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".

26 Flippin' Kicks

It's another year come and gone. I cannot even begin to believe that I am now in my late-mid twenties. For sure still routinely tell families that I'm 22. I'm not a liar, it just doesn't occur to me that I've aged.

In my 25th year, I:

• Watched every season of Survivor with Julius
• Taught my very first college class, which was amazing. Yes, it was 7:30 in the morning and yes, I got a really bad dose of the flu partway through (and continued to teach...), but it was the fulfilment of a degree and a lot of hopes.
• Taught Seamus Heaney's Field Work
• and Hamilton
• and The Book Thief
• and Oscar Wilde's short stories
• Saw 21 Pilots in concert in Little Rock (because I won a radio contest!!!)
• Saw Panic! At the Disco in concert in Tulsa (which turned out to be incredibly weird)
• Attended a Redesign Summit with our office that ended both badly and great. I got a little sassy, which landed me in the "please make a public apology" arena, but it also was a huge opportunity for me to step up at work.
• I made a gigantic excel sheet of all the ideas and organized the living daylights out of it
• then broke up our office into committees
• and instigated us toward actually achieving goals we set during a group retreat.
• Got rejected for a PhD
• Got really into community Zumba classes
• Found and hired a new regional recruiter for Dallas to work under me
• Helped us hire a new admissions counselor
• Helped to create an Early Commit Track and a Community Changers Scholarship
• Went to Colorado for admissions counselor camp

• Helped Julius build and paint 5 sets of Corn Hole (complete with bean bags)
• Got a sweet little AirBnb with Julius in the middle-of-nowhere Texas
• it had a pool
• and roaches
• and an outdoor shower
• but we loved it
• Travelled to Odomfest and spent some gooooood family time at the lake
• Named Assistant Director of Admissions
• Attended my first Global Leadership Summit
• Completed my fourth travel season in Texas
• while also teaching my second in-person English II class
• I loved them. I LOVED them. It was emotional and connecting and challenging and all kinds of wonderful.
• Caught:
• 2 chinchilla rats
• 1 opossum
• 3 groundhogs
• and 1 very angry raccoom
• Attended the wedding of my best friend's much loved older sister
• Had Best Friend Weekend 2017 with Kira and Tyler (a beta test of things to come)
• notably, we went to the Gentry Safari, a movie in a cave, and ate all the foods.
• Ripped out and replaced our kitchen countertops and kitchen sink. By ourselves.
• Started "teaching" an online English I course for a school in Virginia.
• Got my first root canal
• Put together the facts and discovered that my chronic migraines were being caused by teeth grinding
• bought a $5 mouth guard that has, quite literally, altered my whole life.
• Decided I was unhappy with what desk life has turned my body into and lost 12 pounds (until travel season decided to squash my goals of pushing further into that goal)
• Went to Arizona with Julius thanks to my parents
• for my cousin's wedding to his sweet new wife
• and to see my bestie Sarah Cowles.

• Discovered Outlook Task Manager and fell deeply in love with it
• Got a brand new baby nephew!
• Wrote my third article for the faculty excellence magazine
• adopted a stray cat we named Ootzyde Ket (Oots for short)
• Got in a plane and went to Australia to celebrate 10 years of friendship with Kira and Tyler

My 26th year is starting strong with sunshine, friendship, a true break from my work (if we're being honest, it's my first true "unplugging" since I started this job 3.5 years ago).
I'm just so happy and deeply thankful.

Non Compos Mentis

Christmas: anxiety levels at atomic mushroom heights.

Children screaming. Wrapping paper everywhere. And the anxiety of potential flight complications looming.

 
Yet while I sit here, conscientiously stilling my breath and taking some Lamaze notes for my own stress levels, I let the reminder of life's brevity overtake me.
 

These people, these loud, just unbelievably loud, nuanced, weird, testy, loving, fun, funny people are what gives me a reason to come home.

Tulsa is just a city. Its shops and hills and predictability are comforting, but it's the chaos of my family that makes my heart so full.
 

I would be devastated if I ever lost even one of my people. Our unit is messy and sometimes I need to leave the room--maybe drink a little contextual beverage--and chill my introvert sensory self out a little, but I love them with my whole heart.

So let them scream. Let them eat cake. I would rather have a ringing in my ears than a hole in my heart.

Nap till It Ends

Days and seasons whip through me.

It's still fall semester. It has felt longer than a year, and I feel like you can see at least a year imprinted on my face and spirit.

There was an Aflac commercial running a few years back where the duck and a dude are in a little fishing boat, and a hole starts spouting water. Aflac duck plugs it. But then, oh no! Another hole. And another and another and another until he has his whole beak plugging a whole and filling him with water.

There have been some truly good moments, but I feel a little like an Aflac duck. I plug one hole and another spouts. Meanwhile, while my focus is away, another spurt spurts.

To actually have a grip on all the projects and the problems going on, I'd need 18 hands working simultaneously.

At the same time, I'm so thankful to be alive and alive in this stage of life. I often find myself internally angsting hard, but, at the same time, I don't want to wish away my life. I love my life. I love my husband and so many of the people I work with and work for. I love my near and far distance friends.

I love teaching and the ability to share my crazy ideas with people paying to listen. :)

It's just so hard to maintain a spirit of thankfulness in my divided heart and mind when everything in me wants to sleep and sleep and sleep.

I Know You By Name

If you've never read The Book Thief, you're missing out.
Found for a quarter at a garage sale down the road, this book was a steal in and of itself.

The Holocaust is not something to be taken lightly, but it gets as close as you can without crossing any lines. Why is that important? Because humor, even dark, is part of the human experience, and Book Thief's purpose is to show the human experience as colorfully as possible, the whole of it, not just in part.

The entire narration is from the point of view of Death. It's the first I've read of its kind, but the most interesting part is how Death describes himself. As "amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's" (Zusak 1). He calls himself a result. And, when asked to describe himself, he says for humans to only but look in a mirror. Humans, he posits, are the real carriers of death.

However, in my English II course, we explore how that's the most powerful and hopeful statement. We have the capacity to carry death, but that also means we have the power to carry life, to promote joy and healing and goodness.

Death searches, throughout the entire novel, to answer the question of why human existence is worth it. He knows it is, but he is on a quest to show how.

So, that is our course thesis for this novel: Human existence is worth it.

At the end of each class period, we spend time answering the half statement, "Human existence is worth it because..."

It's my second time teaching through this book, but this semester has hit nerves so much deeper inside me and, I believe, my class.

There's something about this semester at my university that has just been a little off-kilter, a darkness felt by so many of our students, faculty, and staff. As a believer, I do believe that spiritual warfare is alive and well and that the enemy seeks to steal, kill, and destroy, especially when there is so much life and light in a place.

I have, thus far, had 3 students drop my course out of overload. Two stayed at the university, one withdrew due to suicidal ideations. Another yet is taking next semester off because of similar mental and psychological stress. And then there's [Claire].

If we are being honest, Claire bothered me. She came to even the first day of class late. She would sit there and I just felt uncomfortable by her presence because it came off as almost hostile. She rarely turned in assignments. It was as if school--and my class--were below her. Which surprised me, as she is an English major.

Then, one day at Walmart, I saw her with another student of mine who I had recruited, a student I dearly love. Call it Jones' Effect, but if she's friends with my student, she is a good person. My whole perspective changed, and I felt it deeply that I needed to reach out. Her tardiness had gotten much worse, if she showed up at all.

She shared with me of her depression, how she wasn't coming because she couldn't get out of bed. She hadn't turned in her major paper because she had never even started her paper.

We talked. We met together. We made compromises and worked through her missing pieces. I told her how valuable her feedback in class was to course discussion. She didn't even know she had been "seen."

She started showing up to class right on time. With assignments. Good assignments. Blew me away with her next paper. I thought everything was going better, going better than better.

Then came an email telling me she was hospitalizing herself for self harm.
Then came emails from the registrar asking if she would succeed if she came back; I confirmed.
Then came an email from her asking what work she had to make up, if she could.
Then came the first day of class back after Thanksgiving. Late. No paper.
Then came the second day of class back after Thanksgiving. No Claire.
Then came the classified ad posts desperately asking for help toward this "new treatment" and a public expose on her mental illness.
Then came the text from the university at 10pm last night saying they were searching for a student they believed had self harmed.
Then came heartbreak.

A reassurance of her life was sent about 20 minutes later, but so much damage had already been done. There isn't anything that could convince me that it wasn't her. I'd be delighted to know it wasn't, but it was. I know the evidence too well.

Human existence is worth it because...

The heartbreak is because I know the answer to that question. I know it for me, and I know it for her. In fact, I could write a full list for any one of my students about why their specific human existence is worth it.

It doesn't matter if a person is Christian or not. Their human existence is worth it because they each have the capacity to love and be loved. To bless and be blessed. To care. To listen. To give. To write and think and create and dream and dance and play and BE.

To me, today, human existence is worth it because I know the Lord. I know that he has the capacity and desire to restore the broken and to pour love and compassion and grace out on us. Human existence is worth it because I am known by name by the creator of the world, and he has given me life and the ability and opportunity to love and individually care for so many people around me--and to forgive me when I sometimes suck at loving and individually caring for those around me.

I know that he sees Claire. I know that he sees her hands full of tears and the pieces of her life and that he loves her and has a plan for how to make her broken world into a stained glass mosaic full of light and color and loveliness.

Human existence is worth it because we have potential. No matter how old or young or broken or ignorant, we have potential.
There is so much more than we can see in our frozen moments of life.


*student name changed to protect privacy

First Year's Stones and Waffles

Marriage year one is in the books. There were so many firsts for me in our love story, but they were mostly seconds for Julius. Of course, every experience is different, but it feels really nice to say that our first anniversary was the first wedding anniversary he's ever had as well.

Our first year, I suppose, was very straight-forward. And, in others, not so straightforward. There's no "normal", though, so I guess we were normal.

We kicked it off with a honeymoon at Galveston beach, which is quiet and quirky and perfect for us. Then a week with my family at the lake.

It felt like I left almost as soon as we got home, however. Texas scooped me up for five straight weeks. In the moment, I really like travel season. Months before I start in with the anxiety and dread. Luckily, last year this manifested in packing up meals to freeze. By the time I left, he had a meal for each and every meal that I'd miss. Needless to say, the freezer was packed. Meanwhile, Julius played tennis, went to work, hung out with his friends, and went to graduate classes. I couldn't help but feel he had more fun than I did.

We had our struggles. Like me coming back from travel season to find the dishes not done for 5 weeks and a stench of a bachelor in every room. This was not aided by the old individualistic patterns that had allowed themselves to reinstate in us during our 5 weeks apart.

It took a while, but we got back into a groove. Meals started reappearing with consistency, the floors and bathrooms, dishes, were cleaned, laundry was washed and folded, roles began to establish in terms of who does what.

Winter sunk in, and with it, the darkness. It's hard to go play and do when the world closes in around you even before you leave the office. We learned hard lessons about togetherness and friendships. How, when your work and class schedules dominate your time, sometimes you have to sacrifice additional fun things with non-spouse friends because, well, you haven't seen your spouse in days.

We learned about grace and immediate honesty, how that generally bodes better than eventual honesty. We learned about unlearning.

Family was new again, as well. His who had been used to him living with them now had to share and relinquish. Mine who is used to me showing up often had to anticipate me less and for shorter periods of time. I experienced what only-child holidays are like, and he learned to cope with what I'm sure felt like repeat scenes from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

We discovered that we get along best if I drive. He also learned the importance of packing snacks. Always.

Probably hardest was finding the balance between roommate and romance. He was used to coming home and disappearing away to be by himself for hours. I was used to coming home to a happy house of introvert women I loved with all my heart. Even if I was alone in my room, best friends were right outside. Marriage changed both those things. Julius had to learn to communicate with another person when he got home--and that coming home is an essential part of that equation. Meanwhile, I was alone. How does a reclusive introvert with an open office layout day job make friends and engage with others when she leaves work if she comes home to an empty house? How do you not attack your husband with love and a desperate need to connect when he arrives home exhausted and uninterested in connection? Where do those needs find balance?

At the end of the year, two very strong-willed, hot-tempered people found ways to compromise, to learn, and to love one another. We threw stones, we made waffles, we figured it out.