sorry, wrong blessing

Humility, I'm pretty sure, is the worst thing to pray for. If you've never tried it, pick a day when you're feeling brave and extra Christian; ask sincerely and openly to be more humble; thereafter, wait for the cosmic smackdown with which life will soon pummel you.

That is why I have not prayed for humility recently. Having only a few months ago emerged from a long and terrible depression only very partially documented below, it would have seemed... morose. But it appears God is in the habit of dispensing unrequested blessings [we who hold B.A.'s in theology call this Grace], and so I am currently swallowing large chunks of Humility garnished with Dependence and I think there are supposed to be some Trust sprinkles on the top, but I tend to peel those off and not eat them. This extended food metaphor, because my feelings about this whole life situation are exactly like the time my wonderful beautiful friend made homemade moon cakes for Chinese New Year. She had worked so hard and been so kind to share with us, and I love trying new foods and wanted very badly to like them; however I could barely swallow a bite of moon cake but I just kept doing it anyway. [to recap: God = underappreciated Asian friend, moon cake = current life lessons, me ungratefully wanting to be somewhere else = identical in both situations].

Because everyone is asking me what my plans are now, and my only choice is to tell them I don't know. What I want to say is, "I worked very, very hard to do a lot of things well in college, and I worked very, very hard to apply for jobs that use those things, but it's a real tough Job Market as you may have heard. And I am not in Grad School because I thought I was supposed to do noble things this year instead but it turns out no one wants me to do noble things for them." But mostly all I have the opportunity to say is, "I don't know".

Looking people in the eye and saying "I don't know" is the hardest thing.

And it shouldn't be. Unemployment is happening to a lot of people, especially college grads. And I don't have to be ashamed that I don't understand the point of this calling right now. And the people asking the question care about me; they're not looking for reasons to secretly belittle me. It's just pride, just a lie that says if I was really good enough I'd have a purpose beyond following Christ for today.

But as I wait I am reminded that I think of myself more highly than I ought, that I do not deserve a job or a boyfriend or turn-by-turn life directions. I do not deserve anything, but God loves me and I am being absolutely lavished with his gifts, and the reasons for that have nothing to do with how I earn money for the next year. I am his daughter and he wants me still; he has not abandoned nor forgotten me. But neither does he need my approval before enacting his plans.

That is humility for me, now.

A few months ago my brother convinced me that it was important to jump in freezing cold water at least once in one's life. He said you can't understand until you've done it, but you simply must do it. I remembered his wise 19-year-old words while at the beach in New Hampshire last week, and determined to run into the 51-degree ocean until in over my head. By the time the water came above my knees, I couldn't breathe; everything in my body was revolting against this torture and the only thing I could think was keep running, keep running, this is important somehow. And he was right. I got in over my head, ran back out, toweled off my icy salty skin and felt like a better, newer person. There is something exhilarating about the cold when you have endured it through sheer willpower and the defiance of being alive.

Experience has taught me that this is what the cosmic smackdown is like. Everything in you says you can't and you won't endure. You gasp and thrash about in alternate anger and confusion. But you simply must do it, and when it is over you realize that you are different even if you don't understand how or why.

But dear GOD, am I humble enough yet?

 "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain; he will bring out the top stone amid shouts of 'grace, grace to it!'... He who has despised the day of small things will rejoice." Zechariah 4:6,7,10

What I do when no one is looking

For two weeks I've been adventuring in New England with John and Diff. Here they are looking rugged:

 

We are back now, but while I was in New England, my parents went to Real England and my brother left for his job at camp. I will have the house to myself for ten days and so, after I said goodbye to my two dear friends, the thought crossed my mind -

i am more alone than i've ever been.

Not even in a sad way, really. Alone and lonely are not the same thing. Just, the fact of the matter is, I've never lived alone for so long without a friend or boyfriend constantly available. I've especially never lived alone with 100% unstructured free time - there are things to be done, but no schedules or deadlines.

So far (as in, for the past 36 hours) being totally unattached, uncommitted, unlooked-for, is as freeing as you'd imagine. I thought about continuing my travels on to North Carolina or Argentina without telling anyone, just because I could. 

(maybe... after I do my laundry).

I settled, mid-return-journey, on just going hiking.

So I did...

And I walked across this log on a dare from myself, and no one had to worry about me...

 And I climbed on rocks and sat in places and thought about things for a very long time before trekking back.

On the drive home I explored a couple of the places I've always wanted to stop at, but never had the time for. This abandoned house was locked:

This church...

 Was not...

...Although it was somewhat protected by a very scary gravel road between that sign and the chapel to which it points. This is quite literally the entire building; I was standing in the doorway, about three feet behind that last pew. 

All these photos and blather to say, so far I've demonstrated that left to my own devices, I go exploring. I also:

- talk to myself

- turn my computer on and off many times a day

- do lots of things at once 

- am fairly responsible (so far)

- introspect like it's a legitimate hobby

Which is what this post was meant to be about - all those great thoughts- but it seems to have turned into a captain's log. Wind NNW at 3 knots, hope to sight whale on the morrow...

Thoughts to come.

reflecting

It’s not that I don’t have enough thoughts about Havenplace. It’s that there are too many, and I’m worried I’ll accidentally write a book and then where would we be? I’m worried I’ll misrepresent myself or other people; I’m worried I won’t make sense.

Because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that everything is too complicated. People talk about poverty, abuse, evangelism and love like they are simple things but they are not. They occur in patterns, cycles, probabilities, it’s true, but no one who proves the rule is not also an exception to it. These are not problems or solutions, they are people – beautiful shattered people whose strength I’ll never know because I’ve never felt their pain. All unique, all valuable, all absolutely infinite and so how could I presume to fill their needs?

I can’t. It is a thing too wonderful for me when the Spirit translates my pitiful efforts into the spark I sometimes see – the light of recognition: this is love. Too often I look into the eyes of the neglected, the forgotten, the scarred, and I worry they’ve lost the ability to recognize grace where it’s found. And so the glancing connection of spirit to Spirit to spirit in that moment makes me able to trudge back again even when the weight of unrecognized sacrifice reminds me how unworthy I am to carry my Savior’s cross. I suppose on that road, step after step, he remembered the laughter of his brothers amidst the breaking of bread, but also the tear-lined face mirroring the fissured heart of one begging only that her story be heard. These are the things worth dying for; this road the crucible where life is truly lived. Left foot, joy – a joke, a hug, the begrudgingly-offered friendship of a longtime pool competitor. Right foot, pain – drugs. incest. the twins are in state care and their father’s up on drug charges. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, but not like a magic hat takes away your quarter. Like your grandmother takes away your hunger, trapping it inside herself and hiding it as it grows. Eat your bread and go play.

And yet somehow I feel richer, fuller than I was before I started losing every Tuesday to eat Little Debbies for dinner. It was a good bet, on the whole, the smaller version of how mothering is a good investment. I could never say they had nothing to give me, nothing to teach me, that they didn’t change me gallons more than I changed them. These are my friends and I love them and they love me in their ways. They are my mirror, poverty the magnifying glass to blow up sin writ large, and yet they shame me with their generosity, their strength and the ease with which they tell me who they are. In a room full of food stamp recipients, paranoid schizophrenics, felons and sex abuse victims, artifice is the most laughable fault of all; and so my precious friends remind me: the pretense of perfection is the most idiotic of upper-middle-class luxuries, a damn expensive waste of all our time.

So here is the grace in it all: that I could have set out on a noble course toward Service or Justice and found myself, in the end, blessed beyond measure, served and justified by those the world would abuse and judge. That I could blithely go about “changing the world” when all along I alone was being changed; that somehow I will only begin to become set apart if I burrow down deep into the middle of the darkness.That love is not a shining deed done at the play’s crisis but the mundane repetition of putting out snacks and yielding a thousandfold harvest of trash strewn about and then I wonder what gifts I, too, have diligently ignored and yet my Father still gives, always gives. The grace in it all is that the command was the gift all along, that the faith and obedience by which I thought I offered so much were only the instruments by which God blessed me. That the anger I once felt at the stubbornly gluttonous church has burned away, leaving only an ardent longing that she would behold with me the face of our King hidden there in the ashes.

As the world fills up with words and soundbites and opinions

Maybe a certain quietness is demanded if we are to be heard.

Steady still confidence and integrity are their own apologists in a crowded frantic pixelated bustle.

Living different means sharing space and time and food, because we know those are sacred things

And this world longs to be consecrated.

dear preston yancey

dear preston yancey.

i am writing to you to confess some sins i have sinned against you. You don't know me and i don't know you, so it will probably be awkward if you ever read this, but we both know that the blogosphere is a strange strange place where people routinely spill their secrets across the world wide web of strangers. it's the hip new thing, like planking and feeling vaguely concerned about africa.

So anyway, i thought you should know that i am extremely jealous of you, especially since you rejected my submission for your guest post series. Here is what you said: "At 49 posts in 25 days, I had to draw the line somewhere". This made me feel as bad as i felt in ninth grade when only three people put me in their myspace top eight, because you literally just told me i wasn't in your top 49.

Maybe next time, you could send me an email that just says,

NO.

-preston yancey.

But i'm not angry. it's really not your fault that i have an extreme sensitivity to rejection. i think i have a chemical imbalance. i read about it in a book one time.

No, i'm not angry, but envious. terribly envious. i want what you have and i don't want you to have it. i am jealous of your ability to invent poetic compound hyphen-words to express exactly what you are feeling. i am jealous of your friends who like to cook with you. i am even jealous of your giant thesis paper because you will come out of your undergraduate career feeling like you accomplished something.

Clearly, i am insane. No one envies other people's homework.

Anyway, now that i've gotten that off my chest, i hope you will forgive me so we can get back to our normal non-relationship without any bad feelings between us. And i will try not to be jealous of you any more, because what you have isn't actually any better than what i have. You only wish you were the Spades champion of Lee University. You only wish you had a cool improv team to hang out with. You only wish you had something better to do than google your own name.

(don't worry. we all do it from time to time.)

And good luck with all your things. I will continue to read your beautiful blog, and you are welcome to continue reading my vindictive-sounding, fragmented one.

But i took you off my top eight.

a hard thing.

a hard thing is when you can't remember why you believed some things. you wait and you try to sort it out but the answers you would've given someone else don't make sense any more. you thought they would, you didn't mean them to be silly and small answers, you expected they'd be real and comforting and true and wide enough. but things you thought impossible keep happening, and you wonder if grace is any more impossible or any bigger than everything hurtful in this impossible big world. sometimes the beauty is only barely staving off a lot of ugliness, like when your jacket's too thin for the cold and no one offers you theirs.

frustration: take it out on people you don't know

"Blessing never ceases to follow obedience". Actually, random high school facebook friend, it does. Unless you have some weird definition of "blessing" that i don't want to hear about. Sometimes, obedience leads to crappiness and not much else. Is it ok if we all agree on that? Can we stop with the platitudes?

Who decided "platitude" was a good word? It always distracts me from my self-righteous indignation when i think of this word because it sounds like "platypus" and "attitude" stuck together, but obviously it has nothing to do with those.

Someone should tell God that he is seriously messing with my theodicy right now, because he doesn't appear to be listening to me.

[ok, God, that was a potshot, and you're not even a person i don't know... but, well, i'm whining, and there's a long tradition of that in the Bible, so there. THERE.

maybe you should come in a thundercloud and yell at me like you did to Job. i would definitely deserve that.

one time my new testament teacher declared that Jesus should have just magically made the widow of Nain happier instead of actually raising her son from the dead. if you're not going to fix things, you could just make everyone magically happy.

oh, that's one of the stupidest things you've ever heard? i thought so too.]