't be fully grateful for if left to myself.
• for not being left to myself.

Tonight I am laughing at the impossible absolute truths of love, grace, and a God who is nearer and more essential than my next breath.

Grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me...wherever it will. 

I rest in and because of thee, Beloved.

Forget Rats and Dragons.

For me, this year is the Year of the Wedding.

For the past several months, I have been thinking about and planning for my friend Abby’s wedding. She and her fiancé (now husband) Ryan were married Saturday in a fairly simple and very warm ceremony in a beautiful yet non-air-conditioned church, and I was blessed with the honor of being one of her bridesmaids.

Later that afternoon, in the surreal blur that comes after a long-anticipated event has come to pass: "Do weddings still make you want to get married, or are you immune to that now?"

For the next several months, I will be thinking about and planning for my brother Jeremiah's wedding. He and his fiancée, Dorothy, will be getting married at the end of November. I will be standing up for them, too. It will be cooler then. 

Today, at work, from the woman who sits next to me: "Your brother's getting married? He beat you?"

Tonight, at dinner, from my slightly older and still unmarried cousin: "Have you been getting set up on blind dates yet?"

God's coming in under my guard something fierce this year. I don't know why I bother keeping it up.

And now for something completely different....

You're Short Round!

Hey, Shorty! You're Indy's street-smart little buddy. You're always watching out for your friends, and if necessary, you'll put yourself in danger to keep them safe. You treat the people you care about with a tremendous amount of respect, but you also have a silly, casual way of speaking, like "Hold on to your potato!" As sidekicks go, you're a really cute, helpful one to have around... and if anyone gets brainwashed, you'll find a way to snap them back to reality. 

When I vowed

practiced denial of fear

openness to whatever came

He sent change

several orders of magnitude greater

than I had imagined

 

When I wondered

if I would really be willing to give

sacrificially

He sent added financial obligations

 

When I confessed

unwillingness to serve unacknowledged

and desire to serve as Christ

He sent more needs, more requests

 

When I asked

for grace to love

those I wouldn’t on my own

He sent people

 

When I prayed

Thy will be done

my plans began to shift

 

I am feeling the danger

of a God who takes me seriously

(Sort of) About a Dress

Tonight after the women's Bible study I asked for prayer that somehow, somewhere I would find someone to hem my bridesmaid dress for less than $40, and in less than two weeks. 

No big deal, right? Just a little extra pressure?

Except that tonight it turned out I was hiding an awful lot of other things behind the fact of my three-inches-too-long bridesmaid dress, and suddenly as I was making the request I was crying harder than I ever remember crying in public anywhere other than a funeral.

Pathetic and funny at the same time, what with me gulping back tears that must have seemed ridiculous considering my stated request was something like "I need my dress hemmed," and a dozen suddenly solicitous women offering suggestions and assistance. (I do have an alteration appointment now.)

"I'm not trying to be manipulative," I kept saying, especially to the woman who had previously refused my request on the (truthful) grounds that she is so busy just now. 

And maybe partly I meant "I'm not trying to be vulnerable."

Trying or not trying, I suppose I never have been and never will be really able to change that.

Waiting for an open door

This morning I took my car in for repairs and was driven to work by someone who works for the dealership. He opened the door for me when I was getting into the car, and when we arrived at my office he asked me to stay seated until he could get around and open the car door for me. This is what made me sure that I had been driven by this particular man before. I vaguely remember the conversation from the first time he drove me to work—not the exact words, but something along the lines of him asking me to do him the honor of letting him open the door for me.

You would think it would be easy, sitting there while he went around to open the door, but it wasn't. It never is, for me. Because it's not just about how the door gets opened, it's about a whole whirlwind of swirling thoughts in my head. As this gentleman looks more than old enough to be my father and speaks of his wife often, I had no complicating "is he hitting on me" mental chatter. (Funny how I tend to assume that people are nice because of what they think they'll get out of it. Or not so funny.)

This morning I experienced on a heightened level the sort of back-and-forth I have over anybody trying to help me with anything:

• I can do it myself
• But I don't have to
• But I can
• But he wants to help
• I don't need help
• Can you let somebody help anyway
• I don't like people helping me
• Yes you do
• I don't know when I cross the line to manipulating someone
• He offered 

Kindness—especially of the sort that seems to ask nothing in return—throws me off, breaks me out of my "self-sufficiency" a bit, makes me remember God.

God helped before I asked, and He asks me to wait while He opens all of the doors for me, asks me not to open them with my strength and in my impatience. Which is difficult when part of me is screaming to fling open every door on my own.

So thank you, Bob from the shuttle service. I need waiting practice.

Hey, now....

"[My brother] was definitely into comic books, so I was exposed to it, although, you know, I'm a girl, let's face it, so...." -- Gwyneth Paltrow

Things To Do

Maybe non-list people don't understand this, but writing a list can be, on some level, dangerous.

Best example: I have a giant list in my head of things I want to do with my life, but I've been too afraid to write this list down anywhere. To write it on a list is to admit that I need it, or want it, which is to admit that I am not okay as I am, which is...what? Expected?

If I write it down, it means I want to try. 

If I try, I risk failure. Or success. Which could lead to a whole new list.

Then I remember that I told God that this year, this year in particular, I was going to make a sacrifice to God of my fear, to do things that I had always wanted to do, to attempt what I've been putting off, to try without worrying so much about whether or not the trying would work out as I imagined it would.

The list is rising to the surface of my mind. Sooner or later, it will either have to be written or smothered back down.

I want to write it.

Post-study thoughts on 1 Peter 3:1-6

The Christian wife is to be submissive and glad of it, glad to bend her will to her husband's for the sake of Christ. Again I vow I will not bow to anyone who doesn't look like Him.

Submission is a sacred thing. It is holy. It is a spiritual act of worship.

It is hard for me remember that when guys make jokes about how it means I have to do what they say because I'm a woman. Even if I know the guys don't mean it. (Shouldn't we mean what we say?)

________________________________________________________

"Isn't it comforting," I say, "that true beauty isn't primarily external? Otherwise it would peak and then be gone."

"When you find a man who thinks that way," says Jennifer, "marry him."

Holly says not many guys do think like that. She says she sees lots of women with gentle and quiet spirits, but that there aren't many men around who are interested.

________________________________________________________

Eventually, as in all church people conversations about modesty in dress, somebody brings up the inevitable hackneyed phrase: "Men are visual." It is said as though there is nothing to do about it, as though that is how it is and we can't expect any more than that.

I wonder how easy it is for most women to develop a gentle and quiet spirit. I know it isn't easy for me. It isn't easy to live like Christ, or even (some days) to want to live like Christ. But I'm pressing on.

Are we, women of the faith, pressing on alone?

________________________________________________________

This is what I despise about talk of "hotness": that fire consumes with nothing left. A few years, and it is gone. Small comfort being "hot" would be, knowing that it always, always cools. Small respect for guys who emphasize spark over substance...my spark is sputtery and my substance is more me and my skin is thin.

I am in the refiner's fire, which will burn for my whole life and render me more and more beautiful in the eyes of God with each passing year, through wrinkles and creaky joints and greying hair and all. I am a woman blazing and have no time to waste on mere heat.

________________________________________________________

The conference leader all those months ago made a list of qualities women looked for in their "fantasy men," and then a corresponding list of things men looked for in their "fantasy women," and the lists showed totally opposite ideals. How is it even possible to bridge such a gap?

We need Someone who has experience with bridges.

Sometimes I miss physical contact....

I come from what my great-aunt Irene has called "the huggingest family." When I was growing up, I could count on (and take for granted) having a plethora of hugs a day. And I know what it means to have a plethora. College, not so many hugs. But I'm a female, so we do a lot of the casual hand-on-arm stuff in conversations. And I was a theatre major, which ramps up physical contact by a factor of eleventy (that's an approximation).

Now, living on my own after college, I pretty much depend on church functions and hang-out times with select people for hugs. This is usually enough to keep me from feeling contact-starved.

This past month, though...wow. I haven't felt like I needed this many hugs in a long time. A lot of it is connected to the stress at work, I'm sure.

Anyway, it's nice to have Sundays. Because Sundays are when I get most of my physical contact for the whole week. I can usually count on the following: 

• A hug from Rosemary
• A hug from Lisa or Abby or Trudy or Janessa or all of the above
• Several pokes on the head from Brenna and Braelynn
• A couple of hugs from Braelynn
• The female-conversation-style arm touching thing I mentioned

Also maybe a few high fives in there from some of my guy friends. That sort of thing.

Today I got a chance to hold a baby for a while, and one of the pre-K girls was playing with my hair when I got down to help her with her project, and tonight I get to see my little buddy Lucas, who is always good for a few hugs.

So it'll be a good day for getting hugs. Which is good because I had kind of a rough week. Which was just capped off by a phone call from my dad to tell me that my brother's bird died. 

Now I'm extra glad I got to go to Pennsylvania last weekend, so I could see Claude, too. We liked each other a lot. I'm going to miss him...but not as much as Jeremiah will miss him.

Now I'm sad about Claude and sad for Jeremiah and sad for Dorothy, who also liked Claude a lot....

Yeah. This is definitely the sort of day when I miss being a daily part of the huggingest family.

Setting in

I worked 39.5 hours in four days this week, largely due to the fact that I was on vacation on Monday. I have a few more to go tomorrow, but not nearly as many as I anticipated.

Today was good. It started off with a clearing of the air between a coworker and myself, which was an answer to prayer as well as a positive reinforcement from God on my 1 Peter pop quiz at work yesterday. (The women's Bible study I am part of is currently studying this epistle about Christians living under pressure, and last Wednesday's lesson touched on living under work pressure, especially people who are behaving unreasonably. God has good timing.) 

It wasn't the only answered prayer today. Here are a few others:

• I had a positive outlook on the day
• I was able to delegate jobs
• It wasn't raining when I moved my computer
• We packaged up far more than expected

We still have a lot of stuff over at the old building, but everything we really need in order to work is at the new building, and we have until about June 20 to clear out the old place. That gives us almost two months to make little trips out for a day or an afternoon of cleaning and boxing at a much more leisurely pace than we've had this week.

So it was good.

Now that most of the intense bits are over, it's starting to hit me....

I'm not going to work at the old building anymore. Sure, I'll be over for some of those cleaning and boxing trips, but it won't ever be home base again. And I've worked there since July of 2001. I've spent more days in that building than I spent at college. I've "lived" there about as long as I lived at the home where I spent my high school and college years. And there is a growing list of things I will miss:

• The quiet lunch room in which I ate on just about every work day for the last seven years, and was able to read in peace for most of those days
  
• The one-stall bathroom
• The "nap room" I made in an unoccupied office, which consisted of three chairs set next to each other
• Bantering and exchanging stories with our regular UPS driver
• The "cage bars" on our cubes and the way Amanda would hold onto them sometimes when she was telling me a story through the mesh
• All the surfaces for displaying trinkets; comic strips; pictures of Apollo, other birds, and all the kids I've tutored over the past years (Jephri, Daijah, Marshelle, Hassan); etc.
• The smallness of the place...only the five of us there, and all of us within easy shouting range of each other, not that we ever had to shout that loudly to be heard
  

That place saw the two hardest years of my life and heard the worst phone call I've ever received. It was also the site of hours and hours of laughter, and myriads of scrapes and bruises and muscle strains (many of which sparked some of that laughter). Apollo came and visited several times, when I was going to leave straight from work for some time out of town. My parents have been there, and my brother, and my cousin, and even some people from my church, who came by for a pop can drive.

The new place is...well, new. While I have no real resentment of it, I have no affection for it, either. There are high cubicle walls that make me feel like a rat in a maze, and keep me from easily seeing everyone I can hear. There are dozens of people in one large space broken up only by these cubicles. I share a cubicle quad space with two other coworkers and can see four more from where I sit. There are three stalls in the bathroom. All the product swatching I used to handle is now part of somebody else's space and will soon be somebody else's job. It's all so different....

Now, after years of having it on the horizon, and months of work, and one crazy busy week, it seems the mental dust from all the moving is clearing away enough for me to start mourning the familiar spaces.

This Week in My World

I spent last weekend in Pennsylvania with my parents and my brother. It was good to be able to be there, especially as I had thought we would be moving offices that weekend and that I would be unable to join them.

Instead, we are moving offices this weekend. For real. I've been boxing and trashing and organizing for at least a month now, but this week has been high-gear. I was at work for over 10 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. My muscles are aching, my left hamstring is mad at me (a slight twinge last Sunday has not been helped by all the rushing around and such I've been doing), my forearms are nicked up, and it still doesn't look like all that much has been accomplished.

Today I woke up at about 3:40 and couldn't really get back to sleep, because I was thinking about move stuff and stuff I should have done already that isn't related to the move.  So I'm heading in even earlier than originally planned. (Maybe I can put 12 hours in and still be home before 7.)

I've been getting some help at work, but as far as my division is concerned I've been doing most of the packing, because most of our stuff is "mine," by which I mean product literature, etc. that I've been responsible for almost since I started working at this place. And I have a hard time delegating because I have difficulty believing that anybody else can do things "right" (meaning just like I do them). So that's been tough, too. I could probably have had more help if I asked for it. Probably still can.

I'm working a long day today, a long day tomorrow, a long day Saturday. I don't think I've ever looked forward to Sunday this much.

Please pray that I do my job well, that I behave as a servant of God, and that I stop feeling so sorry for myself over this. Thanks.

Tagged by Sabrina

My good friend Sabrina blog-tagged me with the following.

Six words that sum me up today:

1. Child
2. Saint
3. Pressed
4. Scruffy-looking
5. Excited
6. Uncertain

I would generally tag Sabrina and Kerri for this sort of thing, but they've both done it already. (I think you both took a longer view than I did....)

If anybody else is interested, here are the rules (and no, I didn't follow all of them):

1. Write your own six word Memoir.
2. Post it on your blog.
3. Link to the person who tagged you.
4. Tag 5 more blogs with links (leave a comment on their blog with an invitation to play).

Sunday School musings

I helped out with a Sunday School class today. This is the first time I've done this in years. It's also the first time in years I've been in a room with that many kids under the age of 6. (Hats off to full-time lower elementary and preschool teachers.)

I like little kids. I like the requests for help because they haven't learned how to do it themselves yet, and the stories they tell, and the casual unconcern with which they admit you into their lives (sometimes Chloe's parents stand on her bed to change lightbulbs).

I wish time with these kids wasn't a trade-off situation, but it is. I love adult Sunday School classes. I love the participation and the intellectual stimulation. I still miss college classes, and the adult Sunday School classes are the closest I come to that. As I can't be two places at once, I am only in the children's class now. (I wish Sunday School followed the Harvest Time model of having a leaders' class at a separate time. To work with kids AND to have a forum to keep interacting with the adults...that would be ideal. Sandra, are you reading this?)

Being a Sunday School teacher also means markedly less time socializing in the hallways. I'm okay with the part where I am there to help guide the kids to their classroom. The part where I wait at the classroom for twenty minutes after class...that's the part where I need to watch my attitude. 

I'm a punctual person, as a rule, although Harvest's disregard for clocks has sort of beaten me down a bit. But I still believe in respecting other people by respecting their time, and it can be hard for me to cultivate kind feelings towards my brothers and sisters in Christ who don't come to pick up their kids after their class is over, instead of using the Sunday School classroom for all the free babysitting potential it holds. I have trouble not thinking, "You go home and sit with family. I go home and sit alone. Can you please let me talk to a few people in the hallway for five minutes?" 

Then again, I guess maybe sometimes the parents with so many kids wish they could go home and sit alone, too. 

In my time with the children's Sunday School ministry, I am going to focus on what it means to serve for the sake of Christ. I am going to practice putting these children (and yes, their social butterfly parents, too) before myself. On simultaneously disappearing so that Christ appears, and on revealing myself in some of those vulnerable places I try to pretend don't exist. (Like the place that really liked having people stop by to say hello to me as I stood in the doorway waiting for parents to show up today. I appreciated that a lot.) I'm giving thanks for people who have done this sort of work for years, even though their efforts were often taken for granted. And that's just for starters.

It's going to be good.

EARTHQUAKE!

This morning I was lying in bed, trying to get back to sleep, and then my bed was moving and my dresser was making creaky noises. VERY weird. My first thought was of the relative structural integrity of the building, but then I listened hard and it wasn't windy outside. Then I thought I was imagining things, but I remembered the creaking dresser and the fluttering from Apollo that had followed it.

I went to the local news website this morning to see if maybe it was an earthquake, even though that seemed kind of ridiculous because I live in West Michigan. But it WAS an earthquake! Bizarre! And kind of cool now that the scariness is over.

Anybody else feel that?

Mourning to Dancing

God is gracious, and things are looking up, and today was a humbling set of reminders of how inadequate I am and how much God knows what He's doing.

For now, I am content. (I still covet your prayers on the move, as only God can keep me in this contentment and I feel myself prone to wander.)

Sitting sad and lonely....

Tonight I hung out with the oldest child-teenager-type I know, and we went to this park and ran around in the the dark a lot and scared some creature that scared me back by jumping into the water as I ran past it, and went on swings and flipped playground tiles to read "HI!" and stuff like that. It was nice. Kind of like a dose of antidote to my life for the next few weeks.

Because tomorrow I will go back to work and prep for the big moving weekend that's looming overhead, and I sort of want to cry because I hate moving and I hate change and at the same time I hate how stagnant I am and how my stomach twists into knots over things like not having enough boxes at hand, because how ridiculous is that?

I'm having trouble remembering that I'm not alone, and that I am not the only person pulling her weight, and that this will pass, and fairly soon. I'm having trouble seeing much meaning in the unglamorous drudgery of the next few weeks. I'm having trouble not feeling sorry for myself over working next weekend when my parents will be visiting my brother.

You can pray for me, if you think of it. That helps. I certainly need help. And maybe a hug....

Help Wanted

Last Monday morning Meghan was in a lot of pain, and needed prayer, and so I fasted for her by not slacking off via the internet at work—no checking email or surfing during non-lunch hours, even for one minute segments when I thought I had "deserved" it because of either really boring or really strenuous work I was doing. It was perhaps an unusual sort of fast, but for me it meant more than fasting from food (ironically, I usually see eating as a waste of time). Monday night the news was good, and God had answered the prayers of many, mine included.

So I've kept this up, and every day when I'm tempted to check my email "just once" I have been praying instead. I say all of this not because I am a stellar Christian but because I am a weak one. I know that all it takes is one day to derail all my fine attempts. I also know that I need accountability, which is one reason I'm bothering to write about this at all. 

Another reason is that it helps me to have a main focus for a fasting prayer. Last Monday, for instance, I prayed for Meghan. Today I will be praying for my Uncle Dick, who will be at the Cleveland Clinic undergoing a procedure called deep brain stimulation that will, please God, help calm the tremors in his body for an extended period of time. (If you would join me in this prayer, I know my entire family would be grateful.) 

If you have any specific requests, let me know. Because I need a focus that seems to bring the reality of God nearer, and because I think that's part of the reason He gave us community, after all.

"And He will yet deliver us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many." (2 Corinthians 1:10b-11)

"If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you."

That is perhaps the most stereotypically female thing I think on a regular basis. And not that I always listen to that impulse, but it is almost always there. Because if you don't know, you haven't tried to know. You don't want to know. You don't care to know, which means you don't care about me, and so if you don't care, then neither do I. (On the other hand, if I don't know, I probably won't ask. Because if you haven't told me, you don't care if I know.)

The above is a good illustration of the meaning of the phrase "a vicious cycle." And is also a nice defensive way of masking the pain that follows barking your shins against the unknown.

This morning I listened to a teacher speak of the inherently unfathomable nature of the infinite (meaning God), and I recoiled inwardly. Even when we continued to elaborate in the class discussion that the fact that God is unknowable means that we will never lose the joy of discovery when it comes to our ever-growing knowledge of God...even when the teacher pointed out that finding out new things about people we know and love can often be enjoyable...even when I thought about how a repetitive task with nothing new to learn begins to wear on your energy reserves.... All of those examples helped, but....

Tonight my pastor spent the first 30 minutes or so of his sermon talking about how the OPC has left "wiggle room" when it comes to origins, so that people can believe in various origins models as long as they believe God created everything out of nothing, and the historicity of Adam and Eve, and some other points that he didn't get into but are in a big report the OPC did in 2004.

And I went home and I cried.

Because THEY CAN'T ALL BE RIGHT. God only created ONE way. And so, whatever you believe about origins, that means that there are a lot of people wandering around wrong. And that extends to other areas of faith and practice, like what you believe about Sabbath observance, or the end times, or the role of women anywhere.

Doesn't God understand that some of us want to know how far we can walk on what days, and whether or not it's okay to lead an animal to water as long as we don't make it drink, and how long our hair should be, and how short is too short for clothing, and what sort of people it's not healthy to talk to and for how long we maintain that sort of distance, if we maintain it, and, and, and.... (Sometimes, many times,  I want the comfort of restrictions instead of this bewilderingly confusing freedom.)

So tonight I cried because I don't know much of anything, and because I have equated knowledge with love. Then came the voice (and I think it must be of the Spirit) that told me I don't have to worry about knowing so much, because I myself am fully known (1 Cor. 13:12b), and because I am meant to know a love that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:19).

Someday I will know everything I am meant to know about God and how He has worked in the world. 

Meanwhile, I know everything I need to know, and probably everything I am able to handle so far.

Meanwhile, "if you don't know," I will fight to tell you. Because that's what love takes in this world, and I want to love beyond knowing. And because you might care, after all. You might just be human, like me. 

Fallen. 

Flawed. 

And constantly progressing on our way to greater things (Phil. 3:12).

Holy Dissatisfaction

We are all very good at fixing lives. Even when our own lives are in chaos, it's inspiring to see how ready we are to help others by telling them what is wrong in what they are doing/saying/thinking.

Christians are perhaps better at this than others, because we know Who to talk about. Your problems? No worries! I have an answer for you, and you've known it since Sunday School: God.

My first impulse on hearing a fellow Christian (or myself) express dissatisfaction with their life has long been to rush in and fix it for them. Why should they be sad? They have a Savior. And besides, lots of people have it worse. Cast all your cares, and all that. Buck up.

I don't know about you, but nothing hit my fix-it attitude harder than a bout with depression. A year and a half or so of nothing seeming certain except for God. Yeah, sometimes it seemed He was certain in the death and taxes sort of way, but He was there, there, beautifully and terrifyingly and inescapably THERE. 

Now, on the other side of that experience, I hesitate a lot more to jump in and fix things. Part of this is because I take the cautions of the book of Job much more seriously (the friends who kept attacking windy words and the God who rebuked them for assuming too much). Part of this is because I know how much God did for me in that time. I can look back and see relationships I thought I had destroyed, and I wasn't strong enough to destroy them because God wanted them around and I can't outwit God. Further back, the horrible relationship I had with a college friend who suffered from depression becomes a gift, as I knew He had brought her safe through it and I clung to that promise for myself. I see all I had been repressing, denying, that finally came to a head and exploded because I wasn't being honest with myself or with Him. I see my (still present) desire for control and see the pain that comes from chasing after that desire and the freedom that comes from giving up if you're giving it up into the hands of God.

We don't want to suffer. Speaking for me if nobody else: I don't want to suffer. And nothing makes me suffer quite like uncertainty (uncertainty, which starves my idol of control and makes it vicious).

But at the same time, in the crazy simultaneous way that life works for those of us on the conviction side of the cross, I relish my current uncertainty, and all of the emotions it's pulling out of me (REpression didn't end with the breaking of DEpression). 

I don't want to rush out of it. I don't want to push it under the rug. I don't want to pretend that it's all okay, when it will never be all okay. Not here, not yet.

I want to sit here, wondering where my life is going and what I am to do with it (keeping in mind I am investing it for a Master Who expects returns on His investment), and I want to wait for God to answer. And I want to listen to what He tells me to do. And I don't want to be afraid. He has brought me through worse...and Jesus brought me through the worst of all long before I was even born.

Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.

"My life is a furious ball of nothing." -- Dilbert

In recent news, someone (or some people) I know:

* Entered into a serious relationship.

* Got engaged.

* Got married.

* Are expecting their first child.

[DISCLAIMER: Each of the above happened to different sets of people. This is not all just the same couple over, say, the past two years.]

* Appeared on the front cover of our alumni magazine.

In personal news:

* I bought a Mac.

* Sims Castaway Stories will run on it.

* ...um....

I am a master at creating hierarchies. This is more important than that which is more important than these things, usually but not always adding up to "Their problems/joys are more important than mine." It's a lousy excuse for actual selflessness, but at least I catch myself at it now. And it isn't always exactly jealously, it's just feeling...like maybe I'm doing something wrong. Or maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm too easily satisfied, or too good at repressing what I really want out of life.

But then there's the part of me that says that really, past all the drama I add to my life, I'm sincerely happy for everybody with BIG news.

I think that's the part of me that is also geeked about that computer game. The part that reminds me that I may be a nerd queen with no actual life, but I'm (mostly) happy with that.

Then there's my dad's voice speaking from about 11 years ago, before I went off to college: "If you want something and don't go after it, it's your fault if you don't get it."

I guess he's still right, too.

Buying stuff is hard....

I hate buying...well, I hate buying pretty much anything, if it comes down to it, but I especially hate buying big ticket items. The unknown potential consequences of the decision coupled with the known expenditure are a bit too much for the tight-fisted control freak in me.

I want to buy a new computer. My current model is about four years old, which sounds young to me because I had my previous computer for almost ten years. Of course, I was mostly using that for writing papers in college. The digital revolution passed my current desktop's 40 GB hard drive and 256 MB of RAM a while back. Also, my monitor is even older than four years and has begun flickering in the lower left corner. Also, I've been getting the Blue Screens of Death that I was ignoring all too often on my old computer, right up until it melted down and forgot where to look for its hard drive. So as far as new computers go, maybe it's about time.

I was pretty much sold on a Mac, thanks to both of my major computer geek friends being hardcore Mac devotees, and then today I talked to some friends who were bringing up objections that had been lurking in the back of my mind, too. Things like price, and compatibility, and familiarity, and ease of use due to said compatibility and familiarity. So now I'm all thrown off again. Maybe I could win a computer somehow. That would solve my dilemma. I wonder if somebody would give me a Mac in exchange for writing fanfiction...that's how I got my iPod....

Anyway, as I was saying, I have difficulty with making luxury purchases. The perfect example of how ingrained this is dates back to when I was around 8 years old, and was ogling dollhouses everywhere. I loved the little furniture and other miniatures involved in dollhouse decorating, and I wanted to try my hand at it. My dad made a deal with me. If I would save a certain amount of money, he would match it, and then we could go buy that dollhouse.

At the time, I was pulling in a small allowance from my parents. This, plus birthday and Christmas money, was the total of my income. But I squirreled that money away diligently and made it up to the established savings mark.

We went to The Doll Hospital & Toy Soldier Shop, an excellent toy store on the east side of the state. With my money figuratively grasped in my hot little hands and probably literally in my dad's pocket, I began hunting for the perfect dollhouse.

There were a lot of dollhouses.

A lot.

And the more I looked at them, the more I realized that even if I could come to a decision, I would still have to make similar decisions later, and spend even more money, because the dollhouse would need to be furnished.

I left with double the savings I had when my dad first made the deal with me.

(A few years later, my poor mom would stand in an aisle at Toys 'R Us for approximately an hour while I vacillated amongst three different Barbie dolls that each had a distinctly different hair and swimsuit color.)

I love it when a plan comes together

Apparently this costume was exactly right for the role. I walked onstage and the audience erupted...which was definitely a lot of fun. Somebody told me this morning that I was an "eerily accurate Alice." Sweet.

Barring a few things like microphone problems, the show went quite well last night. The teens did a great job with waiting tables and with their performances, and the audience was rewarding them with lots of justly deserved laughter and applause. I was proud of "my" kids. My main regret is that video can't ever capture the fun of a live performance. But then, I guess that's the beauty of the live performance....

Many people came up to me today to say they had a great time. One of them said she couldn't remember the last time she laughed so hard. She proceeded to tell a friend standing nearby about the evening's final skit (American Idol, featuring myself, two youth group leaders, and three really good sports we called out of the audience to be our contestants, and who all jumped right in to the improvised bit), and then she put her hand on my shoulder and said "Paula did most of the organizing."

And I took that confusion of names as a compliment.

When it comes down to it

The weekend of the banquet arrives.

There have been months of planning, and of telling my friends sorry but I'm busy that night, and of rehearsals that don't happen in the right space, and of staying up late planning or thinking about planning, and of performers who haven't started practicing just yet two weeks before the performance date, and of actors who don't know their lines the night before said date, and of people not understanding what this all means to me....

And then acts start clicking, and I'm laughing out loud and bouncing on my toes, and two people are asked to repeat their thanks because I didn't hear them the first time (always a little awkward), and one says I seem stressed and I reply that most of my seeming stressed at this point is really just shifting into high-intensity performance mode (on the jazz as the plan comes together), and Janessa says "You get more patient with us every year." And I say "That's God."

Sometimes the things I get the craziest about are also the things I love the most.

Fighting a Winning Battle

"When you live alone, you become more and more like yourself," Pastor Dale said, several years ago. My brother was with me, and we exchanged amused glances, as I had only within the past year or two embarked on my solo living experience.

It's not as funny anymore now that I know what it means.

It isn't just becoming more set in little preferences: more sure that the toilet paper should come over the TOP and the toothpaste tube should be squeezed from the BOTTOM and the bath mat should be laid pattern side UP and why aren't all of those things obvious?

It isn't really about becoming more set in my beliefs and opinions. I sometimes feel as though they've become more unsettled in the past few years than anything else, which is probably good because before I probably clung too tightly to too many opinions just because they were the ones I was used to having.

I think the worst part about living alone is that you have a lot of time to notice yourself, and to see yourself as you see you. It's also the best part, because as much as I'd rather not see my own failings, I am confident that the ability to see them comes from the Spirit. And if the Spirit is poking around down there in the dusty darkness of my inner self, it's bound to get cleaner.

Sometimes I feel as though that the Spirit is working on an especially dirty room, one that I've been shoving more and more things into and trying to ignore. A few years ago there was a cleaning out of the room that was chock full of knowing-it-all.

This year, I think the Spirit's working on a few rooms at once. The one getting the most focus tonight seems to be the distrustful control freak room. The one that holds all my long beloved and nurtured beliefs that nobody looks out for me except for me, that nobody wants to help me, that nobody can help me, and that everybody, everytime, everywhere, will always let me down.

This year's broom so far: the Harvest Youth Group Spring Banquet.

You know how sometimes God lets you do things the way you think they should be done as a discipline tool? Letting you try things your way so you can see how your way is wrong? Well, this year I launched into the banquet with my usual preconceived notions that I must do everything myself. I delegated nothing. I said, "Don't worry, I'll do that." I sighed melodramatically to myself when somebody forgot what I had told him or her at least fifteen times already.

Tonight, after telling a large number of teenagers to meet me at church to practice at 8:30, I arrived and found that there was a prayer shower going on in the gym, where I had planned to rehearse. About 20 women were sitting around eating cookies and cooing over four new babies, and I almost cried. And then I almost exploded because that's less embarrassing than crying. And I was rude to several sympathetic women and also to some who sort of laughed off my distress.

Strangely, I haven't been really worried about the banquet this year. I'm still not, deep down. I know it will all come together. And on some ego-crushing level, I don't think anybody really cares how much effort we put into it, anyway. It's a church fundraiser, not Broadway.

But it could have been better if I had gotten over myself and asked for help back in the beginning. That's what's really killing me. Or, hopefully, just the part of me that wants to hang on to control with both fists even if it comes with a semi-annual nervous breakdown.

Every time something goes wrong, I hear a voice saying, "See? This is what you knew would happen. You can't rely on anybody!"

This year, God has given me grace to counter that voice with specifics. Janessa. Andrew, David, and Emily. Chelsea. Matthew. Michele. (That's for starters.) Every friend who has said "It will be okay," or hugged me just a little bit longer, or asked if she could do anything for me. And then there's the grace I've been given in that I've not been angry at the kids this year. For as much as this has been the worst year for rehearsal, and for my organization, I have loved the kids more this year than any other, and that's from God, too, because my frustration with the situation hasn't spilled over onto them as often as it has in previous years.

The Father loves me.

Christ lived, died, and rose for me.

The Spirit is at work in me to make me more and more like Christ, not more and more like myself. And the Spirit (praise God) is far, far stronger than I am.

This kingdom's coming.

And it's okay if I cry while I wait.

Family Time

Tonight I went to the home of my pastor and his family for choir practice. I ended up staying around for at least a half hour afterwards, just sitting with the family and holding one of the infant daughters of my associate pastor and his wife (they're neighbors and the VanDykes babysit a lot).

Usually infants make me a little nervous, but tonight that closeness and warmth was just what I needed. Actually, I was physically close to people all evening (crowding into a living room with the whole choir, squishing on a love seat between Sandra and Bethany, holding Emma) . This might not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, but it was a big deal for me. It's been a confusing life on a lot of levels lately, and I've been aching for family, and for people just to be close to me. It's nice to be tangibly reminded that I'm not alone.

I went to the VanDykes for choir practice, and I got family thrown in.

Thank you, God.

A Very Short Post

One visit down, one banquet to go.
The momentous insanity of March lumbers on.
Someday I will learn how
to ask for the help I want.
For now, to bed (hopefully
to sleep without needing NyQuil).
Longer post to come...
in about 10 days.
It
will be
all
right.

Owww...it's beautiful....

I know I'm not the only person who feels like this, that beauty hurts at the same time as it invites you. It always has to, doesn't it, down here post-Fall? But in my head most people who ache at the beautiful are watching sunsets or spotting rainbows or running across hilly meadows in full song.

It's not that I don't feel the pain of beauty at the sight of nature. It's just that sometimes I wonder how many people would laugh at me for saying I used to spend a fair bit of time wandering my backyard under the full moon (singing to myself) versus the number of people who would laugh because I was so filled with the beautiful aching by someone else's creativity that I felt I had to be creative myself or risk bursting. Or the number of people who would laugh because the specific inspiration was an episode of Lost.

But then, to paraphrase the poet: Is there in laughter no beauty?

I’m so old…unless it’s just that I’m a bit of a snob. Which it probably is.

For a while there after college, I felt young and small and scared. Then I joined Harvest and started hanging out with people in the pre-college age range like Abby and Brittany, partly because the people my age were all married, sometimes even with children, and I was atrocious at relating in a natural manner to people who had significant others, let alone significant family units. (I’m improving on this, which is good because so many important people in my life have gotten married or engaged within the years that I’ve been at Harvest.)

Anyway, when I first started spending time with people about two-thirds of my age, I felt very old, albeit still small and scared. And now I don’t.

Maybe it’s because I’m good friends with Trudy, with whom I can spend a lot of time and never think about the fact that technically she’s old enough to be my mom…that is, until she starts talking about some nice young man or other. ;)

Maybe it’s because my “young” friends are embarking on their post-college careers and it’s sort of leveling us out.

Maybe it’s because one time I said I was too old to be a college student now and Micah said, “You’re not too old, you just feel too superior,” and that suddenly sounded like a more accurate description.

And/or maybe it’s because I’m finally owning my age. Next year I’ll be thirty. It seems as though I’ve been old enough to be thirty for some time now, and I’m ready for it. I’ve already started thinking of my age as twenty-nine, and when people ask my age lately I’ve had to stop and remind myself that my twenty-ninth birthday isn’t until June.

I’m not as mature as I’m going to be, and I’m younger than a lot of people. But, yeah. I’m older than a lot of people, too.

I have a feeling that being the crazy adult is going to be a lot of fun.

Conversations with Myself

Because I live alone, and because I am my father and my mother combined and beyond, and because I have had bad experiences with talking to other people and I have pulled an illegitimate "lesson" from them, and because of (doubtless) an array of other reasons, I talk to myself.

Who else is there? Besides God, and sometimes He doesn't seem so quick to answer.

This is a good illustration of what I mean. Because as I typed that last sentence, this popped into my head: "What if you really already know what His answer is?"

Recently I've been talking to myself more frequently. I talk out loud, because, as a friend said tonight, something that sounds great in your head can sound suddenly stupid when you say it out loud. I know I've had a lot of stupid thoughts turn into even stupider thoughts and spiral down into self-destructive patterns before too long, and if I can stop them by verbalizing them, I would like to try that for a change. (Also, I'd rather sound suddenly stupid when only I'm around to hear it.)

The whiny or confused voice usually leads off these conversations, to be fended off by the decisive and rational voice that reminds me of who I am, and Whose I am, and how common these fears and failings are, and how faithful my Father is. I hope the latter voice keeps gaining ground. I like it better, and I think it is more dangerous on an ultimate level. Sometimes, it even sounds like a quick answer from God.

Funny how often it tells me I can't really live this life effectively inside a series of self-referential conversations.

"I was born for this."

I hear a lot of people are upset about the weather in Michigan these days. They say it's cold and snowy and gloomy.

Yes, it's cold. That is what happens in the winter. Snow happens, too. And although if given a choice between snowy and dry roads I would choose dry roads, I don't find driving in the snow all that challenging, at least not since the time I drove across the state in the Thanksgiving blizzard...I just can't see any future winter driving experience topping that. So I'm not afraid of snowy roads. I don't like the delays, since I don't like driving all that much and would rather just be at my destination. But it's only weather.

As for gloomy...well, gloomy is a state of mind, not a weather forecast. I expect it to be cloudy all winter long. It's Michigan. I've lived here my whole life. Cloudiness is to be expected as much as snow and cold. And since my eyes tend to be quite light-sensitive sometimes, I actually don't mind not living in direct sunlight. Cloudy days don't make me sneeze.

It's not that I don't like the sun, or blue sky, or warm weather. In fact, part of what I like about winter in Michigan is that it makes the arrival of spring such a euphoria-inducing event. It's forty degrees out! Take off your coats!

Someday, we won't have times when we prefer the darkness. Someday, the winter of this often discontented life will be over and the spring of heaven will be upon us, all the more glorious and beautiful because we've been cold and gloomy and snowed-in so often in the past.

"Weeping may last for the night,
But a shout of joy comes in the morning."
~~ Psalm 30:5b

Weeping may last for the winter...but joy is certain, certain, certain as if it has already come.

Hasn't He?

Are all African-Americans famous, or just Jessica Simpson?

Every available Tuesday during the school year, I go to an elementary school near my office and read with a young child. I've been doing this for five years and have worked with four girls: Jephri, who was all attitude and closeness and too sassy for her own good; Daijah, who spelled my name "Suqanne" and who hugged me after the last of two years' worth of mentoring sessions; Marshelle, who was a little bit shy but smiled a lot; and Consuelo, with whom I'm working this year, and who is the first girl I've worked with under third grade (she's in second).

It's amazing to me how much children learn in short spaces of time. It's also a good exercise to remember that I didn't always know everything I know now.

Concepts, for example.

Last Tuesday, the kids had a little project to work on in the room to celebrate Black History Month. I told Consuelo that she was supposed to write down the name of a famous living African-American. She stared at me, clearly wondering what I was talking about. Famous like somebody on TV or in movies, we told her.

She shifted around in her chair. Nobody likes being wrong, and she seemed unwilling to hazard a guess without understanding what we were asking her.

"Do you like the Cheetah Girls?" I asked, familiar with the band from the past several years of working with third-graders and thinking of the equally popular Raven-Symone.

Her eyes lit up. "Yes!"

After more prompting, she came up with a name, Sabrina. She said Sabrina was a singer. None of the rest of us in the room had heard of this person, so we let it go. We wrote it on the main list and on the little piece of construction paper that Consuelo decorated.

As it turns out, Sabrina is in the Cheetah Girls. But she is as white as one of the other people whose name appeared before hers on the list: Jessica Simpson.

The other girl in the room looked confused about the assignment, too. Her mentor stood up and came over to the room coordinator.

"See how Miss Nancy's hand is darker than mine?" the mentor asked. "But they're still hands. We're really the same."

"Not all the same," I interjected. "That would be boring."

Consuelo stuck out her hand. "My hand is darker than yours..." she said.

So I think I spent most of the half hour last Tuesday helping to impart the impression that African-American is a synonym for famous and/or that anybody with skin darker than mine could be called African-American.

But then, it's good that those girls didn't seem to know why we were making such a fuss over skin color, anyway.