Ringing Out the Old Year

I rang in 2012 with Liz, running to the top of her apartment carpark to watch fireworks explode over the Dallas skyline.  A couple days later, as she drove me to the airport, I asked, "Would it be super weird for me to ask if I could move in with you this summer?"

In other words, 2012 was the year that I moved from Peoria to Dallas, quit my job as a children's librarian and started a Master's program in counseling, and swapped my parents for three housemates.  It's incredibly weird to think that within a year, I visited a place, applied to a school, moved across the country, and finished my first semester at a seminary.

I've made new friends.  I've joined a new church.  I've learned new things and had intense conversations about things like dispensationalism and premillenialism.

I love my new life in Dallas.  And I'm grateful that I've also maintained relationships in Peoria with friends who might as well be family.

A lot has changed in the last twelve months.  Like, a crazy lot.  So that's cool.

Conversations with Kids

Anju:  Weddings are always embarrassing.
Me:  Oh yeah?  Why?
Anju:  Because you have to kiss in front of a crowd of people!
Me:  What if I want to kiss in front of a crowd of people?
Anju:  Well.  You can do what you want, but it's still going to be embarrassing.

Unexpected Gift

When I arrived at church this morning, the woman at the door greeted me by name.  Freshly enthused, I pranced through the foyer until another woman touched my arm.

"Tricia, we know you're a student and maybe things are a little tight, so here.  We want to show you we care about you!  It's not much."

She handed me an envelope.  I hugged her, because what was this friendliness?  Then I found a seat and opened the envelope to see a check from the church for $100.  Yeah.

It was the absolute sweetest gesture.  I love my church.  That whole "pool your resources and give to those who need it" thing?  They do it!  I was just, ugh.  My sweet little TFC.  I love it.  I'm so glad Laura took me there so soon after I moved to Dallas.

Feminist Ears

There is a danger in being a feminist.  You learn to see sexism and misogyny so engrained in our culture and laced throughout conversations that--you see it everywhere.

In class on Tuesday, Dr. Bailey asked who you bring a gallon of cider for our last-class-party.  Michal Ann whipped her head to stare at me, and almost immediately her face fell into an embarrassed smile.

"I thought he said 'what gal wants to bring cider?'" she admitted, and we giggled into our hands.

"It's everywhere!" I whispered.

"I know, I hear it everywhere.  I'm so on edge."

Also, Michal Ann is leaving next semester.  I finally found a passionate Christian feminist (who loves Lord of the Rings and hates exercising!), and she is leaving.  I'm quite sad about this.

The Freedom of Doubt

"There are a lot of things I don't know.  I don't know where evil came from or why God allows so much suffering in the world.  I don't know if there is such a thing as a 'just war.'  I don't know how God will ultimately judge between good and evil.  I don't know which church tradition best represents truth.  I don't know the degree to which God is present in religious systems, or who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.  I don't know if hell is an eternal state or a temporary one or what it will be like.  I don't know why people are gay or if being gay is a sin.  I don't know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical.  I don't know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life.  I don't know how to reconcile God's sovereignty with man's free will.  I don't know what to do with those Bible verses that seem to condone genocide and the oppression of women.  I don't know why I have so many questions, while other Christians don't seem to have any.  I don't know which of these questions I will find answers to and which I will not.

...

Those who say that having a childlike faith means not asking questions haven't met too many children.  Anyone who has kids or loves kids or has spent five minutes with kids knows that kids ask a lot of questions.  Rarely are they satisfied with short answers, and rarely do they spend much time absorbing your response before moving on to the next 'why?' or 'how come?'

Psychologists say that the best way to handle children in this stage of development is not to answer their questions directly but instead to tell them stories.  As pediatrician Alan Greene explains, 'After conversing with thousands of children, I've decided that what they really mean is, "That's interesting to me.  Let's talk about that together.  Tell me more, please."'  Questions are a child's way of expressing love and trust.  They are a child's way of starting dialogue.  They are a child's way of saying, 'I want to have a conversation with you.'

...

If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that serious doubt--the kind that leads to despair--begins not when we start asking God questions but when, out of fear, we stop.  In our darkest hours of confusion and in our most glorious moments of clarity, we remain but curious and dependent little children, tugging frantically at God's outstretched hands and pleading with every question and every prayer and every tantrum we can muster, 'We want to have a conversation with you!'

God must really love us, because he always answers with such long stories."

--Rachel Held Evans in Evolving in Monkey Town

Hopeless Wanderer

I am a skeptic.  This worried me for a long time, because as much as I love God and study His word and try to live out His heart, I--doubt.  I have big doubts and little doubts.  Sometimes they pass me by, but some of them persist.

My favorite hymn is Come, Thou Fount because of this verse:

"O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above"

I sing this verse with a scrunched up face, and sometimes when I'm alone I hold my hand to my chest, as if I could reach inside to clutch at my heart, forcing it to stay still.

It doesn't help to talk to people who have a (for all I can understand) supernatural gift of faith.  Liz is one of those people.  I'll flippantly mention something about, "I've always wondered about that" or "That just doesn't seem fair" or "I'm really struggling with this" and she looks at me with kindness and not a bit of understanding.  Liz isn't perfect, of course, but she doesn't struggle with doubts the way I do.  She isn't a skeptic.  So while I entrust her with my soul and get great pleasure and wisdom from being her friend, she doesn't really help in these situations.

Luckily, there are books.  Right now I'm reading Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans, and it is EXCELLENT.  You know, except for the part where she told my childhood of perfectionism, pietism, and generally goody two-shoes, only it was her childhood.  And she talked about knowing all the answers, and then suddenly, not.  She started wondering if there was more to Christianity than right thinking, and if apologetics and defensiveness and culture wars weren't missing the point.  She worried at the unfairness of oppressed men and women going to hell when they had been raised to believe in a false religion while she had been raised to believe in the right one.

I got a little spooked.  And a lot relieved.  She was telling my story, and she was okay.  Some of us are just naturally skeptics.  We doubt.  We can't take things easily by faith.  We wonder if there isn't something better, something missing.  But that doesn't make us wrong, and it doesn't make us not Christians, and it doesn't make God love us any less.

So when I drove to Target and Mumford and Sons' song Hopeless Wanderer came on, I sang loudly.

"I wrestled long with my youth
We tried so hard to live in the truth
But do not tell me all is fine
When I lose my head, I lose my spine
But hold me fast, Hold me fast
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer
And hold me fast, Hold me fast
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer"

This time as I sang, I didn't scrunch up my face or feel guilty or sing like I was begging God to forgive me.  This time I was smiling.  I was grinning like a madman, in fact.  I was confessing my ridiculous qualities to the God who made me with them.  I sang with the confidence that God used people with doubts, and that He would use me.  I sang knowing that He would hold me fast, and that I didn't need to worry about where my doubts would take me, because God is with me and He has heard everything a million times, and He loves me.

Lord of the Rings Memories

In honor of The Hobbit's release today at midnight, I thought I'd rave about my enduring relationship with Tolkien's creations.

I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in middle school, but the epic awesomeness went over my head.  The first movie came out when I was in 8th grade, and my brother invited me to join him and his friends to see it opening night.  Partly because I liked the books, but mostly because I was in awe of hanging out with people four years older than myself, I went.

By the end of the movie, I had stars in my eyes.  Immediately I re-read the books and corrected my misconception of who Aragorn loved (to be fair, Eowyn appears WAY more often in the books than Arwen ever did).  I had a huge crush on Legolas, and I downloaded pictures of the entire Rings cast, printing them out and pasting them into a LotR scrapbook.  I bought the Ring, I made homemade t-shirts with my favorite quotes, and I made up a potential LotR wedding ceremony in which Gandalf presided and I wore a white dress like Galadriel's.

I saw each of the three movies four times in theaters.  By the time Return of the King came out, I was drowning in nerdiness.  On opening night (of course), I started crying when Merry and Pippin separated, and I pretty much didn't stop for the next three hours.  Well, that's not exactly true.  When all seemed lost in the Battle of Pelennor Fields, but then the Rohirrim appear over the hilltop with the sunrise, I was done.  My body shook with sobs, but I had no water left in my eye sockets with which to cry.

Upon leaving the theaters, I thought, "I could die happy."  That seems a bit extreme, and hey, I was an obsessive teenager, so of course it was.  But there's a big piece of truth to that sentiment.  I had just witnessed the most beautiful, truthful, loving story that somehow echoed everything my heart desired to be and pointed me toward a God who was maybe writing an epic story like LotR throughout history.

I went home, curled up in bed, and turned on "Into the West."  I found some more tears, and I cried happily to sleep, half expecting to never wake up.  It would have been a good way to go.

However, I did not die!  Which is good, because I got to live to see the Return of the King extended edition!  I watched them all through, and then instituted a very strict policy of only ever watching them all in their entirety within one week, and not more than once a year.

Years went by, and suddenly I was a senior in college with one of the best friends in the whole world.  For the end of my final semester in December, Stephanie and I watched all three extended editions in a row.  We started at noon and finished at 2:00 in the morning.  Friends came and went.  Josh and Seth joined us in The Two Towers and stayed to the end.  Erin and Tim came home engaged, and while I happily took pictures of them and squealed with joy, I kept thinking, "But Frodo is climbing the slopes of Mount Doom!  I have to get back!"

Mid-December has been Lord of the Rings-time for the last 11 years of my life.  I think it will forever be associated with the stories, and I'm incredibly okay with that.  Especially because in mid-December of 2012, I'm going to re-enter the visual world of Tolkien and watch The Hobbit!

Guilt Complex

Quick reminder that a month or so ago I had an epiphany that God might actually want me to work in a job that I enjoyed.  Everyone reacted to my epiphany with a wary look and a, "Well....yeah."

Everyone except one person.

Over Thanksgiving, I told my grandpa about my desire to work with married couples and single people, and how it was such a relief to know that I didn't have to work with the sexually abused, because that would kill my soul.  He responded with a thoughtful, "But I think serving God has to hurt."

I wanted to throw myself facefirst on the couch and wail, "But Grandpa!  I had an epiphany!"

Only later did it hit me, he is where I got and developed my martyr's complex.

I explained this whole story to Bridgett, my friend who is also studying counseling.  I told her that my grandpa and I are very shame and guilt-based, then told her how he has always felt guilty for being born into a Christian family in the affluent United States.  Somewhat piously, I then explained how I'd figured out that God gives some people blessings, a better head start on Christianity, as it were, so that those people will use their blessings earlier and more and etc.

Bridgett paused, then said, "Wow.  That is a lot of guilt."

Immediately I corrected her.  "No, no.  My grandpa feels guilty.  I escaped that by explaining it away.  Right?  Wasn't my explanation good?  HEY.  C'mon.  Validate me.  I'm not guilty; I don't feel guilt.  I've got everything figured out.  RIGHT?"

She didn't say anything, just quietly murmured and allowed me to rant.

A week later it hit me that she was 100% correct.

She is going to be a crazy good counselor.

Sickness

I used to hate when Roy would enter my room on days I stayed home from school sick.  He would cover his mouth and a dishrag and rasp a laughing, "How are you, sicko?"  He would poke at me and back out of the room.  I felt like a leper.

Today Liz came home from class, paused in the doorway to moan, "I'm sick," then lunged for my bed.  I yelped and snagged my pillow out from under her incoming head.  I felt bad, looking at her face crushed into my mattress, so I tossed a decorative pillow at her.  "OW," she said, because I'd hit her in the eye with one of the pillow corners.

Bedside manner is not one of my family's strong suits.

Christmas Songs are the Best Songs

The third song in today's service was "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day."  I spiritually rolled my eyes, because since when is that an awesome Christmas song?  Since always, apparently.

"And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

I adore stories in any media--books, TV, movies, songs.  I especially love when a story breaks you down, unveils your deepest fears and regrets, and shoves them in your face.  I love feeling awful, and legitimately thinking, "Ugh, that's TRUE.  Life sucks!"  But a good story doesn't end there, because Jesus doesn't end there.  He doesn't reveal our sin and sit back with his arms crossed, smirking, "Yeah, don't you feel bad for disobeying me?"

He saves us.  He brings us out of darkness into light.  He takes our fears and regrets and covers them in hope and grace.  Jesus is awesome.  And the songs about his entering into human history are especially saturated with hope and grace.  I LOVE THEM.  That's why "O Come O Come Emmanuel" is my all time favorite Christmas song.

"O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel."

Seminary Marriages

Dr. Kreider:  "Some of you are married, some are unmarried.  If you are unmarried, may I suggest that there are better places to find a spouse than here [in seminary]?  Especially if you are female.  If you're male and offended by that statement, maybe you're the exception.  But if you were offended, probably that means you're not."

I thought that was the best thing I'd ever heard.  So I wrote it down and told Liz about it later.  She get this distressed look on her face and said, "Why?"

"....Because.  What?  I don't understand your face."

"Why shouldn't you look for a spouse in seminary?"

"Oh.  Um.  Well, we're very prideful?  Seminary students."

"That's sad."

Liz checked out of the conversation then, which made me distressed, because she wasn't fully appreciating the brilliance of Dr. Kreider's comment.  And while it's totally true that seminary students have a higher-than-normal tendency to struggle with pride (I think it's almost built into the idea of graduate learning and the idea that somehow you can study to become qualified to serve God and lead others), there's another facet I think Dr. K was drawing on.  Maybe.  If not, it's something I have observed.

Men in seminary (women too, but men are more vocal about this) are desperate to get married.  Not all of them, but a lot of single guys in seminary are on the prowl.  Partly this is because it's hard to get jobs as a pastor if you are unmarried.  Partly because seminary students are often committed to celibacy before marriage, and 20-30 years of celibacy often leads to "burning with passion" as the apostle Paul so delicately put it.  Anyway, men are looking for a wife.

And that's just it.  They're looking for a "wife."  Generic, copywrited wife.  They aren't looking for a specific person, but an ideal.  Probably everyone does this to a certain extent while dating/pining.  But it's not healthy.  And women would be wise to run away from men who aren't aware of that tendency. 

So anyway.  It's nice to hear a professor say not to get married, when so many others say things like, "Marriage is so great!  I couldn't have gotten through seminary without my wife supporting me, proof reading my papers, making me dinner!  It was wonderful!"  And I just side-eye them and think, if I'd married them, my life in seminary would be a lot more difficult.  I need me a wife.

Or I'll just remain single.  That is my solid, supported plan until someone absolutely blows me away with awesomeness.

Which is fine, because that guy with the hot ankles moved seats, and now I can't see the area between his pants and his shoes.

Facebook Statuses I Abandoned

I was chopping broccoli and listening to "Christmas Unicorn" when Amy walked through the kitchen.  "I don't get the Christmas unicorn thing," she said.  "I'm trying."  I grimaced to suppress my instinct to shout, "IT'S A METAPHOR FOR CHRISTMAS CONSUMERISM AND ACCEPTING OUR FALLENNESS WHILE STILL EMBRACING THE CHRISTIAN STORY.  AND IT'S AWESOME."

Or if not that, I could have whispered, "I'm the Christmas unicorn."

**

Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan

**

My thoughts for the last few days have been approximately 100% Sufjan Stevens, give or take nothing.

**

Sufjan, I really need you to stop making weird things attractive.



No, I'm just kidding.  Keep doing what you're doing.

Sufjan Stevens Taught Me About Heaven

Last night Liz and I went to a Sufjan Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long concert, and it was the best thing in the history of best things.

Now, if you don't know Sufjan Stevens, you are either not as strange as I am, or you are missing out.  Here is my favorite of his songs for your education.  It is maybe the saddest (true) story to sing about, but if you listen through to the last couple lines, you will understand why I completely adore this man.

 

Does your heart hurt now?  You've been Sufjan'ed.

Anyway, so this concert was spectacular.  Sufjan came out wearing red ugg boots with silver trim, tinseled arm bands, pants with neon tape elongating his legs, a baseball cap under a santa hat, massive sunglasses, and a Christmas cape.  His female lead singer wore a tree.  A guitarist wore a Superman t-shirt over a chicken costume.   The pianist wore a neon pink wig with an angel outfit.  And the everything-else intrumentist wore a Santa outfit with a gnome mask.

The setup of the concert was a mix of his new Christmas album(s), some old songs, and sing-a-long classic Christmas songs determined by a massive spinning Wheel of Christmas.  Occasionally Sufjan would cross himself, or kneel, or point to the skies when singing about the promised baby King.  

Around that point I thought, "This is like heaven."  Not metaphorically.  I felt like I was genuinely glimpsing eternity.  A place where people can be who they are without judgment.  Where Jesus is worshiped with joy and excitement rather than the too-often "sacred" solemnness found in church services.  

With my new eyes, I noticed how Sufjan forgot the words to one of his most popular songs, but we cheered for him anyway because our love for him was not contingent upon his perfection.  I listened to the chorales by Bach that they interspersed throughout the concert.  I confessed my sins with a crowd of 400 people as we sang along to 'Chicago', "I've made a lot of mistakes."  Sufjan played Liz's favorite song from his new album.

 

He ended the song by saying, "Remember kids!  The love of money is the root of all evil!"  That mini-sermon was more effective than many I've listened to.  We sang 'O Holy Night' then followed up with 'Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.'  I glanced around in shock as nearly the whole audience sang along from memory.  Sufjan's lyrics are undeniably Jesus-loving, but he's weird enough that I assumed most of his fans weren't Christians.  Maybe they are.  Maybe I was in a room with 400 of the weirdest Christians in Dallas.  I liked it.

The concert ended with my favorite song from his new album, 'I'm a Christmas Unicorn.'  He pulled on a bike helmet with a horn and an angel wing attached, then donned a feathery, ballooned vest/cape.  He climbed on the piano, confetti rained down, and we all sang comfort to each other, "I'm a Christmas unicorn.  Find the Christmas unicorn.  You're a Christmas unicorn, too.  It's all right!  I love you."

 

After over two hours of celebrating Christmas, Liz and I left the theater and I thought, "I want church to be more like that.  I can't wait to go to heaven and experience something similar."  What it was I was feeling, I think, was grace and freedom.