Live Through the Past Again

A couple weeks ago I saw The Avett Brothers, and there was one particular song that lit up my eyes and awakened my ears.  I leaned over to Liz and said, "They are singing my life." 

The song was "Paul Newman Vs. The Demons," which I have since listened to ad nauseum.  I'll put the video at the end of this post for any interested.  The relevant lyrics, though, are these:

"Live through the past again/ How many times must I/ Live through the past again?/ No more/ Wait."

Something that bothered me for a long time was the fact that I still struggle with the same doubts and sins and selfishnesses that I did before I got serious at following Jesus.  Shouldn't I be conquering things?  Shouldn't I be better?  It took a couple years of learning that following Jesus is a journey (which is why I like to say I follow Jesus rather than believe in Him or trust in Him--all are true, but I think "follow" captures the heart of this choice better than other verbs), and since it is a journey, there are ups and downs and backtracks and resting periods and painful climbs.

Put another way, I used to think life ought to be a straight line--always getting better, always going higher and closer to God.

This is one of those times when I've actually internalized a thing.  I no longer freak out at my sinful habits and unhealthy coping mechanisms.  Sure, I need to work on them, and I need to pray that God will heal me.  But they don't matter.  I actually believe that God has saved me, that Jesus's salvation covered me, and nothing I do affects how God feels about me.  I'm safe, and I can't lose that.  I can screw up my life here and now, and there are consequences for the things I do, but God has me, and He knows my failings, and He's okay with the fact that I'm not actually superhuman.  The Holy Spirit is committed to walking with me through anything and everything.

Okay, I got a bit PASSIONATE there.  I'm just really happy that somewhere along the way those ideas sank into my heart and I don't have to force myself to believe them--I just do.

So the point is this:  instead of life being a line, I now think of it as a pulled-apart slinky.  Loop after loop.  There is direction, but it's not straight.  It looks as though just as much time is spent going backwards as going forwards, but somehow at the end of it all, you're further along than you were at the beginning.

The Avett Brothers sing about living the past again, and I get that.  God has consistently proven that He is trustworthy, but I still freak out about the future.  God has consistently proven that His love is pure, but I still pursue cheap imitations.  God has consistently proven that living selflessly is more fulfilling, but I still put myself above everyone else.

And that's okay.  I'm going to repeat the past.  And I'm going to learn.  And God will change me, slowly, sometimes painfully, usually without me noticing.  It's going to look really pathetic from the outside, I think, and that's okay.  God knows me, and He loves me, past-repeater that I am. 

(The whole song is really genius.  Here are a few more lyrics that make me think of The Avett Brothers as prophets:  "You may have to drag me away from my demons/ Kicking and screaming/ It's been so long now, I've been with them/ I don't know where they stop and I begin."

The Arboretum

Last year, my mom and I went to the St. Louis Botanical Garden for a Chinese Lantern Festival.  We got duped into buying yearlong memberships, only we weren't duped, because you can use them at any botanical garden, and I've gone to the one in Dallas four times since moving here.  I get in for free, no parking, which saves $25, which means $100 for all the times I've gone (except I wouldn't, not for $25, yeesh).  Unfortunately, my swanky membership is over June 30th.

So I went today!  Alright, honest shameful admission: I mostly went so I could wear a tank top and get tan.  But THEN I walked in and there was nature!  And it was beautiful!  The flowers were all, "hey, look at me! no, me!" and the sky was all, "my blueness and clouds make you want to fall asleep in heaven, huh?" and the grass was all, "WALK ON ME!  TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES, WILL YOU?"

Noisy garden.

Because I don't do pretentious unless I'm going to do pretentious, I took some Auden and walked a ways, sat to read poetry, then walked a little further to read the next.  You know, just so everyone in the arboretum could admire my dedication to literature. 

Then I felt crispy, so I left.

What Makes a Church

My thoughts, over the past week, have been forming stars, and I think they are finally discernible as a constellation of sorts.  That's my highfalutin way of saying I finally know what I want to say.

I've spent a lot of this year thinking, "Finally!  People who think/feel/act like me!"  By which I mean, I met people outside the Baptist bubble who think Catholics can teach us things about Jesus, and Communion is a lovely weekly reminder of our dependency upon God, and drinking isn't evil, and cussing has a purpose, and women are equal imagers of God.  When I found these people, I formed my own bubble.  A snobby and exclusive bubble, I might add.

It was all very confusing, because while I adore my family at Woodland, I started feeling like maybe I'd been brought up wrong, and I resented the faceless and nameless church for raising me conservative and bigoted.  I think I was taking legitimate experiences at Woodland and heavily overlaying them with my own personality as well as the face of the Church presented by media.  I needed someone to blame for who I was, and I took it out on people I love.

Then I went home to Peoria last weekend.  And I mean, went home.  Woodland, for all its ridiculousness, is my family.  It was heartbreakingly wonderful to hug dozens of people, to continue conversations from six months ago, to know and be known.  It was so good to hear the Truth amongst people who may not agree with me about everything, but who love me anyway.  It was complete crap, leaving after two days.  Watching Woodland gear up for summer, with VBS (which I hate, even, but I wanted to be a part) and mission trips and youth gatherings and Sunday School plans and summer Sundays, I ached inside for missing it.

When I got back to Dallas, I didn't know what to feel, which is why I haven't written about it yet.  Because the fact remains that sure, I don't 100% with Woodland's party line.  There are people in Dallas with whom I can sigh, "You think that?  I do too!  Can we be best friends??"  I'm so grateful to have those people in my life, who make me feel less weird, who encourage me to pursue the ideas I'm passionate about and engage with culture.  But I couldn't ignore this huge hole inside reminding me of my church family in Peoria.

In July, I'm going to take a class on Ecclesiology, the theological word for "study of the Church."  In preparation, I've been reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He lectured pretty fiercely on the stupidity and sinfulness of "visionary" people who think they can "fix" the Church.  Which, well, stung a little, because I can definitely remember a particular blog post I once wrote that was all about how Church would be if I were in charge.  Bonhoeffer's point is that the Church is God's gift to us, with all its messiness and glory and frustrations.  In fact, it's in the messiness and frustrations that we really shine.

That's what I realized.   I'm copying a sentence I wrote earlier: "It was so good to hear the Truth amongst people who may not agree with me about everything, but who love me anyway."  That's the Church.  A bunch of people with a bunch of ideas, trying and failing to understand our great and mysterious God.  Agreeing on every little detail is not what glorifies God--honestly, that might mean we are cult.  It's in the disagreements, expressed in love, that Christians show the character of Jesus.  The fact that I push people's buttons, but they still hug me and ask my opinions, well.  That's what Woodland is.  It's my church.

I guess the point of all this is, my feelings haven't changed.  I still get frustrated with Woodland, and with Christianity as an institution.  But my feelings about my feelings have changed.  Those frustrations are something beautiful, I think, and I love being a part of a group of people who accept me despite my idiosyncrasies, and I love being friends with people even when I disagree with something they say.

Teaching Hard Truths

I'm a big believer in being honest with kids.  Share life with them, the good and the bad, and talk about it.  Explain the things they hear and see, tell them about the brokenness of the world, and then tell them how it can be better.  Information shared kindly and patiently is almost always better than willfully exerting ignorance.  In my opinion.  Anyway, today I took Ketan to my house (Anju was in camp) to play some Harry Potter PS2 (his gift earlier this week).

Every time we go to my house, the conversation winds up being about my roommates.  Today Ketan wanted to know what Jessica's job was. 

Me:  She works at Genesis Women's Shelter.  She does counseling for women who are abused by their husbands.
Ketan:  What does that mean?  Being abused by husbands?
Me:  Some men hit or hurt their wives.  Sometimes if the wives threaten to run away, the husbands say they'll hurt them even more.  So Jessica counsels those women, and sometimes if it's very dangerous, her work has hidden places for the women to stay so their husbands can't find them.

Ketan was silent as we pulled into the driveway.  When we got out, I tousled his hair and said, "That's why you should always respect and be nice to girls.  You're going to grow up and have massive muscles and be stronger than women.  You've got to make sure you don't use your strength to hurt others."

He cackled, kind of sly, so I elbowed his shoulder.  He laughed for real, said, "Okay," and ran into my living room to play Flinstones on the keyboard.

I'm also a firm believer in "Stop telling girls not to get raped, and start telling boys not to rape!" so, job well done, at least for today. 

I Will Watch Anything Starring Hugh Laurie

I keep leaving blogging until the last minute, because I forget I've decided to blog every day this month.  By the end of the day, I have TOO MANY thoughts flying through my head, and I don't know where to even start laying them down.  Or if I want to commit to the time it would take to go into them.

So I'll go with the easy and mention that Liz and I watched The Oranges, which we've wanted to watch for MONTHS, and it was so weirdly good!  It stars Hugh Laurie, who gets sexier with age, and he sleeps with his best friend/neighbor's daughter.  That's the story.  HAHAHA.  And it was so confusing, because a) Hugh Laurie, and b) everyone was ridiculous and sad and understandable.  I love narratives that refuse to paint people as villains or heroes, but instead tell stories realistically and painfully.

Painfully funny, too.  This movie does awkward like nothing.  It was so wonderful.  I have no opinions about it because it played spin the bottle with my moral compass, so I need time to digest and process. 

Alright, that's a good couple paragraphs.  Done.

I Just Stepped Into the Present

Another thing about my writing I learned this weekend:  someone said, "I can't wait to see how God uses your talent for writing!" and I said, "Me too!"

Until a couple nights later, when I thought about it a little longer.  My whole life, I've seen my writing as a placeholder.  That I'm practicing for something else, preparing for some mystical "THIS IS IT" writing assignment.  And to some extent, duh, everything I write is a chance to play around, learn from mistakes and discoveries, and get better at the writing craft.

But that's not all it is.

I think God is using my Facebook statuses and blog posts right now.  My goal with the inane, self-deprecating Facebook statuses is to bring a little levity and joy to people's days.  My goal with my blog is the same, although sometimes I go surius biznez and write about something deeper.  Two people called me to say they really appreciated my blog on homosexuality, which meant a lot, because I was kind of terrified to write it and make it available to public eyes.  It encourages me to know that every once in a while, something I say hits a person in a particular way, either by making them see something in a new way, or by giving voice to a feeling they've had but couldn't articulate.

None of that is super fancy.  It's just Facebook and blogging.  Someday I'd love to be published, but honestly, that's more selfish vanity than anything.  I think I'm using my talent for writing already, and I trust that God is happy with my use of the gifts He's given me.  So.  No more waiting.  This is it!  This is me writing, ridiculously and passionately and occasionally thoughtfully, and this is what counts.

The Internet Creates Lopsided Relationships

I try really hard to make my Facebook statuses funny.  I mean, not hard like I spend hours on each one, but I definitely tweak the wording and try to make them as concisely hilarious as possible.  Unless I'm flailing, at which point, anything is possible.

It's an art form, I think.  To be entertaining in a sentence or two.  Clearly, this is not usually how I write, since I've always operated under the guidelines, "if one sentence is good, one hundred would be better!"  So I'm branching out.

Which makes it so rewarding when people tell me they enjoy my Facebook statuses!  When I went home to Peoria last weekend, a few people mentioned that I was so funny, ha ha, and it made my little heart light up.  But there is a hidden side to Internet sharing! 

Other people feel closer to me than I feel to them.  Especially those people who never comment, and I have no idea they are even reading my thoughts.  So for people to tell me I'm funny, or they love reading my stuff, or mention something I wrote weeks ago--it's strange!  I am very aware that they know more about me than I know about them.  Mostly I'm okay with that, because most of the stuff I share is either 1) carefully thought out for public consumption or 2) ridiculous funniness that doesn't really matter.  The thing is, I need other people to understand this lopsided relationship.  And I think people do, or at least no one acted as though I ought to know their thoughts like they knew mine.

It reminds me of when I met Donald Miller.  Having read four of his books, I felt like we were BFFs.  I knew his opinions, fears, and desires.  My heart and his heart beat simultaneously.  Until I got face-to-face and realized he had no idea who I was.  It was weird.

THOSE ARE MY THOUGHTS and everyone now knows them.  What an age we live in.

(If you want to restore balance to our relationships, talk to me!  Comment on my posts or statuses, or even just consistently like them.  I pay attention.  Heh heh, that sounded a bit ominous.  Or it should have.  Go back and read it again if you missed that intonation.)