Crazy Day

Yesterday was a crazy day. In a good kind of way.

I got to work a bit early, and was greeted with the news that I would be working by myself for the first four hours, and that my coworker would then be by herself for the last six hours. Someone out sick. Which is fine, except that we're crazy busy, and so we're further behind instead of being caught up.

I got a phone call yesterday morning. I've been offered, and have accepted a new job. I'll be working for a smallish property insurance company as a receptionist/secretary. A friend of mine is leaving the job in order to have a more flexible work schedule for a transistional time in her life, and she offered to reccomend me for her position. It worked, and I'm incredibly grateful. I start there full-time on September 12th. I'll work a half day and a full day there next week, inbetween my shifts at the Bay to begin learning the position.

I'm very excited about this. It's the kind of hours I've been looking for in a job for months now. 8:30-4:30, Monday to Friday. Evenings and weekends off. And better pay, and benefits.

We had my family birthday party on Monday night too. So, yesterday I took the birthday money I was given, in combination with some money I had saved for this purpose, and bought and ipod. We're having a slight technical difficulty involving our wireless internet connection on the basement computer, but as soon as that resolves, I'm good to go to put my music on there. Which is great, because in two weeks I'm going to be commuting about 45 minutes each way by public transportation to my new job.

So that was my day. I'm relieved that the job search is finally behind me. I'm grateful for the friend who gave me such a glowing reccomendation for her position. And I'm grateful to God for the provision of greater stability in my work situation.

And with that, I'm off to get ready for work at The Bay. Only two weeks left, and they're going to be BUSY! But that's okay, because it's only two more weeks! (Although I have agreed to work one weekend a month for them to help out. Plus, it lets me keep my discount!)

Slow typing

This is going to be short for two reasons. The first is that I'm going to spend some time reading, curled up with a new history of Christianity that I bought at a used bookstore the other day (a steal for only $22, and a huge volume written by a preminent Catholic theologian and historian) and a novel. The second is exactly what the title of this post says. I'm typing a little slow at the moment as I somehow have managed to sprain my right index finger, and it's in a splint that impedes my typing abilities.

I made a major decision regarding my church future this week, and sent an email notifying the appropriate person of the decision. I did it in the heat of a moment filled with frustration, and hurt, but it was a long time coming, and, to be honest, I'm just relieved that it's over. We'll have to wait and see how things play out the next while. It was necessary.

I think I'm coming into myself a little bit more all the time. At least I hope so. I feel a renewed sense of boldness. A confidence in the things I believe God has been speaking to me, and a willingness to more clearly and broadly express my concerns. I will probably never be the one speaking controversy in the midst of a crowd - it's more my style to address issues in small groups or one on one. But I feel emboldened to fight the silence I have lived under for much of these last months. I was reminded, as I wrote the email this week of something a friend wrote in an email to encourage me months ago as I was first beginning to express some concerns and to share the things I felt God showing me. He wrote that I had come out from under the blanket of heaviness, and I wouldn't allow anyone to put me back under it. That I had emerged, broken through, and now it was time to live that way. I hope that I'm living that now. I'm excited and scared for what's ahead, but I feel God's presence.

And so, my finger is aching, and I'm looking forward to reading, so I'm off. See you all soon!

Leaking

It was one of those days. I was looking at the post I put up last night. The postcard from PostSecret, and feeling again how strong my internal reaction to that picture is. To the tears, and the words "I miss ignorance."

I had breakfast with Kari this morning. Somewhere along the way, Kari has become a very dear friend, and one with whom it is very easy to be honest and uncensored about the things going on in my life. I knew it was going to be one of those days when all she had to do was ask me how things were going, and I teared up. My emotions leaked right on down my face - it still surprises me when this happens. So I filled her in, swiping sureptisiously at the tears rolling down my face. The waitress came, of course, at the most inopportune of moments, just as the tears were beginning to take my order.

So we ate and talked, and somehow I went away encouraged. I still felt leaky as I sat in the mall for a bit before my shift and read. In fact, I even told some of my coworkers that if anyone yelled at me today I WOULD cry. (I've had a spate of nasty clients this last week - at least one a shift, badly dissatisfied with something or other, usually with nothing that had anything to do with me, and with a need to take out their pent up hostilities on the closest gift registry employee, which has just happened to be me this week.) Thankfully, today was a relatively calm day in the world of gift registry. By that I mean that we didn't have any yelling clients, not that we had any shortage of work.

I was discouraged, and I remain tired. But little things helped today.

As I walked to the train I couldn't help but think that the way I've been feeling lately is a lot like the way I felt during the majority of my five years of depression. But, some careful quick analysis revealed that I am not in fact depressed. I'm excited about life, I believe God is doing some really cool things in my life again, and the things I've been feeling have more to do with some spiritual attack, and the very real pain of walking through difficulty in the belief that God has great reward on the other side.

I read a really fun novel. It was called "Reconstructing Natalie." Nothing too profound. Very girly, quite predictable. A "Christian" novel about a young woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer. But quirky and offbeat and funny in its own way. It made me smile.

Talking with Kari, and snagging a couple of hugs from her helped. A chance to get some of the struggles off my chest. To catch up on what she and her husband are up to. Can I just say that I'm really going to miss them when they move in October?

Chocolate helped. A lot. (it's a natural anti-depressant you know! just in case you actually needed an excuse to consume it!)

And later, at work, some old hymns came to mind, and a few worship songs. So I hummed and whistled (in what I'm sure was a decidedly off key sort of tune) through the first verses (because I can never seem to remember the words to more than the first verse and the chorus) of "How Great Thou Art," "It is Well With My Soul," "Be Thou my Vision," "Amazing Grace," and a few others. Something about musing on the classic songs of the faith, with their deeply meaningful lyrics while boxing up china really served to lift my spirit and change my focus.

So, it was one of those days. In both the good and bad and altogether not completely sure what that was kind of ways.

Missing Ignorance

I saw this post card tonight on this week's Post Secret blog. It struck me because it accurately reflects a sentiment that I have often felt.

I was in ninth grade when I began to learn some things about my family. Things that, while not necessarily carefully concealed are definitely not talked about. I can still describe for you the exact moment my mom told me some of those things - the location, the reason we were having a conversation that led to this in the first place.

Since then, the things I know about my family have gotten harder. I know more, and I suppose I should. I'm not 14 anymore.

But here's the thing. Some days I miss ignorance. I wish I couldn't usually pick out the abused woman in the room before she ever shares that part of her life, because I'm intimately aquainted with the signs. I wish I didn't know quite a few other things too.

These last weeks have been pretty rough at home. Part of the reason that I have again been quiet here and intensely introspective. One of my immediate family members suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and our family lived through a bit of a relaspe last week. I have wrestled with hatred for the abuser who began this thing so many many years ago. I have wrestled with guilt for resenting the added load of housework and responsibility the relapse created with me. I have struggled with the intense spiritual climate in our home as my family member battled back. I have struggled with anger against the other family members who don't bear more of the burden of these relapses. It has been difficult.

I've been exhausted, and I can't explain why to most people. I go to work with a semi-functional brain and an exhausted body and I can't come right out and say that I'm exhausted because my family member has PTSD. It's not my story to tell. It's part of the code of silence. And I hate that their silence infringes on my communication. And I hate that I resent something like PTSD when it can't be controlled and the decisions that caused it were made by a warped and twisted man many years ago. And so I miss ignorance. And I wonder about that fourteen year old that I was... And I wonder if I would protect her longer, or if knowledge really has been a healthier thing, and it wouldn't really have been protection.

Pray for my family if you think of it. We're fighting on. And it's long and hard. I'm tired and stressed. We could use some peace, some rest, some restoration.

Waiting for a call...

So I'm sitting here at my desk, with music playing again. Johnny Cash this time. There's something haunting in his song "Help Me." Something beautiful and soul grabbing that makes you pause for just a moment to realize all the times you've prayed this very same prayer.

I'm waiting for a phone call. It should come in about an hour or so. That's right around midnight for those of you keeping track. It will tell me whether I'm going to the mountains tomorrow for the day, or whether I'm going to hang out in the city and veg in my basement watching some more of "The West Wing." If I'm going to the mountains, then the phone call will also tell me that Megs is coming to crash on my floor for the night.

In the meantime, I have a quote from Rob Bell's "Velvet Elvis" to share with you. I read this book in several chunks, with long pauses in between, so my grasp of Bell's entire message is somewhat lacking, but I did like the book. And I was flipping through a bit of it tonight, reading the parts I marked on my way through, and this bit caught my eye:

Our words aren't absolutes. Only God is absolute, and God has no intention of sharing this absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up with to talk about him. This is something people have struggled with since the beginning: how to talk about God when God is bigger than our words, our brains, our worldviews, and our imaginations. (Velvet Elvis, p. 23)

I like this. Such a succint way of reminding us what is really the thing with substance. We lose that understanding in the middle of this debate on modernism vs. postmodernism, and the existence of absolute truth. We need, on both sides of the debate to be reminded that the thing we are debating, the thing at the center, God, is the only absolute, and our words to describe his absoluteness can tend to simply add confusion to the mix.

slowly emerging

I think I am slowly emerging from this "funk" (for lack of a better word) that has engulfed me for the last couple of weeks. I was laying in the bathtub a little while ago, reading a novel and it occurred to me that that in itself was a good sign.

I don't know if I'm emerging with a sense of deep revelation yet. Corey said that she thought that deep revelation was coming. I think sometimes that deep revelation isn't always something you recognize in the moment. You just kind of know that something has changed, and you keep waking up and realizing that something has changed, and one morning, six months later, you wake up and realize that whatever the change was had to do with some deep revelation that you can just now put words to, because you have lived with it and grown to love it, and the beauty of it is that it is not alien and hard to adapt to when you finally name it because you have spent six months learning it's in and outs, it's curves and lines, and it is familiar in that shockingly new kind of way that happens in relationships with the oldest and best of friends.

This is what happened when I was healed of depression. I sat in a car one night, praying with a friend, and new something had shifted in me when I left, but didn't really expect or even ask for healing. It wasn't even what we were praying for exactly. But I woke up the next morning and could get out of bed pretty easily, and that was something new. And that thing just kept happening. I kept getting up. I kept having reasons to smile in the middle of some of the most mentally, emotionally and spiritually challenging months of my life. And one morning, two or three months later, I work up and realized, "I've been healed." And I really liked life. And I didn't want to die anymore. And I wasn't as afraid. And I'd met God and fallen in love with Him. And He was talking to me, and I really wanted to hear it. And I was ready to hear - ready to move into a healed, healing life because I'd lived with it for a while before it was named. I'd learned to live in wonder a little bit. To really be grateful for the ability to easily get out of bed in the morning.

And so, I'm sitting here and listening to the new Jack Johnson CD i bought because it was on sale when Megs and I were shopping yesterday on one of her random "I must find a disc by this one specific and slightly obscure person," and Megs insisted that this was an excellent CD, and I really should buy it. So I did, and I bought the last recording Johnny Cash made before he died too. And I'm enjoying them both. But not playing them both at once.

So I'm sitting here and listening to Jack Johnson, and I have that same sense of wonder. That feeling of things shifting in new ways. Not ways that are always pain free, but ways that are promising new things. And I noticed some little signs in myself that mean I'm emerging from whatever phase of revelation, or construction or healing (or whatever term you want to use) that I've inhabited these rather painfully silent last couple of weeks. Signs like these:

• I once again have an attention span, and wish to engage my brain. Basically, I can do more than just sit on the couch and watch "The West Wing" on DVD like a vegetable. I've done a lot of this in the last week.
• I finished a novel last night. And started another one tonight and can't wait to get back to it when I'm done writing this post.
• I feel like writing again.
• I told customers today to "have a great day" and really meant it. I didn't just say it by rote while wishing they would just leave and I could again be alone with my thoughts like I have for much of the last week.

I consider these things to be positive signs.

So here's to emergence, slow, sometimes painful... but always with the promise of something wonder-full and beautiful on the other side.

Ruminating

I wonder if all of you blog readers out there have learned yet that when I am silent here for nearly a week, without being out of the country, that I am doing some pretty deep thinking? It's been an interesting week. I've struggled deeply with some things, learned some things about myself, been reminded of some things about others, hurt, cried, prayed, laughed, worked to avoid deep thought, and worked to think deeply. I've read, and avoided reading entirely. I've eaten alone and communally, in my home, and in public places. I've engaged avidly in conversation, and done my best to avoid human contact. I've lurked on other's blogs, and avoided the internet entirely. In short, it has been a somewhat polarized, and very, very human sort of week.

I think I'm learning that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm struggling with "church" again this week. I sat in the service last weekend, and was delighted to see the people who were there, to hear pieces of Sheri's journey from the last year, to talk to a variety of people. But as I sat and we worshipped, I couldn't help but look around and grieve a little. I thought about all of the faces that were missing. All of the people whose lives I've been privileged to be a part of over the last year, over the three years that I've been a part of my church community. There were a lot of faces missing, and it made me sad. I thought about all the friends for whom my church was the last stop on their way out of a more formal Christian community. The ones who left saying that they were looking for something else, but never found it. The ones who are still running, who want God, but maybe not all the trouble of finding Him. Who want to have relationship, but don't want it to hurt quite so much, to be quite so hard, who don't have the energy left to fight for those things anymore.

I thought about the ones who just couldn't fit. The ones who were too radical or too broken, and I grieved them too. Because what good is a church if it can't house a few radicals? And what use is a body that cannot surround and uphold those who are so desperately broken that they can't even pinpoint one need, that they can't even ask for help.

I thought a lot this week about a conversation I had on Monday night. I had asked a friend about a mutual friend, and gotten caught up on her life. She's "hitting AA hard." Wow. That's great. But then my friend went on to say that he really believed that that was where she needed to be right now, not in church, not in community with a body of people who have loved her and prayed for her and upheld her as she's struggled these last months. And you know what, I don't dispute the value of alcoholics anonymous in her life. I believe that it is keeping her sane, that it is helping her beat some of her demons. I just wish that she had found love and acceptance in a community of believers. I just wish that we had been able to make room for her wounds - to allow them to speak and to breath depth and knowledge into our community. To make us more compassionate, and give us the heart for the broken that we claim to have - that we claim to want.

And I'm tired. Because I've had odd nightmares again every night this week. Nothing solid that remains when I awake, just the sense of unease, the snippets of conversation. A feminine presence in my dreams, talking constantly and preventing rest.

I learned something about myself this week too. I love to wrestle and I hate to act. I see these things, I wonder these things about our community, and I have no idea how to act upon them. And to be brutally honest, the idea of taking action is one that terrifies me.

And yet, I can't keep going like this - this interminable inbetween. This deficit of action while my heart and mind refuse to be silenced. It's time to read and think, and write and speak, and pray and act. May God show me the way.

Things that are Making Me Smile

I woke up smiling this morning, which I really didn't expect, because I went to bed with a somewhat heavy heart. I was at church last night, and looked around the group of people who were there and missed the faces and souls who no longer call our community home. Who were hurt, or felt alone, or just simply couldn't make life in our community work. And I missed them, and my heart ached. And I was wondering a bit about this big opportunity that's come my way, because I still think it's from God, but I heard some things about it that scared me a little, and made me wonder what God was getting me into. And I was nervous in that tingly, ultra-sensitive way that I get when I am alone in our house and my dog insists on barking at some imaginary intruder, until eventually you can't help wondering if it really isn't imaginary any more. So I went to bed a little disgruntled, a little sad, a little frightened. But I woke up smiling.

Here are some of the things that are making me smile today:

• A miniature replica of an oil lamp from Biblical times that is sitting on my desk. My friend Faye was recently in Israel, and brought me an oil lamp from the town of Nazareth. She gave it to me last night, and I am smiling. I am reminded of all those beautiful Biblical passages that talk about setting a lamp on a lampstand, and about our treasure being in jars of clay, and about Jesus being the light of the world, and now I have a tiny little clay oil lamp, made in the town where Jesus grew up (As Faye so smilingly put it - "can anything good come out of Nazareth?") sitting on my desk to remind me about all those scriptural truths that I try to hold dear. I'm a big fan of physical objects that remind me of spiritual truths (perhaps the reason I - to the sometimes horror of my mother who grew up in an oppressive Catholic environment that enabled some abusers in her life - love crucifixes and religious iconography, and display several on my bedroom walls.)
• A planned coffee date with a different friend who is also named Faye this afternoon. She just recently got engaged in Paris, under the Eiffel Tower, to her boyfriend of several years. They're one of those high school couples who will end up together and happy. I haven't seen her since the engagement and am looking forward to hanging out with her for a few hours.
• A large group of friends coming over for a BBQ tonight to celebrate my birthday.
• The fact that today I am 23 years old. How fun is that?!
• Emails from some family and friends wishing me happy birthday.
• A chance to connect, however briefly, the last couple days with Sheri, to hear how life in Los Angeles has been going, to hear what's on her heart.
• Several articles online from one of my favorite authors. I love Anne Lamott. Just when I think that everything Christian has gone irretrievably wrong in this world, that everything "Christian" is erudite and worthless, I encounter the earthiness, the practical and honest words of Anne Lamott and I begin to believe again that things might be right in the world. I almost never disagree with her political statements, but I love the boldness with which she makes them. I love the way her love of God has been shaped by loving her son Sam, and the little church community that she calls home. I read an article by her entitled "Spiritual Chemotherapy" this morning, and was reminded after the painful thoughts of last night of the reasons I still believe that church matters in a time when so many of the broken people I know are looking for solace elsewhere. And then, just for good measure I read a whole collection of other articles by her too. I have two more to recommend besides the one I already mentioned. You can find them here and here.

Have a fantastic day everyone. If you're in town, come hang out at my house tonight and eat birthday cake with me. Call me for the details!

Requirement in a husband

I have a new requirement for any man who wishes to be a candidate for my hand in marriage. He must be willing to kill all large bugs and spiders. I can kill my own small bugs (basically anything that I can squish with a kleenex without feeling it or worrying about it biting me) but I require someone to kill the large ones.

I've just had a traumatic encounter with a particularly large spider (in my bedroom of all places), and my "loving" father refused to kill it for me, making it necessary for me to do it myself. As I wiped spider goo from the wall after using a fly swatter and kleenex combo to commit spider homicide I loudly decided that any man I marry must be willing to kill any and all large bugs that I encounter.

Enforced Day Off

My body created an enforced rest day for me. Some sort of stomach bug, mild enough that I can move around a bit, but strong enough that I don't dare head out to work or anywhere where I can't reach a bathroom immediately came upon me sometime around 3:30 this morning.

When I woke up for good, I realized that I wouldn't be going to work, or really anywhere else for the day, and I headed back to bed. So, I've spent the day dozing, listening to music, reading, but mostly just doing things that are restful.

I'll be back either tonight or sometime in the next couple of days with answers to my own reading questions (which only Nolan answered...) and possibly some other stuff I've been thinking about. Oh, and the announcement of the details of my crazy opportunity is coming soon, too... just in case you haven't already heard the rumors!

Calling All Readers...

I've been doing a lot of reading this week. I'm trying to finish off some of the many books that I read approximately half of before purchasing something new and getting engrossed in the new work at the expense of the old.

I polished off Rob Bell's "Velvet Elvis" yesterday. I do recommend this one. I'll probably write a bit more extensively about it another time. Good read though, and some challenging things to think about.

I spend way too much money on books to not actually finish reading them. Plus, one of my goals for this year was to broaden my reading, to actually finish books off, and to challenge my abilities to think - basically to not just read "fluff" all the time.

I'm working on a list of the books I need to polish off before I buy too many more. The trouble is that I'm a sucker for a deal, and I basically can't walk into a bookstore without making a purchase. The books just call my name.

Anyway... in the spirit of expanding my mind through reading, I have some questions for my faithful blog readers:

1. What is the one book you would recommend that others read, and why?
2. What is the best novel you have ever read?
3. If you could pick any book to curl up and spend a day with, what would it be, and why?

My answers to come... (along with the list of books that I need to finish reading!)