hurts like Heaven.
I love my job.
But there are days that I really, really hate my job. For the most part I work with people who have had a lot of bad things happen to them. Sometimes it’s really awful- the kind of stuff that seems more at place in a horror novel then a quiet midwestern town. Sometimes, it’s the kind of stuff that leads to me locking myself in the bathroom for a time out. The worst part of it isn’t the fact that I’m a visual person by nature and thus struggle with visualizing the badness and taking it home in the form of nightmares. The worst part is that often I’m dealing with people whose lives have trained them to believe that they deserve no better, they will get no better, and the best that they can hope for themselves is to grow thick enough skins that they become numb to the pain.
There are men who learn that “real” manliness is fighting back and fighting dirtier. Women who think that they need to trade sex for safety. Kids who think that learning is for nerds and losers and the way to get ahead in life is to punch the other guy first. Mothers who reject their children because responding with sympathy to a babies neediness makes them vulnerable. Men who reject their pregnant wives for the same reason. The world is full of people who know nothing other than cycles of poverty and pain, people who see daily happiness as just as much of a fantasy as the whole family getting along over the holidays. The world has a seedy underbelly of pain and discontent that so many are blissfully unaware of- but for the people who live there, that is the entire world.
Pain, heartbreak, rejection and more pain. The smart ones learn to reject before they can be rejected, to cut more quickly and more deeply, to make sure that everyone else owes them more than they owe anyone.
It’s hard to remember that there’s hope beyond all hopes, that there is a love that conquers fear, that there is a peace that surpasses all understanding. It’s hard to remember, but most of the time I manage to. And I do my best to continue to be God’s hands and feet in this world. I offer love, and then I experience the greatest heartbreak of all: love rejected with a wary eye. Love mistrusted. Love responded to with anger and fear.
And I lock myself in the bathroom again. And sitting there, in the dark and heat (because for some odd reason our bathroom is the hottest room in the building, like a sauna, suffocatingly hot) listening to the sound of the radiator rattling like Marley’s ghost, I realize that what I am experiencing is only a fraction of the heartbreak that the Spirit feels every day when we mistrust God’s love for us, when we respond to salvation with cynism, when we judge others before they can judge us.
The answer is simple: love more strongly. Believe with more conviction. Offer more grace. Create an overflow of mercy and affection so strong that it washes away even the most stubborn of barriers. Live every second of your life in the hope of salvation. Pick up the shield of faith, wear the belt of truth, set your feet in the readiness that comes from the Gospel of peace.
We already have earned our reward if we only love those who want to be loved.
We have to love the way God loves.
And God just… loves. Everyone. Constantly.
I would say it hurts like Hell, but that’s a misnomer. It hurts like Heaven, but that’s the kind of hurt that’s worth carrying with you.
It could change the world.
Let me tell you what you need.
Working in a homeless shelter has led to a lot of interesting experiences and observations. Four months in I feel like I could write a book on the subject. Maybe that book will be written someday, who knows. But for the time being, I thought I’d herald my return to blogging with some observations about our perceptions of other people’s needs.
I came across this odd phenomenon through working with the homeless, but honestly I’m noticing it now everywhere. I’ll start with a fairly inocuous example: some guests needed winter clothes. We had a grant for after-hours care to provide them with winter clothes. A discussion arose over how we’d go about meeting that need. Do we take them to Wal-Mart? Sears? Macy’s? The high-end resale store downtown? There’s a limit to how much money we can spend, but we want them to have good things. We also want to demonstrate that one should think critically about how one spends money. Is anyone noticing the problem, yet? It’s a little sneaky, but somewhere in the conversation, we went from talking about meeting the guests’ needs to talking about changing them. We want to change them, but honestly they don’t want to be changed. Is there really anything wrong with buying a coat from Wal-Mart (where all of our guests are comfortable shopping and feel at home and unnoticed) when you’re on a budget and are hoping to get pants and sneakers too? Maybe a middle class person would approach the problem from a different angle (wanting the coat from Macy’s and hoping they could find it gently used at the resale store thus allowing them to get jeans and sneakers, too) but the fact that a middle class person would approach it from a different angle doesn’t mean that the choices made by a person in poverty are inherently wrong. In most cases, the choices made by a person in poverty are made from a survivalist standpoint. I need a coat, now. I need a CHEAP coat, now. I need a cheap coat, now, and the bus stops in front of Wal-Mart so I won’t have to bum a ride. No one in Wal-mart will notice that it’s mid-November and all I have to wear is a mini skirt. Score. I am shopping at Wal-Mart.
The internal dialogue that guides my choices isn’t even on the radar for them, so why judge them and try to force them to change based on my own experiences? Just because my experiences are different and were fulfilling to me, that doesn’t mean that their experiences are worthless or ought to be devalued in favor of inserting my own will.
Faithful readers- you may be wondering what any of this has to do with the normal tone of my blog. Hopefully that last line reassured you that the old Lindsey is still here plugging away. See, we all have experiences. Many of us have a lifestyle and worldview that is fulfilling to us. Some of us want to spread our contentment with our choices by trying to force other people to make the same ones.
We really are very silly creatures.
If I, as a person who once experienced poverty but is making a successful transition to “middle class”, try to force my lifestyle and choices on the homeless, I’m making a huge mistake. I can model my own happiness, but if I try to force my hand I alienate the people I’m trying to help. The same thing goes for Christians trying to evangelize to people who really don’t want to hear about God’s love (but could maybe use a free ham for Christmas or help fixing their car) and heterosexuals who decide that what lesbians really need is to hear how awesome the penis is.
Seriously, folks- we can model good choices all we want. That’s life. You can radiate your own happiness. But don’t assume that your brand of happiness will taste the same to everyone else. For some people, it’s going to taste awfully bitter.
And that’s okay.
Who I am and what I’m not.
Yes, I am a Christian. For a long time I didn’t self-identify as a Christian because I hated the fact that people would always make certain assumptions about me. One instance stands out particularly in my mind. I saw a table that said “Friends of the GLBT” at the associations, groups, and clubs event my first week in college. Something prompted me to go over and strike up a conversation with the handful of students sitting there. At first the conversation was great, but then someone made a disparaging comment about the Evangelical group. Even though I wasn’t sure about what I believed, I felt a chill. I wanted to say “not every Christian is like that,” but I was worried that the moment I did I would paint myself as sleeping with the enemy.
That moment is iconic of the choice I’ve had to make every day since I came back to my faith. Do I say I’m a Christian, and allow people to make false assumptions about what I believe? Do I say I’m a Christian and try to create a new paradigm? One in which someone who acts evangelical (as opposed to Is An Evangelical) isn’t a gay-bashing anti-choice gun-totin’ Bible-bangin’ war-lovin’ conservative-votin’ unimaginative non-intellectually-inquisitive probably secretly scared-of-everything uh… you get the point. The assumptions people make about someone who is vocally Christian aren’t always the kindest. And in many ways, I’m the opposite of many of the stereotypes. So, for the record, let me be clear about what I am and am not:
- I don’t think gay people are the enemy of society. I like my gay and lesbian friends, and only want them to change if they want to. Honestly, the complexity of this one is way too much to fit into a single bullet point, so suffice it to say this: I don’t think gay people are the problem, I think judgmental and legalistic attitudes are.
- I’m politically pro-choice. Personally, I’m pro-life. I could never imagine a circumstance in which I would have an abortion. But that doesn’t mean that I want to tell other women what to do with their bodies and their lives- there is no ethical argument to keep an unborn child that doesn’t rely on faith in God, so a secular society should allow women to have choice.
- I’m a registered Democrat, mostly because I wanted to vote in the last Presidential Primaries. In my time as a registered voter, I’ve actually voted for both Republicans and Democrats. I believe in voting based off of who you’re voting for and what their record shows, not based off of party. Just do not tell me I’m a Republican who’s afraid of change. I will end you.
- Guns scare me.
- I don’t believe the Bible should be used as a weapon. It is for worship, for exhortation, for meditation, for the strengthening of the body… not for destruction.
- I don’t believe in quoting the Bible to people who don’t read it. Which is why I so rarely quote it on my blog, and why fellow Christians sometimes assume I don’t read it. I do, I just think that Christians should be able to make logical arguments without spraying Bible verses into the fray like bird shot.
- I’m a pacifist. I was raised in the Anabaptist tradition, which means I was raised with a keen awareness of the multitude of people who were martyred for the Faith. Martyred, that is, at the hands of the Catholic church, which leads to:
- I believe that people should be able to worship God as they wish- no matter how much you disagree with them. Not everyone agrees on all the tenants of faith. I don’t think I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m more likely to believbe that we are all wrong.
- I actually do have an imagination, really I do. In my other lives I am a novelist and a jewelry designer. I have no fear of thinking creatively.
- I have no fear of other religions. In fact, I study Buddhism and live out some of it’s practices. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Dalhi Lama. I respect anyone who practices their faith with compassion for others, regardless of what their faith is. I think Christianity could learn an awful lot from other religions.
- I have no fear of being questioned. Don’t believe me? Question me. Debate me. If I can’t argue my faith rationally, I don’t want to have it.
- I have no fear of being wrong. I’ve done it before and it didn’t hurt too badly. If I am forced to examine a belief and find it lacking, so be it. Better that I know now than go through my entire life mistaken.
My name is Lindsey. I am a Christian.
And I may be a pacifist, but if I ever met Fred Phelps, I’d probably have to drop kick him in the balls.
Just so we’re clear on things.
Abuse.
I want to talk about abuse. It’s an issue I care deeply about, but something that oddly has been seldom discussed on this blog. Recently I read a post that very eloquently described the social rules that allow rape to continue to happen. I had to let things ferment for a few days and really ask myself why that post got under my skin so thoroughly. Then I realized: while the post was talking about women and men, the same social rules cause children to be abused.
It’s horrifying- but let me explain.
Children are taught from birth to respect people in authority. While to a point this is necessary, it’s often abused. Some children are taught, for instance, never to question an elder. Children are taught to wordlessly obey anything that an adult requests of them, “except for strangers.” Wait- what qualifies a stranger? Often the dangerous people don’t look like drunken panhandlers, more often the person a child ought to be afraid of is “Uncle” so-and-so from the local church.
This is a very insidious thing.
And it’s not just physical abuse people need to worry about- it’s emotional and intellectual abuse. I hate it when children are taught not to question. There are some kids who are from a young age stripped of their inquisitive nature. They are told it is wrong to correct a teacher, that questioning their parent’s philosophy is evil, that doubts they have about faith or about who they are were put there by the devil. This sort of brow-beaten indoctrination is just wrong, and too often leads to children who grow into adults who are lost, even if they are where their parents would have wanted them to be.
And I’m not even going to get started on sexual abuse by church elders. Suffice it to say that I’ve heard stories.
We need to teach our children to have boundaries and to enforce them. We need to teach them to draw back if they are uncomfortable. We need to teach them to question if they want to question, to argue if they want to argue, to stand up for themselves even if it’s uncomfortable for us.
We need to teach them strength.
And for the love of God- we need to stand up for ourselves.
Are you driven?
Let’s talk about passions. The things that keep us going from day to day, the things your life would seem empty without.
I know one guy who loves making short films. It started in the sixth grade, when his class was given the option of writing an essay about a Shakespeare play, or making a video essay. He got his family to help him put on a production of Romeo and Juliet, with a running joke that went, “what, is that FORESHADOWING?”. It was clever, got him an A, and made him want to do the same thing for Micheal Crichton’s Jurassic Park the next year. His love for short film has been going on 16 years now, and fills shelves full of homemade DVDs with everything from stop animation to puppets to religious inspirational fare.
I have another friend who loves to build things. Give him anything, even a wire hanger and a snips, and he’ll make something. Conversations over coffee lead to the food on his plate becoming a sculpture, or place mats folded into elaborate designs.
And then there are the dancers, like my daughter. Awkward when just walking around the room, she’ll hit her head going through the doorway. But put on some music and her five year old body flows. She glows with happiness, she comes fully alive. She adores dance, she lives to sing little songs about how much she loves the little things like birds or her brother or birthday cake. Why does she do it? She just does. Ask her, and she’ll respond that it’s happiness.
It is.
There is a school of thought that says that some people are artistic, some aren’t. That some of us have creative drives, some don’t. I refuse to ascribe to that thinking. We all have creative drives in some areas of our lives. Some people plan menus with an amazing depth of creativity. Some stay-at-home-moms order their days with mind-blowing creativity. Some executives run their companies in incredibly creative ways (and these are the ones that are successful- cardboard cutout executives are a dime a dozen). I think that tuning into that creative streak and allowing it to be a part of your daily life is one of the most fulfilling things a person can do.
So what’s your streak? Where are you driven to think outside the box, to dazzle a little more than the average bear, to flourish? Don’t fight it down. Don’t force yourself to be average.
Embrace it, and shine.
Trust who you were meant to be.
You were made to be something. It may be a mother, a brother, a writer, a creator of things, an executive, a worshipper, a friend… whatever it is, God has made you to be that. He has made you with certain drives and certain dreams for a reason. I don’t think there is any greater crime against God than when we fall prey to the needs of this world and trade our dreams for material things. How many people go through day after day working to exhaustion, coming home too tired to engage with their families, too busy for friends or church? How many people cauterize their wounds with the television and empty relationships, covering up their hurts with this months fashion or drowning their sorrows with the radio? How many people don’t truly live their lives, but simply mimic what life should be like, like Pinocchio on strings?
We want to be the real boys and girls of God, but we settle for appearances- we settle for things, instead of living out our callings.
Let me tell you something: don’t give up. Don’t trade your dreams. It may seem impossible- there’s never enough time, never enough money, never enough sureness in life to truly pursue what our hearts call for. But if you were made for something, everything you need is already in your hands. The only thing missing is faith.
So believe. Trust God. Trust who he made you to be. Like King David in the Bible, when other people raise doubts, simply remind them of who God made you to be. Remind them that if God wishes it, it is already true, we just have to catch up with God’s word.
So never let go. Hold on to who you are meant to be. Have faith.
Believe.
Creating, Created, Creator
I blog, but I’ve never considered myself a blogger. In my heart I’m a writer, and I still see myself selling books that thousands of people buy… one day. I’m a novelist. by trade, actually, I’m an artist. That’s something I’m getting more comfortable with saying day by day. I’m an artist, I make art.
It may be because I am an artist that I find art so integral to living. If I’m not writing a novel, I have to be creating something else. It’s impossible for me to sit in front of the TV and watch a program without something in my hands. Making things is like breathing, it is second nature, it is necessary in order to fight corruption of the mind and stay healthy and whole. It’s like eating, it gives me energy, it makes it possible for me to grow.
I think that when we create, we see a side of God that is important to know. There’s a reason that there are so many analogies in the Bible about potters and clay, about beating plowshares into swords and swords into plowshares. God is all about perfecting people, about taking us from one existence into another. God lives to touch us and mold us. But it’s not just because of those analogies that I think creating things helps us know God. There’s a second, less easily seen reason.
When I create something, it is a part of me. It comes from deep inside me. It is a reflection of me, of my soul. Everything I have ever made carries my fingerprint. If you look at a shelf full of my treasures, you will see who I am. The choice of color, the choice of medium, the shape and the feel of the thing all speaks to who I am. A created thing that serves well shows the beauty of it’s maker, a thing that serves poorly shows it’s maker poorly.
So I wonder- put all of us together in a room, and what do we say about God? When someone watches us together, what reflection does that show? Do we show that our Creator is good and wise, or do we serve our purpose poorly?
Yet, even more than that- when you observe yourself, do you see the fingerprints of your maker? When you test your own heart can you tell what you were made to do? Are you a true creation, or are you still wet clay- unsure, unformed, yet to be tested by fire?
Here are a few things I’ve made: I think, by looking at them, you see me just as well.
So what do people see when they see you? When you create- be it as simple as the feel of your rooms or the meals that you cook- what do you see in yourself?
(If you’d like to see more of my art, you can visit my Etsy shop, MonkeyLand Originals)
Learn Tolerance, or Die Alone.
(For Kelly.)
Ever had a conversation like this?
Man: Tolerance is a destructive force. It erodes true belief.
Girl: If you never tolerate the other side’s point of view, how can you expect to have an honest debate about the issues?
Man: I’m not going to tolerate false beliefs. How can you ask me to debate the truth? The truth harbors no debate.
So… Maybe I’m watering down the true content and exaggerating the real words said for dramatic effect- but the principle remains true to form. One person takes deep offense at tolerance because in their mind it means allowing an offense to the truth to continue. Yet, simultaneously he is asking that his own views be tolerated and accepted. (Or even affirmed.)
Here is the question to ask that man: Would you rather be right and alone, or tolerant in the company of others? Because to be so unnassailably intolerant means a life of isolation. Why? Because when we go to the grocery store, we are practicing tolerance. We are offering up money to corporations who do not necessarily support our point of view. (If you are conservative, check the amount of stores who offer money to left-wing political lobbies- if you are left-wing, check the amount of stores who offer money to right wing political lobbies. Most corporations do both.) It is nigh near impossible to live in the United States of America without corporately endorsing tolerance. Paying our taxes is also an act of tolerance- as I can guarantee that no matter your affiliation, politically or religiously, our government acts on behalf of those you disagree with.
You may say, okay, this kind of tolerance-by-six-degrees-of-separation is impossible to avoid and thus must be accepted. But let’s take this a step further. Let’s look at humanity as a whole. Have you ever (even once) met someone with whom you fully agreed? We can all find people who agree with our most closely held beliefs, but at some point every relationship experiences differences. My spouse is someone who I agree with eighty percent of the time- but don’t for a second believe that the other twenty percent is insignificant. When it’s things like how to best make eggs, you can roll your eyes and let go. But sometimes in even the best relationship there is serious disagreement. What do you do then? Demand the other person agree with your point of view? Tear them down until they are forced to capitulate? Scrape away at them day after day, trying to win them to your side by hook or crook no matter what the cost?
At some point, isn’t the cost of relationship tolerance? Don’t we all have to love and accept each other despite disagreement, or never know love and acceptance at all?
Know who you really are.
I have a theory. You’ll never find happiness and fulfillment if you don’t know who you really are. You may be married to an amazing person, raising good kids, working a decent job, able to have time to relax and pursue other interests… but if you don’t really know yourself, you’ll always hunger.
Our physical bodies have this amazing capacity to know what they lack. That’s why we have an appetite. You may suddenly crave fresh fruit, or fish, or a cheeseburger. And you may think, “ah, I’m hungry” and eat potato chips or a handful of vegetables or a couple of chocolates from your snack drawer. Yet, you will continue to crave, even when your tummy is full. Why? Because you don’t really understand what your body is hungry for. It may be telling you “more vitamins!” or “more fibre!” or “more iron!” and you are filling it up with the wrong things. So even when it has an excess of calories, it still has a lack of the things it needs to be healthy.
Our daily lives are the same. Our soul aches, and from that ache comes greed and jealousy and depression, or exhaustion. We think that the answer is to work harder, to have more, to divorce the spouse that doesn’t content us, to sink money into hobbies that waste time but don’t fulfill. We search and we ache and we feed our days with all of these things, but still go to bed feeling like something is missing.
Why?
We don’t really know who we are. Like with our appetite, we lack the ability to listen to our soul and give ourselves the right priorities. If you want to paint a painting that reflects your spirit and you settle for “practical” scrapbooking, you could spend a fortune in money and time and still feel unfulfilled. If you’re working at a firm because you chose a profession that offers you stability and all your heart wants is to stand on the stage saying “that this too too sullied flesh would melt” (while rocking awesome tights), you’re going to go home every day feeling like a failure no matter how successful your career is. You may be married to an incredible person, with wonderful kids- but if every day you carry wounds you are ignoring and never healing, your relationships will suffer. The answer isn’t finding someone else who abrades you less- it’s dealing with why the abrasions are there. And here’s the secret: your hurts, while perhaps incurred in the process of dealing with one person or another, may not be their fault.
The problem may be a kink in your own spirit which you simply ignore.
So what is the answer to better interpersonal relationships? It’s not know other people better, or to choose better people to know. It’s to know yourself, to heal yourself, to feed yourself the right foods. Once you are strong and happy, you’ll be able to have a great relationship with even the most abrasive of people. Why? Because when you come from a place of strength, your strong heart bleeds happiness into everything you touch- even other people. A weak heart saps energy and turns everything into dust.
So know your heart. Feed it what it needs to be fed. Once that happens, you will be indomitable.
Empowerment, desire
The other day I was in the grocery store waiting for a scanner to free up so I could check myself out. There was a woman standing a little bit to my right, continuously eyeing a display of discounted 4th of July candy. She muttered to her companion, “That is so tempting.” Her companion replied, “Take charge of what you want, buy one.”
For some reason in my mind’s eye I suddenly saw the companion as horned and cloven hoofed. Yes, she was trying to help her friend. Perhaps there’s something I don’t understand- perhaps the woman had a hard time voicing her desires, often missed out on pleasure in life because she simply lacked motivation. Perhaps buying a few sacks of M&M’s was the first step towards enlightenment for her, towards sucking the marrow out of life. But I doubt it. Desiring the candy didn’t seem to give her any pleasure, neither did buying it. She left with the same discouraged bend to her back, the same slightly haunted look in her eyes. (The companion, to her credit, looked sad and caring.)
Why am I telling you this story? Because it’s the sort of scene I see often. Many people behave as if denying onesself is a prison. As if there is some ephemeral “other” out there who doesn’t want you to eat chocolate or drink soda or wear certain clothes, and thus doing all of these things is a rebellion against a force that needs to be stopped. As if it’s empowering to buy candy you don’t need and probably shouldn’t eat. It’s empowering to eat a double cheeseburger, chocolate milkshake, and extra large soda. It’s empowering to wear a plunging neckline and high hemline. It’s empowering to slack off at work or waste your evening watching senseless television or not changing out of your pajamas all weekend. I’m not saying that these things can’t all be good in moderation, but when “treating yourself” to a wholly unhealthy meal or unproductive workday or deliberately lazy evening becomes a way of life instead of a momentary bite out of forbidden fruit, it becomes self-sabotage. The problem isn’t that buying discounted candy on a whim is necessarily bad- but if it yields no pleasure, can you really say it’s a good thing?
I think the fallacy comes from believing that what we are tempted to is what we really want. When I see a Snickers bar at the checkout counter, and I am tempted to buy it, that doesn’t mean that buying it will appease a genuine desire of mine. Buying it may instantly lead to guilt (when I realize I have very little money for groceries, and could’ve gotten a loaf of bread instead) or much later (when I realize that eating it was only pleasurable for a handful of minutes and now I’m hungry for something else) but either way, chances are I will not have fulfilled myself by any real measure by giving in.
It takes far more strength to resist temptation than to flee it. It’s easy to open a web browser at work and slack off. It’s easy to turn on the TV when you get home and never turn it off. It’s easy to curl up in bed with a book all weekend and never get anything done. It’s easy, which is usually the first sign that it’s not good. The benefits of such things are as fleeting as the pleasure they bring. Slacking off just means your workload piles on you later- and I can’t count the number of people I know who have gotten stuck in cycles of relaxing because they deserve it after a week of incredibly hard work, which leads to another week of incredibly hard work that earns them the right to slack off, and so on and so forth indefinitely. Or the friends who have found themselves to be utterly exhausted after a weekend of hardcore leisure- leisure so intense it gave them a bent neck and eye strain and indigestion.
Perhaps what we need isn’t to take control of what we want and give in- perhaps it’s to take control of who will really want to be, and stop.
