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When God Looks Different Than I Thought

Last night’s small group was a lot more than I expected.

The heaviness in the room made me cry — sitting right there on the floor, with my legs crossed and my striped wool socks on — in front of dear friends and complete strangers.

Because what can you say when everything hangs in the unknown, just waiting to break?

~     ~     ~

This is the product of last weekend’s work, the last of the swiss chard standing alone in the corner. It’s too warm for October, and the bees are eating up the sugar water we left out.

I wandered the yard, taking photos, thinking what a beautiful day, and mingled in with those words was a wordless thought.

Something about pain and joy and what it means that God allows such suffering.

How do I interact with the God of Job?

How do I worship when everything is out of order? When a moment of laughing and cookie-eating is shattered by the reality of a tumor?

~     ~     ~

I am learning to encounter people in their pain, even though I sometimes feel like running away.

No. I cannot handle this. I’m sorry. Please take your pain somewhere else. 

I am learning to face other people’s pain with courage.

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[Cafe Sleep]

I could fall asleep with my head on this table, press

my hot cheek to the cool varnished wood splattered

with other people’s coffee.

 

I still like my idea of beds suspended from the walls,

folded out to catch your tired bones – who

wouldn’t like a comfy mattress for a few

minutes of rest?

 

The busy city wears out your feet and sores

your muscles; the least it can give is a café with beds.

 

But that would be so dirty, they remind me.

The logical ones. The ones who cannot

let go of fact to see perfection.

 

Yes, I admit, it would be hard to keep clean.

But oh how luxurious to sleep

to the muffled voices and toned-down laughs

of a Chicago coffee shop.

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The End of the Hiatus

So I’ve taken a break.

It was unintentional, but deep down, I know I needed it. A lot has changed since my last post, and I needed some time to think. Even my trusty journal was left untouched for almost a month. Thank goodness it (she/he, I don’t know) is patient.

Part of the reason I took a break from writing is because of the title of this blog: “Broke on my Birthday.” When I chose it, I thought it was humorous, a little stab at myself and all my recent-college-graduate friends who found ourselves, indeed, thrust into life and not entirely prepared.

But something’s changed. For me, at least. I was never actually broke to begin with, and now, through unbelievable blessing and good-timing, I find myself with a job. A JOB. Yes. I am a

bonafide

Latin

teacher.

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Latin teacher by morning, administrator by afternoon

The thing about blessings is, sometimes you don’t know quite what to do with them. When people ask what I do now, I feel this huge grin explode on my face. I’m embarrassed, actually, by my joy. Well, I’m teaching grammar school Latin. Oh, and High School Latin I. Yeah, I know, who would’ve thought?!

But as I told my cousin yesterday, over a cup of coffee at my new teacher-hang-out Barnes and Noble, I go into class every day, and I am excited. All these little faces looking at me, eager to learn. Eager to show me what they already know. All the joys I’ve encountered so far will have to wait for another post, but I can’t tell you how beautiful it is to hear a third-grader read, “Roma in Italia est”, and then tell me with shining eyes, “Rome is in Italy!”

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and thank you for supplying my coffee

So that is how I’ve been spending my days: frantically getting together enough material for seven Latin classes. There is too much information, too much new, and I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF IT.

So, welcome back to my blog. I’ve missed you.

Oh, and check it out. I may have taken a break from blogging, but I haven’t been entirely lazy…

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On Beginnings

I had the best nap of my life. Everyone had told me, “Whatever you do, don’t let yourself sleep. Push through. It’s worth it.” But after showering the grime of three airplanes and a VW van off my body, I suddenly found myself lying on the thin mattress in my hostel bedroom, the Salzburg sun streaming over me. I smiled in my cloud of wet hair and fell into the deepest sleep I’ve ever had. I didn’t toss and turn like usual; my insides were weighted down to the bed like an anchor, and when I woke up, I knew where I was but I still did not believe it. My first day out of the country and I’d slept three hours gloriously away.

I remember other things about my first day in Austria: the walk I took – alone, American, enchanted, and floating – along the street lined with trees and open fields speckled with feathery white flowers. I thought they were edelweiss, only to find out later they were weeds no one cared about. For one afternoon I lived in an edelweiss dream, and if I’d had a wicker basket on my arm I would have been swinging it. I bought a loaf of rosemary bread and a small carton of blueberries to satisfy my overdue appetite. I felt like a dimwit when I couldn’t figure out how to open the sliding glass door of the supermarket (turns out I couldn’t open it because it was a wall). And the late arrival of my roommate and good friend, her toes dirty from travel, but her eyes alight with Munchen stories.

~     ~     ~

I’ve always been fascinated by beginnings, by first things. Maybe that’s why I have a whole computer and numerous notebooks filled with witty story-starts, left to dangle in time, either through my quick boredom or my fear of lying. Because that is what I feel like sometimes – I must only write what I see, not what I make up – and all I ever see are beginnings of things. My friends who are artists and writers do not understand this, and really, I don’t either. Isn’t everything we create something we “make up”? And yet the best writing I’ve done is of the things I have seen clearly, the rooms that create themselves with plush red couches and pottery mugs filled with coffee. Whenever I try to make my own rooms – my own characters – they seem false and flat. Even when I see a character clearly, when I see her desires, her hair, her intense way of speaking, I do not always see much more than that, and it is always harder for me to finish stories than start them. This worries me sometimes, if I start thinking too much. Then I calm my over-excited self by telling her, You’re only young, you know. You haven’t really had many endings, so how could you see them?

 

The truth is, though, that I’ve had plenty of endings. That day in Salzburg was over in a flash, leaving itself in my mind in yellows and golds and freshness that few other days have given me. Over thirteen years have passed since the death of my grandfather; those long months of his illness are blurry and sharp at the same time. I’ve seen relationships change that I never thought would end, and I’ve struggled to grant forgiveness even when I haven’t been asked for it. I’ve experienced the end of four long years of studenthood – complete with rushed papers, devoured books, and attempts at lofty poetry. This move away from academia is without a doubt the largest change (and harshest ending) of my life. I am stepping out on the path to adulthood, and I’m not sure I like it. I bucked at the idea of moving home, and now that I am here, I close my eyes against the reality that I need to leave soon. I no longer have a classroom to sit in, a professor to meet with, or a project to put off until the night before. I have glossed over all the hardnesses that have littered the last four years, and I’ve shaped my college experience into a beautiful, winding, light- filled laughing thing that siren-calls to me, Do not let this go. You were never so happy, and you will never be so happy again. This is probably the first time I am dwelling on an ending instead of a beginning; it’s a lot easier to feel unchanged when you are looking back than looking forward. But there is little difference between “unchange” and “stagnation,” and I must constantly fight to keep myself out of that place.

 

I know that endings have a kind of beauty, and I know that the ending of childhood has a melancholy beauty all its own: the close of dependence, the close of naivete, and the lifting of the burden we all feel to be different from who we are. While I can attest to the value of endings, I still think I’ll always prefer the mystery and newness of a beginning. Not only does the beginning hold unknown (and therefore, full-of-potential) events, but you don’t know who you will become in the upcoming story, either. I love beginnings because of the horizonless hope they provide. You do not see the endlessly long plane ride back from Vienna to Boston. You do not see the overwhelmingly sad break-up that leaves you wishing you’d never embarked on the risk in the first place. You do not see that what you’d been studying for years to perfect is, after all, far more difficult than you’d thought. What you see is the world laid out before you, stretching stretching and beckoning you to jump in.

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[Valentine’s Day]

I danced and spun and twirled

and you watched, laughing. Balanced

a glass of pale pink wine 
in my hand –

not spilling a drop – while I danced

alone in the living room.

 

But I stopped and looked at you,

shocked suddenly. This is it, I said,

we are women. And I couldn’t believe

that I was dancing with wine, still

waiting to grow up.

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Blessings and Friendships

This past year (and really, the past year and a half) has been filled with such a mix of things. I wouldn’t call myself a planner — it’s not that I need every step in between before I do anything- but there is a huge part of me that anticipates. I imagine each phase of life, each moment, and when it doesn’t go exactly as planned, it takes me a long time to adjust to reality.

There are times when I feel so overwhelmed by God’s goodness and His gifts that I look at my life and think wow. But then — and sometimes even on the same day — I am equally overwhelmed by the things that are less than perfect. By the hurt I’ve experienced. By the disappointments I’ve faced and/or brought upon myself.

What does it mean when things don’t work out?

What does God want me to learn from all this?

Is it really a scale? Because sometimes, when a good thing happens, I think shoot, what bad thing is just around the corner?

This is not the way we are called to live.

~    ~     ~

I was reading through my journal from last year. It was a hard journal and a hard year. It was filled with confusion, anger, sadness. It’s not fun when someone you thought you knew ends up being a different color after all, a different person from the one you trust. Graduation loomed, and despite all the freedom and newness and excitement that could bring, I was scared.

In the midst of all this, I made a list. It’s what I do.

I listed all the blessings God had given me over the year. It was long. It was diverse.

But what struck me most was the amount of people.

Family. My mother who never tells me she’s too busy. My father who, in his quiet and roundabout way, lets me know that he understands my pain. My brothers and sister who have seen each twist and turn I’ve made as I’ve tried to grow into the woman I was created to be.

Friends. Almost my whole life, I have felt a lack of kindred spirits. There were a few growing up, definitely. Good, fun friends who shaped me. But that didn’t change the fact that I always felt different. It wasn’t until the past few years that I finally feel a kinship with young women like me.

This week I called K. I was driving in my car, and I felt so overwhelmed. Deadlines were coming so fast and I HATE missing deadlines. I was scared about my hospital appointment and I was scared that I wasn’t doing the right thing. So I asked her to pray for me.

She was driving too, but she prayed right there. Over the phone.

I cried while I drove, sadness and joy mixed in.

Because sometimes that is how life is.

Praise God for friends like that.

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Hospitals, Cake, and Stories

After a long day of babysitting, I came home and ate a piece of cake.

It was delicious.

Two days spent trying to figure out the next step — hospitals are scary, but every single one of the doctors and nurses was kind. They took care of me. Robert kept asking me if I was okay, if I was comfortable. It was strange when he said, “Nice to meet you,” and I realized that I’d never see this man again, after two hours of him almost holding my hand.

Still no idea, so today I went back to work and ate cake.

[The little girl I watch makes up songs and stories like it’s her job. Example:

Pre-schooler: My boyfriend’s the greatest.

Me: Really? What makes him the greatest?

Pre-schooler: He gives me popcorn every day.

If only it were that simple. ]

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From Dark to Light

“Thomas Jefferson didn’t believe in miraculous things,” my high school history teacher told us. “He rewrote the gospels, taking out all the miraculous events.”

I went home and looked it up – there it was: a miracle-less version of the gospel. I remember thinking how boring the whole thing was. And then I got to the end (it’s a little long, but it’s worth it):

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elijah.
And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
The rest said, Let him be, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.
Jesus, when he had cried out again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:
Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.
The Jews therefore, because it was the day of preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath, (for that sabbath was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him.
But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus.
And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.
Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen cloths with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.
Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.
There laid they Jesus,

And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.

I have never felt the power of Christ’s sacrifice until that point. Tears streamed down my face, and I realized for the first time that, if this Jeffersonian take were true, all was meaningless. I had never seen such hopelessness. There was no good, no hope, no joy.

It took complete absence of hope to show me the magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice, and it gave just a glimpse of what life would be like if we really were left with nothing to look towards.

I remind myself of this when all I can hear, all I can feel, is Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? The Psalms cry out to God in pain, in suffering. They do not make excuses or pretend that the suffering is less than it is. They call it what it is: horrible.

And then the Psalmists remember what God has told them. They remember what God has shown Himself to be.

A friend set this Psalm for me to sing at my senior recital. I chose it then because I knew what it was like to be in a dark stage of life, and now the light had dawned bright and warm. Every time I read it, now that I have been in another dark place (I almost wrote “somewhat dark,” but who am I kidding? If the Psalmists don’t pretend everything’s okay, maybe I shouldn’t either.), I am reminded of the hope I have in Christ.

Psalm 77

I cried out to God for help;
I cried out to God to hear me.
2 When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands,
and I would not be comforted.

3 I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.[b]
4 You kept my eyes from closing;
I was too troubled to speak.
5 I thought about the former days,
the years of long ago;
6 I remembered my songs in the night.
My heart meditated and my spirit asked:

7 “Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?
8 Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
Has his promise failed for all time?
9 Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld his compassion? ”

10 Then I thought, “To this I will appeal:
the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand.
11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
12 I will consider all your works
and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”

13 Your ways, God, are holy.
What god is as great as our God?
14 You are the God who performs miracles;
you display your power among the peoples.
15 With your mighty arm you redeemed your people,
the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.

16 The waters saw you, God,
the waters saw you and writhed;
the very depths were convulsed.
17 The clouds poured down water,
the heavens resounded with thunder;
your arrows flashed back and forth.
18 Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,
your lightning lit up the world;
the earth trembled and quaked.
19 Your path led through the sea,
your way through the mighty waters,
though your footprints were not seen.

20 You led your people like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

 

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Kinship with Strangers

I am already past the halfway-point of my TEFL course, and I can’t believe it.

Mostly because that means the time of decisions is feeling terribly close.

I was hashing it out with someone (my mother? myself? i can’t remember), and I realized that I don’t like this making of decisions. It’s not that I’m indecisive – that is far from any trait I possess – it’s that I hate the idea of being boxed in a year down the road by a choice I make now.

What if something better comes along?
Or if not better, at least different?

What if I choose something and its permanence becomes a chain on my ankle?

I read this article today on Image.org, and despite the differences in our circumstances, the woman sounds scarily like myself at times. She’s scared of making decisions, too, and actually has put off long-term decisions for 22 years.

It seems even people nearly twice my age have the same thoughts.