Vanilla

What does it mean to be strong? Not in the "I can hoist a car on my shoulders" strong - I mean the "I feel like sobbing into a pillow but I'll put on my happy face" strong. Maybe it's like holding in a sneeze until after the chapel speaker's finished praying - you deal with stress but you wait until nobody sees it, and they'll think you're so capable and you have it all together. Maybe it's like holding in a sneeze until it goes away altogether.

I've been called that twice in the last week; so apparently if you keep a cool head in a non-stressful situation, or you're willing to tell a friend that you can't talk anymore, that makes you a strong person.

The funny thing is, I've never considered myself "strong" in that sense. (Or the "I can hoist a car" sense, for that matter.) When I went to visit my brother in the hospital when he had his tonsils taken out, I saw his IV and had to lie down before I passed out. When things go slightly un-according to plan, I panic and wonder how it'll get fixed. Or better yet, I mope around, bemoaning the misery that has befallen me. We'll just toss that out there: I'm a worrier, a fretter, a hand-wringer. I have just developed this trait in the last few years, about the time I started college. Am I getting all the right requirements for my major? Am I even in the right major? Well, this is what I feel called to do, but was it God calling me or just some whim? I picked to be a teacher, so I'd better get used to eating ramen noodles out of old Tupperware and wearing out shoes until the soles fall off. What about that crack in my tooth, is my nerve exposed, am I going to die? All I see on Facebook anymore is people getting married - am I left out? Will I ever get married and have kids? But shouldn't I wait for that until I've lived life a little on my own? Why am I worrying about that when I have three papers and a test due this week? The list drags on.

I believe God speaks through coincidence and repetition. (My high school AP English teacher always said, "Repetition is the key to understanding.") I believe that all of us need to hear something six or twelve times before it really sinks in and we start believing what we hear. And this week, on three different occasions since Thursday, I have had this passage shoved in my face:

Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? And if worry can't accomplish a little thing like [getting you food or clothes], what's the use of worrying over bigger things?...Why do you have so little faith?...your Father already knows your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and He will give you what you need.

 

When my pastor said he felt led to talk about this today, I rolled my eyes like, "Alright, God, I understsand You're trying to teach me something here."

 

In the past few weeks, I've been getting such a crash-course in not worrying. Like when I found out another considerable sum of money had been tacked on to my college debt, which will translate into student loans. Or when my adopted grandpa was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis - I went to visit him for maybe the last time today. Or when I haven't been able to find a job on campus. Or when I worry about my future as a teacher or, more recently, whether I will find a boyfriend or wind up old and alone. (I'm a girl, it's in my DNA to freak out about such things.) Today in church my pastor directed us to Matthew 6, that section in the Sermon on the Mount where Christ talks about possessions and worrying. And at some past point I had written in big pink letters next to the above section, "RELAX, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD."

 

I don't have all the answers. I don't know how much longer my grandpa will live. I don't know where money will come to pay off my student loans. And who knows - I may be single forever. But it's not important that I know all of those things. Because I know for damn sure I don't have to worry about them. I'm learning to be content with the life I'm living right now. I am Bethanie, single, at this specific weight, in X-amount of debt, with a living grandpa for today. Today I thank my God for having everything under control. And I'll work with what I have for today to give glory to the God who has all my problems, issues, struggles, trials, and insecurities in His hand.

 

Maybe that's why I'm dubbed "strong." Maybe it's because I know Who holds my yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows, and everything that happens during those days, and I don't let those hiccups get to me. Instead of looking at everything I'm dealing with, I look up to my Father who says, "Chill out, my child. I got this."

 

Be encouraged today, my friends. You are loved by the Father today.

Wonky

Isn't doing the right thing supposed to feel a little better than this? Usually it means jumping up and down screaming, "OH MY GOSH, THIS IS SO LIBERATING!!!!!" I've triumphed over sin, kicked the devil in the face and said, "Yeah, that's not gonna be the way things go anymore!" This is a happy occasion!

But I just want to lay face-down on my bed and not think about it. God nudges me on the shoulder and I brush Him away like, "Yeah, yeah, I know it was for the best. That doesn't mean it's any less frustrating."

I wonder if Paul ever had those moments after being tossed in prison. Again. I wonder if he looked over at Silas in the jail in Philippi and said, "You know, this schtick's getting really old."

I Peter (supposedly the book on suffering) says that suffering for what is right is actually a good thing. My situation is certainly far from "suffering" - there was no physical pain involved, no abuse for my faith, nothing like that. But the wound is there because I did the right thing, because I said "this is wrong" and changed it. I wonder if it's actually a wound in my heart. Right now my heart's saying, "You did the right thing;" it's my head that's scoffing at me, "Well, that was stupid, what'd you do that for?"

One thing's certain: I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. My brain is still working out the logistics, but there's a small voice somewhere inside me that's comforting me, "Well done, my child. You have made what is right more important than what you want."

And I suppose that's comforting....sort of. It'll take a while to process this one....

Ever

Remember that verse in Psalm: "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart's desires." As a kid I always thought that meant that, when you're in touch with God, He'll give you what you want. This is what's referred to as the "vending machine God" - He's sitting around waiting to bless you and give you what you want.

Now flip through some of the other psalms and read about David's problems, his tests, his loss. The book of Psalms has some of the most desperate literature ever written; it is here that you can find a man at his most broken. "O Lord, how long will You forget me? Forever? How long will You look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God!" What about Paul, credited as one of the most intense servants of God? He was imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked - he actually said in his letters to expect persecution for our faith.

I'm pretty sure neither of them said, "Gosh, I'd really like to be persecuted - nothing would make me happier."

As I thought more about it, I thought this meant that, the closer you walk with God, the more His desires become your own desires. You will crave righteouness and the peace that comes with it, because you will understand what's important to God and what He wants for you.

This morning I was thinking about that verse, and it clicked: maybe instead of our own desires aligning with God's desires for us, maybe He implants those desires in our hearts. When the psalm says He'll give us the desire of our hearts, it doesn't mean He'll give us what our hearts desire - it means the desires themselves were placed there by God.

I've actually been noticing this in my own life lately. I'm an English education major, and I've been thinking about where I want to teach when I graduate. I've thought about Christian schools, since that's all I've ever known - fifteen years and counting in Christian education. But last year, during our winter missions conference (missionaries come in and tell us what they've been doing and try to hype you up to go overseas to "preach the gospel") I was talking to a friend of mine about potentially teaching overseas. She suddenly mentioned that we have a people here in America that we all too often forget about: Native Americans on reservations. I started doing a little research and found statistics about reservation education (in case you were wondering, they're appalling). And for maybe the first time in my life, I felt a reassurance that God was leading me somewhere, and that He had a plan for me. In late March of this year, I wrote in my journal:

"My God, I've been praying for You to show me what to do and where to go. I've asked for a sign, for a drive, for a passion...And I've started to question if You're really leading me or not. Everything been so foggy, nothing has been definite...Two weeks ago I sat under a tree, begging You to teach me, to show me. And now I hear You. Oh my God, my God, I have that realization, that knowledge, that assurance. I can't write it fast enough - I can barely sit still, I want to run and scream and tell somebody but I can't figure out words to say it...I know it now! I'm literally drawn to my knees, face-down on the floor, writhing on the ground from the realization that this is it! MY GOD, MY GOD, YOU ARE HERE, OF ALL ELSE I'M LETTING GO!! I'M COMPLETELY YOURS!!! TAKE ME!! HELP ME TO SAY WHAT YOU WANT ME TO SAY!! TAKE ME TO THE CHILDREN WHO HAVE THEIR CULTURE AND NOTHING ELSE!! SEND ME TO THE FORGOTTEN, THE LEAST OF THESE!!"

Since then I've been learning more about the Native American culture from classes and documentaries. In that time it's been reaffirmed over and over again that this is where I need to go. And it's becoming more than "I feel like I need to do this." I actually want to do this! I find myself looking forward to graduation, when the calling of my life can be fulfilled and I can begin to do God's work in kids that I've never met but I love already.

Maybe that's what that psalm means...I feel like I'm starting to "get it."

Unheard-of

I've been reading a book by Joseph Prince called Destined to Reign, probably for longer than is really necessary for a book this short. My pastor gave it to me back in the summer and said, "You have to read this book." And in typical me-fashion, I let it sit on my dresser for about a month before I picked it up.

Oh my word. Blew my mind after the first eight pages.

I've been raised on religion basically my entire life. It's not my parents' fault, that just happened to be what we were taught at the churches we bounced to through my childhood. After twenty years we've finally found the church where we "fit", probably because it's different from all the other churches we've been to. The main message is not one of conversion (although that's important, obviously), fire-and-brimstone, or tithing (thankfully - our last church was big on that). It's one of freedom - not a week goes by that my pastor doesn't say, "NO CONDEMNATION!!!" And this book that he's passed on is right in line with that.

Maybe because I haven't been raised on such a message (this is the first time I've ever really heard of God's love for believers instead of God's judgment), the book continues to blow my mind. I feel like I need to get a bunch of copies and send them out to people - so many of my friends need this book! And it isn't just a reminder for the seasoned Christian - it's new even for this Christian who's been in and out of church for twenty years, it's stuff I've never really heard before. I want to give it to my brothers and sisters who are fed up and discouraged, trying to keep up in the rat race that religion has put us in. And I want my non-Christian friends to read it so they can understand what my God is all about, because I think a lot of them have been severely misinformed. (Some of my work friends spring to mind.) They are under the impression that God is just looking for ways to punish us, that He's sadistic and gains pleasure from our suffering, that His standards are set impossibly high just so we can fail and be dealt His judgment. But even I'm learning that MY GOD'S NOT LIKE THAT!!! He loves me regardless of what I've done or will do! He wants me to succeed and actually encourages me when I fail! I feel so cheated that I've never heard any of this before! I want to send it to those who have walked away from God because they were jilted by people who fed them religion but no truth! I want to give a copy to my Jewish friend so she'll see the joy that can be had through literation that comes from living under the New Covenant! That's what this is - it's freedom that makes me want to jump up and down, attempt to dance, sing at the top of my lungs regardless of my swollen sinuses and smoker's cough! I can barely sit still enough to write this, I can't get the words down fast enough!

HALLELUJAH! MY GOD AND MY FATHER, THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOVE AND YOUR FREEDOM!!!!

Alright

In high school we learned about the writing process: draft, draft, draft, draft, revise, final. Introduction, three paragraphs in the body, summary conclusion. Then I got to college and learned to throw out that structure.

Apparently that included the writing process as well. Let me introduce you to the actual writing process of a college paper....This was last night, when I was working on the worst paper of my college career.

~~~

This is by far the worst case of writer's block I have EVER had. (How fitting since it's the worst paper I've ever written.) I'm a writer, for crying out loud - THIS SHOULD NOT BE THIS DIFFICULT!! But it's awful. For the last six hours I've been putzing along, a line at a time, and am about halfway down the third page, with a page and a half to go. I took about a forty-minute Monty Python break, so now I'm gonna hunker down and write this sucker. I will finish it. TONIGHT!!

So it's Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee." And it's a biographical analysis, so he's written this in response to something in his life, something tragic. According to Mr. Ingram's biography of Poe, it sounds like it's about his wife. She died about two years before the poem was written, but the gap in time is explainable, he may have been grieving and really unable to process his emotions. But it was written about five months before his own death. And the last stanza is about him laying down next to her grave...Foreshadowing his own death? Like he knew he was about to die, and he was simply biding his time until he would be with her...that seems like a stretch, but it works.

GET OFF FACEBOOK.

Alright, refocused. With "Watch What Happens" from "Newsies" rolling through my head, as it is writers block set to music. Wow, I just realized how sick I am of being sick - I've had a cold for the last five days. And this pseudo-smoker's cough if getting really old.

Oh...that reading for worldview development is really long...

Right. Poe. FOCUS.

It was published in his obituary, maybe as an explanation of his death. Like a suicide note, except not, because he died of illness, not suicide.

Am I really supposed to fill up five pages? I'm on page three and Ive said everything I needed to say! What else am I supposed to put?

GET OFF FACEBOOK!!

Had to listen to "Watch What Happens." Hush, it's motivation.

Aaaaand you're back on Facebook. Crap. Alright. Back to work.

Two more sentences typed. Considering how the rest of this paper has gone, we'll call this a "roll." And I have a title. We're movin' now, boys.

He seems to be laughing at some greater power through the piece. (I actually put that line in there.) Just as their love defies the separation of death, they defy cultural bonds, since they are children but love with a love greater than adults. They also defy the heavenly beings who separate them - "neither the angels in heaven above, nor the demons," yada yada. It's like he's assuring himself that their love is different, it's special; and regardless of those who tell him to move on, or the God who took her from him, they will be together.

Oh my Lord, why is it so much easier to journal about this??

ALMOST HALFWAY THROUGH PAGE FOUR!!!!!

Dang...I just got hungry.

The question now is, could I, in all actuality, finish this tomorrow? I mean, all I have to do is a couple classes, and this is the only thing due-

THAT IS A HORRIBLE IDEA!!!!

Not really, because I have a free hour-and-a-half before class on Thursday in which to edit it...And I have other homework to do now.

Let the procrastination commence.

~~

P.S. The paper is finished. I have to revise it, but the first draft at least is finished.

Remember

I was in Mrs. Anderson's fourth grade class. Since we were only ten or eleven, they didn't let us watch the footage, but we got the ten-year-old-terms version: something bad happened in New York City and a lot of people have died. Jordan read a verse, we prayed, and the day went on as normal. When we got home I sat on the couch watching the news while I worked on math homework; we were leaving for the mountains two days later and had to work ahead on school assignments. My dad is a pilot and hadn't come home from work yet, and even though we were a good way away from New York I was still pretty paranoid. But when he walked in our kitchen I thought everything was under control. Later that night he sat with my siblings and me and told us a bit more about what had happened. I was terrified he'd have to go to war (I'd seen "Hogan's Heroes," I knew about the draft), but he assured me he wouldn't be called. And for my ten-year-old self, life continued as normal.

I didn't know it at the time, but that day attributed to a shift of our nation back to God. Now, in the years after the fact, I've realized that America is a nation under God as needed. At that point "In God We Trust" was all over the place: bumper stickers, T-shirts, billboards. And then...well, nothing. It was like God had blessed America with a littl ehealing, a little rebirth, and we waved Him back into the clouds with a "we'll let you know if we need anything else."

And we shake our fists at the sky when things go wrong and say, "Where were You when this happened?" I can just imagine Him shaking His head and saying, "Sorry, boys, you didn't summon Me for this one."

Where is God when tragedy strikes? That's the typical question. Or the other one: why did God let this happen? If God is a God of love and compassion, how does He allow (or cause) horrible things to happen to innocent people?

People who ask these questions forget that little space between creation and the Flood in Genesis, between perfection and destruction. Remember the Garden of Eden? Remember when Adam and Eve screwed up and were kicked out of paradise? There were all those pronouncements: snakes won't walk, work will be hard, childbirth will be hell. Creation wasn't cursed because God was having a bad day - the current state of our fallen world is in reaction to man's sin. Plain and simple. Two people failed, and every single person (except One) since then has paid the price. You look at every tragedy that's occurred in the history of time - the Irish potato famine, the European black plague epidemic, the San Francisco earthquake; every tsunami, tornado, hurricane, and flood; the Cambodian killing fields; shootings at schools; explosions at hospitals; and, more importantly on this day, the murder of thousands by enemy terrorists - and it can be traced back to sin. Let me say that again: tragedy is a result of sin, NOT GOD.

THE WORLD AS IT IS, IS NOT HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE. When tragedy strikes and people die, God isn't sitting removed in heaven saying, "Yeah, you got what you deserved." And if we got what we deserved, we'd be punished every single time we sinned. Oh, that negative thought you had about somebody the other day? Punished. Bam. BUT OUR GOD IS NOT LIKE THAT!!!!!! He is a God of grace, who has given us a way out of that punishment that we earn every time we sin! He grieves with those who grieve; He feels our suffering; He sees the way the world is, and it breaks His heart, because it's wasn't supposed to be this way. The only people who will "get what they deserve" are those who ignore the grace and life He extends to us (Rom. 2.7-11). We don't serve a sadistic God who gets His giggles by making us suffer, because it's not Him who makes us suffer! It's like going to the doctor with a broken leg and blaming the doctor for breaking it and not preventing you from getting hurt. God is indeed there when the world suffers, but He's not the cause.

Oh, and to you who say 9.11 was God's way of judging America: we have the account of God's judgment on a whole people. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? God's judgment then wasn't an attack on one part of the city, it was total annihilation of the entire city. When that happens in the U.S., then you can say that God is judging America.

~~~

My thoughts and prayers go to the families of those lost eleven years ago.

Chair

This weekend has has been pitifully unproductive. I'm pretty sure 84% of it was spent sitting right here on my butt at my desk on my computer. I can't even what I did on Friday night/Saturday. Like, physically can't remember. And it's not because anything crazy happened since then to overshadow it...it was just so boring that it evidently wasn't worth remembering. Apparently I wrote in my journal, because there's an entry there from then. Oh, and I skyped one of my best friends from high school, and went to get severely-overpriced ice cream downtown. (For the record, it was good. But when you consider the outrageous hike there and back, plus nearly six dollars for a milkshake, I would settle for the dinky ice cream place across the street any day, gourmet or no.) I think a movie may have been included in there somewhere. Sunday was a church day (yes, I actually went. First time in nearly a month. Broke the streak), then we made homemade soft pretzels for lunch. Which were FANTASTIC. Linus and I came back and farted around for a while, I watched the Python oratorio (made my night) and wrote a letter. Then we wound up spending the next five hours with our friends at their dorm - five fabulous, Sorry-filled, brownie-ridden, movie-soaked hours.

This morning was the Labor Day firehouse (or, if you're from Pennsylvania, fire hall) pancake breakfast. Since we had a day off from classes and pancake breakfasts are one in a blue moon (which, incidentally, we had last week - Neil Armstrong was buried by it) we hiked downtown with our brother unit. It was actually a lot of fun. We came back in the drizzle and worked on homework for a while.

No, seriously, I did: I was so bored sitting here watching Monty Python and playing Freecell that I got a headstart on my homework due this week and beyond (a.k.a. my final analysis not due until December and a biographical analysis paper due next Tuesday...for which I should have started research last week). Went for food and fireworks at the Labor Day festival (first time in my life I've ever been close enough to fireworks to be showered by ash - as a friend of mine noted, it was like Vesuvius), had one of those laughing-so-hard-that-you-forget-you're-actually-walking journeys back to the dorm. Where I sit now. In my chair, as I have for most of the weekend. I shall call him Old Reliable, because I never leave him.

Scratch that: just got up to kill a bug. Should've warned Linus before I smacked the wall witih my shoe.

I didn't do anything productive in the past three days. I'm going home this weekend, and I'm sure I'll regret not working ahead when I'm ignoring my family on Saturday night writing a paper about Edgar Allan Poe. (Alright, I actually have two pages finished on that and it was super easy to whip out. The rest is opinion....how hard can that be?) I really didn't hang out with many people (except my brother unit, and they're pretty cool), didn't even leave the village. And aside from the bored-to-productivity bout at the end, it was really, really good. It was the first legitimately free weekend I've had since...spring break. I watched the "Life of Brian" debate and got some really good material for the paper I'm writing on it (the first paper in maybe forever that I'm actually excited to write). I wrote a lot on a fiction thing that randomly came to me earlier this week and is actually becoming something intriguing.

Tomorrow it's back to real life and class and homework and a schedule. But we needed such a break, even after two weeks of class. I think we'll be able to make it to fall break. : )

Oh, and I got to explain underlying aspects of a play to an actor who was actually in that play a few years ago. Felt very posh indeed. : )

Happy Labor Day to you, whether you labored or not.