The Dangers of Ambition

Sometimes, it is difficult for me to ascertain whether it's the Christian or the woman part of me that causes my ambition to be question and squelched.

Contentment with your position is valued above all. If you love God, then you should be content with where he has led you. If you are a woman, you should be thankful that you are being respected or paid well at all, especially since it might not be a long-term investment in you, being a baby-maker and all.

Sometimes, this is communicated overtly, sometimes covertly.

The contentment issue, though, is not. Be thankful, they say. Be thankful that you have a job and a good community.

However, what I am wondering is if ambition and thankfulness are maybe not mutually exclusive things. I am thankful for my job. I am thankful for my workmates and for the community of really wonderful people that I work for. I am thankful for the consistent grace and pay and 4 minute commute. I am thankful for the beautiful grounds that I can walk briefly every hour. I am thankful for the luscious autonomy I enjoy after being in my position going on 6 years. I am thankful.

Does that mean I am not allowed to want more? Where is the line between greed and drive?

I've been told that I shouldn't desire more rungs on the ladder.
I've been told I should be happy.

What if I could be happy going through several different doors instead of just the one hallway? What if there's another option for me that could potentially lead, not just to my happiness, but potentially to the happiness of another group? Shouldn't utilitarian principles outweigh?

I'm currently sorting through a very full plate of thoughts, and it feels confusing on a host of levels: loyalty, community, family, purpose, future-thinking, sentimentalism, ambition.

What if ambition were re-framed as "growth". Would it be ok then? Would it be kosher to express that, while thankful, you desire a bit of a change so that you can continue to grow and flourish? But what if that choice hurts your team? Or perhaps ambition, or even growth, is always a two-edged sword. No one grows without destroying at least a part of their past: a seed discards its shell as it sprouts. At the end, though, you get a zucchini. Unless, of course, a groundhog eats it.

Dear Seamus, thank you.

Within the first few weeks I lived in Belfast, I visited the Linen Hall Library, which is beautiful and old and makes you feel that creativity lives all around you and literature is alive and breathing and you, too, are alive and breathing and creative. Seamus Heaney had died not a month before and upstairs, at the top of the flight, was a memorial book. I felt the weight of the moment—of course I want to write in a memorial book for any writer I had ever heard of in the upper hall of a library I was enthralled with. I knew of Seamus from his translation of Beowulf, a book I hated in a class I found no purpose in during undergraduate school. I can’t remember what I wrote—I’m sure it was neither impressive nor meaningful. I didn’t know him.

I know him now.

Each time I teach English II, I teach through his entire Field Work collection with my students. We start small with “Oysters”, and by the time we reach “Ugolino”, my students are fiery and on my level in terms of general obsession for the Northern Irish Troubles and for Seamus Heaney’s heartthrob for his people, for reconciliation, and for the willingness of the divisive groups to listen to one another—if only they would listen to one another.

They move from essential non-knowingness (like I did) to being able to describe the man by his themes, his loves, and his heart. They begin to understand his poetry (very hard for people in general) because they can hear his voice and feel the pull of his motivations.

This is when my class starts to shift. We get political. We get real. We talk through the difficulty of listening, of sorting through the hard stuff when divisiveness and fake news surround us. We talk about how bad people can be good, how good people can be bad, and how God is there, swimming around in all of the midst of it, even when we might not even mean to invoke him.

Seamus Heaney loved his wife and he loved his country. He speaks of wounds from their Troubles as though they were imminent and eternal and yet, he spoke through his pain with hope. Together, we feel the pulse of humanity and take that energy into our next two series before the semester’s end.

Were he alive, were I able to meet him, to thank him, I am not certain I could do so without a gush of hot tears, thankful for someone who could create such beauty and such vulnerability and such accessibility and help snotty teenagers learn to open their hearts and their ears to love and care and feel compassion for a situation they could care nothing for beforehand, since they had no heart in the game.

You made them care. You draw us, one another, in and help us to hear in a way we couldn’t before.

Dear Seamus, you planted goodness and hope where we could only see blood, see walls, see bombs. You helped us dream toward a better tomorrow, of white-washed rooms with elbow room, of the smell of saltwater inthe air, and of young women with baskets of green cabbage, new potatoes, andfresh carrots with mould still on the tops of them.

27 is Okay

I turned 27 after two months of fear and anxiety over the health of my grandparents.

I didn't find much to discuss--I just wanted to sink into a deep hug with a crazy old woman and let her love me and be near her.

The year leading up to 27, though, was filled with adventure:

• the year started with beauty and friendship in Perth, Australia 
• I got my first tattoo
• my cat Ootzyde was stolen 
• Julius's dog Ginger died
• Julius worked on his Master's degree, and I worked on mine
• We gardened, excessively
• I travelled to beautiful Vancouver with my team from work for a conference 
• I saw Kesha live in concert with Julius and our friends Jill and Michael
• Spent some wonderful family time at Odomfest
• Won best new poet in a town poetry contest
• Traveled to Arizona for my cousin Kenzie's wedding 

It was a good year full of plants, travel, and preparation for the next to come. 

Trying Our Best

My husband and I decided that power couples, more than anything, are two people doing their best. With how many different monkeys we have spinning on plates, I'd say that for us, we aren't doing our best, but we're sure trying. 

This semester I have felt like I was falling to pieces, dissolving into a human puddle person. Between family medical emergencies, computers that crash when you've just finished an 8 page research paper due that day, huge cracks in your windowshield that you could have prevented but didn't quite make it in time, deceased dogs, fat jeans that don't even fit anymore, 50 students, the work to grade of 50 students, 300 pages of required reading a week for my grad classes, and my never-just-40 hour work weeks, I have been barely holding it together. 

Meanwhile, the hubs stopped working full time in order to work full time for no pay at the same place he had been working full time for full pay. Hooray internships!!!! He also took 12 hours of classes on top of that. 

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo you could say that we're a little stretched thin. 

Moments of this semester, I have felt truly thankful and blessed. I love my students. I love them. And I love seeing the students I helped get here around campus, making friends, growing up. 

I have been thankful for the continued life of my grandmother, after she scared us pretty good at Thanksgiving. 

I have been thankful for classmates that I have enjoyed very much in my grad classes this semester. 

I have been thankful for time spent with my brother's family from Atlanta last month. Only seeing them once a year makes me feel like they grow 6 inches and 6 years of maturity each time I see them. I can't believe how much they've grown. 

I've been thankful for time spent in Arizona for my cousin's wedding and the good memories made climbing mountains and laughing with my family. 

and I've been thankful for having my husband as the light at the end of the tunnel of this semester. He makes sure I eat food and take care of myself. And he gives me all the snuggles. Marriage is so hard sometimes with all the stressors of life, but having a human there to love you and bring you shoes when you forget them and bring you snacks to work when you get a meeting scheduled--again--over your lunch break and squeeze you when you're panicking and squeeze you when you have a migraine and try really hard to make you laugh when you're grumpy is the best. He's the best. 

So, at the close of a really hard semester, when I feel like I am dragging my empty body across the finish line by one bloody arm, I can really only be thankful. Anything else might feel justified, but it wouldn't be true. I am loved, I love others, and I am loved by God. At the end of a difficult season, that's the part that's most important. 

To Be and Not to Be

Face in my hands, eye rubs, deep breaths, a pill every so often, arm wraps, ultra tight hugs when I go home, visions of beaver tranquilizers dancing through my head.

Life with chronic anxiety really is "taking life one anxiety attack at a time."
Recently, my mother told me that she sees my life as one crisis to the next.

That has bothered and stuck with me like a dumb kid who puts super glue between his finger and his thumb.

It bothers me because I worry that others might look at me and think that.
It bothers me because it's probably true.
It bothers me because it isn't true.

Is that my life?
Is that who I am?

My flair to the dramatic I use for storytelling, but I don't feel things deeply like that.
The thinks I feel deeply, I'm probably not talking about. Probably, those deep feelings are getting subverted into random energy for other stories.

So it's true. And it isn't true.

Those who know me probably think it's true, but they would likely describe those "crises" much differently than I would.

It's the difference between a symbol and a motif.
A symbol can stand alone in a story. It is one and it can be done. Some symbols might "transcend" stories: for instance, a dove in any story can generally be seen as a symbol of peace or of Christ. Its use in a short story, though, can be singular.

A motif is something that doesn't necessarily transcend stories from different authors, though it might in a single author's work. It is a symbol that recurs. It is different than a theme in that its appearance may not be discussed or wholly pertinent to a story's meaning, though analyzing its use assuredly deepens understanding to the story. An example of this is in Derek Mahon's poetry. His use of meteorological terms throughout his poetry is so pervasive that I developed, while in graduate school, a multiple page index of his use. Single spaced.

All my "crises" are varied. Boys. Not fitting in. Eating disorders. Female friends because girls are the worst. Housemates. Parental fights.

The roots, though, are all the same. The deep, scathing, inescapable anxiety.
In all honesty, every single one of my life crises probably has that as its center. I was consumed by my own nature, and I did something weird, socially unaware, or straight up mean. Or, maybe worse maybe not, my body tried to soak up my anxiety before it could do those things and accidentally harmed me. The manifestations of which included, but are certainly not limited to: anorexia, vasovagal synchope, trichotillomania, depression, teeth grinding, gum recession because of teeth grinding, the need for a root canal because of teeth grinding, chronic migraines from teeth grinding, friend loss, boyfriend loss, family conflict, job conflict, panic attacks, being the worst at parties, people thinking I'm a B, coming off as a B, reclusion, crying in Walmart, in Starbucks, on the playground in elementary school, various libraries, various countries, various continents.

Hi, my name is Jamie, and I'm going to tell you a really lively story about going to the post office because I have tubs of aching, crippling anxiety that I have no story for but that are driving me to act out.

I talk. I hate my self for talking. I am silent. I worry people will think I'm anti-social. I can't win, even with myself.

That's my motif.
It's not a very good one, and I'm sure many people in my life would respond with something well-intentioned about Jesus, and I would caution them against that. Jesus is great, but Paul had his thorn too. Loving Jesus doesn't make bad stuff go away. He helps give a path to learn where to gain peace from and give breaths of respite, but it doesn't remove the darkness from my nature.

So yeah. My life is a series of crises. I wish that weren't true. But it is. That doesn't mean it's the whole story, though. Maybe that's why it bothers me.
My life goes through one crisis then the next, it isn't just one crisis then the next.
I am not a crisis. I am a person.

Pretense and Prayers

This week, I have found myself caught in a difficult place I have found myself so many times before.

To families I work with, I have often called myself a "nontraditional Christian". Perhaps that's prideful, perhaps it's a cop-out so that I avoid judgment, but I'm really not 100% sure of my motivation. A professor in college once called my personality "slippery". I didn't like that, but he's not wrong. I avoid, as much as possible, any and all definition, even though there's nothing more satisfying than feeling known.

I am a question asker. I am a person who needs to know "why". I am a fighter and a seeker, and that can come off wrong. Many times, people have judged that as not being a faithful Christian because they see it as a sign of doubt or disbelief. In my mind, I see it as a sign of faithfulness, of belief. Why fight for something you don't believe in? No, you fight for that you do believe in.

Throughout my life as well, I have been in puddles of "perfect" people while at the same time having a knack for collecting broken people. Maybe I love the broken because I know that we are all broken. Everyone is broken. Everybody has their fissures and canyons in their life. That's why we need Jesus. But there's something beautiful about broken people's inability to hide theirs. You can see Jesus better when you can't hide where he's working, or wants to be working.

Perfect people, people with rock solid testimonies and veneers, bother me. They bother me at some level because I distrust them and their stories. God is good; yes, all the time. But he is also working all the time. In true community, you share. If we are supposed to be in true community spiritually, then why are we not sharing? Why are we judging instead? I posit that we judge out of our own insecurity, out of our fear that we ourselves are seen as being imperfect. Because maybe we won't be respected anymore or get that job at that Christian foundation or be thought of as a "struggler."

Because we have seen how those labels have power and have seen their impact on lives, as people start to believe what they are called. We're responsible for our own development, but it is hard not to feel the sear of the rejections and the names.

My broken collective has all gone different directions. Some have become their labels, some have overcome their labels. All grow, just in different ways.

Have you ever sat down to "judge" someone's faith walk for one reason or another? Walk that line with prayer and petition. Just because one person has chosen to be vulnerable and share where they honestly stand does not mean that they are necessarily more or less "solid" than the person who stands in front of you and says that they're rock solid in Jesus. No man knows another's soul. No one has "arrived" in their spirituality or their walk with Christ. One man's plateau or peak period may be during another's valley. Give them six months. The man you thought couldn't be shaken might have proven himself weak and the "weak" man may still be standing strong.

We are called to love, to lead back to Christ, to be diligent and prayerful and gracious. We correct when we need to correct, but we should always start with love and with God.

I am a person with the propensity for very strongly worded opinions, This is something I am challenged about daily and something I try daily to be more wise about. However, with regards to this topic, I know that I speak truly when I say that above all other subjects, this one should be treated with more gentleness, wisdom, diligence, and prayer than any others before words come out of our mouths.

Paul writes, "may your love abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you maybe able to discern", "approve what is excellent" "and may be sincere and blameless for the day of Christ--filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ".

The first definition that comes up for "sincerity" is "without pretense." Without our masks.
When I read this verse, I hear, "If you are following God with your whole heart, then he will cast aside all human-coated thoughts, leaving behind only what is true and good and holy."

Follow God, listen to his voice while turning yours off, and speak out with a voice that is not your own, one not coated all over with your pride, your position, your particular brand of sinful.

Crawlspace Creatures

The groundhogs have to go.

For more than a year, they have hunted us, and we them.

Since the raid began, we have captured 2 chinchilla rats, 4 groundhogs, 1 opossum, and one very angry raccoon who, admittedly, was framed by the groundhogs.

You'd think we had rid ourselves.

Currently, one groundhog lies deceased in our "humane" trap as a warning to the others.

Their response? A sit in protest in the front yard.

One would also think our cat would do something. Anything.

But no. She is also on strike. We have the dog during one of the rainiest weeks in Siloam, so she can't come inside. Thus, she watches the groundhog with this look in her eye like, "See if I care, human."

My Amazon wishlist is full of murder devices.
My "humane release" heart has hardened.

Julius doesn't believe me that they could have found their way back across two tributaries and 10 miles.

But he doesn't know them like I know them.

Fools, well-meaning fools, have suggested we just "fill in the hole" into the crawlspace.
AS THOUGH WE HADN'T CONSIDERED THAT.

The heart wants what the heart wants, though, and they want in. Filling a hole won't deter them.
They'll just dig another.
We'll fill it.
They'll dig another.
We'll fill it.
They'll dig another.
And then the house sucks down into the ground like a Florida sinkhole. We've read the testimonies of fellow victims.

We will not make their mistakes. "[W]e are going to fight and our fight will be merciless".