Good lines

My “Word for 2012″

At the beginning of 2012, more than ever before, I saw other bloggers talking about their “word for the year.” Even when it felt normalized (rather than capricious or trendy) it was still scary to me.

To claim that I was going to focus on this topic/image/virtue/goal for the coming year was intimating because I wasn’t sure I could focus on anything for a year.

Repeated defeats and distractions will do that to a person.

Even so, I prayed about it because I really love words. And the idea of having a pet word, an anchor for thoughts and prayers and meditations (when I remembered it, at least) was very appealing.

And I got my very own word for the year.

And didn’t tell anyone, because I was afraid. I was afraid of making a big deal out of something that would turn out not to be a big deal.

Because, honestly, when you’re declaring one word is enough to last you the e.n.t.i.r.e. year, you’re calling it a big deal. I work with words and I know what I’m talking about.

The word I got this January was hope.

In January I was (un)well into my second year of depression, but I was starting up with a new counselor (my third– there’s a story in felt-failure: that it took me three tries to find the right someone), and finding new books, and had a sense of anticipation.

I can’t say it was necessarily about “the coming year,” but it was about life in general, and I was ready for hope.

It was (I believe) in that second linked book that I read (and latched onto) a definition for “hope” that I’ve repeated many, many times this year.

Hope is the assurance that *now* is not permanent.

That is, of course, only a partial definition. It expresses a desire for change (for the better) but not enough of the positive anticipation.

I did a word search through the bible while the word hope was on my mind. About the same time, one of the elders in our church urged all of us to choose a “verse for the year.”

I feel a bit the same about verse-for-the-year as I do about word-for-the-year; only you’re not allowed to say that you think a bible verse isn’t big enough to last a year, so naturally I just was quiet rather than draw attention to myself about how I doubted I’d commit to one of those, either.

Mostly I didn’t want to start one more thing, build it up, in my head or in public, and then notice six-months later that this centering verse, chosen to draw all the craziness of Life toward a single focus, did nothing more to contain the centrifugal spatter of my life than it did cozied next to the verses that were its normal companions.

I just don’t need the extra pressure or resultant discouragement.

But even though I rationally and objectively felt this way, I still liked the idea of searching the scriptures to see if anything “popped,” and combined with the word hope, something did.

I emailed it to the elder, as he’d requested to hear from us in the church, but I asked him not to include it in the general discussion because I was so shy of it.

It was a mighty-big verse to me, and I was shy to have it connected as my heart-prayer. Especially in the context of it being “this year’s” verse. It was much easier to say, This is near my heart. I trust telling you, but please don’t extend it farther, or I’ll feel a need to be explaining myself.

And I just don’t like the idea that I have to explain my affinity to, or delight in, a verse of scripture.

Yes, after all that I’ll say what it was. Continue Reading →

The Platinum Rule

Everybody’s heard of “The Golden Rule:”

Image courtesy of Sebile Akcan via Stock.xchng

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

It is a concept that has existed forever, but I read somewhere that it was Jesus who turned it on this positive angle. Everybody else– Confucius, the Greek philosophers– couched it in opposite terms:

Don’t treat anyone the way you don’t want to be treated.

It was “the law of reciprocity” and contained a rude (underdeveloped) sort of empathy. Sort of like another admonition I read on a twitter profile:

Be gentle with others. Everyone is fighting a secret battle.

All of these build on the idea that we know our own needs and that there is a commonality to our race (we’re all human) that allows us to recognize (from our own experience) what others would value and/or fear.

The frustrating thing about conclusions is that they are fully dependent on the assumptions that lead to them.

Even the Golden Rule.

I have been told more than once that I’m not like most people, and Jay had that great line last week, “You are a square in a world of circles. You come at things from such a *completely* different angle nobody else sees.”

The man wasn’t being critical or complementary. I think bewildered is the best word. It’s nice not to be the only confused one. And nice to be accepted, even “off center.”

So when I assume that others are like me, that they value and desire the same things– I can get in trouble.

For one thing, other people “golden-ruling” me really are trying hard, and I shouldn’t get offended when it doesn’t fit, and what I give other people (because it’s what I would have wanted) can land completely wrong.

So I think the level-to-aspire-to is The Platinum Rule:

Treat others the way they want to be treated.

Image courtesy of Sara Haj-Hassan via stock.xchng

By necessity this requires knowing the other person well enough to make a reasonable guess, but it also requires the presence of mind to apply what you know.

Many people I know (and I include myself in this category) are just plain-nice people. They’re not in the habit of doing unkind things, and I can’t think of situations where they would be deliberately hurtful to anyone.

But some of these people have hurt me.

And I have hurt some of them.

Here’s one specific example, going both ways– it relates (as I see it) to the way we process information differently. Continue Reading →

Comfort

A couple months ago I had a friend getting ready to move away.
I was not prepared for her departure to knock the wind out of me like it did.
Three different people asked me if I was okay. (I must have looked a wreck.)
I said No, each time, and felt loved like I hadn’t in a long time.

I felt seen.

Each listened to me in turn, absorbing my sound bite and offering what comfort they could (it wasn’t nothing).

And the third woman paused with me. Shared her heart with me.
Gave me a chance to get past my pain, to see her struggle.
To share her burden as I looked for a place to lay mine.

These multiple offerings of compassion struck me as a great contrast to the women who could skewer my heart without knowing it, either by their words or by their silence.

And I prayed I would have eyes to be that one who could see.

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own” or real life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life– the life God is sending one, day by day.”

C.S. Lewis

 

Did you know Sinning is Not a Requirement?

“We’re not called sinners because we sin,” my dad says. “We sin because we’re sinners.”

Behavior grows out of  identity, you see. (Another reason to drop “cheat” from your HEP vocabulary.)

This definition is important because those of us who’ve “put on Christ” and the new life he offers us– we have a new identity.

Image courtesy of Simon Jackson via stock.xchng

We’re not sinners any more.

Charles Swindoll in his book The Grace Awakening, Urges Believers to look hard at Romans 6, and makes a challenging observation:

Most Christians have been better trained to expect and handle their sin than to expect  and enjoy their freedom. The shame and self-imposed guilt this brings is enormous, to say nothing of the “I’m defeated” message it reinforces.

Are you ready for a maverick thought? Once we truely grasp the freedom grace brings, we can spend lengthy periods of our lives wihtou sinning or feeling ashamed. Yes, we can! And why not? Why should sin gain the mastery over us? Who says we cannot help but yield to it? How unbiblical!

You see, most of us are so programmed to sin that we wait for it to happen. …

You have not been programmed to yield yourself unto God as those who have power over sin.

That new power– rooted in our new identity–  is a LOT of what Romans 6 talks about:

  • How can we who died to sin still live in it?
  • Our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin’s dominion over the body may be abolished, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin
  • You too consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
  • Do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires (The new identity means we have the choice to obey where previously we had no choice)
  • For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under law but under grace. (Glorious promise!)
  • Having been liberated from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.

These words give me a hope I don’t remember ever basking in this much: We speak of being slaves to sin, the compulsion and the helplessness we were locked into in our lost state.

Now we (who are redeemed) find ourselves slaves to righteousness.

A new identity and a new servitude.

Sin is no longer the Default Mode.

This is a Big Deal because I don’t think I’ve lived this way on-purpose. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at Sin as completely optional.

Then Sunday (I’d been swimming in these ideas since Saturday, the day before) the man bringing the massage wrapped up with 1 Corinthians 10:13:

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humanity. God is faithful, and He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation He will also provide a way of escape so that you are able to bear it.

When I am watching a mystery or one of my body-a-week shows, I pay attention to the way things are said more than I do in real life.

For one thing, every speaker’s words were chosen by a writer, and I can guess that any hints I pick up on are probably real and not just in my own head.

One thing about every good mystery is that the answer is always on the table.

It might be concealed or misrepresented, but it’s there. When the answer is revealed the audience can see how clever everything was (or wasn’t) and know the truth from all angles.

 

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In a similar way, when I go into my life and its demands (and temptations to sin) it makes a tremendous difference to me whether I’ll have to swim on my own, or if I’ve got a rope to hold onto.

God has promised a way of escape.

The answer is on the table.

How encouraging is that?!

So much of my anxiety comes from a sense of feeling trapped. Of being out of options.

And when I’m stressed I am more likely to sin with my mouth.

What a relief to hear I am not bound to this!

He will provide a way of escape.

The Purpose of Emotions

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Two summers ago, I remember pacing the lawn at the old house while talking on the phone (I still don’t know how to be still when I speak on the phone).

I described to my dear friend (in our “stolen moments” after bedtime) how novel writing seem especially necessary or missed in that season, because I felt such a flurry and burying depth of feeling that it took 16 characters to bleed the emotion down to a manageable level.

(All of this punctuated by the emotion thickening my voice as I tried to discuss the topic.)

I was embarrassed by the emotion. I couldn’t think what the point was other than to give evidence to my weakness, and my head wasn’t currently on straight enough to back up and start from basic principles:

Unless this was the result of the Fall (when Sin entered into the world) there must be some original purpose for these frustrating feelings.

This friend was raised on the F side of the F — T spectrum, and she still doesn’t seem to understand my mistrust of the F side of things. So I suppose this comes down to a cultural expression. All I know is that when it comes down to downs, “people” mistrust expressions of emotion the way men mistrust women’s periods. It’s mystical, inexplicable, and the deepest proof of it’s power it the continued impossibility of eliminating it.

Lo and Behold, I finally heard an authoritative voice posit a reason for these pesky little elephants of distraction.

Emotions are radar.

They’re your warning system.

Are you becoming angry? Look around. Who’s crossing a line?

Are you sad? Is there some loss you need to acknowledge and grieve?

Are you zipping with delight? Enjoy it! Share it!

This last isn’t the one we usually wrestle with.

Have you ever heard someone complain about feeling so good they just wish it would stop?

No.

We sometimes know what to do with the positive emotions, even if they’re not any more “understandable” than the rest.

And here I think is where we might try to nail the jello-y question of value in emotions.

Thinking, reasoning, cognitively working things out, gives us an action point.

We leave the mental exercise with something to DO, or at least begin to understand.

Emotions are Raw.  Not just exposed and nebulous; they must be processed before they may become overtly useful.

And most people (in my experience) either don’t know how to do the work, or are not interested in the work. Continue Reading →

More Doesn’t Keep Being More

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In contrast to the popular saying,

Money can’t buy happiness

there is this study that shows a fairly tight correlation between money and a lot of good things. (Here’s another eye-opening view, if you go in prepared for anger and crass language.)

I liked reading about this study when it came out, because I’d always thought along the lines that money has got to simplify a LOT of things and how most of the “simple freebies” that are cozy and fuzzy-edged in any story aren’t so accessible.

I mean, I do those things, and they’re not necessarily cheap and accessible.

  • Musical instruments you actually *want* to play are a pretty penny.
  • Pets/animals take work and money.
  • Craft supplies that are enjoyable to use usually can’t be found at the thrift store
  • Even simple “hanging out” with friends involves cost to someone– either in transportation, food, or entertainment.

Free is really less common than storytelling will admit.

It is this common sense awareness of increased money = improved life that gets us into trouble.

When we see, Oh, more money is better life, we don’t see that topping out– until it does.

This is why you don’t see movies about poor people realizing their two jobs plus night school are eating away at their family life and just. not. worth it.

It’s the rich executive or the workaholic mom who have to choose family over acquiring even-greater wealth.

~ ~ ~

All that to say that we educated types have the same relationship with information.

Continue Reading →

Score One for the Closet Introvert

I’ve self-identified as an introvert for a few years now, but I can’t remember ever using that knowledge to reshape my behavior.  Until recently.

Just this week I went to a graduation celebration, and I took my knitting.  Instead of trying to fight my way into the talk I just sat in the vicinity of conversations that were interesting to listen to and made progress on the little cardigan I’m working on.

Years ago I knew a woman who described her outrage and surprise at being the only individual to defend a core tenet of her faith in a group of fellow Mormons. She told me she was contemplating a month- to year-long experiment.

“I’m just going to quit speaking up,” she said. “And I’m going to keep a journal of people’s responses.”

“Well,” I said, trying to be gentle, but wondering how this could provoke notice from other non-responders, “I think that might be giving others too much credit for even noticing the difference.”

I was feeling this way.

Wondering how much it mattered to me that people wouldn’t notice I was different.  Not being sure how much explanation I did or didn’t want to offer.

YES I feel very different than I did 5 years ago. Or 11 years ago, when I still lived at home (and family had more opportunity to figure me out).

No, I don’t think I’ve actually changed that much, just quit fighting who it’s easy to be.  Started thinking that maybe this is actually who I’ve been created to be…

Who is still allowed to keep changing, so if I’m too confusing now, just love me and wait. You’ll see something new in another six months if you keep paying attention.

Part way through the evening someone noticed

He accused me of being bored with the company, since I wasn’t participating.  I bit back my hurt response at being unfairly sniped and retorted, “When I have something to say I will.”

My sister heard. And remembered it, too; longer than I did.

Today she told me how much she liked the line, and how she’s trying to remember and apply the idea in her own communication.

So am I.

What if this isn’t something you get over?

What if this is something God’s giving you to wrestle with your whole life?

Here is, to me, the biggest part of Christian community: individuals who are safe (as opposed to, you know, unsafe.), and have earned the right to be heard. I know this woman loves me. She genuinely desires peace and good things for me.  So a hard suggestion like that is not painful.

In fact it was perfect, because whether or not it proves to be accurate it provided the necessary re-framing I needed to lighten up.

I’ve been treating my emotional health as something like a sprint: The goal’s not far away: the harder I push, the sooner I’ll reach it!

So I read, and think, and self-analyze, and look for the right book, or bible study, or counselor. And I see real improvement, and I can feel myself getting stronger and that just encourages me to dig in harder, I’m so close!

And then find new things I need to work on.

*sigh*

I don’t know if I’m going to fight this my whole life (naturally I hope not), but I can see the wisdom in in treating it as a marathon and not a sprint.

The most effective teaching seems to be about slowing down. And not just about but some reasonable suggestions how. That’s been my missing link.

Not only does the shift in perspective encourage a more-thoughtful approach to how I divide my time, it also lightens the pressure on each new thing I approach or try.  This does not have to fix everything. This can be appreciated for what it is, not just how far it advances my goals.

And doesn’t that sound more sane?

Obscurity has its Advantages

One of which is realistic expectations.

Or, rather, few to none, which works as well.

I’ve gone through cycles of seeking my “brand” or identity, or audience, pouring thought and wistfulness and effort into producing content days at a time.

The closest I’ve gotten to a theme is, “an unexamined life is not worth living.”

Which is overstating it, as quotes will.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats (1795–1821)

For now, I more wish to belive that the unexamined life may perhaps be lived better (than examined), but without the benefit of reproduction. And I believe a scientist would say that any outcome, however perfect, is not useful unless it can be reproduced.

While I do not strive to live as a scientist, I do wish to be of use. And I know my deepest need (for an improved life) is not perfection, but consistency.

But, returning to obscurity (we left it for a moment), I think on what is necessary to leave it: nakedness. Utter exposure, whether voluntary or not, is the cost of coming out of invisibility.

It was Edna St. Vincent Millay, I once read, who said, “A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.”

My friend Becky and I have had (e-mail) conversations over this, the choice about how open to be.  She knows her audience. She has a sense of mission in her writing, and finds both power and purpose in choosing to open some very personal parts of herself.

I have none of those motivators. Much of my fragility and “intimacy” is very self-centered; they are things I want to remember on topics that are close to my heart and so are easier for me to write about.

Or maybe just easier to stay connected long enough to finish.

All my life I have heard about “masks” and “getting rid of masks.” The idea of presenting a false front is despised in all circles, even while (as a culture) we feel more disconnected from one another than ever before.

So people talk publicly about stuff that doesn’t make you blush any more, and shocking announcements are defended effectively.

I tried to explain the phenomenon to my mother (who doesn’t need anything explained to her), and she is simply horrified at the practice. “Why would anybody do that?!” she asks.

I proffered a few of my theories (the attempted explanation part), but she didn’t seem to hear any of them. And I can’t say I blame her. I don’t rightly understand it myself.

But I’m a part of it.

Apparently I’m in the early years of Generation-Y, and attribute it to what you will (I’ve read theories about this too), we are a “real” generation, where authenticity is the key word.

I’m a part of it without even knowing it.

I can’t tell you how many times someone older than me (and not always very much older) will laugh in an embarrassed way at something I just said and respond, “That’s what I love about you, Amy, you’re so real.”

Which, frankly, confuses me, because what else can a Believer be?

Continue Reading →

Broken Ribs Are Broken Ribs

I like watching pilots.

My parents like to laugh when I say this, since my husband recently earned his license.

I like watching T.V. show pilots, because the good ones, next to songs, are the most compact form of good storytelling I know.

And with my journalism background, compact is meant as compliment.

~

In the pilot show of Burn Notice (the only episode I’ve seen) our Smart, Tough Protagonist finds himself seriously beat up in the first ten-minutes.

Later when the episode fall-man takes a swing at our STP and has his split second of triumph, the image freezes and STP narrates matter-of-factly: It doesn’t matter how much training you have; a broken rib is a broken rib. It doesn’t matter who you are or how you got it, it’s going to hurt.

Fall man thinks his punch was particularly effective, because he’s experienced enough to recognize real pain. What he doesn’t know is that STP’s already outlasted tougher punks than this guy.  And can prove it.

Other favorite line from the show: People with happy families don’t become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops – you don’t trust anyone, you’re used to getting smacked around, and you never get homesick.

The point is that injury = injury. It’s part of being a member of the human race and, honestly, doesn’t define who you are any more than a bloody nose (though it might be argued broken ribs and bloody noses are indicative of a particular identity).

~

Sinners sin, and fragile people get broken.

And there is the rub: even most of us who admit we’re sinners would rather avoid the nitty-gritty of it (fair enough), and all of us feel a bit affronted to be called fragile.

“I’ve taken care of myself til now!”

My whole life I’ve wondered about the horror of tears; why they are so desperately fought.

Why are tears so dreadful? So shameful?

Some thoughts:

  • They confess need.
  • They show weakness
  • The mourner’s core has identified a reason to spill a limited resource.
  • Observers now know too much, and/or too deeply.  Where there is often no desire or right to know.
  • The crier is on display, subjected to public interpretation.

Tears come from so deep it feels like a betrayal to have anyone either ignore or interpret them.

And if I barely know where they come from, so the effort of wondering how others see them is too great a burden.

The reality is, I break.

I bleed.

And somehow this is the natural order of things. This is part of creation and our finitude as humans.

It doesn’t matter how much training you have; a broken heart is a broken heart.

So my latest theory is of tears being as natural as bleeding. As legitimate a sign of wrong-ness, and as natural a thing to tend. Evidence of a wound that needs cleaned and protected.

Yes, I guess that means I’ve been the odd sort that was waiting for some kind of “permission.”