We Are Not Alone

Man.  Sometimes.  Sometimes I don't even know that I'm feeling bad until I say, "Hey, this sucks" and I realize, OH YEAH IT DOES.

I'm super excited about Emily's wedding coming up.  But hanging over every sentence, every plan, is this gigantic floating font that says, "SHE'S THREE YEARS YOUNGER THAN YOU.  YOU'RE SO FREAKING OLD AND PAST YOUR PRIME."  And I try to ignore that, because her wedding is soooo not about me. 

But then tonight, Liz and Mallory and Melanie and I were all talking via Facebook messages.  We were catching up on things, and I just blurted out my self-pity, and Mallory, dear sweet awesome friend, said, "Oh, so what gospel truths do you need to cling to?"

Which.  HAHAHA how am I so blessed to have such awesome, Christ-centered friends?  We all got into the discussion, talking about our needs to be validated, our fears that as single women we are missing out, or are unwanted.  And it was just so funny.  To hear beautiful truth, and then me, the stick in the mud, saying, "I don't even care that God loves me.  JUST LET ME SULK.  But also, yeah, it's cool that God loves me.  BUT DOES THAT MATTER?  I want other people to love me too!"

And while the other three would speak truth, they each laughed and we all shared stories of our struggles with 1) feeling left out of the marriage game, 2) resenting anyone who looks down on us or pities us for being left out of the marriage game, and 3) wanting people to pity us for being left out of the marriage game.  Emotions, they are confusing.

We had a lot of circular conversations, and I'm not sure I really grasped at any truths that will help me through the wedding, but I did grasp that I have these three amazing women in my life, who are SO STINKING AWESOME but ridiculously feel bad about themselves.  And I realized, maybe we're all stupid.  Maybe we're all awesome, and we should stop feeling bad about ourselves.  And since that isn't going to happen, I'm so grateful for their honesty and for knowing that we are all walking this road together.

"We are not alone/in the dark with our demons."

Basically, friendships are good.  They are so so good. 

My First and Last Pub Crawl

On Saturday I experienced the Dallas bar scene, and it was the worst.  To be fair, the evening started out lovely.  My friend was celebrating her birthday with a party hat pub crawl, so we wore party hats, and during dinner I met some of her other friends.  Good times.  Then we went to another bar down the street, and we all sat around two tables pulled together, and I got to know other friends who now happened to be sitting near me.  Then we crossed the street and went upstairs to a techno dance floor with glow-bands, which, obviously, was awesome.

*mild, or maybe not so mild, obscene content ahead.  I dunno how to do proper warnings.  IT WASN'T MY CUP OF TEA, basically.*

But then.  We ended the night down several roads with a couple turns, somewhere I wasn't familiar.  We went into a bar, and suddenly after midnight, everyone in the world was out and about.  My birthday friend had decided it would be a good idea to get a kiss on the cheek for each of her 27 years.  I thought this was a bad idea, but when she started with her guy friends, it was adorable and sweet.  Then random guys at the bar were pulled over.

I have to admit I shamelessly abused her.  When one guy came up to me, I grinned and pointed toward my friend, "Kiss her cheek!  She wants her cheek kissed!  Her, not me."  One guy obliged, then pushed his crotch into my thigh and whispered in my ear.  Since bars are notoriously loud, I couldn't hear him, so I grimaced and scooted away.  He followed, continuing to press against me and shouting.  Finally I worked out what he was saying:  "He's a stripper!"

I said alright, whatever, and when he turned away I turned to my friend and pointed to the other guy, screaming, "He's a stripper!!"  My friend thought this was hilarious, so he was beckoned.  After understanding the kiss thing, he licked up her cheek.  It was, well, repulsive a bit, but also hilarious, because at least she could say, "A stripper licked me on my birthday!"

Around this time all of her friends left minus one.  It was 1:00 in the morning, and somehow a group of them all said goodbye at once, and they told me and our mutual friend to get the birthday girl home safe.  I was so beyond done with the bar scene by this point, and for goodness sake, it was past midnight and I had a half hour drive home ahead of me, and I wanted to sleep.  But they were gone, and I didn't have it in me to leave my birthday friend alone with just one other person.

We were still sitting in the corner of a bar, and I cannot describe how little fun I was having.  The place was so loud, and so crowded, and there were eyes everywhere, and people touching me that I didn't know, and I just like to have my personal space respected, you know?  Wanting to get the show on the road, I said, "Are we still doing the kissing thing?  Because we should maybe move around.  Find more guys."  So practical, I am.  So we did, pushing toward the back of the bar, and yeesh gross ugh these two guys came up to us.

They were both tall, and one stood beside me.  He grabbed my arm and twisted my wrist so he could see my tattoo, pulling me into his side in the process.  Whenever he talked he leaned close to my face, frequently spraying me with saliva.  His friend was chatting up my mutual friend, and another guy who had given birthday girl a kiss was back for more, I guess.

Slobber Guy:  What an idiot.  What kind of idiot wears sandals? (referring to the guy chatting up birthday girl)
Me:  Well, it's hot outside.
SG:  Real men wear close-toed shoes.
Me:  Oh, yeah?  Anyone you know?
SG:  I'm awful.  I'm really judgmental, you might have noticed.
Me:  I did notice.
SG:  But you're fine.  I give you a pass.  In fact, if the world were ending, and I could only save 20 people, you'd be at like, 25 right now.
Me:  I'm sorry you only know 24 people you like better than me.
SG:  Hah!  Good one.  I'm going to get another beer.  You want anything?
Me:  No.
SG:  Really?
Me:  Yes.

Let me insert here, studying feminist things can make a girl a little leery of men.  So this whole exchange just absolutely repulsed me, because the only reason I could see for him wanting to buy me a drink is so that I would be just drunk enough not to resist his inevitable sexual advances.  Disgusting.  Underhanded.

Also, if you wear a party hat to a bar, drunk people think it is entirely within their right to pet it, move it around on your head, or gesture obscenely toward it.

Slobber Guy came back, but I suddenly thought of something I had to tell my mutual friend, which could only be spoken into her right ear, so I moved to her other side.  Where "Nice" Guy was standing.  He was pleasant for awhile, mostly making fun of his friend.  Good tactic, because I didn't like his friend.  I kept trying to convey my dire need to escape to either of my friends with my eyeballs, but they didn't seem to catch the hint.

"Nice" Guy:  You both seem way too sober for 2:00 in the morning.
Me:  We go to seminary.
"N"G:  All of y'all!?
Me:  Yes.  We go to seminary.  So.  No drinking.
"N"G:  Well, okay.  I love Jesus!  Woo hoo!  Halle-f**king-lujiah!  Jesus!
Me:  Aw, jeez.

I made serious eyes this times, and birthday girl said we were all tired.  They guys tried to hug us as we struggled past them, but I skittered away and gave high fives instead.  When we got outside, birthday girl looked upset.

Me:  You look like you're not having as much fun anymore.  With the kissing thing.
BG:  They just.  They started, you know.  Taking advantage, and instead of just kissing my cheek they would linger or touch my waist, and just.
Me:  THAT WAS AWFUL.  I'm sorry.  Happy birthday.  Just, ugh.  Right there, I didn't love that.
BG:  Let's go meet my friend at another bar.
Me:  Wut.

So we walked to yet another bar.  It was 2 a.m. by now, and everyone on the sidewalks and hanging over bar patios screamed "happy birthday" at us, or sang at us.  I won't lie, I kind of liked that part.  Drunk people are often very sweet, when they aren't being gross.

Luckily birthday girl could not contact her friend, so we did not go into another bar.  Instead, one of the guys who had abandoned us an hour earlier drove to pick us up, and when we were dropped off in front of her apartment, I positively fled to my car and sped home.

Here's the thing.  I knew the bar scene existed.  I knew that people spend their weekends drinking with friends, meeting people, maybe hooking up.  But I do not know how they do it.  I hated the aura of the whole thing, this idea that personal space no longer matters, that everyone is there to chat up someone else, that personalities don't matter so much as the vague shape of being the opposite sex.

And I hated even more that I had willingly walked into that world, that by going into a bar after midnight, I was tacitly giving my acceptance to be leered at, grabbed, and spit upon.  Or told nasty things, I didn't even relate the worst things guys told me, ugh.  The guys I met at the bar quite literally had only one thing on their mind, and they knew that I knew, and they didn't care.  That was the whole point of the thing.

I can't do "romance" that way.  My interactions with the opposite sex go like this:  Notice someone is attractive.  Initiate awkward conversations.  Continue awkward conversations for several weeks.  Perhaps escalate to flirting, by which I mean lingering eye contact and maybe punching of shoulders.  Pine after guy for two or more years.

Obviously, I'm not cut out for pub crawls.  When I talked to Liz, she said she'd gone along on a few when she was in college, and she kind of enjoyed the attention.  Which, I get, I guess.  But attraction for me is all about words, about joking and questions and personality.  You can't really have conversations in crowded loud bars.  And anyway, even if a guy finds me attractive enough to have sex, well.  I'm educated and cynical.  All guys want that, I'm just a warm body, get away from me.

So.  That was my Saturday.

So That's What Marriage Can Be!

I did not grow up seeing a marriage that I wanted to one day imitate.  Most of the lessons I learned in the home were of the "avoid this" theme.  Fortunately, I spent time with married couples who got it right a majority of the time.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find myself in the relationship.

Take my grandparents for an example.  All the time I can remember them, they have been a team, working together as family and as church members.  The problem is, my grandmother is the picture of domesticity.  So are many of the women I grew up with, hosting dinner parties or enthusing about house decor.  I am not that woman.  My bedroom is a bunch of books stacked on top of furniture.  There is unmatched artwork on one wall.  My bedspread is inside-out and my pillow case has Lion King characters on it.  In the kitchen, my standby is egg tacos, because it consists of 1) eggs and 2) tortillas.  I eat this at least five times a week.  Occasionally I make an actual meal, but the excitement is enough to tide me over for the next month.

The things that I have to offer are my brains, my passion, and my empathy.  That's all I've got!  So in a culture that exalts meek, mild, submissive wives who follow their husbands instructions, well.  I feel like an outsider.  I would so much rather be in the thick of things, studying and thinking and deciding, actively participating rather than passively following.  (I know many of the women I grew up watching are incredibly intelligent.  The thing is, culture is often stronger than example.  I internalized the conservative party line.)  If I were ever to be in a God-honoring marriage with a man who follows God, I felt like I had to give up who I am and put on someone with an entirely different skill set.

The rationale behind my despair had everything to do with Ephesians 5:21-33, specifically verse 23.  The husband is the head of the wife.  Oh my word.  I hated this.  It felt like a death knell: "Give up your personhood.  Give up your opinions."  Husbands were the loving heads of the home, and wives were to submit to them.  I was fed the line that if a husband truly loved his wife as Christ loved the church, then a wife wouldn't mind submitting to him.  And while I would much rather submit to someone loving than to someone hateful, I didn't want to give up my ability to make decisions.  I like using my brain; I didn't want someone to take that away from me.

But it turns out, that's not what the passage is talking about!  I'm reading Sarah Sumner's Men and Women in the Church for a seminary paper.  In it, she pointed out that we normally associate the husband's headship with the wife's submission.  This is inaccurate, she said.  There are three associations made in this passage:

1)  the wife's submission/the husband's sacrifice
2)  the wife is the body/the husband is the head
3)  the wife respects her husband/the husband loves his wife

Let's start with submission/sacrifice.  These are two sides of the same coin.  For one thing, both are voluntary.  Forced submission is not submission.  That is slavery.  A wife submits when she voluntarily chooses to put her husband's needs or dreams or desires before hers.  Sacrifice is also voluntary.  A man sacrifices his needs or dreams or desires so that his wife can pursue hers.

"For when the wife comes under [submits to] the husband, thereby lifting him up, he sacrifices himself by giving up his advantage of being over her by exalting her to where he is.  In other words, the husband and wife participate together in a dynamic upward spiral of lifting each other up instead of putting each other down."

Now there's a marriage I can get behind, primarily because that rings so true to Christ's character.

But there's still the matter of a husband being the head of his wife.  Turns out, the word literally means head, which makes sense if it is paired with the idea of the wife being a body.  The key is in verse 31, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."  This isn't just code for sex.  When a man and a woman get married, they are entering into a mystery wherein they become a head and a body, together making up one being.  This is why Ephesians tells husbands to care for "their wives as their own bodies", even that "he who loves his wife loves himself."  Because he is loving himself; they are one.

Headship isn't about leadership.  And it's definitely not being  "head of the house."  A husband is a head as the wife is a body, and together they are one flesh.  Seeing each other as part of themselves, a wife submits to her husband, and a husband sacrifices for his wife.

Oh man, this is just one chapter out of sixteen that I have read thus far.  But I cannot describe how wonderful I felt after reading this (and it only gets better:  Sumner unpacks how masculinity=less physically vulnerable and femininity=more physically vulnerable.  She discovers what the connection is between Christ as head of the church while husbands are heads of the wives while God is head of Christ.  And she also interprets 1 Peter 3:7 as a scathing indictment against physical abuse.)  Sumner is not a feminist.  Throughout the book she honestly and kindly presents the case of complementarians and egalitarians.  Then she offers a third option that makes all kinds of sense.

Reading her, I realized that submission doesn't mean I lose everything.  I don't have to give up my intellect or my opinions.  I realized that a husband being my head doesn't mean he rules over me.  I don't have to wait for my husband to do everything.  I don't have to cook or clean or decorate.  None of that is part of the biblical picture of marriage (I know Proverbs 31, that's another post).  Marriage actually looks attractive to me now.  Putting my husband's needs before mine, letting him sacrifice those needs for me.  Being part of an mutual upward spiral of humility rather than constantly giving everything I have to someone who only takes and takes.  Being the body to someone else's head, mystically entering into a union that is two people in one.  I don't know.  I suddenly get why marriage is so beautiful.

Probably good, since I want to be a marriage counselor.

(Sarah Sumner says this all SO MUCH BETTER.  She is a wonderful theologian who shares her story while interpreting Scripture masterfully, humbly, and understandably.  I 100% recommend you read her thoughts rather than mine!)

Holy Spirit At Work

On Sunday I had this feeling that it was time to stop being depressed, time to stop dreading church, time to stop purposefully dwelling on the people I don't have.  I felt convicted that while my depression was valid at the beginning, I was now clinging to self-pity.

And....I'm no longer depressed?  That sounds like absolute crazy talk, and to be fair, I'd been feeling better for longer periods of time anyway.  But it was this sudden sweep of everything, all the darkness I'd been clinging to erased.  Like windows thrown open, illuminating a room, I was back.

I honestly think it was God.  I've been learning this week about how every part of salvation--justification, sanctification, and glorification--is accomplished by grace through faith.  Everything good comes from God.  I cannot work myself into a better person or a happier person or a holier person.  God's Spirit transforms us.  Learning this, looking back, I think a few days ago God prompted me, I agreed, and the Holy Spirit did His thing. 

Very rarely do I experience immediate change.  But I think this was one of those times.  And it was so cool!  Of course I'm still sad that I'm not experiencing a Woodland summer and that Liz is no longer my roommate, but I can remember now how great Dallas is, and look forward to new roommates, and most importantly, I trust my God just a little bit more.

DTS Bathrooms

Women have only been allowed to take classes at DTS since about 1980.  That's around 35 years.  And if that weren't bad enough, the campus still has physical reminders of our newness to the academic life.  It's been a joke amongst the female students that there are fewer women's bathrooms than men's, when everyone knows the opposite ought to be true.  But I've never heard a man comment on it, and especially not negatively.

Not until today, that is!  Dr. K keeps winning "professor of the year" in my book, largely because he is a legitimately great teacher, but also because he treats women as human beings who are in attendance in his classes.  That might sound stupid, but I've sat through whole semesters in which the professors only referred to the students using masculine pronouns or used examples of men and husbands but never women or wives.

You know it's bad when Dr. K says, "and then, to a man and to a woman, they" and your heart soars from the intentionality of including both sexes.  It's little things like that that make me feel visible and valued.

And it's bigger things like the bathroom rant that make me feel like standing up and cheering.

Right before break, Dr. K finished reading the syllabus, which included a statement about the school's commitment to not discriminate based on disability.  Dr. K said, "We don't discriminate on the basis of disability, only by gender. I'm serious. During our upcoming break, if you are male, you may go down the hall to use the restroom. If you are not male, you will have to go to a different floor or another building. A board member, a female board member, said recently that until we have a women's restroom on the first floor, all our talk of equality will be vague.  I think she's right."

I mean, this touched me so deeply that I copied his words verbatim.  So.  

THERE IS HOPE, hallelujah, it gives me so much joy that a respected theology professor purposefully and intentionally includes women in his common speech and deliberately brings up issues of equality that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.  This is the best.

To Act or To Wait: That Is the Question

There's been this certain thing weighing on my mind for awhile.  It's one of those decisions between patiently waiting or acting assertively.  Either could be good, and neither contradicts God's will.  There are a lot of good things that would result from choosing either course of action, and a few bad things that will happen with either choice as well.

It's a really weird situation!  Choosing between two equally viable but totally different options.

Maybe not so weird.  A lot of life is like this. 

Anyway, it got me thinking again about following God.  Because essentially this decision hinges on whether I should wait for God to act, OR realizing that God uses people (including myself) to act.  This choice between waiting or acting used to stress me out A LOT.  And it still does, but I've learned a little since the last time this was a major concern (choosing between pursuing a missions job after Senegal or waiting in Peoria--obviously I chose waiting last time, and it worked out splendidly).

What I've learned is:  I'm in the hands of a really big God.  He already knows what I'm going to choose and how it's going to turn out.  God is a God of redemption, who takes even stupid decisions and molds them into something beautiful.  He can handle whatever I decide.

In some ways, it's helpful to think of myself as a little kid, riding around on a bike or playing in the woods or chasing classmates across the playground.  I always felt so alone as a kid; not in a bad way, but just like, what I was doing was going unobserved.  That was always the case until I fell off my bike or skinned my knee or whatever.  Then an adult swooped in, and it turned out I had been watched the whole time.

God is kind of like that, I think.  He's watching everything I do, and more than an adult, He can do more than just deal with the fallout.  In some mysterious way, He acts and I act and in free will and God's authority, history is shaped.  I don't pretend to know how God works in the wold, but I know that HE DOES.  And I trust that whether or not I act or I wait, God will be there, constant in my life, still working things out for good and preparing me for the next time I'll need to either act or wait.

Too Close

There are times in my life when something is said that, though not pointed in and of itself, strikes right at my core.  On our roadtrip, I rehashed boy things with Liz, and talked about how so often I live in a fantasy world of "what ifs" and daydreams.  Then we listened to this really excellent song that included the lyrics:

"We are the reckless/ We are the wild youth/ Chasing visions of our futures"

I yelled, "NO.  That hits too close to home!" at my car stereo.

Today I was once again rehashing boy things with Liz.  This time she said something about how maybe there was selfishness inherent in my desire, just kind of in passing, and she kept on listing possibilities.  But I stopped, and when she breathed I said, "No no no.  You're right.  Oh my gosh.  I'm being selfish."

She backpedaled and said of course I wasn't, but the (positive) damage was done.

I try to be a pretty self-aware person, so it's weird when someone else speaks truth into my life about myself.  But it's good.  It makes me realize I am a mystery even unto myself, that there are depths to be explored and hidden motivations.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made, basically, so much more complicated than I give myself credit for.