Closed Windows

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good day, milady!

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

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

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

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

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

All in all, an enjoyable day.

Turtling Up

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

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

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

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

Mostly I'm glad it's Friday afternoon.

Annual Spiritual Review Time

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Laundry List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Mom and the Superpower of Niceness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy birthday, Mom!

Slow down, you move too fast

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

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

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

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

4) It is fun to say “Blood Bus.”

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

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

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

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

Baby, It's Cold Inside

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want to believe...in the right things

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

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

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

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

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

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

I choose to be pretty geeked about it.

Hooray for this week!

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

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

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

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

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

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

All in all, a good week.

The status is no longer quo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filler

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

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

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

Even if I only say it to myself.

The "what, huh?" moment of the day

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

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

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

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

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

Tonight and the week to come

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

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

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

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

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

Secret Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm totally against the Poles

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

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

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

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

*sigh*

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

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

...and speaking of idolatry

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

-- Brooks & Dunn

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

God save us from our own twisted vision.

Subtle Idolatry

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

• To know what I'm thinking before I have to say it.
  
• 
  
• 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....