Why Knowing Yourself Makes Dating Hard, or Why You Should Get Married When You're Young and Stupid

I’d like to interrupt my blogging hiatus to comment on the difficulty of dating in your thirties.

I’d like to start by saying to all the single thirty-something men who have a clue: Ahem, where are you? Seriously. Where?

With that said, I’d like to mention that I’ve dated a handful of great guys in their 30s (and one little baby guy in his 20s) over the past many years, and the problem seems to be, over and over, that I know what I want.

This is the problem of dating in your thirties. If I had dated these guys in my early twenties, they might have done very well for me. But not so now.

For the most part at this point in your life, you are a whole person, established in a career, paying bills, enjoying your friends, you know what you like and what you want. Or at least you have a better sense of who you are. Now some would say that’s an advantage of dating in your thirties, but I say no. No, it is not.

When you’re in college, in your early twenties, you have your whole big wide open life ahead of you. Who knows where it will take you? Sure, you’ve got ideas, but love trumps all and finding someone to journey with is exciting and beautiful. So what if he doesn’t have a job—no one does! So what if he doesn’t know what he wants in life—who does?! So what if he doesn’t know who he is really—I’ll help him figure it out! It doesn’t matter that he lies all the time—he’ll change! All we need is love.

When you fall in love and date and get married young, you sort of grow up together. You learn to pay bills and be responsible adults together. You deal with your ugly character issues together. You learn who you are together. For some that means you figure out you are different people who don’t really get along that well. But you’re in, you’ve chosen. So it’s one more thing to figure out together, how to make it work. It works for some, not so much for others. But the dating, the selection, the pairing up was easier (even if the growing up wasn’t).

But when you do all that growing up apart and then start looking for “the one,” it’s not at all like it used to be. I mean it might start the same—ooh, good looking guy, similar interests, we’re going somewhere with this… but then, bam! You find out he goes to a mega-church and lives in the burbs. He’s out. Or bam! He wears white sneakers and listens to metal music. Out! He doesn’t have a job. What? No! He’s a picky eater and doesn’t like trying new things. Forget about it! He’s never even heard of Tim Keller. Seriously? Or worse, he just didn’t ever grow up.

Would I have cared about any of this in my 20’s? I don’t think so. But now the pool just seems so much smaller. Maybe it’s not. Maybe I just know myself so much better. I’ve got a much longer list of deal-breakers now. Or preferences, anyway.

The idea that there are plenty of fish in the sea may be true when you’re 18, but in your 30’s it seems the fish are few and far. I’ve been fishing for years and nothing has stayed on the hook. And when you add in the desire for a godly man who loves Jesus and understands the Gospel story, it’s even more limiting. Then finding someone who is just as interested in you as you are in him? Impossible.

This seems impossible.

And that’s why it’s so easy to lose hope of marriage or children in your 30’s. This can be a disheartening thing, making you question whether pursuing career will make you miss out on a family, or if you should just settle for someone who is tolerable so you can get started with a family before it’s too late. These are things you usually don’t have to consider in your twenties.

Some have given me a hard time about being picky. I give myself a hard time about it. It’s just that I have such a distinct idea of the kind of man I’d like to be with, and now I’m beginning to believe he doesn’t exist. Maybe those white sneakers aren’t so bad after all? I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Maybe preferences are a luxury I can’t afford anymore?  If I’m actually going to get anywhere with anyone, maybe I need to keep my preferences peripheral (I’m looking at you, manly facial hair and tattoos) and recognize the things that are actual deal-breakers.

I have a date Saturday. He’s the whole reason for this rant.

I really like him. It’s terrifying to think about how that might change my whole world. I like my world, even though I really want to have a family. My world is comfortable and familiar and independent. He could change that. There’s more at stake now. Dates weren’t this scary at 20. They were just fun.

So maybe those picky preferences are actually sneaky little saboteurs that help keep my world comfortable and not so scary? And that, ladies and gentlemen, takes me full circle back to the conclusion that dating in your thirties is difficult.

Sometimes I really miss being dumb and young and naive. 

Jesus is coming... look deserving

We, the human race that is, tend to operate on a “deserve-it” philosophy. People get what they deserve. It’s a comfortable philosophy because it can be managed. It is “fair.”

We see it in all aspects of our thought and culture from the way we parent to the way we throw around the word karma, and even in our Christmas songs (see: Santa Claus is Coming to Town). We make decisions about who to give to, who to withhold from, and who to root for based on this deserve-it philosophy.

We even want a God who operates on the deserve-it philosophy because if we don’t control the outcomes, at least he does, and perhaps we can get him to give us what we want if we can prove we deserve it. I learned this pretty early on in Sunday school. The  parable of the talent. My take-away was: if you want stuff from God, you gotta prove you deserve it. (Hey kids, here’s how to manipulate God.)

I mean let’s face it, this deserve-it principle feeds right into our need for control—it provides a sense of order in chaos. It works for do-gooder liberals and boot-strap capitalists alike. This whole rain and sun shining on the righteous and unrighteous can really pose a problem for us, though.

Those of us who live with longings that seem out of reach (all of us?) can find this all quite confusing. My inner dialogue goes a little like this… You don’t have what you desire because you haven’t been faithful with what you have now. You don’t deserve it. You’re not worthy of it. God would give it to you if you could prove how worthy you are. Make better decisions, love more, be less selfish, be more faithful, deny your base desires. Work. Work. Work.

And I lose site of relationship. I lose site of a God who is committed to me. Of a God who sees. A God who wants to meet me in my longing.

Because the truth is, the waiting, the longing is not punitive. It is the reality of living in the tension of now and not yet. The reality of two kingdoms. Longing awakens us to reality and calls us to relationship. We have to thirst. We have to hunger. It’s not going away. Not fully.

To live is to long. The problem comes when we try to explain our longing with the deserve-it mindset. The behavioral therapist and life coach in me wants life to operate on an absolute sow/reap principle, so that there is no mess, all can be fixed up with the right behavior, and everyone gets just what they deserve. But it is not so. There is mystery in life. There is longing.

Sowing and reaping can guide us, but it cannot explain life and grace and God. The haves and the have-nots. The rain on oversaturated land. The sun on already scorched earth. The barren. The hungry. The waiting.

It is in these things, He calls to us, and not because we deserve it. Because of grace.

So, rather than carrying around a burden of shame for not having, rather than work work work to find our way out of the waiting, we need to lean into it. Let our longing lead us to relationship. Let it draw us to a God who is committed to us and on whom our hopes are anchored.

Let Love be your Mango: Moving From Survivor to Disciple

Sometimes the way we live in our “survival season” becomes the way we live.

You know what I mean when I say survival season? Those times we just want to get through? Where we do what we need to do “for now” until things get better? The times when we’ve lost a job, or we are especially busy, or we’ve just moved to a new city, or maybe there’s been a loss or heartbreak. It’s those times when we feel more insecure or disconnected.

I knew that season was coming when I moved to Chicago nine months ago. I expected it. I knew I just needed to get through it. Then things would be better.

But survival mode often means we lean into those things that tend to give a sense of control and security—achievement, aloofness, avoidance, arrogance, addiction, alliteration (apparently), etc. We can become more guarded and focused on ourselves and our needs.

Then, before we know it, living like this “for now” becomes a way of life. 

It becomes the way you live.

And the way you love.

The other day my colleague did an object lesson with the college students we work with. It was one I've done many times before—the one where you try to fit a lot of different size objects into a container. The only way it fits is to put the largest object (a mango, in our case) in first, then the second largest to the smallest.  He asked students... What drives you? How do you make decisions about how to spend your time? Your money? What to pursue? What is priority? What makes everything else make sense? What is your mango?

I started thinking about the answer for myself.

I wanted my answer to be love.

Love?

No.

Comfort.

Security.

Fun.

Excitement.

Image.

Avoidance.

Pleasure.

Control.

Guaranteed Outcomes.

Me.
Love doesn't fit.

It hit me hard.

This is not the life I am called to. This is not the life I want to live. This is not the life of a disciple. The life of a disciple is one of risk and tension and sacrifice and vulnerability. And joy and purpose and fruit. Survival is not life to the fullest.

I want to live a life of radical love. A life on mission where Christ is made known. But this kind of life is not compatible with survival mode. This kind of life requires freedom.

And freedom is found by letting go of control and security and guarantees. It is found when we open our eyes and look around at others, not just at ourselves. Look around at what God is doing. It means our time is not our own... our money, our space.

With this, a lot of fear comes up. Fear of messiness. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of discomfort. Love gets messy.

I recently listened to this TED talk about the importance of vulnerability. I can relate so well…

I want to love well. I want to be vulnerable. I want love to be my mango. But fear get's in the way.

Is love your mango? If not, what gets in the way? How can we switch from guarded survival mode to live lives free to love?

• Repent. We have to sit with our sin and confess it. And grieve it... I haven’t loved well. I have hidden and run from God and the life He has called me to live. 
• Surrender. Give up the fear and control. Embrace the messiness. Daily. Recognize there is something better that is worth the forfeit.
• Be loved. We will never be free to love if we are guarded and looking to others to give us our value and worth.  We need to believe and abide in the truth that we are loved by God, have a purpose, and have something good to offer. "Believe that what makes me vulnerable makes me beautiful."
• Pray. Ask God open our eyes to see those around us, to see His Kingdom, and to be able to love as He loves.
• Love. Go. Do. Get into people’s lives. Meet people. Invite people. Pray with people. Serve people. Give to people. Share meals. Know and be known.

Singleness, Shame, and Misunderstood Promises

I’ve been single now for six years.  When it comes to singleness and marriage I have struggled with what  I think I should feel about my singleness, what I actually feel, why I often have shame over what I actually feel, and what I’m comfortable letting others know about my feelings.  To be honest, most of the time I’m not even truthful with myself about what I really feel.

One day I’m perfectly delighted being single because I have personal and career opportunities that I wouldn't have as a married woman, I can spend money without consulting someone else, and I can not shave serve God.  Then the next day I am paralyzed with fears of being alone.  The next I feel completely self-absorbed and in need of someone else to love who will call me out on my selfishness.  Other days I think of stealing babies (see Raising Arizona "I need a baby, Hi"). Then I feel certain that there are no single men left in all of Chicago-land (maybe the US, maybe the western hemisphere).  Then I encounter a slew of infantile and/or character-devoid single men (who are baby-making ready), and I’m back to being a (grudgingly) happy single.

And then there’s the shoulds…  You should be content being single.  You should trust God to bring the right man along.  You should be fulfilled in Christ. You shouldn’t need a man to make you happy.  You should be able to find someone if you’re ____ (fill in the blank: pretty enough, smart enough, cool enough, faithful enough, good enough, godly enough, patient enough, social enough).  I’ve been shoulding all over myself.

And that leads to shame.  Because the truth is, I want to be married.  I want to have a family.  I want to be a mom.  I want to answer to someone else.  I want to have conflict and struggle and chaos.  I want to have to think of someone else besides me all the time.  I want to be loved.  I want to be cherished.  I want to have someone to shave for.  But I don’t have any of this.  And I may not ever.  And that’s hard to accept.

See, it’s not a promise from God that He will pair us up.  I don’t believe He’s our Divine Matchmaker.  I want Him to be.  I really want Him to be.  I want to believe in fate or destiny or divine intervention or whatever provides hope that there’s some force out there in the cosmos at work to bring me together with this (bearded, tattooed, theologian, outdoorsy, artist) man who I was made for. But I'm increasingly convinced that’s just a romantic ideal that we've attached to God (a romantic ideal that Dr. Dobson and Christian culture perpetuated in my formative years, and that I've had a hard time letting go of).

I want to be wrong about this… I mean, there’s Ruth & Boaz, Isaac & Rebekah, Hosea & Gomer.  Right? So God can put people together? Right?  God designed marriage and cares about it.  Right?  Marriage is good.  I pray for it (when I'm being honest). And yet, it’s not a promise. 

Because it’s not a promise, I’ve been ashamed to admit that I want it—because I might not get it.  And the only way I know to deal with that is like any good human being would… I deny my desire.  I play it cool. I distract myself so I don’t feel it—so I don’t have to think about how it seems God has left me on my own to figure out my love life, so I don’t have to think about how I’m getting older and the family ship may have sailed, so I don’t think about the resentment I still have at having my hope in all of this stolen away, so everyone will think my life is just as I want it and won’t see me as defective. 

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.  Married, single, parents—we all desire something that isn't promised by God, maybe something we wish He would just work out for us without all the pain or hard work or waiting.  But He doesn't promise to give us all we want or make our path easy. As humans, aware or not, we live with unfulfilled desires, longings and disappointed hopes.  And often our response is to hope in a false promise or try to fill our life with achievements or addictions or something else so we don’t feel it.  

I, for one, need to stop filling and start feeling.  I want to get rid of the distractions I fill my life with and get honest with myself and God. Because out of our honesty, healing comes. True hope comes. I want to focus on His real promises.

What are the promises of God?  That He’ll never leave us or forsake us.  That we have a final and lasting hope in Him.  That He is making all things new.  That He has come to set us free, to comfort our mourning, to bind our wounds, to make something beautiful of our brokenness.  Let us give Him our desires.  Let us feel them.  And let Him heal them and be our Hope.

Here's a couple of good articles I ran across on singleness and such this Valentine's Day:
The Myth of 'You Complete Me'
Your Womanhood is not on Hold
I Don't think God has a Plan for my Love Life

And this is a must-listen for Christian singles (in my opinion):
Podcast on The Sacredness of Singleness & Sex (week 4)

God, Concussions, & Chick Flicks

I went skiing with my friends and family to start off the new year.  It was a fun day, and I couldn’t help thinking about a ski trip this time last year.  While trying out snowboarding for the first time (without a helmet, on icy snow) I got a concussion.  Another first for me.

 

What a crazy experience!  I sort of “woke up” and had no idea where I was, how I got there, what year it was, and I couldn’t remember any details of the day or the days before.  Most of all, I was confused about why I had a snowboard on my feet since I knew I wasn’t a snowboarder.  I was afraid years had passed in which I had become a snowboarder and I couldn’t remember them.  I knew my name, but couldn’t remember much else. 

It got me thinking about those movies with memory loss as a central element.  And since I’ve been on the topic of spiritual forgetfulness…  I'm not usually one to defend the chick flick, but I can’t pass up an opportunity to use a chick flick to illustrate a spiritual truth (I have often thought the value of the chick flick lies in it's ability to point us to our true desires, which is why we're ashamed to admit we like them... but that's another blog). Stories of memory loss seem to be a favorite of the genre, and in particular, of Rachel McAdams.

 

Her movies The Notebook and The Vow share this theme.  In one, Alzheimer’s takes her memory and in the other, a car accident.  But in both, she becomes hostile or indifferent toward the one she loves as a result of her memory loss.  And that is the tragedy of the story—what makes it heart-wrenching—that she could forget how much she loves, how much she is loved, how much they shared, what is true.

And I think that is the tragedy of our love story with God.  We so often live as if we’ve forgotten.  We live as hostile or indifferent toward the lover of our souls.  But what makes it beautiful (just like in the movies) is that He doesn’t give up on us!  He keeps pursuing.  He is patient with our forgetfulness.  His love doesn’t run out.  And that is what inspires our love.  His relentless love draws us back.  What a beautiful love story (even better than a chick flick... See? This is what we desire).

So the good news is that in spite of our forgetfulness, God calls us back to Him, reminds us of Who He is, of who we are, and what is real.

Are you aware of God’s relentless pursuit of you?  How are you responding?

Are You Suffering from Spiritual Stockholm Syndrome?

Another throwback on the topic of forgetfulness, this one from April 2010, just a few months before I really started living at a break-neck speed that put me in survival mode, where I started seeing my Father as the enemy...

If you watch The Amazing Race, you see that no matter how the teams start the race, usually the longer they go at their crazy pace, the more they forget everything but winning. They forget kindness, they forget love, they forget who they are, where they came from, and what they’re about. I wonder if they were allowed to slow down for 30 minutes a day to talk to their family back home if it would help them remember—remember what’s real and what really matters. But far from home, they forget.

My sister came to visit last week, and we had a great time in the city, but I can’t imagine trying to keep that pace of life up for very long. Fun for a day or a week, but continuing at that pace makes you forget. Yet, since she left, I'm realizing I've been in this race for a while now in one way or another.  I've been forgetting.  Again. Forgetting who I am and what I'm about. And I haven’t taken even 30 minutes each day to be reminded. I stopped talking to my Father regularly. Far from home, I forgot.

I read a Ted Dekker book recently that I wasn’t into at first, but I really can’t walk away from one of his novels without thinking about the human condition—my condition. The book was The BoneMan’s Daughters, and it was essentially about a girl who is kidnapped and in order to survive she assimilates to her environment and the ways of the one who holds her captive. Her father pursues to rescue her, but she treats him as the enemy. Far from home, she forgot.

It made me think about how we are all prone to Stockholm syndrome. Far from home, we forget. We lose perspective. We develop distorted alliances and pursue misguided ends. We need to let the Father remind us who we are, where we’re from, what we’re about, and who He is. We need to slow down and remember.

…we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary… Hebrews 6:18-19

Signs of spiritual Stockholm syndrome:
1) Do you see God as the enemy, against you, just trying to make life difficult for you?
2) Are you too busy or distracted to spend 30 minutes a day to be reminded of what real and true?
3) Has survival or success or fun or other pursuits become more important to you than living for Christ?

Now life has slowed down for me, but I am still working on realigning what I know to be true, exchanging the truth for lies. I have to be reminded of what's real, who I am, who God is, and that I'm not just living to win or survive. There's more to life.

Forget Resolutions--New Years Tattoos, Anyone?

I'm starting this "throwback series" of blogs based on blogs I wrote in the past, to remind me of truths I used to know.  ...that I used to knooooww (now the song is stuck in my head).  

I originally wrote this June of 2008, but I've been thinking a lot about it this New Years.  I've been slowly awakening over the past several months after a two year soul sleep.  And as much as I want to live in the freedom and fullness that I once enjoyed with Christ, it's a struggle each morning to remember that's where I want to be when so many other things are calling out to me. I forget.  Each day I forget.  Maybe even every three minutes I forget.


We are a forgetful people. I've been thinking about our tendency to forget. I saw an older movie the first time recently, Memento. In it, the main character has a disorder that affects his memory. He can’t remember anything for longer than three minutes or so. But he’s got a very important purpose—He wants to find the man who killed his wife—the last thing he remembers. Of course, each morning when he wakes up he can’t remember his purpose or the new things he’s learned without leaving himself daily reminders. 

He tattoos messages on his body, he leaves himself notes, and he takes pictures to remind him of the important things so that each day he’ll know what is true, who he can trust, and what he should be about so that he won’t be deceived or distracted from his mission.

In a way, we all have this disorder—we forget our purpose, forget what we’ve learned, forget what we should be about. When we wake each morning, our first thoughts are selfish and we need to be reminded of what we know is true, reminded of what we learned the day before and the day before that. The distractions of life make us forget. We are deceived into thinking other things are more important. Then we waste our time and resources on pursuits that are meaningless. We need reminders.

John Eldredge makes this observation in The Journey of Desire, “I wake most mornings an unbeliever. It seems that during the night I slip into forgetfulness and by the time the new day comes, I am lost. The deep and precious truths that God has brought me to over the years and even just yesterday seem a thousand miles away.” He says he’s got a section in his journal of central truths he must return to each morning. 

What are the things you need to remember? What are you doing each day to help you remember?

“Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live.” Deuteronomy 4:9

I started my own list of truths to remember back then.  This New Years I'm making a new list to wake to. Here's just a few...

• I am loved!
• God's grace is sufficient for me
• God is actively working to transform me
• I was made to know God and make Him known
• This is not as good as it gets!
• Hulu is the devil  ;)

What's on your list?  Wanna get matching tattoos?

Navigating Life and the Canadian Wilderness

I used to be a blogger.

It’s difficult to write when you have nothing to say.  

When I write I usually like to have a point, to know where I’m going, and to say something that matters.  Otherwise, why read it?  Unless there is a lot of self-mockery.  That makes pointless things worthwhile, somehow.  Universality or something.

This blog has been blank for a long time.  I haven’t had much to say that matters.  All my writing has been sort of rambling.  I’d get to the end and realize I have no real point.  If I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t want to get anyone else lost with me.  

Those who know me well know I tend to get lost (in the literal sense).  Frequently.  I have no natural sense of direction.  When I first moved to this area, I was constantly calling my friends to find out where I was and how I might get somewhere else.  So much so that they all chipped in and bought me a GPS for Christmas.  I promptly broke it and was back to calling them. 

But a strange phenomenon happened last week.  While co-leading a women’s wilderness canoe trip in Canada, I was given a map and told to lead.  And I got us where we needed to go.  All week.  In fact, my navigational skills might be considered stellar.  By some.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this.  I determined there were four things that led to my navigational success.

1. I consulted the map frequently.  I was constantly trying to match what I saw with what the map said I should see.  If they didn’t line up, I had to re-align myself until I got my bearings.  Sometimes this meant stopping for a bit.
2. I conferred with my friend and co-leader (Deb) regularly.  We helped each other figure out when we were off-course or reading the map wrong.
3. I trusted myself.  I didn’t second-guess myself, but maintained confidence in what I believed to be true.
4. I was entrusted with an important task.  The trip lead (Scott) didn’t carry a map.  No one in the group had a map.  That meant it was up to me not to get the group lost.  I felt I had a significant role to play.

When we got home, Scott had words of wisdom for each of us.  To me he said (something to the effect of), “keep your eyes on the map and you won’t get lost.”  I took it sort of literally at first.   But I know there was more to it.

Lately, my life has resembled my writing.  Rambling.  Uncertain.  Not sure of my point.  Trying not to get anyone else lost with me.

The truth is, sometimes in life it’s easier not to look at the Map.  Not to paddle. It’s easier to float in the middle of the lake aimlessly, feeling sorry for yourself for not going anywhere.  Sometimes it feels so good to feel sorry for yourself.  It’s so much easier than having a significant role to play.  Or trusting yourself.  Or conferring with friends.

You can sit there and tell others what they’re doing wrong.  Or blame.  Or make excuses.  Such a good time.

And then it’s not anymore.  You get stuck on a rock.

I’m not saying it’s not okay to be lost.  We’re all lost sometimes.  But there’s a difference between being lost and being stuck.  I’ve been stuck.  And it’s not such a good time anymore. I’m ready to move on. 

The beauty of a wilderness trip is that God can speak to you in new ways, showing you parallels in the journey for your own life. He’s showing me what I need to do... in four easy steps.  Ok, not four easy steps.  Four complicated, time-consuming, sometimes fear-provoking ways of being.

1. Consult the map frequently.   When I think of this, I don’t simply think of using the Bible as a how-to manual or road map, but rather staying centered in Truth... listening to God, being grounded on His love, comparing the reality of what I think with the truth of what He says instead of just going in the direction that seems right.  Frequently.
2. Confer with friends.  Community is so important.  Friends help me to see when I’m off course.  The isolated sheep are more prone to attack.
3. Trust myself.  Have confidence in who God says I am and in the good gifts He has given me to share with others. 
4. Believe I have been entrusted with a significant role.  God has designed each of us with genius and purpose to carry out His mission of reconciliation and restoration. He trusts me.

My point is (ha!) … I’m going to write more.  I’m going to paddle.  I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself.  I’m going to be loved.  I’m going to love.  I’m going live free.  I’m going to live a full life, full in the fullness of God.

My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.  Ephesians 3:14-19 (The Message)

This Tastes Bitter: The Taste of Self-Preservation

Those pithy sayings about the difficulties of life making us better not bitter are not meant for us bitter people, I think.  They may be meant for potentially bitter people, but more likely they’re meant for better people—to feel even better about themselves.  But I may just be bitter. 

I’d really like to be one of the better people, but in reality I think I often prefer to wallow in my misery.  Just for a while.  Just until I’m sick of myself...  I’m sick of myself. 

Perhaps my bitterness comes from a tendency to take myself too seriously instead of seeing the lighter side of disappointments with life.  Maybe I should change the tone of this whole blog and find my voice as a witty humorist who is almost 35, with no babies, no dates, no real job, no prospects and more student loan debt than I care to mention.  But somehow when I try, it comes off sounding desperate and pathetic.  Maybe that’s because I hear other voices—the ones of my contented single friends, or discontented married friends, or the better people telling me I shouldn’t be honest bitter.  Though maybe it’s just my own self-preserving voice.

I suspect self-preservation will be my downfall.  Or the reason I never quite get off the ground.  It is the reason why I’ve removed my last several blog posts, the reason I’m scared to risk, the reason I don’t love fully, and maybe even the reason I’m bitter instead of better.  It’s safer.  It’s the reason I am satisfied with a superficial self rather than my true self.  I wonder what would happen just in one year if I could live my life without self-preservation.

I can’t.  We can’t.  Not fully. We all wear fig leaves of some sort.  But I imagine.  I imagine who I could be if I didn’t hide from God and man.  Mark Sayers says this is true holiness.  “Holiness is not about pointless and impossible perfectionism.  It is about becoming the people we are meant to be.  It is the ultimate discovery of our true selves.  Each step toward holiness brings us closer to becoming who we really are.”

Being sick of myself is often the thing that makes me want to trade in some self-preservation for a taste of holiness, a taste of God’s work of restoration in me and in the world.  But then, if I did that, I might forget why I’m bitter.  

Post-Grad School Angst

I feel let down. It seems I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. After investing three years of my life (and finances) into grad school, I’m now wondering if it all wasn’t just some siren song calling to me to greener grass just to dash me on the rocks. I guess this is what they call the divine discontent. Holy frustration that leads me to the truth that my hope has been misplaced. Again.

I don’t regret going to grad school (of course I haven’t started paying back my loans yet either). I guess I just thought it would be different on the other side—that I would be someone else maybe. And I am, in some ways. But life is still hard and confusing, and I’m still not who I want to be. I thought I’d be perfect by now. How disappointing.

I hear this is a common feeling for post-graduates. Maybe it’s common for anyone who has worked hard to get something or get somewhere only to realize it’s still not enough. It reminds me of what my professor said, that frustration is built into our lives on purpose by God to lead us to him—our Source. It’s part of the curse. To lead us to freedom and rest and true hope (Romans 8:20-21). We won’t find what we’re looking for until we look to God.

And yet before I get there I always seem to have to spend myself trying to avoid the curse, mad at God for not giving me what I want and irritated that he’s more concerned with what I need. Until I’m exhausted enough to let him work.

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”  St. Augustine

Until Then

Death loss
is not what I thought, not what they taught. Yes, it’s grief
and tragedy. It’s sadness and sympathy.
But not so much over
your death
as over

your life

that I didn’t know,

that you never showed,

that maybe no one knew,

not even you.

All your greatness, hidden by shame.
All your heartbreak, hidden with blame.
All in ashes. Only worn out jokes and guitars remain.
Nothing risked, but all is stained.

I wonder if now you see clearly, and what you would say
now that you see, and who you would be
now that you’re free, and how things would be different
back then if you had not been

hidden.

But I’ll see you again.
Until then
I miss you, Dad. I always have.

Deep Calls to Deep

I prefer to write about innocuous truth. You know, then I don’t have to get naked.

But perhaps the truest thing about us is the most personal, the most vulnerable—our desire to connect and be known. I tend to be pretty ambivalent about it, really. But then at times, I am ambushed by that desire so powerfully that I have to confront it. Last night was such a time.

Often for me, like last night, it comes after spending time in community when no true knowing has taken place. Conversations about food, the economy, and the weather are paramount. And we all remain unknown. And safe. And then boom. Suddenly I want to do something self-destructive and reckless, like an angsty teenager. I feel unsatisfied and restless.

I wonder, if we could all just learn to recognize and name that longing, a longing for intimacy, how much senseless tragedy would be reduced. Would there be less drunk driving, less affairs, less eating-disorders, less suicide? Probably not. Because awareness doesn’t fix the problem. We’d still be unsatisfied—we’d just know why—we’re not getting our deepest need met. So, what do we do with the problem of deep desire?

There’s the obvious choice: repression. Don’t feel, don’t desire. Keep busy. Self-preservation. Seems to be the thing in our culture. I even feel weird writing this because I’d rather play it cool or make a joke—that’s how my family has dealt with it. Laugh it off. But then, the truest thing about you dies.

Then there’s the option of trying to get that need met in counterfeit and harmful ways, or trying to force others to meet that need for you. Addiction. Manipulation. Come to think of it, that’s my family too. And this is what I have seen most often in the therapy office. The aftermath of it, that is.

To be honest, I don’t even think most of us know how to connect or be known. It’s freaking scary—to be known. Most of us opt out. We push people away or hold them off in so many ways, but mostly we just don’t know how. What if we all confessed that we have this deep desire that’s not being met? Would it be okay to talk about? Because if we start talking about our deepest desire, there’s a chance we might begin to feel known.

But it seems to me that this desire can be so deep that I could eat and eat and drink and drink and never get enough. I think we have to learn to live with this desire—to let it be the symptom that tells us we are alive and part of the struggling human race, and let it lead us to the recognition that we are far from home. It is a homesickness that touches us when things are not as they should be, or when it feels like home here. In pains and pleasures, the deep calls, reminding us of the truest thing about us. And really, the call is to risk being known now, as we are, naked.

"Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me." from Psalm 42

How to Look Good Naked

While many self-loathing people might sign up for a reality show that promises makeover, I would be surprised to find people lined up for a self-acceptance experience that involves exposing your flaws and vulnerabilities to the world with no promise of ridding you of them. I wouldn’t do it. So I was pretty shocked by the audacity of this show “How to Look Good Naked” hosted by Carson Kressley. He basically takes women who hate their body and tries to convince them they’re beautiful—by having them get naked and unashamed.

I don’t like to be naked in public.

I guess that’s normal. I have a recurring dream about being naked on an elevated toilet in the middle of the mall food court. And there’s the one where I realize I’m naked in the middle of teaching a class. Vulnerability scares me. Even more than being physically exposed, I think I fear others seeing inside. I can turn deep shades of red just thinking about things I’ve said that may have exposed parts I try to keep hidden. I even go through and delete blog posts periodically when I’m feeling especially vulnerable and fear I may have taken too many layers off in something I’ve written. I’m very careful about what I let you see.

My friend recently said to me, “Let people feel the full weight of who you are,” and I can’t get over it. When I think about it, I’m filled with a million reasons why I should cover up instead—a million reasons why I shouldn’t let you see me naked. It makes me think about our fall and restoration. If, in the garden they were naked and unashamed, then does redemption involve ridding us of this shame that tells us to cover up the full weight of who we are? To stand naked and unashamed, I would have to have full confidence that what was exposed was acceptable—that I’m loved in spite of my damage from the fall. Is that the makeover God has in mind? Is that redemption?

As I was watching Carson gently convince women to take their clothes off, look in the mirror, and be photographed naked, my discomfort was growing. He told them they were beautiful and brought evidence to persuade them they were acceptable, until finally they seemed to trust him enough to take a risk and expose themselves. It reminded me of how I need to hear from God over and over that I am beautiful and acceptable—until finally I’ll risk exposure to let others experience the full weight of who I am. It seems to me that unconditional acceptance is the only thing that can convince us to take off the layers of striving and careful covering—it is the only thing that heals the wounds of shame.

Of course, I’m not suggesting we all become nudist—literally or figuratively. In fact, if the host were a straight man, I don’t think he could pull it off. I, for one, would assume ulterior motives. And the truth is, it’s not always safe to walk around naked in our fallen state. But if we never stand bare before God or others, we can never be fully known, and can never experience the balm of acceptance—we can never look good naked. We have to get naked to look good naked. And that is where redemption takes place.

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.” Soren Kierkegaard

Deep Down Things

THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins


I’m on a roll. Life has been going well for me lately. This isn’t a problem, per se, but I am starkly aware of my grasping desire to keep things going my way. This seems to mean living life on the surface in accordance with my safe and selfish imagination—I use work and achievement (smeared with toil) and entertainment to keep my soul at bay as it tries to come to life. I’ve been down this road before (have trod, have trod, have trod). It leads to death.

And yet, “there lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” My truer desire for something deeper and grander always returns—a desire for something better, more difficult, and more beautiful than my way.

As I was reading David Benner again yesterday morning I was struck by the truth in his words, “We will never come to prefer God’s kingdom and will to ours until we meet the Divine in this relationship of love intermixed with wonder… There would be no reason to submit our will to a tame god of our imagination. No god that is merely a projection of our deepest needs and longings is worthy of surrender of our soul. Surrendering to God’s will begins by encountering God’s grandeur. It also involves falling in love with God’s grand plan of restoration of all things. This lies at the heart of God’s will and God’s kingdom.”

This put me in mind of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem.

May I be willing to exchange successful surface living for the grandeur of a Kingdom of restoration.  May I give up the god of my imagination for the God of wonder. Oh, morning!

Silence and Soul Cravings

I have just entered into a very busy season of life—maybe busier than any other time in my life. So, what has been on my mind lately is how discipline leads to rest. And beauty. And rightness. And all the things that feed my soul.

My tendency is to let life spin madly on and carry me away, and before I know it I don’t know who I am or where I’m going. But I need silence. And nature. And God. To remember. And discipline leads me there. Discipline (once hated as the end, now cherished as the means) allows me to pay attention to the soft, low sounds that can probe depths to awaken soul cravings. Like the sound of poetry.

I heard Mark Sayers speak recently, and as he read this poem aloud, I felt as if something that had died in me was being awakened with a gentle caress—as if something deep and beautiful and a little tragic, like my favorite novel, was coming to life. And it filled me with a new and urgent desire for silence, so I could hear more of the same.


In The World of Whispers - Cam Semmens

There is a serpent in the speakers
of my TV,
radio,
laptop,

phone.

I can hear its hiss

running beneath every

show,

song,

clip,
chat.

Thiss hissssss –
a subtle, insistent whisper:

…buy, buy,
buy an ipod, buy an MG,
buy a PC, buy an Apple
and you will be like God,
buy, buy…

And I – too late – feel the fangs
pierce the thin skin of my will.
And I can feel the venom
poisoning
every choice I make,

…buy, buy…

but I
lie as still as I can.
Still.
Still listening.
Listening
for that other whisper –
that still, small voice.

Cameron M. Semmens

Charlotte Bronte, Anne Rice, and Dissevering Christianity

I decided that I needed to return to a classic this week after spending last week trying to figure out the mania behind the Twilight saga (which I determined comes down to the proverbial human longing for some hip, ethereal being to find us irresistible in spite of our obvious frailty and imperfection). So, I picked up Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre today because, although I have already read it twice, after twelve years I only recall that I liked it. Turns out, I really like it.

When it was first published, critics called it anti-Christian. In the preface to the second edition Charlotte Bronte addresses those “in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong” to remind them that speaking out against Christianity is not equal to speaking out against Christ. She says,

“To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns… appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is – I repeat it – a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

“The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth – to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines.”

Have things changed so little since 1847? In so many ways, Christianity is still wrapped up in human doctrine and appearance all blended together with the creeds of Christ, and we have such difficulty separating them. I often equate pleasing the Christian subculture with pleasing Christ. But it is not so. Yet it’s so hard to separate that subculture from the world-redeeming creed of Christ.

It all reminds me of Anne Rice’s decision recently to disassociate from Christianity because of all the hypercritical, politicized ideas that have become a part of Christian subculture. She doesn’t want all the extra stuff. She just wants to follow Christ. I get that.

Sometimes, it feels to me that the only way to really separate Christian subculture, with all its narrow human doctrine and appearance, from the world-redeeming creed of Christ is to withdraw from the Church completely so that the simplicity of the gospel doesn’t get mixed in with all the rest. Yet, I’m convinced that we need each other, and so I can’t leave, messy as it may be to be part of a family, and as much as I get sucked into their ways; as much as I’m often embarrassed by them. It’s my family.

So I guess all I can do is continue spending my days trying to dissever that which has been enmeshed with Christ’s redemptive message ever since he came, ironically, to free us from all the extra stuff. I needed Bronte to put words to it for me, but that’s what I’ve been working at for some time now. That’s what she did with her novel, Jane Eyre.  That's why this novel has so much more significance to me now than when I studied it in school.  Now I understand the author.


article on Anne Rice

Don Miller comments on Anne Rice

To help with the dissevering

Avoid Rain: Be Good?

It has taken me 33 years to learn that pain in life is a given. And even still, I have to constantly relearn it as I find myself trying to escape from anything painful or disappointing. I blame Disney, really. I think Disney movies set us up for disappointment (with the exception of The Journey of Natty Gann and The Fox and the Hound which are unnecessarily painful). We’re left to believe that if Walt Disney were in charge of the world, it would be a much happier place. But we’ve got this God guy in charge who seems to value pain as much as pleasure (if not more).

Still, I got the idea from the God-followers that I could actually avoid pain by following a simple formula: if you keep from being human, you can keep from being hurt. In other words, rain only falls on the broken so don’t be broken. Keep it all together and pain won’t knock at your door. Or, you reap what you sow, so be a good girl.

Maybe there’s some truth there (like 2%), but it sets us up with a Disney-esque purpose in life: be good, avoid pain, live happily ever after. And it contradicts the words of Christ, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous,” and, of course, Bono’s paraphrase, “Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel, luckily.”

The consequence of this formula, I think, is that at some point in life (I am a slow learner) we realize that very often life sucks whether we’re good or bad, and we feel we’ve been hoodwinked by the God-followers who promised that everything would work out fine. We think God didn’t hold up his part of the bargain—he must not be good like Walt Disney.

I admit, I’m disappointed with God. I didn’t get the life I wanted. And I was good. The formula failed me. So, now I keep trying to reprogram from Walt-philosophy to a philosophy that allows for my humanity and the complexity of a life with pain and pleasure and brokenness.

Blaise Pascal said, "Two things contribute to our sanctification. Pains and pleasures." Could it be that happiness and pain-avoidance are not the purpose of life? Maybe the journey of sanctification—the journey of knowing our true selves by knowing the true God—is the point. Maybe I can’t protect myself from pain (even by being good) and maybe I’m not supposed to.

"The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed." Frederick Buechner

courting youth

sorry if I encroach but you smell like youth
so I want to lean in and
keep moving in to breathe you in
to catch it through contagion as you speak

and breathe on me

as your dreams all spill out

over laughter and meals and your green ideals

though I know I can’t stay

but maybe just for today I’ll pretend so

I can spend this hour

letting you get under my skin

you should know this may hurt
but I need you to bleed
a little hope onto me and a little carefree
a little reckless spontaneity
just a drop or two of what I used to be before
this compulsory vaccine called life
got to me

Reflections at a Wedding

I miss the beauty of unblemished hope

where fewer slowing shoulds interrupted

the fast flow of could

and all was youth

drifting

drowning

in forever

where we played and planned

lifetimes of lying together
even in fabled fields of trouble
together
days of white and spring and cherry blossoms
that would never die

never

until they did
when all the why's came one day
and took it all away
replaced by something more profound
but less hope and less white
where cherry blossoms die
and love is tempered in
calming seas of good and right

and where I wonder if I’ll ever drown again

My Ego Wants to Fix You

Someone shared this passage from a book with me today, and I caught a glimmer of a truth I used to know, and I longed for it again.

It spoke to me because I’ve been thinking about how often I prefer to provide answers rather than to listen. I have the same tendency whether in friendship, counseling, discipleship or evangelism. And I started to wonder if maybe many of us do this as a way of coping with feelings of inadequacy—our way to prove our worth, to feel strong and to distance ourselves from others’ struggles. But as long as we’re focused on being enough we can’t enter the holy place of struggle with others. It leads me back to the need for surrender and rest. Only in the place of rest I can truly enter into life with another. It’s a lesson I’m learning and relearning.

Here’s the passage:

In the Service of Life
Recently, the question, how can I help, has become meaningful to many people.
But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not, how can I help, but is, how can I serve.
Serving is different from helping.
Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals.
When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength.
People feel this inequality.
When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness.
When I help I am very aware of my own strength.
But we don’t serve with our strength.
We draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve.
Service is a relationship between equals.
When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction.
When I serve I have a feeling of gratitude.
Service is also different from fixing.
When I fix I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of life in them.
When I serve I see and trust that wholeness.
There is a distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing.
Fixing is a form of judgment.
All judgment creates distance, a disconnection, an experience of difference.
In fixing there is an inequality of expertise that can easily become a moral distance.
We cannot serve at a distance.
We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch.
This is Mother Theresa’s basic message.
We serve life not because it is broken, but because it is holy.
If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery and expertise.
Service, on the other hand, is an experience of mystery, surrender, and awe.
We are servers of the wholeness and mystery of life.
Fixing and helping may often be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
They may look similar if you’re watching from the outside, but the inner experience is different.
The outcome is different too.
Over time, fixing and helping are draining, depleting.
Over time we burn out.
Service is renewing.
Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose.
When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose.
Lastly, fixing and helping are the basis of curing, but not of healing.
Only service heals.
-Edited and abridged from original written by Rachel Naomi Remen