oh, for grace to trust you more

My mom often tells me how very "strong willed" I was as a child. I also got 10 times as many spankings as my brothers. (Once I told my oldest brother to "go to hell" while we built a dam in the creek behind our house. He thought it was funny and couldn't wait to tell my mom. (I confessed before he had the chance to revel in tattling and was punished by doing his share of unloading the dishwasher for a week.))

When I was about six years old, I got a dress that I would probably think was hideous now, but that I adored at the time. It had a black satin slip underneath a sheer, long-sleeved cover with red and rust-colored flowers on it. Um, how does that even sound appealing at all? Except for the fact that it swooshed when I walked.

The only problem was, it was a little too big for me. My mom wouldn't let me wear it to church, and I was angry. I remember putting it on and sitting at the little plastic Play Mate table in my room, in the dark, being angry. Brooding. Wishing I had my way. Wanting something I couldn't have. And all because my will wasn't my own, but my mother's. Not fair.

Today I was thinking about the similarities between my childhood relationship with my mother, and my relationship now with my Lord. The difference now is that I choose to surrender my will to replace it with God's, because He knows when the dress is too big for me to wear (so to speak). But I laughed somewhat pitifully at myself today as I realized how often, in my attitude, I sit at my Play Mate table in the dark, being angry because I'm not getting my way. I realized that here I've been praying "I want what You want," all the while hoping that He wants what I want. It doesn't work that way. The followers who tried to mix their own wills with Jesus' were the ones He told to go away and rethink their devotion. The followers who left their everything to follow Him became His disciples.

What would it be like to be completely and wholly surrendered to the Lord, mind, body, and spirit?

"Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground." - Psalm 143:10

self-centered love

Shouldn't it be an oxy-moron?

I have read this passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together multiple times over the past few months. But every time I read it I see further just how imperfect my love is, how I love out of my own broken cisterns, and how I love selfishly.

There is...a "merely emotional" love of neighbor. Such love is capable of making the most unheard-of sacrifices. Often it far surpasses the genuine love of Christ in fervent devotion and visible results. It speaks the Christian language with overwhelming and stirring eloquence. But it is what the apostle Paul is speaking of when he says: "If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames" (1 Cor. 13:3)--in other words, if I combine the utmost deeds of love with the utmost of devotion--"but do not have love (that is, the love of Christ), I would be nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2). Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ. That is why self-centered love seeks direct contact with other persons. It loves them, not as free persons, but as those whom it binds to itself. It wants to do everything it can to win and conquer; it puts pressure on the other person. It desires to be irresistible, to dominate. Self-centered love does not think much of truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the person loved. Emotional, self-centered love desires other persons, their company. It wants them to return its love, but it does not serve them. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving....Christ stands between me and others. I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my emotional desires. All this may instead be hatred and worst kind of selfishness in the yes of Christ. Only Christ in his Word tells me what love is. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love for my brothers and sisters really looks like. Therefore, spiritual love is bound to the word of Jesus Christ alone. Where Christ tells me to maintain community for the sake of love, I desire to maintain it. Where the truth of Christ orders me to dissolve a community for the sake of love, I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my self-centered love. Because spiritual love does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother or sister. It originates neither in the brother or sister nor in the enemy, but in Christ and his word. Self-centered, emotional love can never comprehend spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above. It is something completely strange, new, and incomprehensible to all earthly love.

How much I fall short!

Lord, forgive me for my self-centered love, and teach me Your love, which is so contrary to my human nature and the emotional love of this world.

feeding your inner-introvert

Extroverts are like those huge trees in Florida whose roots lay on top of the ground like monstrous wooded Octopus tentacles, sprawling out for human interaction. The sunshine of people's presences and the mist of retirement communities's sprinkler systems is enough to feed and water them. (I actually know nothing about these trees, so I hope no horticulturalists are reading this, disapprovingly clicking their tongues at me. I can't take disapproving tongue-clicks!) Their roots soak up the environment around them like scaly reptiles in the sun. Sssssssssss.

Introverts, however, are more like trees whose roots are buried deep in the soil. They need gulps of flood water to penetrate the soil, or else the heat of the sun scorches their leaves and leaves them wilted and pitiful.

I am an introverted tree who has been trying to water my roots like a gargantuan Floridian tree, and now my leaves are wilting. I love the sun for its chlorophyll and vitamin D, but without water I'm scorching, and the sprinkler systems of the extroverted world are not enough.

I realized last night that loving people does not mean that I can be around them all the time. All the energy I have I would love to spill onto them, but so many things are taking up my energy that I'm drawing on reserves to give to people until I am slowly being depleted. And this leaves me no time to replenish what I've lost, if every spare moment I'm looking for more ways to BE WITH PEOPLE. It's a balance system I have not mastered, and still don't understand. I hope my future occupation is working with people, so that they can have my energy.

Ways to recover and feed my introvertedness in order to rejuvenate and de-stress:

• My favorite part of the day is walking to class down my street in the mornings. The sky is always so early, unmarred, and glassy, like a cold pool without the ripples of the day in it yet. I need to relish this more and spend it in praise to the God who created it.
• Black Beauty. Ultimate relaxing, everything-will-be-all-right movie. What is more serene than watching butterflies land on pink flowers to the music of Danny Elfman?
• Participating in unimportant - yet not unproductive - things, like watching curling. There is something peaceful about that sport, like golf - except they don't yell at each other in golf ("YUP! YUP!"), and curling is a lot more technical (Team USA: "I'd say you gave it a 7-8. It landed on the button." Me: "Ah, yes, a 7-8. Precisely. You conquered that button").
• Reading, and realizing I'm not missing out on the world by reading. I'm reading The Professor's House for my American Novel class, and for some reason I'm really enjoying it. When I got to class today, Dr. Vincent began it with, "This novel is about someone experiencing a crisis." Oh. Well, maybe that's why.
  
• Spend time with the Lord. Be still, He says. Cease striving, and know that I am God. Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. (Psalm 46:10 NASB & Isaiah 30:15 NLT, respectively.)
  

just from Jesus simply taking

I babysat a 3-year-old boy on Tuesday. He slept most of the time, but at one point he began to cry out. I went into his room and sat on the edge of the bed.
"What's wrong, Cesario?"
He just kept crying. I rubbed his back and asked again, "What is it, buddy?"
Then he stretched out his arms to me and said, "Uppy." I lifted him up and he completely melded into me, without hesitation, his head on my shoulder and his arms on either side of me. He just lay there, and I began to sway. I hummed the only song I could think of: "Nothing But the Blood of Jesus."

As I rocked this little boy in my arms, whom I held so close to my chest, I thought about how completely safe he felt. He was completely dependent on me. Maybe he'd had a bad dream, or maybe he'd just opened his eyes and been afraid of the dark and quiet. Whatever it was, while he was by himself, he was scared. But in my arms, he could rest, because it wasn't up to him. I was there. Cesario trusted me with his entire well-being, which allowed him utter rest.

What would it look like to be like a 3-year-old child in Jesus' arms? What would it be like to trust Him so much, that all fears and worries completely disappear in His presence, and we realize, "He's here. It's okay now"? What would it look like to rest in Jesus? I want to know that complete lack of fear that comes with trusting in the Lord. I want to rest in Him.

"Let the beloved of the LORD rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders." (Deuteronomy 33:12)

I asked Cesario, "Are you ready to lay back down?"
There was a pause before his little brown-haired head shook "no" against my cheek. I didn't expect him to think about it, then say, "Why, yes, I suppose that is sufficient. I'll lay back down now." And, in fact, I preferred he wasn't ready. I wanted him to feel safe forever.

things

I think about quite a few things throughout my day. Never mind that I have 7 classes, meetings, an internship, and global warming to think about. These are a few things that have been on my mind the past few days:

Socks. My parents bought me a bunch of socks in August. The company's called "Wigwam" and has a huge sale every six months in Sheboygan. I wear a pair of these socks, thick orange ones that reach my ankle, when I go to bed, because when my feet are cold I can't fall asleep. I call them my "bed socks." On night I forgot to put on my bed socks, and I wore these brown socks (still Wigwam) with cream-colored argyle on them to bed. The next morning I didn't think about changing them (because they weren't my bed socks!) and I ended up wearing brown socks with my black dress pants. They were a distraction to me all throughout church.
"And Jesus gives us hope...."
My socks don't match.
"...not just for eternity...."
My SOCKS don't MATCH.
"...but also for right here on earth...."
My socks are not matching RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE!

Tea. I know I should be more refined, and rave about Tazo or some Indian tea with herbs, but my favorite tea is Bigelow's Lemon Lift. I tried Chamomile tea yesterday, and the very smell made me uncomfortable. Not to mention the color is reminiscent of what you find in the snow after a very hydrated dog has passed by. Drinking Lemon Lift is like drinking sunshine that spreads throughout your body and shoots out your fingertips and toetips, like in Beauty and the Beast when the Beast is transformed back into a prince. (And a very unattractive one at that. But looks aren't everything. He was rich, too.)

Jesus/The Lord of the Rings. I think about TLotR a lot. My mother scolded me as we watched the trilogy over break when I kept quoting things before they were said.
"'Do not trust to hope."'
"Do not trust to hope."
"'It has forsaken these lands.'"
"It has forsaken these lands."
"HEATHER!"
Like a good eight-year-old I resorted to silently mouthing the words. Like a good mother she could hear my lips smacking and knew I was trying to get away with it.
My point is, I have these movies memorized, and they come back to me all the time - sometimes applicably. This morning I thought about struggling, and how much I have been struggling the past few months with the same problem. I get so frustrated with myself, because why can't I just be done with it? Like when Frodo's laying on the mountain at the very end, and he tells Sam, "There's nothing, no veil between me and the ring of fire!" (To which my dad starts singing, "I fell into a burning ring of fire..." Kind of a mood ruiner.) And Sam says, "Then let us be rid of it, once and for all!" Sometimes I think, "Let me be RID of IT!" I think about Smeagol's argument with Gollum, and how, when Gollum finally left, Smeagol bounced around shouting, "Smeagol is FREE!" How much I would love to raise my arms in victory and say, "I'm FREE!"
But. The third or fourth time I saw The Return of the King in theaters (I'm telling you, I'm a maniac), just as Frodo is standing on the edge of Mount Doom with the Ring, the woman behind me said in aggravation, "What are you waiting for?" Then Sam shouts at Frodo, "What are you waiting for?" And Frodo, who has been completely taken over by the thing, slips it on his finger, saying, "The Ring is mine."
I have this burden, this sin, this hurt, this desire, whatever it is, in ring-form hanging around my neck. And I want so badly to "cast it into the fiery chasm from whence it came," but I also don't want to let it go. I want to be rid of it, I want to be free, and the audience is shouting, "What are you waiting for?" Why can't I just let go? What hold does it have over me? How can I still be holding onto something so destructive, so oppressive, so hurtful?
Sometimes I wish someone could rip it from me, just take it and throw it away. I often wondered why Elrond didn't just push Isildur in the fire himself when he had the chance. Or Sam could've pushed Frodo in. Or someone could've pushed someone into something JUST TO END IT ALL.
But Frodo had to do it. It was his burden. No one could've done it for him. But you know what I love about that? He had people with him, beside him, for him. In Sam, who carried him up the mountain. In Galadriel, who appeared to him in a vision and offered him a hand to lift himself up. In Aragorn, who fought battles to protect Frodo and enable him to succeed.
And you know what? Frodo did succeed. Gollum had to bite off his finger, and he was almost swallowed by lava, but in the end, he's rid of it. In his own words, "It's done. It's over."

Wow. What does this mean? Did you even read all that? Sometimes analogies make situations really clear and understandable to me...but they don't make dealing with the situation any easier. If anyone had told Frodo, "Hey, bearing the One Ring is kind of like..." I'm not sure he would've said, "Oh, in that case - TOSS - all done. Who's hungry?"

I just want to keep all my fingers.

every day is a resolution

Things I have quit:

1. Ballet (age 4)
2. Gymnastics (age 8)
3. Band (age 12)
4. Show choir (age 15)
5. Business Management minor (age 20)
   
6. All the King's Men (age 22)
   

I'm sitting in the silence of an empty house, in my sage-green chair my dad pulled from the end of someone's driveway two summers ago. I'm currently reading The Rise of Silas Lapham, because I've taken a break from AtKM. (I say "taking a break," though I'm not 42- or even 27-percent sure I'll finish it before break is over.) I've already read Housekeeping (another American Novel novel) in this break within Christmas break. Part II of AtKM to be continued....

The silence has been nice. No TV, no radio, just the occasional sigh from the cat sleeping on my bed or a car passing on the slushy street outside my window. I found my mind wandering, however, even amidst the enjoyment of my book. The string of large-bulbed Christmas lights strung haphazardly across my room (Dad thinks my room looks like a trashy Christmas tree lot) makes me think of the Christmasses past. And the red snowman mug of Earl Gray tea beside me smells like fruity pebbles. I can't drink it anymore.

But speaking of quitting, New Year's resolutions are a ridiculous concept to me. Much like cookie jars (like cookies even last that long) and the hooks my dad put on the inside of the bathroom door to hang our bathrobes on, when no one in my family has a bathrobe. I make resolutions all throughout the year and don't need an entirely new one to encourage them to stick. I wonder if January ever feels used, like it's just a month in which people acknowledge how to improve themselves?

So as we approach the front stoop of the new year, what do I have planned? My New Year's resolution is to stop resolving and to fall into the hands of God, because if there's anything I've learned in the past year of my life, it's that human plans never, ever, ever go the way you think they will.

"I am the LORD. Those who hope in me will not be disappointed." - Isaiah 49:23

All the King's Men, pt 1

Prologue

My eyebrows hurt from frowning so much while I read this book. Half the time I don't understand what has happened, is happening, or will happen, and the other half I don't understand why what I understand to be happening needs to happen in this story. So I've decided, to aid myself and any others who have trouble with this book, to summarize, in story form. I shall include in bold, to the best of my ability, the words Robert Penn Warren uses that I don't know and had to look up. And the parts I didn't understand or forgot, I will make up.

Part One

Why hello. I am your supposedly-college-educated narrator who still has terrible grammar, Jack Burden. I am opening this story in the back of a 1930s nightclub owned by Slade, then introduce you to Sadie so quickly that you think it's the same person until suddenly about fifty pages later I use the pronoun "she" in Sadie's description and then the entire mental image you've concocted of him (now her) is obliterated, she not being Slade and all.

I work for a governor who I call "The Boss" for most of the story. Back when he was simply Willie Stark, he was somewhat naive and married a school teacher named Lucy. She was also naive. I met Willie when he was running for governor and I was covering the story as a reporter. Sadie, who is reminiscent of that girl on The Hudsucker Proxy who pretends to be a Muncie girl, very dramatically calls Willie a sap and tells him he's being played, and that he'll never be a governor. Willie gets drunk and for a few pages I describe the way Sadie stands over Willie's unconscious body and stares down at him.

Willie goes to law school and gets learned up real good, then comes back with gubernatorial flare to win the office. I quit my job and Sadie, who's working for Willie, tells me to come work for "The Boss." I do, even though he's a sap. But he's a more powerful sap now.

He's very intimidating, and whenever you see three asterisks (***) between paragraphs the time shifts, so sometimes it's 1939 and sometimes it's 1933 and once it was 1914, but one often feels like he is being flushed down a chronological toilet and all the dates are swirling around as you drown in wordy water.

I knew Anne and Adam Stanton back when I was a child. I say about 50 times that Adam won't go fishing with me anymore, and I used to love Anne, though she wasn't very pretty. I married Lois, who was prettier than Anne, but I haven't explained yet what happened to her. Maybe in part two. In part one, however, I have dinner with Anne several times, and Adam is a fancy schmancy surgeon with oleaginous hair (as most people had in the 30s).

Willie, after becoming somewhat successful, has an affair with a girl on skates in Chicago, and upon finding out, Sadie cries into my chest and laments about having the small pox when she was young which left pock marks in her face. Apparently she thinks Willie owes her something, and just two-timed her. I'm not very good with women, so I just awkwardly pat her on the back and tell her to get over it. I should've said something like, "I ain't noticed Mr. Willie askin' fer ta marry ya," but not all books written during the 30s and 40s can be as poignant as Gone with the Wind.

Before I worked for the Boss and was a journalist, I was a grad student studying history. For about 75 pages I read my ancestor Cass Mastern's journal about having an affair with a woman named Annabelle, whose husband, Duncan Trice, shot himself. Then Cass leaves Annabelle and frees all his slaves, then dies during the Civil War. I am left pondering this all and the reader is left wondering, "What the crap does this have to do with anything?"

End part one.