The End of Winter

I will never understand why we start the new year in the middle of winter.  Nothing is new in January; it's all dead, dying, cold and generally dull.  We should honestly save resolutions for Easter because I'd be willing to bet more people would stick to an exercise routine in 70 degree weather than a gym regimen in the middle of the coldest month in the Midwest (except for this winter when all winter months have sucked).






It caught me off guard to see Sweet Williams blooming yesterday.  I should've expected their arrival given the nice weather we've been experiencing for the last few days, but I've gotten so used to the endless winter, I'd forgotten they would grace us with their presence at all. 






I needed to see Sweet Williams.  I think I needed to be reminded that all winters--figurative and literal--come to an end. 






I'm still working on how that ending looks.  I understand very little about forgiveness, grace or even gratitude, and I didn't know that until we were hit with an endless snowstorm.  So that's where this season begins--a few steps, patches of purple-y carpet and the hope of glory.

On Facebook...Again.

I've laughed at all the stupid memes on Pinterest that point out how Facebook makes us hate people we know while (insert name of other social media here) makes us love people we don't know. I've laughed because there's a ring of truth about that meme. And several years ago, that was one of the reasons I chose to take a step back from Facebook.

My reappearance was innocent enough. I realized a few family members didn't use Instagram so I linked Favorite's Facebook profile in order to force post pictures from Instagram. After a week or two, I realized I was missing the comments on those pictures, so I would occasionally log in to read those. While I was there, it happen that my mom or one of my SILs was on chat so we'd talk for a few minutes.

 Eventually I was reading through the newsfeed regularly, participating in a constant chat stream with several of the teachers from my school and occasionally commenting on a few of the things that caught my interest. I would gripe to Favorite about the articles I found frustrating and found myself discontent with people who posted information I found to be narrow...or worse yet, I began to feel some posts that were likely innocent markers of that person's emotional state were personal attacks toward me and mentally began to hold them accountable for their, admittedly innocent, action.

 Here's where it gets even stranger: outside of Facebook, I don't care. Your beliefs about my personality, your personal preference on breastfeeding or recent weight loss are really none of my business. (I'd prefer to know your individual stance on vaccinations so I can decide whether or not to keep my kid away from yours, but again, that's your choice.) I am totally open to conversations about Common Core, World Vision, Christianity or personal problems, but I don't feel Facebook promotes real conversation. Sure, social media is supposed to help us all become more social. But I don't know that we should give that type of fragmented exchange the same weight we give to a fluid conversation. It's a whole lot easier to part and parcel someone else from behind a computer screen than it is to do it face-to-face.

 There are a lot of things I enjoy about social media. I love seeing pictures from old classmates. I like being on the periphery of most conversations--basically to feel like I am a part. Plus, it's nice to know when important things go down in the lives of old friends (or family members)--like in the case of my high school best friend's dad who went through a lung transplant recently. Without access to Facebook, I missed most of that stuff. And I felt a little cut off from people I actually saw on a regular basis. (Mostly because the conversation had started and ended on Facebook...usually the night before.)

 But if I weigh that against the ill feelings and the lack of real exchange with another human being? Facebook doesn't even come close. I'm trying to decide if I'll keep force posting from Instagram. For now, I think I've decided I will. There aren't many comments on Facebook anyway, and Favorite, who doesn't have Instagram, can still see, too. If I'm tempted, knowing what I know about how I'm impacted by Facebook, then I'm just not thinking clearly.

 After all, who needs a reason to dislike people they know in real life?

The Truth in Love

“If our only response is to speak the truth in love to the exclusion of the hundreds and hundreds of verses that call us toward mercy, peace, kindness, hospitality, and patience while leaving judgment to God, the only One able to judge fairly and correctly (James 4:11-12), consequently also the only One who transforms and sanctifies, then I insist that you exercise that practice with every single sinner in your life.  Every single one.  Every single sin.  Otherwise that obedience has no integrity.  Every. Single. Sin.  I want it called out in truth and love, I want it blogged about, I want it argued into legislation, I want it discussed in public forums outside of genuine relationships, I want articles, I want excommunications.  I would respect a believer who calls out every sinner and sin around him in equal measure over one who selectively applies Scripture to certain categories. (I would not like that believer, but I would at least respect his consistency.)”  --Jen Hatmaker

I’ve been in the middle of this weird personal crisis where I keep trying to determine what it means to be in community with other people, how to best use my gifts and even this strange assessment of what my gifts actually are.  In a lot of ways, I’ve been limited in how I can write about it—partially because there seems to be weight in a word written and partially because I just don’t know what to say.  Even identifying a starting point is difficult.  Well, if you’re the kind of person who needs clear starts and stops.

A lot of people do—need clear starts and stops, that is.  And those starts and stops must be accompanied by clear reasons and must be logical to the person listening.  Rarely does the logic allow hurt on both sides and even less often does it account for the consequences of choice.

That’s where I’d like to start at least.  I’d like to call it speaking the truth in love and just lay all my raw thoughts out there from the last year.  That’s one reason the quote from Hatmaker caught my attention.  Her basic admonition is that we tend toward the truth we feel is necessary to share and assume love is present because this person or that person is/was tragically unaware of his/her transgression.  But it also caught my attention because I don’t know how best to love people.  And as someone who often says the wrong thing without even intending to (or realizing it), I can tell you loving people in Christ and for Christ feels like the equivalent of holding a live grenade.  I’m not sure when or how it will go bad, but I am sure we’re all heading downhill.

Usually, that means I’m hesitant to commit to people.  I stand to the side and watch and carefully catalog what I notice.  I see that you are afraid people won’t like you or that what you’re doing will be unsuccessful so you attempt to guide situations or people’s thoughts in the direction you’d most like them to go.  I’ve noticed that you’ve been hurt badly enough to cushion your interactions with everyone.  Most of the time, I catch your insecurity and your attempt to cover it with positive statements that often come across (personal opinion here) as hollow. 

Watching has afforded me a wide assortment of knowledge about other people.  Very often, people will be clear about exactly who they are if we are patient enough to pay attention.  So while some of it is based on personal opinion, much of it is performed loudly enough that I get it without ever allowing my thoughts to enter the picture.  That said, my problem isn’t really seeing people (for the most part).

I just don’t know what to do with that information.  I don’t know how best to love you in your circumstance.  Favorite says I come off as judge-y.  I don’t know how that statement could be anything but true.  If I can see you, but I don’t know what to do with you, I find ways to stay away from you.  It’s that simple and that complicated all at once. 

Here’s my struggle with how this applies to community, though:  I deeply understand the theology of grace.  I know myself and my tendencies and I am flabbergasted that Jesus would also see those things and want me anyway.  My unsurety sits firmly in the fact that I have no idea how to react toward other people with that kind of grace even when I approach the situation with that intention.  I either come off as the judge-y “speak the truth in love” Christian or I come off as the person who is completely dismissive of behavior that isn’t always best ignored.

So when it comes to best using my gifts within my current community?  Yeah.  No idea.  And, unfortunately, just putting gifts into practice isn’t always the issue.  (There’s a lot more to be said on that topic, but one thing at a time for now.)

I’ve never seen the play Wicked, but at the beginning of the song “For Good,” Elphaba sings, “I’m limited…just look at me, I’m limited…”  I think of those lyrics pretty often anymore.  We are so limited in our abilities and our responses—to ourselves and to others.  Nothing is more clear to me than the need for a Jesus who can break through all that nonsense.  So I keep asking—crisis, questions and all—what now?

To Stabilize in Rejoicing

"Stability of the world depends on the rejoicing in Your [God's] works." --John Calvin

Voskamp asks, "Doesn't my world also stabilize when I rejoice in Your words?" (One Thousand Gifts Devotional 31).

I'm trying to process those thoughts because I don't want to be flippant about this relationship that often confounds me.  I think maybe the difficulty is in the word "stabilize."  The first entry on Google says, "Make or become unlikely to give way or overturn."  That makes so much sense to me, because my initial feeling about stabilization indicates an "evenness" I never have in difficulty.  I'm far too emotional--too up and down to be "even" during chaos.  And I've envied people with that kind of demeanor.

But the fact that rejoicing in God may be the very thing that keeps me from "giving way"?  Yeah.  I get that.  In the middle of the darkest days, when I first started praying for God to save us from drowning, I couldn't' see any movement on His part.  I prayed in panic daily--sometimes hourly--because I honestly felt like breathing was an impossible task.  Looking back, I know that "no response" isn't true.  (Though, I only saw Him through this "looking back.")  We never overturned.  We breathed in water, but did not drown.  We walked through the fire, not without scorch marks, but without being burned up.

That description doesn't sound much like rejoicing--simply praying for survival.  But isn't acknowledgement of God in itself rejoicing?  Isn't it honest and open recognition of who He is?  A recognition of the creation in the chaos, to quote L'Engle.

That's how I didn't overturn.  I cried.  A lot.  And I was honest with the One Who Hears.  

So I guess my world does stabilize in rejoicing.  I'd never thought about it like that.

You've Been Weighed; You've been Measured

I've spend this pregnancy in a weird place--overwhelmed and excited to do something again we'd never thought we'd do once and simultaneously cursing the state of my body when we learned Ryan would be a big brother.  It's sad, and I'm mostly ashamed to admit that I've looked in the mirror with far less wonder than I did when my belly grew the first time.


All my life, I've heard jokes about men and how they compare "members" without realizing women are far worse about measurements.  We aren't just concerned about inches, but about pounds.  We measure weeks and months, ounces and amounts.  We measure intensity and emotion and worth and contribution.  We measure cost and time and devotion.  And when the sum total is in?  We almost always find ourselves wanting.

All that measurement leaves little room for wonder.  It suffocates grace and makes gratitude almost impossible.

It's strange to me that a year of focused gratitude would come at a time when I'm so zeroed in on measuring--as strange as last year when the word "peace" was dictated in a year of chaos.  I've spouted sayings that indicate situations like this are how we learn, but I wonder why that's the case.

Ann Voskamp describes thanks as recognizing the gift set before us, and, ultimately, how that attitude makes joy possible.  Because, she points out, "wonder really could be here--for the seeing eyes" (One Thousand Gifts Devotional 27).  Maybe my lack of gratitude stems from my unwillingness to see, and leads to my inability to perceive the wonder of what's around me--the gift of my boys, my coworkers, my church.

Far too often, I see the obligation and fail to receive the gift.  

Dismissive Communication

Contract negotiations at my school are in a much better place than they were two weeks ago.  I've had trouble determining right action during the whole process because I'm not a huge fan of the Us/Them mentality that develops out of situations like this one. 


When those mentalities first developed, I shrugged my shoulders because I believed it really was just part of the process.  My dad served on a school board for a couple of decades, so I feel like I speak from experience there.  I feel like the real loss, though, comes in the form of an unwillingness to reach out for the sake of conversation--people don't want to look at each other.  Forget talk.


We stop hearing each other.  We stop understanding that some (though definitely not all) motives might be good intentioned the way ours are.


I'm guilty.  After several months of emotional ups and downs on a contract, I just wanted resolution.  I got tired of hearing that my one concern as a teacher was money and I was sitting pretty with a "posh" contract and I needed to count my blessings.


Those were the things that were actually said.  What I heard was that it was OK for others to have deeper concerns regarding contract negotiations, but any unwillingness on my part to accept what is offered is greed, plain and simple.  It didn't matter if there were reasonable solutions presented.  At that point, I couldn't hear them.


Sometimes it's hard to hear people.  Hearts are all tied up in words and that may mean there is intention and deep conviction behind something that sounds a little flippant at the forefront.  But I'm so quick to dismiss words--a lot because I'm an introvert and would prefer to surround myself with only people I know and connect with easily, but also because I think I've allowed myself to become dismissive with words, and, as a result, people.


It's a work in progress.  It's letting myself share what I think without being able to fully process the emotion behind it and then allowing someone else the same luxury.


That's the difficult part--allowing someone else the same luxury.


Because often there just aren't conclusions--and I need to stop drawing them.

Nostalgia

Since I've closed my blog, my only reader is you, Ronnie.  You'd think that means I'd be more willing to sit here and type the things I'm really thinking instead of constantly editing how I need my thoughts to read, but that's clearly not the case.  Otherwise, there would be more than two posts in the last four months.




I've been thinking a lot about what you said about nostalgia--particularly church nostalgia.  I think tonight I'm super guilty of the same sort of sentiment.  It's not about the old church, exactly.  I can't gloss over the problems enough to be guilty of nostalgia in that respect. 




I don't belong at The View.  I'd like to tell you I know exactly why, but I can't.  Everyone else seems to be finding a little niche, but I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing there or why I felt drawn there in the first place.  The deep connections we had before the Josh saga have largely disappeared and few people seem to interact the way they did previous to that incident.  Jermaine and Mallory, who were great connection points for me, have left for another pasture (which I hesitate to identify as "greener" as I'm not entirely sure that's the case) which was further small group displacement.  Not only that, but I really connected with Mallory which you well know isn't something I do easily.  I alienate people.  It's my personality.  But it's weird for church dynamics.  I assumed that being a Mom would automatically connect me to the other moms, but that's a misconception.  I'm probably never going to work in the nursery or kid's church.  It's just not my thing.  (And one Sunday of accidentally saying something inappropriate to a repeater would prove that true.)




I don't want to be a part of Praise and Worship.  I don't want people to look at me.  I don't want to be on the stage.  But music is such a vital part of worship for me.




So I'm nostalgic.  I miss my women's group.  I miss their consistency and welcoming nature.  I miss our understanding and their commitment to drawing others to Christ.  I miss their lack of judgment on how Christ works through individuals.  And that nostalgia means I feel sorry for the people who must really just long for the day when they felt like they really belonged.




You think that's what nostalgia is about?