Dallas Blessings

Okay, loving God.  I fear God more than I love Him.  I have become a paranoid worrier over the last couple years.  I think God wants to make a martyr out of me.  I'm terrified of rape, muggings, violence, and murder.  I'm scared God is going to let something really awful happen to me so that I'll glorify Him or something in the aftermath.  I don't want to be an example!  I want to live a happy life.  And every time God moves me out of my comfort zone, such as to a new city, I worry that this is Him preparing me for something massively horrible in my future.

So the idea that God wants only good things for me?  I just don't believe it.  And it is incredibly difficult to love God when I'm constantly scared that He's setting me up for horror.

But I don't want to stay in that fear.  Perfect love casts out fear, and I'd really like to 1) trust that God loves me perfectly, and 2) try to love God perfectly.  As near as I can tell, one way to do that is to list all the good things God has done for me.  I started this list with things like Rory, but since I had to give up Rory to follow God, that only made me more bitter.  My new list consists entirely of things that are in Dallas.

1)  Liz.  After two years apart, we are immediate friends with no awkwardness or getting-to-know-you slowness.  We just jumped right into life together.  We love so many of the same things, and we get passionately invested in Olympic swimming relays, superhero movies, and our embarrassing lives.  Being friends with Liz means laughing a lot, which is always a great thing.

2)  Jess.  My second roommate is a little snarky and a little crazy.  She jams out to her music and tries to force its awesomeness down your throat.  She values people's honesty and isn't afraid to call people out on their bullshit.  I said that because she respects people who cuss, because it shows they are not trying to filter themselves.  She is basically a grown-up me, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to bask in her DTS wisdom and her life-after-DTS wisdom.

3)  Paisley.  My third roommate is rarely home, but her dog is.  Paisley is crazier than I prefer, and can make the most obnoxious noises.  But after she's calmed down, she's very sweet.  Right now she is curled up under my desk.  I love having a pet in the house.  She makes things seem more homey.  And even when she's shrilly barking a greeting, it's nice to be greeted.

4)  Writing.  I hate not having a job that I'm good at or a church family that takes up half my week nights.  I have a lot of free time when my housemates are all working.  But it has given me an opportunity to write!  I've been seriously working on a project, and my goal is to have it finished by this week.  This week!  I've never finished a writing project.  Not once, ever.  And I know if I didn't have this free month, I wouldn't have done this one either.

5)  Exercise.  Along with the writing, I've been able to exercise during my long days at home.  I'm horribly out of shape, but even 20 minutes of yoga makes me feel good, way deep inside where apparently my muscles are.

6)  Jamba Juice and Chick-fil-a.  It is marvelous living in a city where two of my favorite destination restaurants are within 20 minutes of home. 

7)  Living on my own.  I'm grateful my parents let me live at home, but it is so fantastic to be on my own.  I don't even know what the difference is, but I love it.

8)  The Olympics.  First, watching the Olympics all day and all night is a great way to bond with my housemates.  Second, I just love the Olympics.  I'm not much into sports, but for some reason I adore the biggest sporting event in the world.  I love the athlete's stories.  I love the intense battles for gold.  I love the peaceful patriotism of cheering for USA.  I love the global unity inherent in nations sending their citizens to run races and play games with the rest of the world, no matter what the political feelings between countries might be.  I even love the stupid commercials that make my heart swell and maybe sometimes cause me to tear up a little.  The Olympics is humanity at its best.  I love it.

Omission

I've been side-eyeing God for a while, that is old news.  Church makes me think better thoughts, that is also old news.  But I'll share what I thought about yesterday anyway.

Stephanie bought me The Valley of Visions for my birthday, and it's a fantastic book of prayer poetry written by Puritans.  I get totally into the author's desire, and then he gets really self-hating.  Like, this dude is really in touch with his sin, and he absolutely loathes it.  I just don't get that.  For one thing, I'm very prideful.  I focus on the good things I do rather than the bad things.  For another thing, I just don't believe that any of the bad things I do are all that bad.  You can tell me until you turn blue that any one little sin is enough to cut off my relationship with God, and I'll believe you.  But it's hard for me to really hate my occasional lustful thoughts or insults.

Yesterday I thought about sins of omission.  The pastor I listened to said that our sole purpose in life is to make much of God.  Our identity is bound up in God, and all we have to do is talk about Him.  The pastor never at all went into rules or sins or anything.  It was all about glorifying the God who created and saved us.

I don't do that.  If I'm in a safe place, and if the conversation turns that way, then sure.  I'll talk about God.  But does my love for Him burst out of me the way I compulsively discuss Doctor Who or my latest books or a feminist study?  No.

When I think about my sins as all the times I could have mentioned God but didn't, well, they start to weigh a little heavy.  When I think of all the times I could have encouraged someone but didn't want to seem forward, I sinned.  When I let someone talk about their problems, and I don't mention God's peace and kindness, or offer to pray for them, or actually follow up and pray for them, I'm sinning.

 I may not DO a lot of awful things.  But I sure do MISS a lot of opportunities to do something good.  And I think those are the things God is most concerned about.  We are known to be his disciples because we love, not because we don't cuss.  I want to be a do-er, not a don't-er.

There's another problem with making much of God.  For our love of Him to spill out, we have to love Him.  A lot.  And I've already mentioned that I'm having trouble trusting, and therefore loving, God.  So I'm going to address that tomorrow.

This is What I Signed Up For

Liz is the busiest person in Texas.  She is always gone when I wake up, and she's never home before 7:30.  One time she didn't come home until after midnight.  While this has given me opportunities to hang out with Jess, I want to party!

Last night we did just that.  There are Studio Movie Grills in Dallas, and we had coupons so that we could see The Amazing Spiderman and get a free drink for just $6!  The thing with this movie theater is that you order your drinks and food from your seat, and people serve you as you watch the film.  I was a little overwhelmed by this, so I went out on a limb and got...popcorn.

Spiderman really is amazing.  I would have been okay with a different kind of origin story, but Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are so infinitely better than Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst that the plot almost doesn't matter.  When we left the theater, I told Liz that I love any movie that causes me to make unexpected noises.  She said, "I forgot that is one of my favorite things about you!  I love when you laugh uncontrollably and then get embarrassed and try to hide it."

The thing is, I assume other people find the same things funny that I do.  There's a short clip of Peter sitting upside down on his wall beside his door, and it's so ludicrous and "of course you would try that!" I let out a huge bark of laughter.  And no one else made a sound.  C'mon, moviegoers.  Luckily, most of the time Liz was laughing with me, and we smacked each other whenever Andrew Garfield was especially adorable, which was 98% of the time.

We got home around 10:00, which meant it was time for the Olympic Opening Ceremonies!  James Bond and the Queen!  JK ROWLING.  So much British insanity.  They certainly have their own brand of humor.  Also, it made me incredibly sad when the agrarian fields were torn up for the Industrial Revolution.  It was like I was watching Tolkien's pain in fast forward, and I told the television, "The ents are going to get you for this."

I desperately hoped, even after the ceremony turned sentimental, that the Doctor would light the final torch, but he didn't!  Britian, you are supposed to be Who-obsessed!  The time-space continuum is now broken.  As one website complained this morning, "You had ONE JOB, Britain."

I love the Olympics.  I love that I live in a house of Olympics fanatics.  Jess and Liz and I sat around watching events all morning.  For like, four hours.  The next two weeks are going to be extremely unproductive.

Oh, also I paid for my classes and applied to work on campus.  YIKES I AM SUDDENLY POOR.

Keep All Paper Away From Me After Midnight

I've been writing for a couple hours every day.  There are first drafts and penciled marks everywhere.  It's very professional.  An unfortunate side effect of my responsible habit is my tendency to turn everything into a story.  This is especially true at night, when I lie in bed and my creativity decides to wake up.  Last night I kept turning sentences over in my head until I had to turn my light back on and hunt for paper and pen.  This morning I read what I'd written.  It's quite genius, which of course means, yikes, I wrote this some time after midnight.  I don't bother to hide my weirdness that late at night, I suppose.

For your amusement:

A chair popped, or a floorboard settled.  Maybe the drawers were shifting in the dresser.  Whatever made the noise, it startled Janie from her almost-sleep.  "What the frak?" she moaned blearily.  "Shouldn't furniture be stationary?"

Her parents had taught her never to curse, but then she'd seen Battlestar Galactica, and frak seemed like a good compromise.

Another crack from somewhere in the room.  "I hate you!" she shouted, and threw a pillow in the offending noise's direction.  She hit something that oughtn't have been hit, and now there were lots of noises.  They didn't bother her, though, because she knew what their cause was--her.

Janie regretted the loss of her decorative candle collection, but even more she missed her pillow.  She tried to will it into her hand, but unfortunately, Jedi powers didn't magically activate after midnight.  She flomped onto her stomach and grumbled into her remaining pillow.

A last candle hit the floor, late to the party or maybe suicidal in the face of the great candle massacre.  Janie gave it a pass because she valued a cushy headrest more than teaching that candle a lesson.

The next great American novel, obviously.  Though I am quite pleased with the word "flomped."  I'm like Shakespeare.

Nap

My goal for this month before school starts was to get serious about my writing.  Since being at home is distracting, I've been using Starbucks gift cards to get me out of the house (and not waste a ton of money).  It has been great!

Until today, when I took a nap instead of leaving the house.  I must have been tired from all the nothing I was doing.

Books and Budgets

I'm mostly okay.  Last night Jess asked if I wanted to watch The Bachelorette finale with her, and I agreed, because you don't turn down an invitation by a housemate you want to get along with.  It was three hours long, and I am happily ashamed to admit that within five minutes, I was totally sucked into the reality TV romance.  I like to think Jess and I are now super close to BFFdom.  So the house front is good.

And I'm navigating Dallas alright.  I have a few haunts already, and when I don't know where I am, my handy dandy phone GPS is there to save the day.  There is a surprising lack of fast food restaurants within close proximity to my house, which led to an embarrassing display of emotion when I turned a wrong corner and came face to face with an Arby's.  "Arby's!  I've missed you!"  Then I stared it down seductively, promising with my eyes to return at a later date.

The last time I was in Jackson, Jennie showed me this app on her phone that helps keep a budget.  I set mine up last night, with absurdly low goals.  I've already exceeded my "entertainment" quotient by going into Half Price Books to fill out an application.  I had to wander the store, you know, to get a fill of where I might be working, and surprise!  There are books there!  And who has zero ability to turn down books?  Me.

I found a $1 copy of Revolutionary Road, which is on Francis Prose's list of Books to Read.  Then I saw a set of Narnia books, and I realized how silly it was that I had given away something I obviously would reread multiple times in the future.  Finally I came across a British version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.  My heart stopped.  I thought, "I have the American version.  It is literally the same book but with a different cover.  But maybe there is British slang.  Maybe there are more instances of 'mum' or 'prat'.  It could be such a different reading experience!  And it's so pretty."

I'm actually a bit nervous about potentially working at Half Price Books.  There will be books everywhere, all the time.  At the library it was fine, because I could take whole stacks and they were free.  Now I will buy them!  Don't talk to me about, just don't buy them.  Please.  That is not an option.

It's kind of a smaller deal at this point, but I also did fill out an application.  Then I went home, because the thought of working, of getting to know a new system, learn new skills, and interact with new people made me very tired.  Maybe I'll apply somewhere else tomorrow.

It's not all yoga and books, though (yup, I did yoga this morning--p90x again, and I got through the Warrior 1 pose....a whole fifteen minutes, what a beast am I).  I've been doing a pretty good job of blocking out my loneliness.  Sometimes it comes out, though.  I drove to Irving, TX to sit at a Starbucks and type.  There was an interstate off ramp for Fort Worth, and my muscles all rebelled and decided to stop working.  Memories of patting Roy's head outside Kimbell or sitting on the curb at the Stockyard with Nathan and Troy and David rushed into my head, and I didn't like it.  I will never go to Grace Temple Baptist Church even though their pastor is basically Jim Donahue--I never want to go back to where I spent time with my Woodland family and said goodbye.

Liz comes back tonight, though.  We will have adventures, and discuss The Fault in Our Stars, and use our movie theater coupons, and eventually things will get better.  When in doubt, choose optimism, I guess.

Emboldened by Church

I went to a church suggested by Lisa Weber today.  It was a bit more high church than I'm used to (I mean, the choir wore ROBES), but I kept liking what they were doing, even if it felt unfamiliar.  Three women sat around me and were very kind and friendly.  I'll probably go back next week and try the Sunday School as well, but I'm hesitant to commit to it just yet.

Let's be honest.  I'm hesitant to commit to any church at all.  Going on after Woodland is like breaking up--I need a bit of a grieving period, and maybe time to play the field a little.

The pastor was gone this week, and a woman intern filled in.  I quite liked her; she talked about being the peace of Christ, and what that looks like in our world of social divisions and prejudices.  Relevant to my interests.  And then she punched me in the face, while she was talking about yoga, of all things.  She said sometimes in yoga, you get in a new pose, and sweat is poring down your face, and you want to either cry, curse, or collapse.  But just as she was about to give in, her instructor said, "Practice begins when you want it to end."

Last night I was complaining about God, about how He pushes me past my limits, and how I wish He would just stop.  This morning one of His people told me that when I reach that point, practice has just begun.

Yup. Here's the Depression.

This morning was awful, saying goodbye to my mom and the Woodlanders.  Watching them drive away and return to life in Peoria without me was harder than I anticipated.  I spent the day alternating between productivity (I got a library card!  I organized my room to neatness!) and sadness that I had no one to share it with.

I have exactly one friend in Dallas, though she is definitely a great friend.  Gone is the easiness of church programs filling up my week.  Gone is randomly stopping by a friend's house because I'm in the area.  It will take me at least a year to build up even a passing resemblance to what I have at Woodland.

Which made me think:  Why am I doing this?  Why move nearly 1,000 miles away from my friends and family?

Because I felt like God led me here.

And you know what?  I hate that answer.  Last night I went to the Mission Serve celebration worship, and the pastor talked about the demoniac who asked, upon seeing Jesus, "Are you here to torment me?"  That's how I feel.  I feel like God has continually put me in new places with new friends, only to yank me away from them when the relationships get really deep.  It feels sadistic.

I know that there is a part of me that longs for change, who loves the newness of cities and people and jobs.  I cannot sort out how much of this move to Dallas is something I want and something I blame God for.  But I know that it is easier to blame God than acknowledge that I did this to myself.

I want to trust God again.  I want to love Him, to genuinely love Him from my heart rather than reciting facts and theories from my head.  I don't right now, and my persistent ignoring of Him is only hurting things.  But that's just it--I don't WANT to be close to God.  I don't want Him to win me over only to screw with my life.  So I'm ignoring Him, and have been for months.

This has happened before, and I'm resigned to believing that it will happen again.  I will choose to leave a group of people who are more family than friends, and it will hurt.  I think part of my desire to move frequently is to avoid getting attached.  I have this idea that my life will be frantic and mobile, so why not turn off emotions and never get too close to anyone?

I haven't gotten very good at that yet.

Forced Adaptation

I've been in Dallas for five days now, and I am deceived into thinking that I'm the best transplant in the universe, that I'm handling this super well and am only a tiny bit stressed all the time.  Then I remember that my mom is staying with me and my church family is 20 minutes away, and the panic increases.

It will be hard to lose my support group.  Not just the people who support me, but the people who I can support.  I can already feel a purposelessness hanging over me.  I don't have a job to contribute to society, I don't a church to volunteer my time, and I don't have friends to talk to and encourage.  There is no one who will call me out of the blue and ask me to help with something.  Getting to that point will likely take months of intense pro-active work, and I am very aware that I'm not great at being pro-active.

Still, I keep remembering what one of Liz's friends told me in January.  She had just moved to Dallas a few months before, and she felt like the change was a way of God keeping her on her toes.  She felt like He would lead her to live overseas one day, and so she didn't want to get too attached to any one place or group of people.  She was purposefully making herself into a nomad so that she would be ready and prepared whenever God led her somewhere.

That stuck with me.  I have no idea what God will do with me.  Maybe I will live in Asia.  Maybe I will return to Peoria.  Maybe I will stay in Dallas.  Who knows?  But I can see wisdom in forcing myself to change, to adapt, to trust God in difficult situations.

This doesn't mean I'm any more confident about being in Dallas, but I respond very well to being given a reason.  I may not like being secluded here, but at least I know why it might turn out to be a good thing.

Let the Games Begin

I've arrived in Dallas, unpacked most of my things into my baby bedroom, and met two of my three housemates.  I'm feeling pretty good about this moving thing, although since I'm still around my family and since my Woodland family is only twenty minutes away, the reality of leaving hasn't hit yet.

I'm super excited to be living with Liz again.  I arrived at my house a few hours before my family and the moving truck, so we had a chance to drink coffee and talk together.  We went to the Mission Serve church so that I could introduce her to all of my people.  It was nice to bring her into my world a little, since I will soon be fully immersed in hers.

When Roy and Mom arrived, we unpacked the truck and analyzed my tiny bedroom for a long time before coming up with a solution that results in a nicely furniture-heavy look that still allows quite a bit of floor space.  Then Liz and I made dinner, and we kept referencing how similar it was to cooking together in Senegal, only with the amazing conveniences of bottled spaghetti sauce and apples that didn't need soaked in bleach.

I sat and talked with Jessica late last night.  She's my housemate who already graduated from DTS in Biblical Counseling.  She seems quite normal and fun, which is good.  I half believe in seminary stereotypes, but she gleefully told stories that highlighted those stereotypes and then assured me that not everyone was that way (especially in counseling, apparently).

The third housemate is in Sudan right now, but she left a dog here.  It's so nice to have a pet!  Paisley instantly makes things seem more homey.  She is also a spastic lap dog, which is just enough like Rory to make me less sad, but not enough like Rory to replace my fantastic cat.

There's no cause to be sad yet, since like I said, most of my people are here with me.  That will come later, but for now, I'm quite excited to be in Dallas!

Avengers is Getting Me Swag

I went to a Starbucks to hang out for the afternoon, and as I stood at the counter waiting for my drink, I noticed that they'd decorated their 4th of July chalk board with Captain America's shield.  I made eye contact with my barista and told her that I liked it.  She melted a little and admitted I was the first person to realize what it was.  She helped someone at the drive through, then came back and said, "I want you to have a free drink for being so observant."  She handed me a coupon.

AW YEAH. 

It pays to be a friendly geek.

4th of July

I am celebrating the 4th of July by reading a book.  You might think this is a lame way to spend a holiday, but you don't know the book I'm reading.  It's I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson, and it is a collection of articles he wrote for a British newspaper after returning to the United States after 20 years of living abroad.

These essays cover everything from the United State's preoccupation with fighting drugs, the incompetence of our federal agencies, the obesity of our citizens, and the lengths to which we will go to remain indoors.  The wonder of all this is that Bryson writes with a charming affection so that I finish an article and smile, "We Americans are weird, bless us."

Of course, I cannot argue with the man, since instead of sitting outside in unbearable heat for hours to watch a short colorful extravaganza in the sky, I chose to stay inside, wearing a blanket in air conditioning, reading a book.

Home of the free.

Emptying or Filling Brains

I lent Avatar: The Last Airbender to James, and psychically knew to bring the second season to him just as he finished watching the first.  His mother was less than pleased, and she told me, "Can you tell that his head is lighter?  All those brains just dribbling away in front of the TV.  Now he can lose more!"  I laughed along with her, because really, that's a funny (gross) image.

But later I thought about it, and I have to respectfully disagree.

Entertainment can be mind-numbing, for sure.  But most of the time people don't engage with media that turns their minds off.  At least I don't.  I can spend an entire day watching my favorite TV shows, and at the end I don't feel empty.  I feel full.

A good book, a good TV show, a good book--they fill my mind with new ideas and complex plots and provoking characters.  It's been years since I've watched the season 6 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I can still fall all over myself remembering the Jesus parallels and the power of friendship.  It's been even longer since I watched Return of the King for the first time and was so moved that I honestly believed that I could die happy and fulfilled.  It hasn't been that long since I've seen The Avengers, but obviously, that movie kept putting thoughts in my head weeks after I'd fallen in love.

Sure, I've spent days in college zoned out in front of an America's Next Top Model marathon, and did I come away fuller?  No.  Although I did usually spend the next day standing in various poses whenever I found myself in a line.

I hope it is obvious that spending all day every day camped out on a couch is generally not a healthy idea.  But I completely disagree with the idea that every once in a while, a full day of story absorption is a bad thing.  Learning to lose yourself in someone else's story teaches empathy.  Living in another world teaches imagination.  There is so much good out there, told through various entertainment mediums.  I would hate to lose that, and I would hate not to share it with others.

So, blog readers, go watch Avatar: The Last Airbender.  (The TV show, not the movie, oh please.)  It's fantastic.

Joplin--Play

If I like working with my church family, I LOVE playing with them.

Decades ago, our church mission trips meant working half the day, then sightseeing and playing throughout the afternoons and evenings.  Sometime while I was a child, the workers took over, and the majority of every day was spent working.  That is arguably a better way of doing mission trips, but I have to admit I really liked that the extreme heat of Joplin necessitated work being cut off at noon.

This meant longer lunch breaks, hearing stories of adventures that morning and going back for seconds of homemade cookies.  It also meant afternoons at the pool with a huge group of Woodlanders.  One time I was the first to the pool, and three random teenage boys were there.  Didn't they know this was Woodland's pool?, I wondered, before remembering that we were staying at a public motel.

At the pool, I got to take ridiculous pictures with Abby and James, wrestle for control of a hose with David, help Andrew surf on his boogie board, and learn to swim adult-doggy-style with Emily.  I could read books on the deck chairs with Stacy and avoid Jeff's massive splashes.

After pooling, we ate.  Several evenings almost the entire group (40 of us) arrived en masse at a restaurant.  We ate in different combinations, we shared food from each other's plates, and we waved gleefully at people across the room even though we had seen them only an hour before.

We also went to nearby waterfalls, perused used book stores,  had evening meetings, and endured a power outage with no A/C.

My church family is just that...a family.  I love spending time with them.  I love spending ALL the time with them.  If I had my way, I would eat every meal surrounded by my church family, and we would all gather for a debriefing at the end of each day.  Honestly, I would be quite content if our church was reworked as an apartment building, and we all just lived together for the rest of our lives.

Which is why it's sad that I'm leaving.  Sometimes I wonder why I want to move to Dallas, when so much of what I love is here in Peoria.  I've got an extended spiritual family who looks out for me, who is invested in my life, and who is kind enough to let me be a part of theirs.  I won't have them immediately nearby in just two weeks, so I am extremely grateful that I got an entire week of them, 24/7, in Joplin.

Joplin--Work

Woodland has taught me how to roof a house and love doing it.  I'm grateful to be part of a church who taught me from a very early age to be a hard physical worker.  Sometimes I think I learned this lesson too well.

In Joplin this year, the majority of our team worked at a homeless shelter, continuing work on a second story addition.  They were undeniably the cool group.  They went to work at 6:00 a.m., sent people home vomiting from the heat, and by the end of the week, the piles of wood actually looked like a building.

I was not on that crew.

With seven(ish) other people, I worked for Americorps, surveying homes throughout Joplin to see which families still had needs.  My fellow crew members were self-professed non-construction workers, either always or as a result of age catching up with them.  I am by no stretch of the imagination a magnificent construction worker, but I felt a little like I'd been put out to pasture.

This imagined unimportance was the result of my priority-addled mind.  And that's too bad, because it took me far too long to realize what a cool job I had.

Four years ago, I survived a tornado that hit my school and wiped out 80% of our dorms, killing no one, thank God.  It was the most traumatizing event of my life so far, and the only time I have legitimately thought I was going to die.  It's been several years, but still I panic at the sound of tornado sirens, and my fear of tornadoes has morphed into a fear of thunderstorms at night.  What I mean is, I'm still affected by it.  Living in a town where no one else experienced it, sometimes I feel like I ought to be "over it."  People rarely ask me how I'm doing, and I assume that they are right for not bringing it up.  But it's something I do want to talk about.

Surveying in Joplin was cathartic for me, not because I told anyone about my experience, but because I got to do for others what I've been wanting people to do for me.  I could ask people if they needed help, and I could listen while they repeated the stories they have probably shared over fifty times, and need to share fifty more.  I was able to say, "It's been over a year, but this is still a huge deal.  Do you want to talk?"

We only worked four hours a day.  We wore tank tops and flip flops.  We didn't carry hammers or put up walls.  But the surveying work we did was valuable.  I believe it was helpful to the people we met, and it was definitely helpful for me.