What do you want in a friend as an adult?

I was sitting on a porch step with a friend the other day, and she talked about how friendship is different when you’re an adult and are going through a lot of changes.  We talked about relationships in general (you and other people, you and your spouse, you and your church, you and your church small group).  How much work SHOULD relationships be?  When one side is doing most of the emotional work, when is it time to try to talk about it to be sure there’s not a simple misunderstanding in the way?  When is it time to redraw boundaries, reflect and revise expectations, or even call it quits?  We talked around whether it was brave or selfish to do these things.  We don’t want to be people who only receive and never give, but how long can we give but not receive, and what is the “right” ratio for these things?  (I think we decided it’s hard and there is no “right” answer that fits every given situation because each situation is different.)  When we were talking about friendship in her current life, she said something like,  “I don’t even know what I WANT in friends anymore.  What should I want to do with my friends?  What do you want for your friendships?”  I thought it was a fantastic question that deserved a more thorough answer than the one I could give punch drunk on late autumn porch sunlight that day. 

Since I’ve been listening to the entire catalog of Sara Groves songs at work to get me through a destructively busy time, I found myself reflecting on the words of several of her songs about being with people you love.  Here are some of my thoughts about the kind of friend I want to be and what I value in friendships in four Sara Groves songs.

Just One More Thing
https://genius.com/Sara-groves-just-one-more-thing-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOu1Yh4QzTw

One of the most interesting things about learning to live with chronic health problems is the fact that I have HAD to slow down.  I have had to STOP over-committing, STOP over-scheduling, STOP acting as if my current body can do what my brain remembers it doing effortlessly in the past.  I have had to stop allowing myself to get stressed out about things that don’t need to be done but probably should be done and focus more on what needs to be done.  If something doesn’t need to be done and if I CAN’T physically do it, then I have to release myself from the guilt of not doing it, so I can focus my energy on doing what I CAN do, even if sometimes the only thing I can do is rest or maybe manage to drive over to friend’s place to be exhausted there instead of at home.

I characterize this song as frustrated and cranky and a little bit reflective and re-centering about the fact that the law and the gospel can be reduced to loving God and loving our neighbors.  The singer is giving herself a good talking to about the ways we can drive ourselves to distraction with all the things we could be doing at any one time and the way that we need to choose not to be distracted from the important work of loving each other by all the things we could be doing.  The chorus is a joyful shout about the freedom from getting wrapped around the axle about everything being demanded of you by others and yourself.

And love to me is when you put down that one more thing and say
I've got something better to do
And love to me is when you walk out on that one more thing and say
Nothing will come between me and you
Not even one thing

This.  This is where I want to get.  Without guilt, with joy and peace and contentment.  Not because I physically can’t do anything else but because I am choosing to do this thing.


Every Minute
https://genius.com/Sara-groves-every-minute-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AZfLOG1VhQ

This song is like a hug.  You should listen to it.  (Let me know if you want to borrow the CD.)  It’s a reflection on what is amazing about being with friends, about staying IN with friends instead of going out (or feeling like you should go out), about what it means to have a home (a place and people). 

And I can think of a time when families all lived together
Four generations in one house
And the table was filled with good food
And friends and neighbors
That's not how we like it now

'Cause if you sit at home you're a loser
Couldn't you find anything better to do?
Well, no, I couldn't think of one thing
I would rather waste my time on than
Sitting here with you

This was true when I was kid and there were so few other things I had to do.  There were no wrong choices when I had to choose between reading and playing outside with friends and playing inside with friends.  And on those long summer days when I knew I was going to be at my friend’s house again first thing in the morning, I didn’t want to leave even after the fireflies had settled down for the night, and it was too dark to do anything safely.  Every moment and every minute.  How did I forget this?  How can I be like a child and get this back?

While I was busy taking on too many wonderful activities and responsibilities, I didn’t get to do this, and then I grew up and forgot all about it, left it behind as if it were unimportant.  And it’s so very important that I think we FEEL it, we feel it missing, we feel its absence, and it hurts us, and we long for it, but we don’t even know what it is we are longing for until we find it and then we realize we are home, this is home, this is kairos time, this is what all eternity in heaven will be like.  And we don’t want it to end.


To Be with You
https://genius.com/Sara-groves-to-be-with-you-lyrics

This song is about family and the holidays.  For many people who don’t have great memories around Christmas, this song can be kind of fraught.  However, even if your holiday memories with your family are not positive (and many of my more recent ones are not), there is something about the warmth I feel toward the ones I love that this warm and nostalgic song evokes that makes me smile. 

We gather by the fire
Reminiscing by its light
The kids will be up early
But it's hard to say goodnight

To be with You, to be with You
I love this time of year
It always brings me here
To be with You

What I love about this song is that it so perfectly describes this feeling of rightness, of doing something we’ve done countless times again with people we love to be present with.  This is the time that matters; it is good to do this now, and it will be good to do it again and again.


Twice as Good
https://genius.com/Sara-groves-twice-as-good-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7WY9w_7v2Q

This joyful celebration of friendship is straightforward.  This is the kind of friend I want to be, and it is, frankly, why I will never have a large number of close friends.  I don’t have the physical capacity to support relationships like this with very many people, and that is okay.  God asks that I be faithful with what He’s given me, and I believe He leads people to each other to be there for each other in different ways and for different lengths of time.

When I am down and need to cry till morning
I know just where I am going
When I'm in need of sweet commiseration
To speak out loud
Raise a glass to friendship
And to knowing you don't have to go alone
We'll raise out hearts to share each other's burdens
On this road

Every burden I have carried
Every joy--it's understood
Life with you is half as hard
And twice as good

In the End
Once a friend asked me if I had any dreams.  That’s another post, but he asked it close to a time I went on a plane and, shortly after takeoff, when everything is getting smaller and further away, I saw this place at the end of a road and surrounded by trees and some fields, and there were three houses like 3 sides of a square and a big open yard for the fourth side, and I thought, I want to live in a place like that someday with Friend X and family on one side and Friend Y and family on the other side.

And I wish all the people I love the most
Could gather in one place
And know each other and love each other well
-from Every Minute

I think that is what heaven will be like, an eternity of that, enough time to develop that with everyone there, to live in that kind of communion forever.  What we experience here and now is but a glimpse of the joys to come, and I think true friendship gives us one of those glimpses. 


What about you?  On a more practical level, what do you look for in your friendships as an adult, what kinds of commitments and activities are reasonable, especially when money is tight?

To evangelical moms concerned about their children liking IFLS's posts:

Maybe we think

that the truth 

or quality or humor

or heart of the thought

are more important than

whether a swear word

is present.  Maybe we

would like to think that

our friends have similar

mature views and that

our parents do, too,

because if people are

shallow enough to judge

us based on the presence

of swearing on our

Facebook feeds (it might

indicate we are friends

of sinners, after all), then

maybe their opinions

on the subject shouldn't

matter at all to us.

Dear parents of an adult child with un-diagnosed mental illness,

Dear parents of an adult child with un-diagnosed mental illness,
This
is why I want you to go
see a good family counselor psychologist: so

you will know 

that this 

is not 

your fault.  I 

want you to talk
to someone who sees
this kind of thing
every day, someone
who will listen with
knowledge, someone
who can suggest
things you can try

(if you haven't already 

tried them and only 

if you ask).  I want 

you to hear--from someone who hears
from people like you for a living--
whether or not this behavior
that hurts you
so badly
is something your child
chooses (and something you choose
to allow) or whether

this is 

something 

your child 

has no choice over 

due to the mental health issues.
Maybe that doesn't
matter to you so much,
but it does to me.  It's
different for me if
someone is choosing
to be cruel to me than
if someone is
unable to
choose
anything healthy
because of brain
chemistry problems.
It's scary, too, of
course, to think that

someone is behaving 

so badly without 

any choice 

in the matter 

because that means they can't
choose better behaviors (except
maybe to finally seek treatment
and health and help like any
ill person should).  However,

I'd rather know that truth

than go on suspecting 

that someone is knowingly, 

intentionally causing pain 

to people who love them

because that person chooses
to do so for any reason.  Please,

talk to someone who 

can give you real answers,

and stop lying and
saying it's okay and
it doesn't bother you
when the hurt you feel
is a sound
I can hear
so clearly even
over my phone's
terrible connection
to you.  Please choose
to find out
if this brokenness
can be repaired or
needs to be surrendered
as something you
cannot change and are not
responsible for, so we can all
move on from there.
Love,
TMIA

The best path

I told the doctor to think of me as a nun.  She was doing the usual new doctor-y speechless gaping when told I am not, have never been, and have no plans to be sexually active.  My humor broke the awkward silence and allowed her to laugh and stop gaping at me while trying to form a coherent thought.  I should have said I was a free-agent nun.  I'll try to remember that line for next time.

I also said I was going to try to go off the thyroid med again.  I'm at half of the lowest dose, I have my eyebrows back, and I'm not losing copious amounts of hair right now.  I am ever-so-slightly less exhausted.  Part of me wants to stay on this ultra-low dose because it's working, but doctors keep telling me that if I do, soon my thyroid will get lazy (instead of just exhausted) and stop working altogether, and that's bad.  It's also, according to some doctors, probably not good to be taking the medication for a long time starting so young if I can avoid it.  But right now is not a good time to start losing hair and feeling even more tired.  I don't want to screw this up, but since I can't know what will happen this time I stop taking it, I can't know which choice will actually be more likely to screw things up.  Welcome to adulthood?

Since I've been tapering off the medication, I've been silently cheering my thryoid on.  "You can do it!" I tell it mentally.  "Go, thyroid, go!"  Now that it's had crutches for a little while, surely it can walk on its own.  Probably.  Maybe.  Eventually?  I think of it like the little thyroid that could, but in real life (outside of children's storybooks), sometimes the little train that thinks it can just can't.  Do I want the symptoms to return right in the middle of the stress of moving?  Can I trust my malfunctioning body to get this one thing right despite everything?  And if I do trust it, what if that trust is betrayed at the worst possible time?  But if I stay on the medication just until the moving is done (probably some time in August), what if that pushes me past the point of no-return, and, frustrated by my lack of trust, my thyroid locks itself up in its attic room and refuses to come out ever again?

Obviously, I could use more sleep.  (Most of the docs think that would actually allow the thyroid to function normally again.)  However, that's still the thing that just isn't happening here in my crappy apartment.  If I move to a place where I can consistently knock all the sleep-hygiene stuff out of the park, it's possible that things will improve.  If that doesn’t work, I may actually go to my last contingency plan (the one where I ask for, like, a three week supply of some drug that just totally knocks you out and then add that to the perfect sleep hygiene in a last-ditch, desperate effort to re-program my sleep [at least I'll have somewhere another person can sleep to make sure nothing wacky happens while I'm on that med]).  I'm pretty sure whatever decision I make will be the wrong one, but that just means that if anything works, I will be pleasantly surprised and very grateful.

Any thoughts?

The power of platonic touch for men

Two articles and a story.  It is funny watching him try to hold the baby.  He is so awkward.  He did not grow up babysitting or helping out in nursery all the time.  He holds the child too far away, at uncomfortable angles, but the baby is a smiler, and the baby smiles at him and loves him and wants to be held, and you watch him just melt before this beaming beacon of love, trust, and genial good cheer.  This is why some babies are adorable: because they adore you unconditionally. 

He is not married, has no children.  Some of his friends are having children, but, like most young marrieds with small children, their lives change so radically that they no longer really intersect his, and they don't stop to think that he might like to learn about caring for children that aren't his.

It's not like he can offer to babysit to try to stay part of their lives; he doesn't have the experience and isn't comfortable with it (he might be if someone could teach him, but most parents have so little energy to spare for that).

It's not like he even knew how rewarding (and challenging) the simple act of playing with children can be because when does he even get to do it?  Now that he does know, I wonder if he will be less afraid to help.  He will certainly be more sympathetic about how much work it is.  Maybe he'll realize how kind it is to volunteer to clean or cook or do the dishes or tag-team with a person with more child-caring experience to give weary parents some time off.

Maybe he'll become indispensable to his friends with small children because he will sometimes help them shoulder the burden and reap the rewards.  Or maybe he'll never get the chance to play with babies again until/if he has his own.

Being Christ to the Creeper, Part II

Perhaps it boils down to this: What would Christ have me do here and now?  This poor dude has fallen in my path, and I am supposed to be a good neighbor and love extravagantly.  I'm supposed to meet his needs somehow because I am, as they say, the man on the ground at this moment.  This strikes me as a tad absurd because, frankly, I would say this kid does NOT need ME to try to teach him to be SOCIAL. 

I am an introverted, lonerish, antisocial person by inclination.  I LIKE being this way.  I suppose I could teach him how to repel people less obnoxiously, but obviously, he doesn't need my help overall with that.  He needs friends his own age to help him understand what is appropriate and what is not.  But let's be serious: how many 18-year-olds  at anime clubs do you know who have the sensitivity to notice this situation and the ability to do something to improve it? 

I'm not saying they're non-existent, but when I was in college as an upperclassman leading orientation groups, I had to reach out to some of my freshman to give them people to hang out with because their own peers couldn't do so.  I tried approaching the leadership of the club to ask them to take on this responsibility (I figure it's theirs), and that . . . didn't really work.  Maybe they need someone to teach them how.  : )  But I was a completely different person back then in a different place, and I had that to offer.  Now I don't. 

So we circle back to the question again: what would Jesus have me do besides pray for someone else to intervene?  Lacking any clear messages in 30-foot letters of fire, I turn to the gallery.  Your thoughts on what it means to love my neighbor in this case?

Being Christ to the Creeper

Once upon a time when I was younger and less physically broken, one of my jobs was befriending the lonely ones, the ones left outside the circle, the ones no one wanted.  I would protect them, the pasty and overweight ones, the socially awkward, the prickly, the unattractive.  Since I did not need friends or popularity or fitting in, I was free to be friends with those who needed friends but, for whatever reason, couldn't seem to make it with the regular people.  I felt like it was some sort of gifting or calling, a way to use my comfortable introversion to love people like Christ commands us to.  Now I am older, more physically broken and exhausted, and I don't have the energy to use this freedom any more, which is unfortunate because there's a guy at the anime club this semester who is starting to really creep me out.

In the anime club, I have always been there for the anime.  I have never been there to make friends, be part of the community, or fit in.  I don't live on campus; I'm not a student.  I do not need any friends in the club to have a nice time.  This has always worked out well (once the super-friendly folks have learned to leave me alone each semester) because it's good for these kids to make friends with their peers.  I have not needed to actually reach out and show kindness to an outcast when I have pretty much nothing to give.  With one notable exception, I have made no friends there, and it has been lovely.

Many of the folks in the anime club are a bit socially awkward.  This stereotype exists because it is based in observable fact.  Many of them are bad at eye contact and reading body language and understanding personal space, but they usually figure things out by the time they graduate.  Most of them find their tribes, even the ones who are incredibly annoying and awkward.  As a sort of maiden aunt, I watch all of this at a distance and am glad things work out, even if I am sometimes mystified. 

This semester has been different.  This semester has been incredibly uncomfortable.  This semester there is a guy who hasn't found his tribe, and he seems to want me to be his tribe because all the other natives flee screaming at his approach.

I have never met anyone so terrible at understanding body language and personal space.  He seems to take me scrunching up, leaning and moving away, refusing eye contact, and reluctantly talking brusquely in short answers when absolutely necessary as amazing encouragement to sit down, move cloers, be friends and talk and talk and talk about the same things 4 over and over and over again.  (At least he hasn't used the words "scrotum" and "anus" since the first time he opened his mouth to talk to me several weeks ago.)  He talks about his anime that he will make some day and its badass, junior-high-school-boy-humor-liking female main character and what he doesn't like about X, Y, and Z anime and about why he likes the Devil May Cry anime but hates Black Lagoon, etc., ad nauseum.  (If you're an anime fan, this will seem even more annoying to you than if you aren't.)  He does this to anyone who has a pulse and doesn't actually get up and just walk away.

Recently, because no one else will even talk to him, he has taken to following me out to my car, chattering all the way, and ignoring my LEAVE ME ALONE PLEASE body language and really fast pace because he is that desperate to connect.

I know that if I want him to leave me alone, I need to just completely ignore him and not respond at all.  However, he is so lonely and sad that my old reflexes kick in, and I talk sometimes, un-encouragingly and grudgingly, because I don't want him to be completely alone in silence.  He is so young and so awkward, and I think he may not ever find any friends if he doesn't come across the college student equivalent of the old me soon.

I probably don't have to tell you that the following me to my car thing makes me really nervous.  Men I don't know in general make me wary and having to be trailed by one as I walk half a mile away to my car where there might not be anyone else around does not help.  I think that I probably need to just have the creeper talk with him or ask the club admins to intervene, but maybe I've been living in Minnesota too long (land of 10,000 ways to passive-aggressively indicate things instead of just saying them) or maybe I'm trying in a sort of half-assed way to be Jesus to this poor kid.  I mean, everyone avoids him, and that's really sad (even if I totally understand why they avoid him).  I was hoping someone would take him under their wing and help him understand the basics of body language, but they haven't even this far in to the semester. 

As maybe one of the few believers who attend the club, do I have some sort of responsibility toward him?  Because I'm sure acting like I do.  And as long as I sub-consciously feel responsible, I won't be able to just tell him leave me alone or ask the folks in charge of the club to intervene.  Thus far, the best I've been able to do is drag my poor friend to the club to try to act as a buffer and escort to my car, and that's not fair to him.

So, Christians, your thoughts?  Everyone, your strategies?

Notes to a college student soliciting alumni donations

• Do not ask the stupid questions trying to get the alumni to remember the wonders and joys of their time at Cedarville.  Our time of wonder and joy is gone, and it's been pretty well stomped on by successive administrations lacking integrity.  Can there be a button to press to forward through that part of the conversation and automatically be connected to a responsible adult, so we can be really honest about why we're not supporting the school any more?  Does the administration even care why alumni are not supporting them anymore, or do they just consider that the cost of doing (their view of) good kingdom business?  Yes, those were good old days, and I'm sad they're gone and you won't really get to experience them.  Then again, maybe you will.  For all I know the same shenanigans were happening when I was a blithely ignorant student, and I managed to have an awesome time . . . 

• Do have glib explanations ready!  I suppose they might work on, um, timid and uninformed people who didn't think and debate and research for 50 hours before coming to the decision to stop donating to the institution.  I was a little sad that you only had a glib explanation for the destruction of the philosophy department, but, really, it's not fair for me to expect you to know/care about the other high-level institutional shenanigans, and I can't see the alumni office expecting the alumni to know about it, so why would they prepare glib explanations for those?  I know I had no idea what was going on at that level until my senior year, and I'm pretty sure you sound like, what, a sophomore?

• Don't play the pity card.  Does it ever work?  "Just think of the poor students you are hurting (by your rigid desire to only support ministries with integrity)" kind of just makes me mad.  See the next point for a better way to handle the disappointment when I say I'm not going to give you money.

• Do explain that the money you're soliciting only goes to students and not to the administration.  That's pretty important.  I do have to think about that a bit.  I do want to bring the incredibly high tuition you current students are paying down to something slightly less ridiculous.  I'd also give to a fund for the faculty who have to buffer you from all this crap.  Do you know if such a fund exists?  And can I separate my donations to that degree?  I might need to do more research on the financials, but the administrations shenanigans DO trickle down to the students, meaning you do get influenced in ways that are not quite, in my opinion, above-board.  But.  I didn't choose the school because it was perfect and I agreed with everything.  I chose it because it was Christian, had a good academic reputation, and was also the cheapest with the financial aid I could muster.  Maybe the students who made their decisions to attend for the same reasons do deserve my financial support.  But the administration decides how to use the funds, so . . .  Gah.  Back and forth.  It's good to make people think and start going back and forth.  Good for you.

• Do not play the breezy, administrations change all the time card.  This has been a concerted effort to move things in a particular direction through multiple administrators, and mowing down a lot of good administrators and educators in its path, and it's been going on for over a decade.  I'm not sure that refusing to give my money will make the situation worse.  Although now I wonder if that's why the tuition has gotten so high . . .

Thanks for your time.  Have a wonderful Saturday earning minimum wage.  You poor schmuck.

P.S.  I appreciate how you didn't lie and write down that I made a pledge (which is what the guy two years ago did).

A House Hunting We Will Go? (2013 edition)

So here's the situation. My rent already went up once this year. And now it's going up again. It'll have gone up 6.5% after this. (I did the math.  Twice.) What with all the medical issues and student loan payments, that's, frankly, too much for my budget and attempts to get out of non-mortgage debt, especially if it's going to happen every year. Below are the options.  Do you have any suggestions about things I've missed or opinions on what seems like the best idea or time frame?

I'd really appreciate your advice . . .

What I Dream About	SITUATION: A good friend will get a full time job and she and her family will be able to buy a big house (duplex or apartment building or mother-in-law suite or whatever), and I'll move in and help them pay off their mortgage faster ($500 a month) while being able to pay off other loans faster (by not having rent keep going up crazy, unexpected  amounts all the time) DIFFICULTIES: To be frank, my friend might not be able to get solid, full-time employment.  The job market just isn't terrific for her field in this area.  It definitely won't be in place before my rent spikes for the second time this year. ONE MORE THING: If I do find another place, some corollary to Murphy's Law guarantees that my friend will soon land a great, full-time job.  But I'm willing to take that one for the team.  : )  Also, I may end up increasing my commute time and end up even further away from PT.
The Next Best Thing	SITUATION: Buy a condo or townhouse.  Still living in a community for safety but with fewer neighbors than an apartment (and hopefully less having to overhear raging domestic arguments) DIFFICULTIES: Finding one of these that is single level in the price range I'm looking is sort of impossible.  I really only need a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen on one of those levels (possible surgery concerns).  Also, these have association dues, and those can go up randomly year to year just like rent can. ONE MORE THING: To avoid ending up with double payments, I'd have to give notice ASAP that I'll be vacating my apartment; if I don't find a house and close on it in that time, I'll be stuck in a big way.  I could end up being allergic to some hidden thing in the house I won't know about until I start living there, and I may not have the money to get it fixed.
The Next, Next Best Thing	SITUATION: Buy a house.  It's easier to find single-level houses with all the rooms on the ground floor, and there are no association dues to pay.  DIFFICULTIES: I would be living alone.  That can be dangerous for a number of reasons (and my mother would worry ridiculous amounts).  Also, I have to shovel snow and mow the lawn, something I am not really physically capable of doing, so I'd have to pay someone else to do it and be concerned about someone getting hurt or getting trapped in my house if the snow removal people get tied up. ONE MORE THING: Hiring a snow removal service and some kid in the neighborhood to mow the lawn is an expense that can also go up suddenly.
The Status Quo	SITUATION: Stay here for now (and pray the dream comes true [SOON, DEAR GOD, PLEASE]).  DIFFICULTIES: Deal with the rent hikes and the extra money I have to blow running my AC all four seasons because I live on the third floor and nobody in this building pays for heat, and so they waste it insanely, baking those on the third floor.  And all the screaming and the strangers my fellow tenants casually let into the building.  And the added trouble sleeping because of the light and noise from the rigged up AC in the bedroom. ONE MORE THING: At least I wouldn't have to pack and inflict moving on my friends.  Again.  In summer.  And if something did come up (sudden job loss or something else), I am still probably more easily mobile in this situation.
The Least Best Thing	SITUATION: Move to another apartment.  It could be better.  It would have to be more expensive to be this size but better quality. DIFFICULTIES: Seriously?  Pack and inflict moving on my friends when I will just have to move again and when I can't know if the rent will be more stable or if the situation will be improved. ONE MORE THING: Just don't have the energy to do the research on this for some place knowingly  temporary.

"Trying to change unfair behavior with submissive niceness"

"The problem is that trying to change unfair behavior with submissive niceness is like trying to smother a fire with gunpowder. It isn't the high road; it's the grim, well-trod path that leads from aggressive to passive, through long, horrible stretches of passive-aggressive. The real high road requires something quite different: the courage to know and follow your own truth. If anyone in your life is exploiting your courtesy and goodwill, it's time you learned how all of this works." - Martha Beck 

So.  Thoughts on the intersection of this and Christianity?  (Especially the bits of common wisdom in the evangelical culture today?)

In my experience, this quote is correct.  I worked with some amazingly terrible and toxic bosses at my last job.  I did try the old Christian standby of being humbly submissive.  It didn't work.  I went down that crappy path and in the end found myself loathing the schadenfreude I felt when my bosses' incompetence caused them additional problems (and no only because their problems caused more problems for my beleaguered co-workers).  It was a very bad place to be in.  I don't recommend it.  But how do we reconcile our desire to stand up for the oppressed (ourselves and our co-workers) with the command to turn the other cheek?  It's a tough balance to try to figure out. 

Any thoughts or experiences you've had that you can share?

Renting as a spiritual discipline

I miss living in a house.  I miss the sound the furnace makes when it turns on as I sprawl on the floor under a blanket above one of the vents.  I miss knowing the temperature is not controlled by the people below me blasting their heat they don't have to pay for until I'm in shorts and a t-shirt with all my windows open enjoying a balmy 83 degrees indoors as the snow falls outside.  I miss not having to turn up a DVD or music to block out the raging domestic arguments around me at night when I'm trying to unwind.  I miss control, silence, solitude, ownership of space.

House prices are decent right now.  My credit is excellent.  I could find a good place if I wanted.  I could have my control, silence, solitude, and ownership of space.  But the economy is still a little rocky.  Layoffs are happening; there is no job security, and I'm crippled and exhausted and in debt from being crippled and retraining myself to get a job despite being crippled.  It's probably not a good time to purchase a home.

But when will be a good time?  When will I be safe enough?  When will I be comfortable enough?

Maybe it's better to rent because it means I am not comfortable, not safe, not in control, not "owning" a place.  Maybe that reality can be seen as a reflection of the one where we are strangers, aliens, pilgrims passing through, peregrinating, as St. Augustine called it.  Every mortal life is but a breath, and all that, but we are to be even less attached because we know this place isn't home.  It's not our destination; it's our journey, etc. 

I long for rest, but I won't find it here, won't find it in the control, silence, solitude, and ownership of space here.  That's all an illusion. 

As a renter on a month-to-month lease, I am in an enviable situation.  I am flexible; I can be mobile should I be needed or should I find a more stable job elsewhere.  Wherever I am, I should be content.

Maybe until I am, I need to keep renting to remind myself that I don't belong here, that my real home is where my heart is, and my heart is with God even if I'm in this crappy apartment building listening to her yell at the toddler again and again as I have the AC on because it's warm enough for my allergies to prohibit opening the windows, but folks still have their heat on below me.  Some days it's a really good thing to know that this is not my home.

Losing a friend

It was at the beginning of a comment, the offhanded phrase that left me stunned at its unexpectedness from that quarter: I don't believe in God any more.  I was off balance all day, literally; I kept catching myself on walls and desk corners.  Whenever there was a quiet moment, I was melancholy, more deeply saddened than I would have thought, at this loss.  We will remain casual friends who knew each other better once, but something is different now, like a missing tooth.

I asked what led her to that decision, and the answer was reason.  She found herself with some new premises and realized that if she believed them, logically she couldn't believe in God.  This seemed weird to me because it's not really how I'm set up, but when I thought about it in relation to her, to how she operates, it made sense.  She has always been a person of fact over emotion and logic over experience.  It makes sense that thinking logically led her away from the God of the Old Testament who surely seems a being of emotions (many of them negative).

I am reading Ezekiel right now, and there are definitely times where I feel the cultural gulf and the discomfort of an alien way of thinking.  I read certain passages and think, well, this part probably really offends this group of people.  I wonder, how do I reconcile this?  Then I go to bed and pray for people. 

Perhaps this means I am an intellectual coward, someone too afraid to dig in mentally because I think my faith will be lost on the path of reason.  Perhaps it means something else entirely.  Perhaps it means that I am able to see the Old Testament as story told by man about God in a different way than she does.  Perhaps it means I can divorce what the New Testament God says from what He says in the Old Testament (which took place in very different times).  Perhaps I don't really know what it means but am glad for it anyway.

I find myself wondering what she thinks of the God of the New Testament.  I understand how people read these two collections and think there must be two different beings involved because the one in the Old Testament doesn't seem much like the one in the New Testament at all.  In the New Testament, He is embodied, walking among us, teaching different things about how we are to live our lives, and then there are letters from those who knew Him and/or those who followed his teachings.  And then there's Revelation (equally as mind-blowing as Ezekiel).

Anyway, I found myself thinking about how we refer to people who no longer believe in God.  They have "strayed from the path" or "lost their faith."  At first I thought I didn't like these phrases; they are Christian cliches, almost devoid of meaning.  A former classmate of mine has refused to ditch Christian cliches as worthless and has chosen instead to study them and remake them into meaningful communication again, to find and redeem them.  In the interest of following her example, I decided to do the same, and I realized that even though people usually say these cliches as an end (as if once you are lost or strayed, you are as good as dead), I think they really could be seen and used as hopeful.  If they have been on the path, there is a possibility they could find their ways back; if they are lost, they can be found. 

I pray it may be so.

When church membership is more like country club membership

When I became a member of this church (so I could work at my alma mater if I ever had the chance), the folks interviewing me seemed very anxious to tell me that they didn't have any expectations that I would serve within the church just because I was a member.  Most people spent their time supporting ministries outside of the church, and that was just fine with the church, they assured me anxiously, like they thought I would leave if I was actually expected to DO SOMETHING (in addition to all the work I had to do to get to that point).  They sold it like a benefit to get a candidate to take a job when there was another comparable offer being made elsewhere.  It made me pretty uncomfortable, to be honest.  What church lets people join and says, "We don't expect you to take your membership seriously or, like, do anything biblical or anything"?

After I expressed my frustration about this recently, a friend who has had lots of struggles with church people said maybe the church wasn't where my ministry would be.  I had pretty much reached that conclusion myself.  I've got two really attractive options I've been looking at for a while.  I made one last try at my church, and apparently there are no orphans, widows, or single parent families (which frankly seems to be the modern equivalent) in my church who need my gifts.  You know what?  That's a lie.  I call shenanigans.  I know there are people who could use my help, my gifts, my talents.  I just have no way of connecting with them, and the church leadership apparently does not consider them a priority.  (No lie, the leadership decided that they wanted to put all their efforts and money into nuclear family ministries, so tough noogies for singles, couples with no children, poor people, single-parent families, and everyone else outside of that particular group.)

Is it really so wild for me to feel like my church should be doing things for the orphans and widows who attend?  Like actively seeking out the members and knowing them and knowing their needs and doing something to help since the Bible is pretty clear about our responsibilities to these groups of people in our midst as the church.  I mean, is it really outrageous to think it should be standard for a church to do biblically commanded things like take care of their orphans and widows?  Or am I being silly and stubborn and unrealistic by demanding this happen in/through the church when I could just as easily go to a place where these needs are addressed by civil bodies?

I want to do the right thing, but it seems like my church just isn't interested.  Obviously, this means I'm in the wrong church.  (I'm looking for other options.)  I'm just so disappointed that these fallible humans have failed me again.  : )  Is this like the fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, or is that really too cynical?  I know we are strangers and pilgrims not of this world, people just passing through, but it hurts when the church only intensifies that feeling.

Maybe I just need to think of it as getting side-tracked on a quest and needing to get back out on the road in search of other opportunities.  Maybe that can keep me going for a while.

Breaking up is hard to do

I'm trying to compose a break-up letter to my school to explain why I won't be making any more charitable donations to them, but it's surprisingly hard.  I don't want to sound petty or unreasonable.  This might be difficult because I'm still not convinced I'm not being petty and unreasonable.  Am I acting like the child who feels betrayed because he has discovered that adults are fallible humans or am I behaving like an adult who has looked at things rationally and decided she would rather give her money to organizations that aren't behaving (in her opinion) shamefully.  Am I being like my mother and being more concerned about appearances (the school's behavior is embarrassing me, and this is how I can punish them) or more like myself (taking a principled stand against unprincipled behavior)?  Am I being reasonable, or am I carping about the Emperor's New Clothes in the middle of a nudist colony?

Who knew I was such a coward about breaking up?  It's been three weeks since I made the decision.  I'm tired of putting this off, trying to think up the perfect way to explain, avoiding the internet because I don't want to read any more about these disasters and their aftermaths.  I think maybe I will just tell them I'm discontinuing my financial support.  If they want reasons, maybe then I will write up my list.  Maybe.

Mamma mia, alma mater!

This is not how I want to be spending my Friday night: in despair about my alma mater.  On top of the numerous other questionable decisions made using questionable methods in the last few years, they have decided to cut the philosophy major.  Yes, a liberal arts college without a philosophy major.  On the positive side,  I no longer have to wonder if I would have been miserable teaching there: I know. 

I just wish I didn't have to be ashamed of the behavior of both my alma maters.  (The other one recently ripped apart the liberal studies program and cut the Liberal Studies master's degree, as well, under similar circumstances.)  For a while, it wasn't a complete black mark to tell people I graduated from those institutions, and I could even recommend them without reservation.  Now?  Well . . .  But anyway, focus on the positives!

• I am now officially really glad I didn't get that job, that they treated me in the shameful way they did. 
• I'm glad I no longer feel conflicted about giving financially to the institution. 
• I feel lighter knowing I no longer have to keep attending the church I've been attending mostly because it fits with Cedarville's doctrinal statement (even if I don't) on the off chance that another job opens up, and they don't treat me like crap this time through. 
• I don't really have to blog "anonymously" anymore if I don't want to (I was doing so partly because some of the things I said could have adversely affected my chances of employment there) because I wouldn't want to teach there even if they offered me a position, at least not until things stop heading the direction they are right now.  (And if things turn around, then I don't think anything I have said would prevent me from getting hired at an institution heading in a better direction.)

Why do these positives leave me feeling so negative?  Am I being completely unreasonable to demand this from my Christian alma mater?

"We believe that every organization, especially those in higher education, and most-especially those claiming the name of Christ, should be characterized by transparency." - Fiat Lux

 Amen.

What your school owes you

So my school is in the news making me sad again.  It claims to be a liberal arts college, but it's in the process of eliminating the philosophy major under less-than-aboveboard circumstances.  Recently a long-standing administrator may have been relieved of his duties under less-than-legitimate circumstances.  A faculty member was fired because the powers that be suddenly decided that it was suddenly not okay that he did not believe exactly what they wanted him to believe for the exact same reasons they did.  (They stressed that they were not questioning his orthodoxy, but apparently they didn't realize what they were stressing by the nature and circumstances of the action.)  Academic freedom for faculty members has been steadily being eroded, and the institution is no longer one I really wish to financially support.

Another school I graduated from recently eliminated part of the program that brought me to them in the first place.  Another school has changed its focus and purpose and is no longer doing the excellent work I loved it for.  Another school shamefully forgave a popular male athlete for a crime that they never considered forgiving female athletes for.  These institutions run by human beings keep making decisions I think are bad, and I don't want to support them when I could be using that money elsewhere to support institutions that are doing more things right.  If only they would stop doing things to make me sad, I would be more willing to (continue to) give them financial support.

But who am I to demand that they do what I want to keep getting me to give them my money?  Who am I to demand that they cater to me and my paltry amount of support?  What do they owe me individually as a graduate?  What do they owe their alumni as a whole?

One of the things that's been galling about all of these actions is that they appear to be driven by (I am assuming) old men in power who are very, very afraid of anything that does not match up exactly to what they believe.  And it is possible that these men are driven to these actions because they fear that the older, more conservative alumni with the most money to give would stop giving that money if the institution changes any more than it already has.  As a blogger I admire once said, it's pretty galling when you know you are in the category of acceptable loss.

The interesting thing is that this tactic may be very short sighted on the part of the current decision makers.  I mean, the current old men will grow old and die, and the future support will come from my generation eventually.  Or, at this rate, maybe it won't.  Maybe the institution will fade away because they have alienated my generation.  Or maybe it will thrive despite that.  It doesn't really matter.

What I am trying to figure out is if it is fair of me to deny my monetary support to the students who need it just because the old men who run the institution are currently acting in a manner I find offensive.  Is it? 

Is it childish of me to, well, take my toys and go because the other kids aren't playing the way I want them to?

Giving up this one thing

"My dreams and my fears and my hopes and my anxieties get all knotted up in my hands, and I say to God, I give these things to you, but I don’t really. I keep picking at the mess of it, trying to untangle it myself. I am worrying and clutching tight, simultaneously comforted and agitated by the feel of all of this weight in my hands."
. . .
"And the other, unexpected part of its beauty comes with the release. In the trusting that God is good, that the world is rich with good things, that giving up this one thing does not mean giving up."

-Addie Zierman

Oh.  Yes.  Please.

Being the grownup (in my own special way)

I am really trying to be an adult about this, but it's hard.  In my small group from church, we got on the topic of how I am really not a people person but how I seem to be constantly be involved in things that help other people connect.  I am overcompensating, in a way.  I lack something that most people have, and I've read enough and known enough people to recognize this.  As the dispassionate outsider, maybe I'm somehow better equipped to help other people connect?  I don't know. 

Anyway, the group members all did the sharing-not-so-secret-grins-and-eye-contact that says, "Ha ha, you say this, but you are exaggerating, and we know the real you really like people and are just shy."  They dismiss all my hard work in fighting my nature pretty much every second I am around them (and everybody else).  It is reeeeeeallllly annoying.  And it makes me want to do nothing more than what I really want to do: withdraw and be blessedly alone, no matter who I have to hurt in the process.  Ignore invitations, blow people off to hibernate as much as possible, read when I want to, not have to be with people.

I mean, I really don't want to waste time on all these things that I do because they are good things to do.  I do them because they help others and show my commitment to to follow Christ and love the people He puts around me because He asks me to love them, which I can only do through my choice of will and my actions of denying myself and my desires.  And people basically thinking it's a big joke that I say this is such hard work make me want to throw in the towel.

But, you know?  That would be really childish and immature.  I am not, ultimately, doing this for their approval.  I have higher reasons.  So even though giving in sounds glorious (I cannot tell you how wonderful it sounds or how much I want it), I will keep going to meet with them and will try my best to ignore their knowing smirks that don't, in fact, know anything because I know who I am, and God knows my heart, and that's really all that matters.

Bringing good out of bad

I contemplated this as the ten year anniversary of the injury that started it all came and went, bringing no Mayan Apocalypse with it.

"To the limited extent that I suffer, I want that suffering to be productive, to bring about holiness and a purity of character.  I am grateful that the Bible is honest about the bad in this world: the bad is bad.  Too often Christians seem to want to say that because God allows suffering, that suffering is somehow good in itself.  This is not true; God is good, but sin and suffering are not.  They are not what God intended for this world and they will not be there in heaven.  But God does have the power to bring good out of bad (which is not the same as saying that a bad situation is inherently what God wants), and He is able to work in all things (good, bad and ugly) for the good of those who love Him (Rom 8:28)." - Tanya Marlow

I choose to believe this.

Happy New Year.

When the body breaks down

Here is an interesting article about one former athlete's descent into the mire of medical problems.  In her struggles, I heard echoes of my own.

"I have known God's presence in unique ways during my journey from physical powerhouse to pathetic patient. As Christians, we know that we must take up our crosses and follow him daily. But what happens when that cross is gall bladder failure or an allergy to tomatoes? Saints in ages past were boiled in oil or crucified upside down for their faith. What good is it to suffer as an unwilling martyr merely to one's own brittle body?

"This would be the place for the inspiring testimonial about how spiritually transformative the experience of ill health has been. How I have been purified of fleshly pleasures and am now more single-mindedly focused on the celestial. Instead, I obsess about macaroni and pie. I find other ways to indulge, such as with junky magazines or mindless materialism." - Kathleen Anderson

My small group has been reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, and Lewis mentions that our highest goal and highest good is not health.  We are not commanded to be healthy, and good health is not a requirement for us to have faith.  Poor health, in fact, helps us acknowledge our dependence on God, and that is a very valuable thing in a world that lies to us and says our comfort, pleasure, will, and ease are the most important things we can seek.  Not that anybody would really ask for it, per se, but when God is ruthlessly loving us and molding us for our betterment and His glory, sometimes the poor health is going to happen in a fallen world, and it won't seem fair and we won't know why and we will have to choose to keep praising Him and trying to make what meaning we can.