living in the tension

today i’m bummed out and just wanted to be real about it.

the cause for the bumming out is my own fault, but i’m not quite sure why, which only adds to the negative feeling.
the thing is, once again i’ve mismanaged our budget and we now have 2 overdraft fees against our checking account. this is the second time in the last month and it’s so frustrating! it would be frustrating enough if we’d just made a mistake or something simple, but what’s especially frustrating is that i follow the online statements religiously, at least every other day, but usually daily, to see what’s posted, comparing it to my excel spreadsheet of what should be posting soon, etc. i usually enjoy the meticulous process since i love lists and organization.
yet twice this month i’ve somehow bungled it up and ended with a negative balance. today two debits have shown up as being more than our balance.

i suspect that part of the problem is that i don’t have a complete understanding of the online banking’s complexities. it seems like it’d be pretty standard – when a debit clears at the bank, it should go through the online banking & show up on the statement. what i’ve come to realize though is that they organize the previous day’s debits with the largest debit coming out of our account first, which rearranges the way it looked on that previous day. so i can be looking at the online statement on monday and feel great, yes, we’re on track. then on tuesday, looking back at monday’s activity, it will be arranged totally differently than it was when I was actually looking on monday.
so even if i’m following the activity daily, they’re going to rearrange things the next day & change it up.

it makes sense to me that if i just keep track of what i know is coming out based on what we’ve spent and what funds we have available that we should stay in the black regardless of how they rearrange things.

but no.

somehow, all my figurings get randomly thrown out the window and i have no way of knowing why because i have no proof of how the online statement looked the day before and how it changed today. this last month we’ve had a total of $140 in overdraft charges. maybe i should start printing out each day’s online statement and comparing it to the next day… i don’t know.
it’s humbling to admit financial failure, especially when i’ve been thinking we’re great, everything’s on track, we’re good to go. it feels like no matter how hard i try, I still can’t even control the simplest of daily mathematical situations. and for the most part it’s really all on me. it’s both nick & i’s money, but i do the daily figuring since i usually enjoy lists & whatnot. we decide together what we should spend our money on, how much we should budget for groceries, etc. but i alone do the daily managing (or mismanaging).


it makes me wonder if i can’t control this little area of our life, how in the world can i even try to get a handle on other, bigger life issues?
and all you christians out there will say , ‘aha! exactly! the moral of this story is that you can’t control things and god’s trying to get you to understand that you’re not in control of your life – you should just trust him.’
and to all of you christians out there, i say that’s just annoying. of course i know i’m supposed to be trusting god, and of course i know i’m not in control of my life. but what does that mean in every day practical living?
i’ve always wrestled with the extreme view that’s projected by oversimplified christianity – the ‘let go and let god’ mentality… obviously god’s in control but that doesn’t mean we sit on our couch doing nothing. we still have to participate in the actions of life.


the answer is hidden somewhere within the concept of living in the tension of being human. i don’t remember which book i read it in, but it talked about that idea, that living on this earth as spiritual beings presents a tension that we’re ill-equipped to understand. it involves letting go while holding on, desiring something but not having it but still hoping, all those themes that seem to contradict each other but are supposed to exist simultaneously. i don’t get it. i don’t know how it works. i suppose somehow that’s also part of that tension.
i feel a little less bummed out though, thanks to venting. sometimes it helps.

the work of the spirit

so i've been doing some thinking and pondering the last few days.
here's what i've been thinking and pondering:

usually when i'm in church it's very difficult for me to focus on what i'm supposed to be focusing on. instead of paying attention to the service, i'm usually watching the people and being distracted by all the normal people-like things going on. if there's a baby anywhere near, the morning's shot for sure. they're just so entertaining with their wide-eyed wonder and squealing and hand-waving. it's pretty impossible for me to pay attention. and even regular full-grown people are distracting - i look at their outfits, their hair-dos, their interactions with whoever they're sitting by...
it's not something i'm proud of, but it's just my particular weakness. i'd rather be shoring up the spiritual knowledge imparted by the pastor or joining in singing the praises of my good god... i just find myself more often than not very distracted. this is something about myself that i'm not surprised by - i'm pretty used to it. i'm good at sitting still and giving the illusion of full attention being directed toward the front, but under the surface, my mind's usually all over the place.

a few sundays ago i was a little surprised by something though. toward the end of the service we were singing a few songs of dismissal and i closed my eyes (not out of a deeper reverence - mostly because then i can hear my voice better and hear it compared to the voices around me and i like hearing the pretty sounds blend... yes, it's true, that has nothing to do with worshipping god...) but all of the sudden i got this impression of myself standing surrounded by people (as i was in fact, standing) but suddenly not aware of the other people in a distracting sense. we were all standing side by side, but all of our attention was directed upward in praise. we were united horizontally by our vertical affection. we weren't paying attention to each other all that much, i wasn't comparing my dress to so and so's or deciding if yonder lady really should be keeping her noisy kids in the main church service instead of sending them to the nursery (things that only i can decide, you know), but we were each paying full and undivided attention to our maker. our thoughts and hopes and focus was single-mindedly directed toward the father in a way that was beyond our ability to achieve. we weren't all of the sudden more pious - it's like we were being drawn up into worship. he wanted us to see him in his glory, so he pulled our focus up into his presence.
it was only for a few minutes, but it was something completely other than i've ever experienced in church.
i knew it wasn't me. this might sound hoky or disturbing to you, depending on who you are or how you've grown up, but i know it was the holy spirit drawing my heart up into the heart of the father, corporately with my brothers and sisters who were equally being drawn. and instead of it being an individual thing only i experienced - i was standing side by side with others who were equally being drawn - it was an even more powerful feeling of joining a huge group of people all united by a magnetic pull of a god who wanted us to experience him more fully.
i tend to mistrust 'feelings' and see more value in something if it's purely logical and rational, but really, we were made to be emotional beings. it's when feelings overtake and supercede logic that things get out of whack. i almost feel like i've relied so heavily on rational logic to choose to go to church and choose to sing whether i feel like it or not, knowing it's the right thing to do - but god was saying, 'here's what it feels like to worship'.

it was just a few minutes at the end of church one day, but for me it was a total shift in thinking. it was so completely not of my own doing that i literally can't dismiss it as over-excited religiosity. i know it was from the holy spirit.

then this last sunday, something similar but even more amazing happened.
again, it was the end of the service and we were singing the last few songs. i closed my eyes, and i was instantly swept up in the most amazing mental movie of worship ever! it was so beautiful, i wish every one of you could see it!
like before, i was standing side by side with the people worshipping the lord in song, but each one of us was a part of the most brilliant river of light, travelling swiftly, moving together in a steady stream upward to an even brighter light above us. we were full of color but also full of silvery non-color at the same time. it was clear and bright and so fast - i wanted to stay there and be a part of that in my mind forever. as the song was ending though and we moved on to another song, i kept trying to hold onto that mental image but it left without my permission and i kept struggling to bring it back... but as moved on to another song, it changed to something different. instead of a river of light, all the voices changed into swirling clouds that rose up over us in the sky and joined each other to make a covering over all the earth, hovering and moving together in the same silvery, colorful, bright beautiful light. i was standing alone but was joining a great crowd with my voice that grew into an amazing panorama of beautiful worship. and again like the other sunday, it was my imagination and my voice, but i was being called up into worship, there was no effort of my own involved. i didn't do any magic trick to get this cool vision, in fact, i was pretty grumpy during the service - not at all in a churchy mood. but i knew the holy spirit was drawing me up into worship in a way that i could never imagine or accomplish on my own.
it was beautiful.

every once in a while i'd open my eyes and look at the people around me and try to make what my spiritual eyes were seeing fit in with the reality of them but it was kind of disappointing. the real people were dull - even the bright colored skirts on the trendy girls were dull and boring compared to the bright, silvery light moving in worship. i didn't want to see them in real life, i just wanted to keep my eyes closed and keep seeing my mental vision of them. but there was something about looking back and forth at real life and at my mind's eye that kept me comparing and trying to figure out how we fit. i kept thinking there has to be a reason that god made us human and ugly and pitifully dull in comparison with how we could be. he could have just skipped the humanity part entirely if there were no reason for it.
even after we were done singing and we went downstairs and ate and talked, i kept thinking about the conundrum. i talked to a few people about the vision of worship that i felt like god drew me into and we discussed it a bit... how maybe my vision was an idea of how our transformed bodies will be in the new heaven and new earth - what we were created to look like and how we were originally intended to worship... still mulling. then when i was laying in bed that night trying to sleep i thought some more. i was remembering that jesus chose to come in the flesh, to be human. i kept thinking, 'why?' then the answer came out of the blue like a big gong clang. obviously, it's because of human weakness! and when it came to me, it was so entirely obvious that it was almost too simple to be the answer to the question i'd been pondering all day. i'd just been trying to make it more complicated than it is.
our weakness and frailty is the perfect vessel for god's strength and beauty. if i were all that competent, if i were able to pay perfect attention in church and glean all the wonderful insights every sunday, if i were able to respect my husband perfectly in all his ways and love him entirely with all my being, i would have no need for god in my life.
my weakness and my need draw me into a dependence on the only one able to make me strong.
otherwise i might never turn to him. we were made with free will so we can choose whether or not to be in relationship with the father, but we were made so feeble, so frail that there's only one logical place to turn. and when we do, there's a part deep inside that feels perfectly right.

i've never been too good at witnessing or 'evangelizing the unsaved of the world' mostly because i can't quantify this feeling in my soul. i can't make my faith sound socially acceptable. but that's all i really have to go on when i think about god. i know it's right because there's this place in me that knows he's the only way. nothing else will do.

i don't know if that's the only 'moral of the story' - i'm sure there's more to be pondered, but that's where i'm at right now.

i meet with a small group of girls once a month and we talk about our lives, what god's teaching us - we pray for each other and eat food. the last couple of times we've talked about how we can keep each other spiritually accountable. when it was my turn, i was at a loss to say how they could keep me accountable - i hate thinking about all the ways that i don't measure up, and being held accountable sounds to me like choosing the one area i'm in the weakest in and trying harder to do it better. very often times i don't feel like i fit into the regular 'christian' mold that i assume i'm supposed to fit into - 30 minute quiet time in the morning, reading the bible and praying, writing scripture verses on pieces of paper and taping them to your dash, making cookies for the neighbors, having bible studies with my students after school...
those are all good things, but i have no idea how to go about being and doing those things every day. i'm not a good person more often than not.
as i was saying these things to the group, ann-victoria said maybe i could be held accountable to ask god what 'christianity' looks like for me. not that there's all different varieties of christianity and you have to find the right one that fits you... i think people just expect everyone to look a certain way on the outside without knowing what's going on in their hearts. instead of being concerned with doing the right things and looking good, i want to ask god to show me how to worship him with my whole heart.

then the sermon in church on sunday was about the greatest commandment - to love the lord your god with all your heart, soul & mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. the pastor went on to say that it's not enough to 'want' to fulfill that commandment, but we must 'will' it, and we have nothing within us that causes us to will it. it's only by the power of the holy spirit, creating in us that willingness that we can love. he went on to encourage us to make space in our lives to ask the spirit for that willingness.
i think that's what i need to be held accountable for these days - to continually ask the spirit for a willingness to love. all the other things that fit that 'christian mold' flow out of a heart that is empowered by the holy spirit and alive to the love of god.

anyhow, those are about 3 different threads weaving together in my mind these days but really with just one theme - the work of the holy spirit... a lot to mull over, but pretty cool at the same time.

if you've survived this lengthy post, give yourself a 'kudos' from me. :-)

lovey

i realized today how i truly am so incredibly thankful for nick in my life. i can't even find the words to describe the depth of the gratitude in my heart for him. i sometimes feel like writing too much about him will sound trite or cliche, and anything i might say to other people could sound the same way.
the truth of the matter is, i think god has shown me more of what redemption looks like through nick than through anything or anyone else he's brought into my life.
all the junk that's associated with the male gender for me is slowly being redefined in nick. yes, he's still a guy, he's not perfect, but i'm starting to understand how i can love a guy with all his imperfections and hang-ups as fully as i could ever love the perfect guy. in fact, so much more deeply because of his faults. when he's blown it and he's ashamed of himself or he's wounded and emotional and he comes to me with that soft, hurting face, all i want to do is be tender and loving to him. and when he uses words that i've long ago labeled as cornball, like cuddle and snuggle, it makes me want to do those very things with him.
i just love that guy.

i love his solid, physical presence when it's an arm's reach away, i love having someone to depend on that feels it's his god-given duty to protect and provide for me and acts out that calling as often as he possibly can, i love taking care of him when he's sick, i love loving him and relishing the fact that no one else loves him like i do, holding his hand, following his lead, responding to his tenderness that fits surprisingly well, amidst the beard and the dirty jeans.

i just love him. maybe not as well as i will grow to, but for now, it's more than i ever expected.

'ergh' defined

disclaimer: possible extreme ranting and raving ahead.
read at your own risk.

after the first 5 minutes of interacting with the aforementioned counselor, i realized i had a new winner for the 'least favorite people in my life' award. the last winner was a girl who flipped me off while zooming past in her sporty little car. i think i was going too slow...? i don't remember. i just remember feeling emotionally assaulted by a gesture. while the new winner did not assault me, gesturally or otherwise, i ended up feeling like crap anyhow. i don't know if there are hordes of people that love the way this woman counsels... if so, godspeed to them. but personally, i'd rather be counseled by a man-eating venus fly trap.

'what's the big deal?' you say. 'it couldn't have been that bad!'
well, let me just fill you in.

throughout the course of my vast counseling experiences, i've found that it's easier to share your deep-seated fears and hang-ups while warming up to the counselor first, having a little introduction, giving some pleasant background-setting chit-chat.
makes sense, right? right.

after being led into this particular counselor's office,

(which was just that -- about 7' x 7' rectangle of a room with a metal desk and two hard chairs... oh, and a heater that came on every time the air conditioner came on, creating an odd draft of freezing and roasting air simuntaneously)

she plopped down, turned to me and said, 'so why are you here?' then stared unblinkingly at me trying to fumble my way into honest sharing of struggles and need of help to process life in general. not many comments or questions came from her unless i just quit talking entirely and stared back at her for a few seconds, at which point she would make a 'counseley' statement or question -- her favorite being, 'so how are you feeling right now?'.
at the time i couldn't explain why i was responding so negatively to her, but i felt more and more angry as the hour ticked away. in retrospect, i think it's because a counselor is supposed to be someone you want to talk to. and when you don't want to talk to them because you hate them, somehow you still have to talk to them because you're trapped in this tiny, cold/hot, institutional office with them. and if you let on that you hate them, they're going to ask you why and suddenly it might get so much more awkward. so i basically felt manipulated into talking about myself in ways that i really didn't want to, but was constrained to based on the implied code of counseling.

i don't know if that makes any sense at all, but the long and the short of it was, i left her office

(why don't you give me a call to set up another appointment?'
'no, thank you, and i hate you' -- mad dash out the door...)

got in my car and sobbed very angrily for enough time to get it all out, then just furrowed my brow for a little while longer, after which time i felt much better.
oh, and decided to never visit a counselor again, for as long as i live.

yes, i realize that's a decision i made out of an emotional response. i'm now reconsidering it since i'm still in dire need of some extra help with this phase of my life. but i don't know if i have the chutzpah quite yet.
it might be a while.

remember that definition for 'inertia'?

the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force.

who would've known that the external force that acted upon me would have been the very thing i thought i was walking in a straight line towards?!
i'm suddenly confused.

inertia

you may think, have i had absolutely no thoughts in an entire month? well i answer you, no, i certainly haven't. i've been a blissful blank slate walking around, minding my own business, with nary a thought in the world.

and now, the only thing drawing me to think of thoughts is my chronic procrastinating tendencies. i should be cleaning my house, doing laundry, writing new church serving schedules, figuring out lesson plans for my sub on monday (cursed curriculum day... i'll be a mere hallway away from my very own classroom, but i'll be typing in dreary curriculum to a dreary new curriculum program). as usually happens when there's too many things to do, i set them all away in a compartment marked 'system overload' and find totally unrelated and unnecessary things to do, such as eat pizza and ice cream for breakfast, stand over the heater and stare into space, try to dredge up thoughts to share on the aptly named thoughts blog...
if i were a computer, i would be at that stage where there's too many tasks and it freezes up and not even pushing 'ctrl' 'alt' 'del' works and you have to reach back and find the 'reset' slot on the back and push it over with the end of a pen...
only problem is, no one's around to do that for me.
so here i am, frozen up.

truth be told, the ultimate issue freezing me up has nothing to do with any of the myriad tasks i should be doing. i usually find great pleasure in doing the kinds of things waiting patiently for me to tend to. i usually relish them and revel in their completion as i tick each one off my mental list as i happily go about my saturday.
the real reason my brain has been frozen for the last month has more to do with fear.

there are some things happening in my heart that i really don't want to deal with. i've had tiny little flashes of those things, and i've flinched, drawn back, shut down my brain. as i logically recognize the value of facing my fears, my desire to turn away is much stronger.
if i focus on all the banal nothings of the day, watch the bare branches on the trees outside my window, stare intently at the dust motes in the sunshine stream, maybe i can forget that i ever had those brighter-than-light flashes of anxiety.
even though the after image is still burned on the back of my retinas. when i close my eyes, i still see them, floating, waiting for me to square off, get some gumption, deal with them and move on.

meanwhile, an entire month has gone by.

this monday is the first monday of a new month.
i'm seeing a counselor.
nick has been a jolt of courage for me, leading by example, seeking counseling for himself and encouraging me to do the same. he's given me a good solid push in the right direction. i'm the poster-child for inertia.

in·er·tia
/ɪnˈɜrʃə, ɪˈnɜr-/ –noun

the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force.

here's hoping no other external forces come along before i get there.

so i've been waiting to see the final results of the poll before writing much more on here... it seems most of you wish this blog were part of bate's klog. the more i thought about it though, the more i decided to leave it separate. the poll was like asking someone which earrings you should wear -- hearing your opinion helped me solidify my own.
i'm leaving it separate because i don't think i would honestly write these contemplative kind of thoughts on bate's klog. if i joined the two, i would basically just be killing this one with nothing taking its place. there are a lot of thought processes that i just have to use more words for, and i don't like cluttering up the other blog with so much wordiness. it seems like a picture story/event/news type place.
i feel more free to write long writings on here, like i'm journaling more than updating.

so there you have it.

soon to come: more long, wordy, contemplative writings!

gender confusion

i've been thinking a lot lately about the whole gender topic.
no, i'm not contemplating whether i might be a man inside a woman's body (why is oprah obsessed with that anyway?)...
i am however, thinking that i wish i knew more about what it means to be a woman right now in my life.

teaching art to high schoolers is the best job i've had, hands down. BUT, there are times every single day where i feel like i'm having to fill a role that is more leaderly, more assertive, more manly than i was created to be as a woman.
maybe this is part of the reason why i don't see myself being a teacher for the rest of my life.
the deepest desire of my heart is to be a wife and a mother. even the word 'job' seems like what the man does.
i'm sounding more and more like a 50's conservative old-fogey here.

the question i've been wrestling with though is why are there parts of me that are less than feminine?
does it have to do with being trained to fill a male role, therefore getting easier as time goes by?
is it because i'm naturally arrogant & independent and i need to sacrifice those tendencies as sin?
or is it just strong woman personality, and an okay way to be?
i feel like i'm a big mishmosh that needs to be sorted out. i'm not so good at sorting mishmoshes.

the reason i find myself mulling these things over is because of how much more intense my desire has been lately to live the role god created me for. i don't know about all those confused gender people on oprah, but i'm glad to be female. it's not all science and hormones and brain chemistry. there's something mysterious and unexplainable about being one or the other gender, and i'm glad i'm not in control of it all. it's beyond me.

it's fun to be a part of a relationship with nick right now. as we grow together, i'm able to act out my femininity which supports and encourages nick to act out his maculinity, which in turn supports and encourages my femininity...

you get the picture.
it's primarily through our relationship that i'm starting to see these ways that i'm less feminine than i would have noticed, which makes me ask the questions...
we're going to do a little couple's counseling with the infamous eric bolger and maybe explore topics like this. i'm excited about it.