I will not be shaken

We had family friends over for thanksgiving. The dad of this family is kind of like our church's philosopher in residence, and he has a wife and four kids. My mom and and his wife are in a prayer group with a few other women from the church. Her name is Mary Ellen.

Two of Mary Ellen's four kids weren't home for thanksgiving. One of the absentees lives in Oregon and works at his uncle's organic farm, and the other lives in a commune in New Mexico with her boyfriend. She comes home sporadically, but she never stays for long. She's a year younger than me.

Mary Ellen and I were getting things ready in the kitchen when she saw a verse that my mom wrote on a piece of scrap paper and taped on the fridge.

"I love that verse!" she said. "I think of it like this - I will not be shaay-ay-ay-ay-ken!" she sings while performing a toned-down version of a shimmy.

Later that day, as in, after I went to bed and was reading The Hunger Games, the power went out. I sat there in the dark, terrified. Someone had cut the power. Someone who wanted to kill me and my family, but mostly me. Soon, I would sense his presence in the corner of my room. He would be brandishing a machete, rusty and already stained with the blood of my mother or one of my brothers.

I started to pray. And then I stopped myself. I couldn't do that! It wasn't going to work - I hadn't done enough for it to work. I sat, curled and tense, on my bed. And then I called my mom.

She sounded almost asleep, but she told me she would come down to the basement with a flashlight. She would come downstairs to give a source of light to her twenty-year-old daughter. This daughter had told her that day that sleeping in the basement was never scary. Well, everybody lies, right?

The power came back on an hour later. I promptly turned off my lamp and went to sleep. This morning, I thought about my prayer. And how I think prayer works only if you put enough oomph into it - it gains significance in the sight of God if you back it up with daily devotions, or good deeds, or healthy relationships or good grades or a good track record or an existence that 1. makes sense and 2. has some sort of net positive impact on the world.

I don't trust God to stay unless I do all the right things.

And I decide what those things are.

And my standards for myself are impossibly high.

And something inside me enjoys berating myself for my failures.

And so I think that God does, too.

Because, in the end, I want God to operate the way I think He operates. Because, in the very very end, I want to be Him.

Quoting a friend without permission...

"Im learning Trust means that you dont know what the hell is gonna happen next, but you know He loves you and has something great waiting ahead."

Walls

I usually don't blog about the Bible, because it makes me feel like a poser, but right now I'm avoiding homework, so, there you have it.

This comes off as pretty sacreligious, but I'm not exactly a big fan of Paul... He tends to bring the hammer down pretty hard, and I have the feeling that he would not be impressed with me if we were to ever meet.

This is kind of funny in light of what he writes in Galatians 6: "Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh."

ATTENTION ALL SUPER CHRISTIAN WANNABES: YOU ARE JUST HIDING.

You know that you aren't all that great, you are terrified by the idea of giving everything to Jesus, you still want everyone to think that it's all under control, and you want recognition to boot.

You are hiding. You say lots of nice things about how vividly you see your sin in your own life, how selfish you are, how controlling you are, how God is gracious enough and merciful enough to teach you these things over. and over again, you even let on about your secret agenda of impressing everyone, but the only reason you confess is that so other people will see you confessing. You say you know yourself. You say you know your sin. But you just dress it up to make it look looming and dramatic and horrible when the truth is that you can't save yourself from something mealy and pathetic and wrinkled and shivering on a table. Nothing about you is impressive. Not even these great sins from which you are so heroically saving yourself.

What makes you think you are so fucking important?

You don't have the power to save yourself. You aren't a monster. You are just sad.

So it is OK to accept handouts. To accept others. To accept you. To be indebted. To make a mistake. Or twenty. Thousand. To fall apart. To help. To find it, to lose it, to forget it. To laugh at yourself. To stay quiet or to let it all spill over...

Because fixing yourself and accepting yourself both end in OK. The only difference is that one is possible and the other isn't. 

Bringing it back to the whole Bible thing, accepting yourself is accepting that you will always need grace. And accepting that you will always, always have it. No need to chop off your foreskin. Or be an RA, or have a perfect relationship with your roommate, or find your husband, or get the best grade on one of D-Strat's essays, or teach English in Guatemala, or time manage perfectly. None of it. None of it works, anyway. Not if you're using it to protect yourself from the gracious fury that is Christ, not if you're using it to prove to everyone that you are your own gracious fury, thank you very much. 

"Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation."

From Lucille

I received an iPad from an overly wonderful aunt, so I decided to try blogging from it. The iPad's name is Lucille... At least, I think that's how you spell her name.

It's a little slow and laborious, but I'll sacrifice for the cause.

There are a ridiculous amount of good things happening in my life right now, but I guess I'm choosing not to shake the general feelings of angst... I've taken to describing my life as awkward... Oh, I'm awkward, that's awkward, my whole friggin life is one mess of awkward. A better word is insecure.

On our lovely drive to Branson yesterday (I'm vacationing at my roommate's house with another one of my best friends... So many good things happening, seriously!) I gave some thought to what my life would be like if I wasn't so committed to feeling awkward (insecure) about every situation ever... If I let go, started breathing more evenly, accepted things about myself and others and life and...

It's a mess and I can learn to love it that way or feel forever awkward...

At the kids program at my church, we sing a song that goes like this:

"Jesus, Jesus loves the children, yes, He does, yes, He does,
Jesus, Jesus loves the children, yes, He does, yes He does,
Jesus, Jesus loves the children, yes He does, yes, He does,
And, He wants all of them to love Him, too, ooo ooo ooo...."

And after we sing it once, we substitute someone's name in for each of the "the children"s:
"Jesus, Jesus loves Ben, yes, He does, yes, He does,
Jesus, Jesus loves Norah, yes, He does, yes, He does..."

And something really funny happens whenever we sing one of the kid's names. The named kid giggles, or slides down off of their chair, or hides their face, or turns red, or gets all wide-eyed, like they've been exposed. As though having the people in your life suggest to you that Jesus loves you is something to get all squirmy about.

Which it is. Because, if Jesus loves the children (all of them), there shouldn't be much to feel awkward or insecure about... Unless, of course, you don't happen to buy into that whole "yes, He does, yes, He does" part of the song.

This is exclusively for Sarah. And everyone else.

ALL

GLORY

IS

EMPTY

UNLESS

IT

IS

GOD'S.

What am I forgetting?

I'm forgetting to do something. But that doesn't matter, because I just remembered what I was going to do when I got sidetracked for an HOUR on facebook... and youtube channels... while Josh Ritter angsts away on my Pandora station (also, I'm skipping out on a teaching observation assignment right now... what can I say? My weekends start early). Flipped through the entirety of someone's wedding album. That someone will go unnamed... of course, it wouldn't be too much trouble for Sarah to figure it out, probably, if she just glanced at facebook,

ANYWAY.

In the youtube world, everyone will be glad to know that Jane Bennet (vlogbennet, that is!) is going to pursue Bing Lee to the big wide world of Los Angeles! Yay for proactive 21st century women! GET IT, GRRRL!

So, what I was going to do was write this not-poem inspired by my friend Kara, who told me a fun word fact today:

Startling, it was, she was
Starting to resort to
Staring. I know the
String will become tight, and we'll both feel the
Sting. It won't be right to
Sing, not about
Sin, especially when it's
In all that
I am.

And I was going to do some homework, too.

ARTS: