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An Honest Look at God

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Scary.

That’s the first word I write down. I am surprised and not surprised when I see it flow out of my pen. This is why I’ve waited so long, anyway. Because I knew I wasn’t going to like what I found.

I read in a quick stolen moment this blogpost. I’d never heard of this woman before, but her words seemed familiar; in writing her story, she’d unknowingly written echoes of my own. She wrote of when she was young and how she strived for perfection, reaching exhaustively for righteousness. She wrote of the moment she realized that God doesn’t bless work like this, that He isn’t a “balancing-act” God.

And then she sat down and wrote out all the things she believed about God. Not what she was “supposed” to believe. Not what she’d been told to believe.

What she actually believed in her core.

As soon as I read this, I groaned a little inside. I knew it was coming. Things hadn’t been quite right.

I kept reading, trying to ignore it. I didn’t want to put pen to paper and face the facts.

I still don’t know who God is.

“I see it as a time for intentional and careful reflection.” That’s what I wrote about Lent almost two weeks ago. And I meant it. I still do mean it. But now I’m staring down the fact that “intentional and careful reflection” means being willing to engage with what you find there. What I found in writing that list is that I have a lot to learn.

Am I saying that God isn’t scary? No. He most definitely is scary. He is the Creator of the Universe, after all, and power like that isn’t something you mess with. What I am saying, though, is that most of the words I used to describe the God I claim to follow are negative. Fearful. Unsure. I didn’t know how to interact with this, because there’s often a huge difference between what you KNOW to be true (God is good) and what you BELIEVE and act on (God is scarier than He is good).

[powerful. sovereign. tricky.]

Do I really think God is tricky? No. But I act like I do. I often live my life as though he were the infinite trickster, just waiting to pull one over on me. Ha! You thought I would protect you! I’ve got you right where I want you.

That isn’t God talking. That’s the part of me that still hasn’t fully grasped what it means to surrender. To give it all to Him and admit that I am finite and broken and that I don’t have all the answers.

I wasn’t sure what to do about this list, with all its biggness and negativity, and only a few beautiful qualities strewn in.

[merciful. loving (but not always in the ways I would think). protective.]

So I decided to remind myself of who God says He is.

I made another list with better words, straight from the Word of the Lord.

Redeemer.

Savior.

Merciful

Creator.

Lover of your soul.

Omnipotent.

Just.

~     ~     ~

Apparently, reflecting is not always fun. What is in the depths of my soul? Who am I really? And how do I answer these questions without answering: Who is God?

I explain grammatical concepts to my students every day. That’s an infinitive – it has no number or person. It’s like the most neutral form of the verb. I explain things over and over, and they seem to understand. When I ask them, “What’s an infinitive?”, they can spit out the answer. But do they understand? Could they use one in a sentence? Could they explain what is happening? Not always.

There’s a huge gap between knowing what is right and understanding. I may be able to spit out that list of words from the Bible about who God is, but that doesn’t mean I understand them. It certainly doesn’t mean my view of myself or my view of God has changed fully. How do I change the words in my head and the feelings in my soul? I am constantly in a state of flux – growth is painful. I can feel the pains of embarrassment, anger at being reprimanded, and my human desire to just live my life and have fun. Because who doesn’t want to have fun?

There’s a hope in growing, too. It means we aren’t stagnant. If we’re constantly growing, it means we haven’t yet arrived.

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Reading and Trains and the Beauty of Timing

I bought another book I didn’t need today. It called to me from the stack at the used bookstore. I popped in (against my better judgement and against the wisdom of my wallet), thinking I could poke around and leave without buying anything. I should’ve known better.

It was a paperback copy of Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood.

I reasoned for a moment: You’ve already read this. You do not need to buy this.

But I knew even as I held its soft covers in my hands that I would buy it. That I should have my own copy. You really shouldn’t keep recommending a book that you don’t own. At least, that’s what I told myself as I went up to the cash register.

When I think of this book, I see myself on the train. I’m holding a hardcopy from the library, and I’m reading as the brakes squeak and smash me against the side of the train (this happened only a few times, I’m sure, but in my mind it was a constant interruption). I consumed this book with a fervor that surprised me; I’d tried reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek the year before and I’m pretty sure that I will never get further than three pages into it.

There is something to be said for timing.

Dillard’s book spoke to me from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a little blonde girl discovered the world and her place in it. I was a barely-bigger blonde girl, interning at a large publishing house for the summer before heading back to college. I rode the train every day, and every day I thought Is this what will happen to me? as I watched middle-aged men and women silently board the train, silently ride the train, and silently get off. Was this what life had in store?

“I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again”
― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

[a poem wrote itself hurriedly on the back of a receipt from lunch. it was about being little and memories and contradictions. it was born out of Annie Dillard and the receipt is still in a book somewhere.]

The train moving forward, the hardcover book in my hands, my feet propped up on the runner. My stomach growling because I hadn’t packed a big enough lunch (again!), and my mind wandering to my senior year of college and what the heck am I doing and what the heck am I gonna do? The city slowly slipping away behind me and Annie’s world opening up.

“In short, I always vowed, one way or another, not to change. Not me. I needed the fierceness of vowing because I could scarcely help but notice…that it was mighty unlikely.”
― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

There was too much of me in her and it scared me. How important is it to be unique? I started hoping it wasn’t too important, because my uniqueness was being written away.

Every day I went into the city and every day I worked in a little gray cubicle. The words began to blur on the screen, blur on the page, blur in my mind. I longed for my lunch hour when I could take my little peanut butter and jelly sandwich (yay for cheap meals!) and eat in the gardens and watch poor unsuspecting people and yell at audacious squirrels. I loved words. I loved learning about publishing. But not talking for eight hours a day WAS KILLING ME.

So I escaped to Annie.

“As a child I read hoping to learn everything, so I could be like my father. I hoped to combine my father’s grasp of information and reasoning with my mother’s will and vitality. But the books were leading me away. They would propel me right out of Pittsburgh altogether, so I could fashion a life among books somewhere else.” ― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

Annie Dillard was to my 21-year-old self what Joan Didion was to my 23-year-old self. It’s all about timing. Who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t love either of them if they’d switched places.

~     ~     ~

So I bought another book I didn’t need. I think I bought it for the memories as much as anything; they’re all wrapped up inside. The book’s sitting beside me without a line or mark in it. Who reads their own paperback without marking it up? I don’t understand it. I can’t wait to get my hands on a pen.

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In my dreams I say…

I swear in my dreams.

Last week, I dreamed I said it in front of my grandmother. I don’t know what was happening, I just know the word flew out of my mouth and she was horrified, stood there looking at me, blinking, probably ready to disown me.

Two nights ago, I dreamed I said it in front of the worst possible audience: my fourth graders. They were all sitting at their desks, their faces bright, a few of them clamoring to see what we’d be learning in Latin. And out it came, “What the…?” and I clapped my hands over my mouth so fast, in real life my cheeks would’ve burned red.

There was no reason for me to make such an exclamation, no prompting from either my grandmother, or the class full of children. My psyche is freaking out.

~     ~     ~

That is a word I consciously choose not to use. I say “consciously” because a little part of me would love to break out with such profanity and look at those around me and laugh. Yes, I swear. And you want to do it, too. 

But I don’t.

Or at least, not that word.

I can’t even imagine what would happen if I did, if I stood in front of all these children who made me Valentines (spelling ‘Magistra’ like ‘Magestra’) and swore like a sailor. I would be fired, probably. No, definitely. And I would live on in their memories as their “Magistra who said…”

~     ~     ~

The name of this new blog is my attempt at the impossible: to admit to myself that I am now an adult. As I wrote about earlier, I may never feel like an adult. But that doesn’t change the fact that 99 children’s parents have entrusted a part of their education to me (albeit a relatively small part). I may not feel like a very grown-up person, but I’m as tall as I’ll ever be.

I wrote an overdue letter to my dear friend in Switzerland the other day. In it, I admitted that I love how much those children look up to me. I love that they can’t wait to see what I’ll say next – that they devour the derivatives of rex like it’s the most amazing thing they’ve ever heard. They race to get the dictionary if they have questions, and they jump to be the first actors when we act out the Latin skits in our textbook. They ask me questions that seem far too deep for third, fourth, or really even fifth or sixth graders, and I know that what comes out of my mouth is important. They believe every word I say.

Maybe that’s why I dream about swearing in front of them. I know that what I say matters so much more in those classrooms than it seems to outside of them. I can still picture the adults I admired and respected as a kid, and it’s frightening to realize that I have become one of those people. It’s frightening to realize that there is so much in the world these kids have yet to discover.

Eventually, they are going to realize that all I say isn’t gold. They’ll see my faults (“You forget everything, Magistra!” they say in chorus as I run back in to grab my water bottle almost daily), and my humanity will be all too obvious.

Someday, they’ll realize it, but it won’t be because I said ______.

285092_2161342945874_1015570950_32489021_7554639_n[Five weeks in Austria after graduation taught me: You will never feel so free again. Enjoy this. So I did. I felt young and I knew when I hit American soil, everything would be different.]

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Reading Slump

There is a stack of books by my bed that keeps toppling over. Okay, 2.5 stacks. My sister has been gracious enough not to say anything, but I’m sure it’s bugging her. There’s no possible way I could read so many books at once, so why do I insist on having them haphazardly flung around my bed?

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I spend a lot of my time wishing I had more time to read. If only I didn’t have to drive so much! I could be reading RIGHT NOW! The storm this weekend gave me a glorious snow day (!), so I had three days to fill with movie-watching, coffee-drinking, and book-reading (and it was impossible to go anywhere for the first day and a half, so I couldn’t throw my books aside for live friends, like I often do to the poor things). I was ecstatic. I piled books high on the coffee table, eager, unsure of which to start first.

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It didn’t matter which one I chose though. Cost of Discipleship was challenging (and embarrassed me a few times, actually – more on that later), but I got tired quickly. Mary Oliver, with all her beautiful expressions of nature and its inhabitants, could not take me outside my own head, and at the end of each poem, I was unsure of where I’d gone and how I got there. Jeffrey Eugenides, no matter how hard he tried with his characters’ 20th century woes and struggles with depression, could not keep me even half-engaged. Ruth Reichl, in all her food-love and witty descriptions failed to transport me to the world of the New York Times.

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I felt out of sorts, and I didn’t know why.

My book club met this week, and I was (again) the book club delinquent, arriving without having read the extremely interesting Quiet: The Power of Introverts. We had a fabulous time of birthdays and talking, but I hated that I keep not connecting with books.

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Books have been my friends since I was five years old. The first book I read was Fun with Dick and Jane, an old green copy my mom and I bought at an outdoor flea market. Since that day, I’ve devoured all kinds of books, with the exception of science fiction (Sorry, K, I can hear you groaning. I tried.). From Little House to Anne of Green Gables to Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, I read all the classics. And then came the high school standards, followed by four years of collegiate-level reading that sometimes made me want to gouge my eyes out.

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[This was literally the worst book I read in college. It was for an Irish Literature course, and we had to write a two-page journal response to each reading assignment. I remember sitting in the library, looking down at the quad, and realizing life was too short to read such horrid stuff.]

thomas

[We sang a setting of Thomas’s poem “Fern Hill” my senior year of college. I remember asking our conductor, “But what’s going on? What does it mean?” He looked at me and said, “Isn’t that your job, English Major?” I was sufficiently humbled. Here’s a recording of this amazing piece.]

I’ve been reading for nineteen years, but for the past few weeks, books have not spoken to me. I’ve tried. I’ve opened them gingerly, carefully, admitting them into my consciousness. I’ve focused on one book at a time, to see if that helped at all. It didn’t; I felt even more scatter-brained and self-focused while I was reading. I listened to music while I read. I turned the music off. I committed to a chapter a night. I made no commitments.

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[I didn’t discover Auden until the fall of my senior year. “Stop all the clocks” and “The More Loving One” still make me cry.]

My relationship with books is cooling. Or, at least, it seems we’re on a “break.” It’s an awful thing to say about my dear friends of so long. I wonder if this feeling of distance – of complacency – is at all what a long, tired marriage feels like: you have loved deeply, but now you barely recognize your own love.

eliot

[This was for my British Lit class my junior year. I had a skinny little paperback that I riddled with sophomoric notes, and that has since been lost in the abyss that is my bedroom. I refuse to buy another copy.]

I’m hoping it will come back. That my eagerness for books and characters and interesting stories will surge up and remind me of all the wonderful things that can be learned, all the beauty that comes from reading. I’m hoping that a magic book will rest in my hands, transforming my view of the world and my place in it.

austen

[I read all the Austen novels when I was around 15 or 16. That’s probably the perfect age to read them for the first time. I think I’m almost ready for round-two.]

Until then, I’ll keep reading. A page here and there, at first. And then a little more, and a little more. Again, I see a kinship with that long marriage – a working-at-it until it brims over with new life.

Books teach me new things every day, even when I’m not reading them.

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Lenten Growth

We didn’t observe Lent growing up. I guess it’s something most Baptists don’t do… I remember when I was nine or ten, one of my Catholic friends looked at my piece of chocolate sometime in March and said, “I can’t. I gave up chocolate for Lent.”

I’d never heard of Lent (I was well-educated, I swear!), so I asked her what she was talking about. She said you choose something bad for you to give up until Easter, “but I hardly ever eat chocolate, so it isn’t that hard.”

And that was that, because we were nine and had better things to do than discuss Church history or the spiritual significance of sacrifice.

IMG_1242[I guess I’m taking a pretty big risk, hanging a horseshoe upside down…]

In college, I was surrounded by so many different expressions of Christianity that it sometimes felt like a free-for-all. I could pick and choose my favorite parts of each (I still don’t know what’s wrong with this approach, as long as the tenets are there). I watched friends give up coffee, chocolate, and Facebook in pursuit of a closer walk with the Lord. In my cynical mind, I failed to understand the beauty of this tradition. It felt more like a cheapening of Christ’s sacrifice than a spiritual discipline: so giving up ice cream is your personal equivalent to Christ giving up his life? That doesn’t fly.

Last year, my Lenten season was a peculiar one. I was working three part-time jobs, so my hours were all over the place. I found long stretches of time when I could read my Bible, surf the web for interesting reading, and try to reconcile the fact that I believed in God’s power and Truth, but that I had serious fear of dying. For the first time, I felt compelled to observe Lent, and by “observe” I mean mostly “be aware.” Instead of giving something up, I would add.

Every night, I prayed to the Lord. I do this most nights, but usually in the comfort of my warm bed. For Lent, I decided to pray on my knees.

It wasn’t revolutionary; kneeling happens in every liturgical service. But for me, it was rare. As I feared a potential (huge) surgery, I needed to be reminded of my perfect posture in life: kneeling before the Creator, so that I could stand with his strength.

I had a hard time remembering at first. There were a few nights when I’d roll out of bed, groaning, to get on my knees and offer a few sentences to God. I don’t remember a word of what I prayed, but it’s the feeling of my knees on the rough rug that’s stayed in my mind.

~     ~     ~

This Lenten season, I have a lot of ideas brimming. I want to check my email and Facebook less (although work makes this a little difficult). I want to read a daily prayer or meditation, and not forget it throughout the day, like I normally do. I want to learn how to offer up every relationship – friends, parents, siblings, everyone – to be shaped by Someone other than myself.

I don’t see Lent as a time of deprivation. Instead, I see it as a time for intentional and careful reflection. And by giving up something material or adding on something meaningful, I’m hoping that the external will allow the internal to more fully connect with what it means to share in Christ’s suffering and resurrection.

Cross

[We found this cross off the beaten path as we climbed Mount Untersberg in Austria.]

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Blizzard of ’13

The brothers and I went for a night walk in the storm. We used to do this a lot when we were little – bundle up in layers and wander around in the glowy-darkness that only happens when it snows.

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I liked it better without the flash, even though the images are dark.IMG_1253

This picture looks like it could’ve come from the 1950s, with the Coca-cola machine and the clock.
IMG_1256 Kindly posing.
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The plows were the only vehicles out. They probably thought we were crazy. And we were, a little bit, singing Neil Young and Jim Croce songs at the tops of our lungs.

By the end of it, our cheeks were burning and we couldn’t look straight ahead because our eyeballs were getting sliced. “We’re like Laura Ingalls!” I said, laughing. Except, I realized, she would’ve thought we were pretty stupid, choosing to be out in a blizzard. Probably would’ve shaken her head and muttered something about 21st century wackos.

[Did I mention we had a snow day? I think I was more excited than the kids, waiting for the notification, staying up too late because hope is strong. And it paid off! A whole Friday to fill!]

~     ~     ~

This is the world I woke up to.

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I love it when the glass gets covered in icy snow.IMG_1300 IMG_1298 IMG_1297 IMG_1296 IMG_1293

Spending my morning in front of the fire. It’s quiet, at least til everyone else gets up. Trying to make a dent in “Cost of Discipleship,” but it’s not exactly a quick read. I guess it goes with the territory – “cost” doesn’t sound easy, and neither does “discipleship,” really.

Writing a letter to Switzerland, wondering what the world looks like from there, trying to share what’s been going on in this corner of it.

For someone who was ready for spring, I am certainly enjoying this wintery place.

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[thoughts on february]

February is one of my least favorite months (March taking first, I think). I know I can join the club on this one – there’s just something about the post-Christmas-ness of February, the bleariness, the seeming-longness. One of my coworkers has been trying to convince me that in fact, February has a lot to offer. Her biggest argument is a little subjective, though: “Well, my birthday is in March, so February’s great cause it’s right before March.”

Hmmmm….

The days are, indeed, getting longer, as another coworker reminded us via a mass email. There was math involved, and the math seems to show that the sun is with us a full hour more than in December. I am trying to believe it and rejoice accordingly.

~     ~     ~

I was asked to babysit on Valentine’s Day. It was innocent, a quick text sent: “I’m sure you already have plans, but…” She doesn’t know that I promised myself last year: Never babysit on Valentine’s Day AGAIN. I love children. I love these particular children, especially. But there is something oddly demoralizing about watching someone else’s offspring while they do such enjoyable things as eat at a fancy restaurant, coo at each other, and makeout. This happens on a regular babysitting evening, too, but it is inexcusable on Valentine’s Day.

~     ~     ~

It doesn’t help that when I look in the mirror, I wonder if my skin could get any more translucent.

~     ~     ~

When I went out to do the chickens this morning, my fingers stuck to the metal waterer. Just for a moment (not quite the drama of A Christmas Story), but just enough that I got a little jolt of “oh!” and realized that I am entirely and completely and unapologetically ready for spring.

That being said, a huge snowstorm is on its way. I love snow. I love storms. I love being cooped up in my house with a hot drink, a good book, and good company.

But after this one? Bring on spring.

IMG_0501Please and thank you.

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Karaoke and Curry

Last night I did something for the first time.

I sang at a karaoke bar.

Okay, it wasn’t a karaoke bar. We were at an Indian restaurant that has karaoke on Saturday nights (weird, I know). With the smell of curry wafting through the room, the long-haired dj sang his heart out, waiting for people to get the courage to come on up and sing.

While the few people in the room were trying to convince all the other people to sing, my friend nodded his head across the way.

“What about that guy over there? Why don’t you go hit on him?”

I looked over at the only man at the bar – a guy around my age. He had his nose buried in his iPod, and I don’t think he looked up for ten minutes.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“Okay, how about him?” he said, gesturing toward a portly gray-haired man who was barely taller than I am.

“What the heck?! Cut it out.”

So after an hour or so of witty banter and teasing, he finally coerced me and B, my roommate from college, to sing. I should’ve known better. I kept saying, “No, no thanks. Not really interested in embarrassing myself.” And they just couldn’t understand why two women with degrees in music would pass up an opportunity to sing in front of people.

Maybe because I don’t know how to sing with a microphone?

Maybe because I’m used to practicing for hours before getting up there?

Maybe because I’m classically trained and don’t know a thing about belting or how to perform a pop song and make it sound good?

Maybe all three of those reasons?

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[This is a little more up my alley. Or at least this is how I’m more used to performing. Here I’m singing a setting of some of my favorite Psalms composed by a friend of mine from college. I can’t wait til I can say I knew him when!]

But I got up there and did it. My friend and I sang together, but our song choice was horrible. That’s also part of the problem: all the songs that sound good in my voice and that I can perform well are so sad. Give me a melancholy song any day, and I’ll rock it. “Cry Me a River” is a powerful, knock-your-socks-off number. But that’s not the kind of song that makes for good karaoke.

Nobody booed or threw their garlic naan at us, but there was a general sense of BUMMER. When I sat down, I thought: I am never doing this again.

I’d changed my mind by the time I woke up this morning. I have to redeem myself. Next time, I’m singing something a little more sassy, a little more upbeat. Something that says “I’m fun and I sing at karaoke nights.”

Let’s Give ’em Something to Talk About.