Rebirth

After a long hiatus, I’m semi-reviving this blog.  I say semi-reviving because I hope it will be different than it was before, because I hope that I myself am different than I was before.

Since the last time I really posted anything on this blog, I’ve experienced a lot of things.  I’ve learned how to live overseas, re-learned how to live in America, graduated from college, realized that maybe I shouldn’t have graduated from college just yet, and experienced firsthand the nagging worthlessness of my degree that was, when I was writing previously, a remote and mostly pedantic concern.  I’ve grown in my faith, withered in my faith, and turned in confused, dejected circles in my faith.  I’ve done exactly what I once cautioned everyone against doing, first by making a plan and marrying it, then by telling the plan that we need some time apart while I “work on myself.”

This may seem like a lot of pointless blather, but the point I’m trying to convey is that I’ve experienced a lot of life in the past eighteen months or so, and it’s made me into a different person from who I was (or so I would very much like to think), and I really want this blog to reflect those differences.  That’s not to say that the things I wrote before are wrong or misguided in any way (and just to be safe I reread all of them), but I do think a bit differently now than I did then.

I hope that as I continue to grow and make decisions and change the way I’m living, this blog will reflect that.  Additionally, I would like to share that journey with everyone who stops by here.  So whether you just pause a moment and read a snippet or take the time to leave a comment or message, I appreciate your sharing in my journey for just a moment.

The Eye of the Storm

When there was a storm as the disciples were crossing in the boat, they panicked and woke Jesus, and He calmed the storm.  That’s a story Christians really like to tell, mainly because we like to pretend that real Christians don’t ever have problems, because they have Jesus on speed-dial so that He can calm the storm.  Oh, your dad is in the hospital?  Let me just send Jesus a quick prayer text, hey presto!  Dial-a-Miracle, works every time.

I love that Jesus calms storms.  I don’t know where I would be if He didn’t.  But a lot of Christians like to pretend that He only ever calms the storm; that’s the only answer, the only solution, the only way out.  We cannot deal with storms.  We do not want to deal with storms.  Christianity is our fairy tale dream, and Jesus is our super fairy godmother, so we’d like to think.  When we cry, He hears and comes with a magic dress and pumpkin carriage so that we can go to the ball after all.

I don’t like that we think that way.  I do think that Jesus wants us to have comfort and joy and peace, but I don’t think that He is always going to do that by calming the storm.  Instead, I think what happens a lot of time (and this is where Christianity gets really weird to outsiders, because it’s at this point they stop relating to us) is that He allows the storm to rage, and He just moves us to the eye.

The eye of the storm is a really amazing place.  While we’re there, we can easily see the storm raging around us.  Winds are howling, gales are whipping up, cows are being tossed around like confetti (what, was that a Twister reference?), and honestly, we’re still in the middle of it.  The difference is, despite the storm raging all around us, when we move into the eye of the storm with Jesus, we’re protected from it.  There will still be consequences, pieces to pick up, things to rebuild and remake, but Jesus moves us into a place of calm and rest, where we aren’t being drenched in the torrential rain.  We can just sit beside Him on the ground, secure in His presence as He gives us peace and tranquility.  We can’t stop the storm, and He might decide not to, but we can still have peace in Him.

I encourage you to find the eye of your storm.  You can’t get there on your own; you’ll have to have Jesus walk out into the storm and take you there.  I guarantee, it’s worth it.

I Love You

The other day I walked past an elevator, and I thought to myself, “I wish this were a movie and I could just hop in that elevator, hit the button labeled ‘happier world,’ and go.”  Sometimes life in this world is very hard.  Okay, most of the time life in this world is very hard.  There are papers to turn in, endless obligations at work, constant demands on our time, a million things we’ve done wrong, four times as many as that of things we just haven’t done yet, and countless other problems and uncertainties.  Sometimes it can be overwhelming.  Sometimes we can feel like we’re drowning or suffocating in our miseries and problems.

That’s what these last few weeks have been like for me.  There has been a lot of stuff going on, and I honestly didn’t have the emotional resources to deal with it.  I spent a lot of the last two weeks going through my life trying not to think about anything, because thinking about it made me feel like I was powerless and hopeless.  Frankly, I still feel a little like that.

However, I feel like I can make it through.  That’s not because things are getting under control or anything is getting easier, because things are definitely still spiraling out of control faster than I can try to grab onto them.  The other day, though, I got a note from a really good friend and brother in Christ.  It was great to hear from him, and that in itself would have been enough to make me feel better for a whole day, but at the end of the note, he wrote this awesome sentence that made me feel like maybe there was hope after all.  It was three simple words: “I love you.”

I left that page open and centered on those words for a week, and when I was really frustrated, when my eyes were red from crying, when I felt like my other relationships were falling apart, when I felt like there really was no hope for me and I was nowhere near good enough, I would switch over to that tab and read those words over and over, and I would feel like even though I am a total screw-up and there was still a lot pressing on me, at least someone thought I mattered and loved me.

I wish that my other friends and the other people around me would tell me that sometimes.  People mean a lot to me, and I always try to make sure that they know that they mean a lot to me, and when I am caught up in a whirlwind of obligations and disappointments and frustrations, when I start to feel like I’ll never escape these feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness and depression, I just want someone to look me in the eye and tell me, “I love you.”  It is really something amazing, the power held in those words.  They are comforting and reassuring, gentle but forceful, small but overwhelming.  There were exactly what I needed right then, and they are still exactly what I need right now, and I bet they are what you need, too.

So, I love you.  I really do.  I think you are a wonderful and amazing person in so many ways, and I am grateful for you.  I just hope that we can all remember it.

The Surreal

I love surrealism.  It’s probably one of my favorite things ever.  If you’re not familiar with surrealism, dictionary.com (my favorite!) defines it as, “a 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.”  I think it’s fascinating, because there really is no way to explain the subconscious or anything incredible about the way the world works by employing imagery that is found in day-to-day life.  What other way is there to express the creativity and wonder of the human mind?  How can we express the depth and power of love in any other way?  I love the idea that there are ideas too grandiose and unfathomable to explain or express with anything but the impossibly fantastic.

I enjoy surrealism because it’s a sort of beauty that relies solely on the human mind and its creativity to create the harmony and symbolism.  It’s not something you can look at and say, “what a pretty flower,” or “how symmetrical it is,” although I appreciate those kinds of beauty as well; particularly the latter.  I am a huge fan of symmetry.  Anyway, if I told you that the beauty of the night sky was the image of the stars singing, or that love was like someone had taken my heart and melted winter into spring, or some such thing, there’s a kind of beauty of connection there, where you have to say, “well, it doesn’t really make sense, but I can’t think of any better way to put it.”  It’s the way that utterly nonsensical concepts seem to work and explain concepts better than we can in any other way.

As far as surrealist music goes, I’m a fan of Panic at the Disco’s second album, Pretty. Odd., which has a lot of surreal imagery in it.  Jack’s Mannequin also has some great surreal imagery in their music.  What do you think of surrealism? Do you have any favorite instances?

Importance

I’m one of those people that prioritizes everything.  I love lists.  I love making lists, even about trivial things, just because I enjoy being decisive about what I feel is important to me.  Also, putting things in list form just clears my head and helps me see what’s really important and what isn’t.

Everyone, to some degree, prioritizes the things that are in his life.  If one didn’t prioritize, one would get totally caught up in things that are totally insignificant by sacrificing what really matters at the altar of idiocy.  Where relationships fall on that list is something that can really tell a lot about a person, but it’s not really the status of relationships on your personal to-do list that is interesting.  It’s how you demonstrate it that matters.

There are a lot of voices in this world, and most of them are pretty negative.  In general, they’re screaming about our inadequacies, our faults, our weaknesses, and our failures.  It’s really easy for those voices to be co-opted by our own inner voices, so that we’re just a sounding board for our own list of personal failures and shortcomings.  It can be really depressing.  Is it any wonder that there is such depression, such hurt, such anguish, and such despair in the world?  Deep down, there are a million voices telling us that we have no value, and we have no importance.

I am, of course, not saying that’s true.  Every soul has value and worth assigned to it simply because it’s part of God’s creation, and (inexplicably), He loves all of us.  But it can be impossible to feel that when we’re inundated with the voice of the world telling us how little we matter.  That’s why I think it’s really important for all of us as friends and brothers and sisters in Christ to let each other know how much we matter.  I know it’s really awkward, but I really think there is nothing worse than feeling like you mean less than the dirt you’re walking on and then having no one prove you wrong.  It can be really painful when you feel like no one cares or loves you or thinks you have any value or importance at all.  When that boy thinks he isn’t good enough to accomplish his dreams and everyone agrees and tells him to set his sights lower, it hurts.  When that girl does everything she can to show love to other people and then no one shows her any love in return, it’s heartbreaking.  When you’re drowning in a sea of misery, sometimes you can’t save yourself.  Sometimes you can’t even see Jesus reaching to save you.  Sometimes you just really need a friend to put out their hand and pull you onto the life-raft.

I think we should all strive to be that friend to someone.  Even if you can’t see it, I think almost every person in the world has their own hurts and pains, and I think we should try to make them feel like they are loved and like they have value and worth and importance.  It really can save a life.

La Fête de Saint-Valentin

Even if one doesn’t speak French, I imagine it isn’t hard to derive the meaning of the title.  As every woman in Western civilization has been thinking about for weeks and every man in a relationship just realized in horror, Valetine’s Day is coming up.  It really just seemed fitting to do a post about it, because I enjoy philosophizing about love.

I really like the idea of Valentine’s Day, but it also makes me feel a little resentful.  Valentine’s Day is really nice (in theory), because it affords us an opportunity to share with people how important they are to us and how incredible we think they are in an open environment; it’s not weird on Valentine’s Day, because it’s what everyone expects.  I really like that I can write to my friends more honestly than I usually would about how much I appreciate and love them.  The thing is, though, why can’t we do that normally?

I’m not sure how familiar you are with Myers-Brigg or Jung personality types, but I’m INFJ.  I don’t really go in a lot for that kind of thing, but there was one thing I read once when I first was looking it that really struck me and has stuck with me.  It said (I paraphrase) that INFJs have a lot of deep, strong feelings about people which they really long to share, but are constrained by societal norms.  That’s very true, at least for me.  When I care about people, I care about them very deeply.  Sometimes I feel very awkward, because a lot of times, I just want to be able to tell people how much I love them, and what I love about them, and how incredible I think they are, but it would be just incredibly awkward.  I mean, imagine if we were having a conversation and I suddenly went on a tangent about how much I loved you and just what about you I loved.  It would be odd.  You might back away, unnerved.

I don’t really expect that to change anytime soon.  I get by with just slipping things into conversation here and there and writing personal notes, but it really only scratches the surface.  If you read this and think about it, I would be thrilled if you asked to have an honest conversation about what I think of you.  I love telling people what I think of them.  And wouldn’t it be great to do that and not have it be incredibly stilted and stiff?

Humblebee

I have a friend who has a few shirts that basically advertise his humility, which always seemed sort of paradoxical to me.  One of them says simply, “Humblebee,” and the other reads, “Humble (but still awesome).”  Anyway, it’s probably good that he owns those shirts, because whenever I saw them, I would wonder if I had been acting humble, and it always made for good self-evaluation.

I thought a lot about humility this last semester, which is good because God doesn’t usually just tell me things out of the blue.  Usually He shows me things when I am already considering them.  This leads to my ignorance in a lot of areas, but it’s useful for when I’m actually working on an area of my life and hoping to see significant improvement.  Anyway, about humility.

Humility is a totally strange concept.  It’s been twisted by a lot of people to mean something like what “modesty” means, which is totally untrue.  Modesty means not being a jerk about being good at something, or downplaying your own skill tactfully.  That’s not humility.  Humility means that your thoughts dwell on other people, not on you.  There’s a great saying, the origins of which I wish I could remember (suffice it to say that I didn’t come up with it), that really sums it up:  ”Humility is not thinking less of yourself.  It’s thinking of yourself less.”

Humility has a lot of repercussions in body of Christ, some of which manifest themselves as missions work, social justice advocacy, and all different kinds of ministry.  That’s very important, and the cause of Christ would never be advanced without humility from His followers.  However, I want to talk about humility specifically in the realm of forgiveness.

Everyone has been hurt.  Maybe that person broke your heart despite everything you did for them.  Maybe your parents let you down time and time again.  Maybe your friends weren’t there when you needed them.  Maybe your most-trusted confidant let you down and broke your trust.  There are things in life that we can’t control, things that break our hearts and spirits and make us question why we ever wanted to know those people in the first place.  It’s not wrong to feel hurt over those things.  I think that the pain is a way of making it real and showing that you have value: I know that I am worth more than this because when that person told me I was not (through their actions), it hurt me and was wrong.  I think feeling hurt is normal, and even good, for a short time.  It validates our feelings and helps us know that we are valuable.  But then you have to let it go.

Yes, it hurts.  Sometimes it hurts so bad that we just want to crawl in a hole and never see that person again.  It hurts so bad that we want to close our eyes, wait a minute, and then wake up, like it was all just a bad dream.  Sometimes, we want to hold onto that hurt to validate our feelings, to say, “I dislike this person because he did this,” or “I hate her because of this,” or “I’m worth more than what they think.”  We use our hurt to justify not loving those people.

There is this person I know, and I swear that no one makes me be more humble than this person.  In the past, they really hurt me, a lot, and it took me a very long time to forgive them.  Then, after I forgave them and tried to reconcile the relationship, they did the exact same thing that had hurt me so much in the first place.  It really hurt, again, and I found myself thinking, “What a bad person.  What an immature person.  I was only doing what I was supposed to do, and they hurt me again.  I’ll forgive them, but I never want to see them again.  I don’t want to be their friend.  I wish they would just drop out of my life without a trace.”  I had a lot of bitterness against that person, until about a day ago.  This happens every once in a while, where God has to keep showing me the same thing because I am a pretty slow study.

When we act that way, we are being so selfish.  All we are doing is thinking of ourselves, focusing on ourselves, thinking of how much we are hurt, never thinking about the other person.  Maybe, by not forgiving them, by being bitter toward them, we really hurt them, too.  I’m ashamed of it, but I have been so cold to that person that it’s made them leave the room I was in.  I wasn’t necessarily rude, but I made them feel really unwelcome and unwanted.  I feel really bad for that, and it’s because I wasn’t able to see past myself.  I got so caught up in myself that I couldn’t see the damage I was doing.

Humility is at the essence of forgiveness.  Humility is saying, “I can forgive you, because even though you really hurt me, I don’t see myself.  I only see my love for you and Christ’s love for you.  Maybe you hurt me, but I can look past myself and forgive you, and keep loving you.”  I feel bad, that I wasn’t able to do that immediately.  I was really wrong to treat this person like that.  I hope that now I can humble myself enough to forgive that person and then ask their forgiveness for how I’ve acted.  I hope we all can do that for the people who’ve hurt us.  Because Christ did it for us.  Even though every sin we commit is an insult to the God who loves us so much and His Son who died on the cross so that we could be free from sin, whenever we ask Him to forgive us, He doesn’t see the hurt we’ve caused Him.  He just sees us, and He sees His love for us.  Let’s see it for each other.

Plans: A How-to Guide

Last semester, I had an English class titled “Survive… or Perish.”  Yes, the ellipses were in the class title.  Yes, I agree that it is pretentious.  I hated that class.  I hated it more than I’ve ever hated any class before, including my Women in Politics and Media course, which was quite nearly diabolical.  But I learned a lot of things in that English class which didn’t apply only to surviving in the wilderness when your arm is caught under a boulder and you have to cut it off (seriously) or you crash in the Andes and are forced to eat each other to survive (also seriously).

One of the things that people who study the science of survival emphasize in survival is the plan.  Survivors have plans.  In fact, they have plans out the wazoo.  Well-prepared survivors have plans to prevent survival incidents, plans for all kinds of survival scenarios, contingency plans for survival scenarios, and plans just in case every single other plan goes awry (usually the last plan is something like, “pray for mercy and start bargaining with God”).  If you don’t have a plan, you will not survive.  You have to have some kind of a plan, or everything will overwhelm you, and you will die.

Plans are very important in day-to-day life, not just in survival situations.  Who among us would be able to go a day without having a plan?  Whether you’re a student and your plan is go to (or skip) class, do homework (or slack off), go to work (or lay around), or you’re in the workforce and your plan is to go to work and earn money, none of us would make it long without a plan to organize our day around.  Similarly, we have plans we like to organize our lives around.  Maybe you plan to be an engineer and live in a house with a picket fence, your wife, 2.5 kids and a dog.  Maybe you plan to go into politics and spend your entire life slaving away for what you think is right while everyone around you screams in your face that everything you think is wrong and you’re an idiot.  Whatever our plan is, we wouldn’t make it through a day, let alone a lifetime without one.  Just like survivors can get overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable odds with which they are faced, so can we with circumstances in our lives.  Plans help us not be overwhelmed; they give us purpose and direction, and they keep us moving when we don’t know if we can anymore.

So, I think we can all agree that plans are important.  However, survival experts stress that there is one thing even more important than having a plan: being willing to let it go.

What’s the point of having a plan if you are just going to let it go?  Here’s a scenario: you’re lost in the wilderness with only a compass, and the only knowledge you have is that the closest civilization is due north of your position.  You quickly develop the only reasonable plan there could be: walk north and hope to find civilization before succumbing to the elements or starvation.  So you begin walking, and everything goes great for the first day.  However, at dawn on the second day, you come to a huge river, swollen with rainwater, easily and carelessly heaving around huge trees and pieces of debris.  The river is directly in your path, but you have to cross it to keep going north.  Here’s where survivors and victims are divided.  You can stick to your plan and wade straight into the river, be pinned against a rock underwater by a piece of debris and drown, or you can let go of the plan, change it, improve it, and make it to civilization after crossing the river at a calmer point or waiting for the floodwaters to recede.  The ability to let go of our plans and adapt to the situation is what enables survival.

Sometimes we get completely caught up in the plans we’ve made for ourselves.  We get so caught up that we can’t see past the plan; we can’t see everything that’s going on around us, everything that’s making our plans obsolete.  And when we finally do realize that our plans have led us to a raging river, an impassable canyon, untold grief and misery, we look around us and wonder, “how in the world did this happen?”  At that point, it’s so much harder to fix it.  It’s so hard to leave the plan behind when it’s all you’ve ever had.  It’s hard to look at your job and wonder how your career turned out this way.  It’s hard to look your husband in the eye and wonder at your failed marriage.  It’s not impossible to fix things then, but wouldn’t it be easier to not get in that situation in the first place?

God has plans, too.  ”‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord.  ’Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”  (Jeremiah 29:11)  Let’s be open-handed with our plans.  God has amazing things in store for us, but we can only experience the majesty of what He has planned if we’re willing to let go of the mundane things we have planned.  It’s hard, sometimes.  I love having a plan, and I love sticking to it.  To me, deviating from the plan is almost like committing adultery.  But I’m willing to lay it at the foot of God’s throne, because I know whatever plans He gives me in return will be so much more amazing than anything I could have ever designed for myself.  The best plan we can have is to keep an open hand and an open heart, and go where God directs us.  Because whatever He has planned, it’s going to be totally awesome.

The Food of Love

“If music be the food of love, play on,” says Duke Orsino of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which is a hilariously awesome play, if you haven’t read it.  That’s not the point.  The point is, music.  Music is amazing, and definitely one of my favorite things ever.  Music is amazing because music is everything, nothing, and all the shades of grey in-between.  It’s everything to everyone. Music brings people together in a way that other media simply cannot.  It crosses boundaries put up by language, ethnicity, region: anything by which humans divide the self from the other.  Music eliminates, or at least softens, those boundaries for a time.  No matter what kind of music it is, it meets us where we are and brings us joy.  Whether you’re living in another culture and enjoying the easy familiarity of music in an unfamiliar environment or feeling alienated by everyone around you, music finds that quiet, aching part of your heart and speaks in the silence (as music is wont to do).  As Robert Browning once said, “He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once.”  Music speaks without words or languages, and you don’t have to understand it to enjoy and appreciate it (although the appreciation only grows with understanding of the phenomenal intricacy of a piece of music). Music is therapeutic.  Over the ages, it has consoled and comforted and coddled the hearts of many broken men.  Some examples:

• “Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.”  –Oscar Wilde
• “Music is a friend of labor for it lightens the task by refreshing the nerves and spirit of the worker.”  –William Green
• “Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead.”  –Benjamin Disraeli
• “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”  –Berthold Auerbach

Sometimes I feel so sad and overwhelmed that it’s almost more than I can bear to even think on the things which are weighing heavily upon me.  In those times, I find that the only thing that I really find solace in is music.  I have a playlist full of songs that are reserved almost exclusively for that purpose.  Do you know the sort of sorrow which is relieved by sighing?  And after the sigh, one’s heart feels just a bit lighter, momentarily, fleetingly?  Of course, the sorrow always settles back in.  When I listen to music, I feel that lightness linger while the music plays.  I hope that is what other people feel, because it’s probably the only reason I haven’t absolutely given up. Music is close and dear to the heart of God, as well.  I think it is the most amazing gift He ever gave us, besides our own salvation.  ”Music is God’s gift to man,” quoth Walter Savage Landor, “the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.”  According to William P. Merrill, “There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is.”  I am thankful to God every day for music. Music shrinks and crosses boundaries, lifts and caresses wounded hearts and spirits, and gives us a glimpse of Heaven on earth.  What more could we ask for?

Vulnerability

Friendship rocks.  It’s one of the best things ever, I think.  I personally love having people around that I can go out for coffee, or hang out and jam out, or go see a movie with, and it is totally awesome.  The thing is, there’s more than one kind of friendship, and the most important one I know of is an emotionally vulnerable, intimate friendship.  To me, this kind of friendship is a picture of the type of relationship we have with God, on a smaller, less grandiose scale.

An emotionally vulnerable friendship is a friendship where we are totally transparent with the other person; we share our deepest thoughts, feelings, ideas, and desires with the other person, and they share theirs with us.  These relationships are really important, I think, for a few reasons:

• A friendship where we can really share what’s on our minds and hearts is a friendship where we can have true fellowship and spiritual refreshing and renewal.
• An intimate friendship is a picture of the relationship we can have with God.
• Let’s face it: have you ever felt like you were going crazy and had to get all your frustration or whatever out?  An emotionally vulnerable is a great place to do that, because the other person probably already knows how insane you are.  You aren’t throwing them a curveball.

Despite being important, emotionally vulnerable friendships are difficult to form.  They’re formed in ways that are almost directly opposed to human emotional nature, which makes them almost uncanny.  An intimate friendship is one in which we are entirely open to profound emotional hurt.  The other person knows so much about us that, if they had the motive, they could wreak inconceivable havoc on our psyche.  They know our deepest fears and concerns, and the idea of allowing another person access to such undeniably dangerous information is something that flies in the very face of self-preservation.  It’s very easy to deny anyone that knowledge, but it’s very hard to open ourselves up to the kind of vulnerability that could end in personal psychological destruction.  A real intimate friendship that will last is one in which we and the other person make two separate commitments: the first, to be entirely emotionally vulnerable with the other person; and the second, to never cause the other person emotional distress.

Trusting people like this is difficult, and generally it is not instinctive.  Perhaps you’ve known someone for such a long time that trusting them with things they could use to destroy you is second-nature, but for many of us, it’s not.  Often, trust is an act of will.  Trusting someone says, “Telling you this may cause me untold grief, but I have faith that you will not use it against me.”  It’s especially hard to trust someone in an area where we feel very vulnerable already, but by building that trust up, amazing relationships can be formed.

Intimate relationships don’t always turn out well.  Sometimes someone will, knowingly or unknowingly, do something that decimates the relationship.  It’s a hard loss, and a painful one.  Discretion is necessary, and discernment invaluable.  But the amazing love that can be shared in an intimate friendship is worth the chance of pain, and it’s in truly intimate, vulnerable friendships that we can see the love that Christ has for us, and the kind of relationship He wants us to have with Him.