my mundane life

My mundane life as of late:

• Last night I exited Boundary Bay to the entire place cheering for me for no particular reason other than jumping on a bandwagon. That was a first for me. Slightly embarrassing... The whole night reminded me a little of Perkins runs in college, actually, especially when the whole restaurant randomly broke into "Happy Birthday"....to no one.
  
• I have been being remarkably successful at not getting much done. That must change starting today.
• I made my first month's weight-loss goal five days early, which is problematic since I then feel like I can slack till the beginning of February...and gain back some of the weight lost. Oops.
  
• TA office Risk is going well...I think my fear of being a threat inadvertently caused me to encourage someone else to be a threat...which is a threat to my being a threat, which is a threat to me winning the game. Oh well. I love Risk for the journey, not the actual world domination, so it's all good. :)
• I love my life. It's great. I'm so blessed to be doing something I love, to be training for a job that I know I will love. I'm blessed to be doing something where I don't dread "going to work." There are so many people, even those doing what they want to do or feel called to do, that complain about going to work. I remember the feeling of dreading a shift...and I hope that I will be blessed enough to live my life truly loving in every way what I do, so that work is not work.

belief and action

I have been thinking a lot of late about how belief needs to be wedded to action. How following Christ is not just praying a prayer for forgiveness, but, rather, believing must be wedded to death to self, to jumping off the proverbial cliff of faith, to responsible action in a lost world. My faith must never be solely a list of beliefs, a doctrinal statement, or an inward emotion. I am called to wed my belief to action. To jump, knowing who will catch me.

And yet, this action must never become divorced from the reasons for it. God, who loved the world he had made enough to send His Son, His essence, His begotten, to earth to save us from ourselves. His Son, who forgave the ones whose sin and rebellion nailed Him in all of his perfection to the cross. Coming and dying to offer us love, life, meaning, purpose, joy, and all things good. Who gives us the chance to die with Him in order to be reborn into life eternal. That is who I serve, and that is the message I want the world to know. At all costs. For I am dead to myself, and so incredibly alive with Him.

ambiguity

My life is constantly shifting, both in terms of my emotional health and in terms of the things and people who are important to me. Life is good right now. I am getting so much out of my classes - more in a new confidence than any actual information gained. I am getting more out of life socially than I previously dreamed possible. I am basically loving life in almost every way.

I've been thinking about modernity, namely, our exaltation of science. Science is the new ultimate truth...science reaches into almost every facet of our existence, offering answers to everything from why my pen falls when I let go of it to why I feel sad today. It's starting to annoy me a little that everything needs to fit a formula, because I am increasingly convinced that life is so much more than a formula, and even if it is a formula, it's a formula that humanity will never grasp. As I search my heart and motivations, I am continually reminded of the ways in which I am a walking contradiction. I believe separate things that directly disprove one another - scientifically speaking, at least.

Forget science. I'm embracing the humanities major in me, the poet, the romantic, the idealist, the ambiguity, the freedom of not knowing why, not knowing how, and not even knowing what.

sin & charity

What is the point of life, if everything that we do is ultimately selfish? In light of the theoretical impossibility of doing anything purely for the betterment of someone else, what's the point of pursuing a life lived for others? I do not believe there is an answer in this line of thought. If the point of life is simply to do good, it's futile, and we may as well pursue a life lived purely for self. After all, in living to please oneself, 90% of the time we will end up pleasing others. [People-pleasers unite!]

As a Christian, this is deeply troubling. Is everything I try to do futile? On some level, it is. I fail to love as Christ loved us. I fail to live unselfishly, all the time. Everything I do is tainted by imperfection, selfishness, sin. Filthy rags. And yet, even the most selfish among us acknowledge one simple, powerful fact. A life of charity serves to better oneself. Perhaps one of the most selfish things that one can do is to serve.

Interesting, eh? Even in this society characterized by self, still exists the basic premise that life is on some level at least about others. Still, however, we live for ourselves first, and loving others only comes because we know that's the only way to attain happiness. It seems to be insurmountable. How do I recognize my love for others with my inherent selfishness?

It occurred to me is the fact that I do not live for others. I don't live for myself either. (At least in theory, that is). The only way to love is to love God. To submit to God. And then He loves through me. Through selfish, sinful me shines the divine love of the one who sent His Son to die for sinful, selfish humanity...a humanity to which God owed absolutely nothing.

Thank You, God. :)

opening an old wound

Last night, while cutting potatoes into tiny pieces for a delicious meal of fried/microwaved potatoes and onions (for the third night in a row; yes, I'm pathetic), I managed to slice my finger open. This is not the first time I've managed to prove myself a complete klutz, but this cut was slightly more significant than past experiences. Nothing to freak out about, and definitely not stitches-worthy, but it was bleeding pretty good. I don't really have many band-aids, plus, it was bleeding pretty significantly, so I got a Kleenex from the bathroom and used a hair tie to secure it to my left index finger (that's resourcefulness, let me tell ya). I then finished cutting my potatoes, cooked them (a genius combination of frying them for a while, getting impatient, and microwaving them the rest of the way to tender), and ate them. Delicious. I then decided to go try to find a real band-aid from my "medicine drawer" (in one of the lamest twists of fate ever, my apartment doesn't have a medicine cabinet). I found one. Success.

Problem is, I'm sorta weird with band-aids. I find myself uncontrollably curious about how the wound is doing, and so band-aids never last long with me. About 10 hours later, when I was going to bed (yeah, yeah, it was like 4 am, and yes, I'm ridiculous) I took it off. Bad plan. There's a rather large flap of skin no longer entirely attached to my finger, and so without the protection of the band-aid, I acccidently flipped it back. It hurt slightly. I pushed the skin back into place.

Today I managed to do the same thing twice more. Each time this happens, it starts bleeding again (not badly, but bleeding nonetheless). I find myself ridiculously annoyed each time this happens. You would think that my finger would have been satisfied with the first bleed. But, no, of course not. It has to bleed every time that piece of skin moves.

Sometimes life is just like my slightly-injured left index finger.

confidence

A few nights ago, I was sitting at my dining room table (aka card table) doing some reading for my American Slavery class, when suddenly the pressures of being a Modern Europe person at a place with little to no modern Europe professors got to me. I suddenly realized that I should probably just switch to early United States history and study religion. It has seemed for so long as though the Nazi Germany door is closing, and as though I should probably jump ship while I still can. As I contemplated making that rather huge move, I wasn't thrilled. I felt as though I was losing something that has become fundamental to who I am. But, lots of people do things for work that they're not 100% passionate about. Life moves on. I began telling people that I was pretty serious about switching. I continued to go to German class, but my heart wasn't as in it anymore.

Making the mental switch caused me to realize some things about myself. I really, really like religious history. Why do people do the things they do when at least some of them have to be Christian people? What does it mean to be a Christian, and how does it impact decisions and reactions?

Yesterday morning, something changed. I made a sort of commitment to living confidently. To knowing who I am and that what I have to offer, both personally and spiritually, is significant. That even though I may not be the smartest, the best read, or the smoothest talker, I have something to share with the world. I went to European Cultural History, and for one of the first times, I admitted in class that I am deeply religious. My admittance of this fact resulted in a conversation that for the first time, I felt as if I had had a part in making. Many times I leave class feeling as though the class came to a conclusion with which I could not relate or agree. This time was different. My confidence and assertiveness changed everything.

I went home last night, and out of nowhere, I realized what I want to write my thesis on. This was the single most liberating realization that I have had in some time. Peace filled me as I realized that the doors may be opening again...

I want to study German religious history in the context of Nazi Germany.

welcome to resistance

I've been doing a great deal of thinking lately.

What is true religion? "To look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unpolluted by the world." (or something like that, the end of James 1)

My faith/religion has always been somewhat inward. Some of the only times I reach out or share my faith are in Christian environments. Where it's safe and even expected. Where am I called to go? To the unreached.

I have come to a place where I need to make a choice. Am I going to continue pursuing this inward, emotion based religion unsupported by real action in a lost world? That cannot continue to define my life.

It's so easy to be intimidated, or to feel inferior. It's so easy to feel like my faith will not be accepted by my peers and to feel as if somehow I don't have something worth sharing. This mindset is a tragedy, and I can't live that way anymore. If I'm going to claim Christianity, I do not want to claim cheap grace. I don't want to routinely fail to be a light in a dark world and then fall back on grace. I believe I am being called to jump, to trust that my God is big enough to carry me.

God, give me the grace and strength to follow You to the dark corners, to the forgotten, to those who will never accept me, to those who will condemn me. Be my strength, be my passion, be my joy. I truly have no hope of doing this without You.

Welcome to resistance...

wide awake

Most nights I'm half asleep by the time my head hits the pillow. Most nights I'm fully asleep just a few minutes later.

Three nights ago, that was not the case. The littlest thing had set me off, and my brain was chasing circles around itself... Several times I had to get up and walk around to remind myself that my half-dreams were not real, and that my thought pattern was not rational. I finally watched a movie for a few minutes on my laptop to get my mind back on "normal" mode.

There are very few things that frighten me anymore. I live in a strange city on the other side of the country from everything familiar, and I don't lay awake thinking about that. I'm not homesick, and although I have a somewhat severe inferiority complex, that also does not keep me up at night.

What I am terrified of, to the point where it can cripple me, is hurting people. It forms the vast majority of the motivations for decisions I make in life. I am terrified of my imperfections, of the ways that those imperfections affect those I love. I don't know whether to embrace this as a strength or fight it as a weakness. I suppose anything in life to the extreme is not healthy. Luckily, I am often able to rationalize my fears away, reminding myself that everything will be okay, just as it has always been okay before. The problem comes when things weren't always okay...the biggest Catch 22 of all. To hurt or to hurt, that is the question.

I keep promising myself that I'll leave everyone alone. That I won't share myself, because sharing myself always ends up too far down that road that I've traveled too many a time. I hate that I share myself. I hate that I am often vulnerable, because it so often backfires. And sure, I could just tell myself that it's okay to be myself...but I honestly don't think that it is. After all, anything in extreme can be a bad thing.

And so, I fight to stay reserved...fearing that to let myself go would mean my world crashing down around me again...

life update

It's been a while since I've updated this, and, for posterity's sake, I feel compelled to document a few of my life's most recent events.

Flight back to Washington was quite uneventful. Lucky for me it was the holiday season so Delta was offering free on-flight wireless. So I passed the wee hours of New Years Eve morning reading a random Caring Bridge site of a person I don't even know. It was fun though. Much better than sitting there wishing I could sleep.

It was rather disorienting coming back, though. It didn't help that I flew in the very early morning and so didn't really sleep that night (except for a half hour or so on the plane and an hour or two on the bus from Seattle to Bellingham). Instead of going immediately to my apartment upon arrival, I went shopping instead. This was an odd experience - it had seemed like I was in SD forever, and that my life in Bellingham was just a distant dream. But being back here made it all so real again. It felt somewhat like home, although the feeling was different than when I got home to SD three weeks before. But, I knew where I was going, and I realized that Bellingham no longer confuses the crap out of me. So that was a nice feeling.

My water heater broke, probably sometime in my absense, although I didn't realize it was broken until later that evening when I attempted to take a shower and realized the water wasn't warming up...at all. Unfortunately, it was New Years Eve weekend and so I had to wait til Monday for it to be fixed. That was...interesting... especially because the stupid thing was leaking and so I had to keep putting new towels by it to soak up the water as to save my carpet from utter ruin.

I slept in the New Year. In one of the lamest New Years ever, I decided that my level of exhaustion (and my frustration with said water heater) warranted an 8 pm bed time. So, go to bed I did. I got about 14 hours of sleep. It was glorious. Maybe even more glorious than watching the ball drop. Ha.

Since then, I've been...not doing much. Ok, that's not true. Classes started Tuesday. I enjoy my German class, although it's interesting to say the least, given my lack of exposure to the spoken language or most of the vocabulary. Grammatically speaking, I'm far ahead of the class, but, unfortunately, I can't really say anything, because I don't have the vocabulary to back it up. My library-check-out textbooks and my rescued-from-an-abandoned-house-1950s-textbook taught me how to say things like "I have ten fingers," but unfortunately modern textbooks focus on things like "How are you?" Oh well. I am considering taking the class pass-fail. That way I can slack. I like slacking.

I'm taking an American Slavery class this quarter. It should be fun, and I am sorta viewing it as a last chance for me to switch from Nazi Germany to something that I would have more faculty support for. However, at least so far I have not been nearly as passionate about what I read about slavery as I am about Nazi Germany. A fellow student asked me yesterday if I was ready to be depressed by the slavery class. I was taken aback, and then realized that the fact that I'm planning to spend the rest of my life studying the Holocaust says something about my freakish and somewhat disturbing ability to read things and be relatively unaffected emotionally. Yup, I'm a disturbed freak.

Speaking of disturbed freak, I have lately been becoming increasingly depressed. I don't think it's anything to be too concerned about, but I do think that I need to find a roommate for next year. It's really hard on me to live by myself in a city where I don't have the established social circle or family that I had in the Midwest. I love my church, but I especially notice how hard it is on me during the weeks where my church's small group doesn't meet. I get slightly irrational and feel like an emotional basketcase. I need people. Maybe I'm not an introvert after all. I have wonderful friends back in the Midwest, but, however wonderful it is to talk to friends over the phone, it's not the same as being able to talk to someone face to face (and not on Skype).

Also, I'm starting to definitely feel misunderstood and out of place here. I am labeled as the "quiet," "antisocial," "shy" girl. Not to mention conservative and naive and a bunch of other adjectives to describe someone like me. It bothers me, because I don't believe that I'm shy. My motivations for being silent are usually just that I am either a) not aggressive enough to get a word in or b) don't feel as if I have anything valuable to add to said discussion and so remain silent. This comes from not fitting in here, I think. Although the culture here is similar to back home, there are also important differences. People here are more outgoing than people back home. People talk more here. They're more exuberant. I often feel as if (especially in class) it's a huge competition to see who can talk the most. And that's a competition that I'm not particularly interested in winning. I need to be interested in winning it, though, if I want a good participation grade. So it's hard. I'm just not aggressive. I'm passive aggressive. Haha.

bah

This is a "bah" evening.

Emotions can be frustrating. Out of no where I'm bombarded by old emotions, reminded of what my heart still (and may always) wants, and forced to remind myself of the hazards of acting on emotional moments.

On a brighter note, my water heater was replaced today. And my toilet was also fixed. Yay. :)

Classes start tomorrow.

surreal

Coming back to Bellingham was surreal in many ways. It probably didn't help that I'd been up all night coming back. My plane left Sioux Falls at 5:05 am, so I just stayed up all night, catching a few hours of sleep on the plane and bus. It was surreal driving from the bus stop to my apartment - it was very similar, actually, to my arrival in SD a few weeks ago. It's crazy how a couple hours on a plane can change so much. I think it was harder to make the quick adjustment from SD to WA than it was the other way around. It was weird to go from an environment where I was constantly surrounded by people to an environment where I live entirely alone. I wasn't away for that long, really, but in many ways it seems like I was gone forever.

My water heater is broken. Go figure. It's a holiday weekend, so I'm anxiously waiting for tomorrow when hopefully it'll get fixed. I'm sick of no hot water and mopping up water from the base of the water heater. Especially because towels don't dry on their own here.