The Learning

In high school, before I was ever in a serious relationship, I read a lot of relationship books. Books with titles like 5 Paths to the Love of Your Life and For Young Women Only: What You Need to Know About How Guys Think and Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity. (And no, I never read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, because of my aversion to what my family deemed the detrimentally fundamentalist Christian courtship model. And did you know that Relient K wrote a book about girls? It's called The Complex Infrastructure Known as the Female Mind, and yes, it's on my bookshelf). 

Books on marriage, sex, divorce, and childrearing were often laying around our house -- a product of my Dad's profession as a psychologist. And I would read them, or portions of them, with the utmost fascination. What were they telling my parents about teenagers? How could I understand myself? Did romance disappear as soon as you got married? Would dating a number of different people make me feel empty and depleted? I needed to know. 

And since I didn't have a boyfriend, I took the safer but less empirical approach to relationships and just spent time reading about them instead. 

Then, eventually, I dated and got my heart broken and broke people's hearts. Sometimes I ignored wise people and I ignored God, but when I listened, beautiful things happened to my heart.

I grew up a bit and matured, with a lot of blips along the way. I stopped compromising and justifying. 

And now I'm in a very blessed relationship with a man who happens to defy pretty much every category into which I could have put him and every definable relational trend that I thought those books prepared me to tackle.

So really, I've ended up feeling just as unequipped as your next 20-something to handle arguments, desires, insecurities, anger, naiveté, inadequacy, my own immaturity and selfishness, and a whole slough of other issues that no one really likes to talk about in any regular conversation.

I'm learning that every couple is different. Every relationship witnesses both universal struggles and unique ones. Only in wading through all this together can you really learn how to love in the real way, the lasting way. And no one can really tell you how to do this, because they can't.

I read somewhere once that you should always hold hands with each other when you argue. Well, you can't do that when you're on the phone and you're in a long-distance relationship.

My 'complex infrastructure' hates to mess up. I do my best to work towards healthy and joy-filled relationships, but I screw things up a lot more than I would like. But I can hope to keep learning how to forgive and be forgiven.

Because loving is one of the most difficult, soul-wrenching, fulfilling, and rewarding undertakings we can ever attempt as fallible and fallen human beings. 

Sommer

And the long-anticipated moment has come. 

The moment where I run barefoot to the backyard, stretch out on a brightly-colored beach towel, turn back the cover of a fresh novel, and feel the kiss of sun-warmth on my back.

And all the summer moments that follow.

When I woke up I didn't touch the curly little wisps escaping from my ponytail. 

I didn't set an alarm. 

I didn't worry about anything.

The youthful faces of jubilant sunflowers on my windowsill greeted me.  

Mail -- three perfect little notes -- lay on my desk awaiting my fingertips. "I hope you've found some moments to let your mind wander, to create and celebrate life in all its beauty, and to feel the peace and presence of God," wrote a dear friend. "Use this time to think, Em," wrote my best friend.


My favorite rosebush, with its tiny, fragrant, delicately purple blooms, is done flowering. I collected three eggs from our chickens -- each was a slightly different hue of brown, a slightly different ovoid size. The blueberry bushes are laden with promising, pale little blushes of unripe berries.

I listened to my mom practicing Debussy's Clair de Lune.

I stirred a thickening roux over the stove as I reacquainted myself with my family's laughter. 

There's a red-and-white china teacup, a bird's nest with broken robin's eggs nestled inside, an antique electric fan, my Grandpa's toy car, a deteriorating old copy of Jane Eyre in French on my shelf.

Oh yes, I am remembering... I found that '50s clock in an Istanbul pawn shop and carried it home in my suitcase. I picked up that postcard at the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. I bought that art print from a booth in Pike Place Market. And there are the photos. Dancing, rolling with laughter, embracing, growing up, lapping up ice cream... I remember travels and lessons and who I am and who has loved me. 

I sit in the redolent haze of affable memories. 

And I remember other summers, the feel of speeding bicycle tires and sandpaper-rough diving boards and heat-radiating sidewalks, the taste of melting fruit popsicles and late-night dinners outside, the sound of lawns being mowed, the scent of dry pine trees and wild sagebrush. 

Kisses of indefatigable summer, 

of blessed solitude, 

of buoyant activity. 

Home is familiar and yet I rediscover it every time after a long absence. And I begin to know its impermanence and see its transitions. And so I grow all the more thankful for this long-awaited time at home.

'Loveliness,' says the top of the old tin chocolate box that rests upon the stack of coffee-table books.

Rest

Lately I feel like my existence has been characterized less by 'seizing the day' than by clutching on to it for dear life. Maybe this is a bit melodramatic, but the truth is, the injunction "carpe diem" seems like a moot point when crippling stress overcomes me and seemingly everyone around me. To be honest, I'm not really enjoying life right now, at a time when I know there is quite a lot to enjoy. This isn't out of any ungratefulness or loss of perspective so much as out of sheer exhaustion.

Sitting in a pew in a Good Friday service yesterday, I had such a hard time focusing that I began to wonder if my brain had short-circuited. I was gripped by anxiety, a sense of panic. I looked up at the stain glass almost desperately. This church is a peaceful place, I thought. A place of solace, a sanctuary. 

"Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest." And… "my yoke is easy and my burden is light" The words -- those familiar verses -- floated unbidden across my thoughts half an hour before the pastor said them. Both times, my eyes filled with tears, because I knew it to be profoundly true, a truth I'd lost sight of.

I'd felt burdened by everything -- including 'faith' (Am I a sub-par Christian? Should I be more conspicuously involved in 'ministry'? Am I using my gifts for kingdom purposes? Am I honoring God with my time and resources? Do my actions and attitudes portray something counter-cultural, something beautiful? Was I doing enough, being enough, in my relationships and before God?). I'd forgotten, as of late, that God and his gospel to us aren't intended only to challenge us and (often painfully) transform and remold us, but also to give us rest. Faith and its application in and through our lives is not a burden -- it's freedom, support, strength, happiness, fortitude, resoluteness. It can't be reduced to a self-improvement project or a to-do list, because has the potential to bring us radical peace in the knowledge that we're not plowing through all our crap alone. 

As the choir sang its way through John's account of the Passion, I began to reflect on how remarkable it all was -- that this story of Golgotha was being told here, after centuries and across the world, in Southern California in the 21st century….that this evening of remembrance has been kept for so long, in so many places, with such continuity…that ours was one of thousands of churches across the world observing Good Friday and dwelling on the horror of the crucifixion, the power of fulfilled scripture, the magnitude of Christ's sacrifice… and anticipating the inimitable joy that is resurrection, salvation, redemption, new life, continued discipleship. 

I've been so preoccupied with tedious tasks as of late that I've forgotten to remember where I was this time last year. And sitting in church yesterday, I actually thought about it. 

Last year I was in Jerusalem on Good Friday. It was also the last day of Jewish passover, and the day of the week when Muslims usually go to mosque for a Friday sermon, for something more than daily prayers... anyways, the Old City was packed with tourists and pilgrims and average folk going about their daily lives of devotion. Most of Jerusalem was blocked off, but we found a side street from which we were ably to slip into the procession that wound its way along the Via Dolorosa, the "Way of Grief" along which Jesus supposedly carried his cross on the way to his crucifixion.

We were pushed along the famous route by Greek Orthodox pilgrims wielding wooden crosses as they sang softly and elbowed one another along with silent force towards the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I saw an old woman lose her shoe and almost get trampled as she tried to retrieve it. She gave up the attempt and continued on her way, buffeted by her fellows. 

The church was thick with incense, candle smoke, chanting, prayers, and the shouts of IDF soldiers to "keep moving." My impressions were a blur: don't get trampled...don't get separated from the group...bearded priests half blind with age...towering arching ceilings...gargantuan boxy sepulcher of Christ surrounded by colossal candles and shrines of flowers and icons. There were so many throngs of people pushing along that we wound our way through quickly and ended up back outside in the blinding sunlight before much of anything could sink in. After getting caught in the throng of foot traffic leaving from al-Aqsa mosque, we eventually made it out through Herod's gate and climbed the road up to the Mount of Olives, surrounded by Jewish cemeteries. 

We heard a gong, sounded three times, from within the Old City that signaled the end of Jesus' hours on the cross. 

Christ had died.

Nearby was the Garden of Gethsemane, with its old, old gnarled olive trees. I remember thinking how peaceful it was there, at the place where Jesus and his disciples had prayed the day before his death. 

Arguably one of the most 'stressful' days in history. 

We entered Gethsemane Church, weary from a long day of walking in crowds and the hot sun. As we went into the church, a sadness came over me, a heaviness. 

The church was exquisitely beautiful. And then I was profoundly moved by a sense of peace, calm, and God's unfaltering and unconditional love. I remember looking up at the blue mosaic ceiling dotted with stars high over my head. I recalled how, once, God had told me that all my hopes and dreams and things to be achieved were numerous as the stars, and that He held all of them in His hand, stretched out like the glittering tapestry of the night sky in his palm. The beauty of this encouragement affects me as deeply now as it did then. 

This Easter season I am here in the United States -- stressed, tired. Always moving. Pushed along from behind. Afraid of getting trampled. Seeking sanctuary and peace of some kind. Forgetting what my hopes and dreams even are, let alone how to achieve them. Not having time to let anything sink in. Feeling like one in a crowd. But one who wants to stay faithful and one who wants to remember what happened on Calvary. One who wants to carry my cross and follow Him. 

Come to Him, you who are weary, and He will give you rest. His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

I Could Have Danced All Night

"All children...soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, 'Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!' This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up." 

-- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan 

I realized it when I was nearing my thirteenth birthday. 

It was a most horrible realization, the awareness that the exuberance of my imagination and the ability to play, wholly satiated by the delicious taste of make-believe, had somehow been unintentionally quelled by that cruel thing we call Reality... 

I realized it while babysitting a six-year old. We were sprawled out on the living room carpet, surrounded by scattered Playmobil figures. I don't remember the exact nature of our game, but I distinctly remember that at one point I told her, "No, we can't do that! That wouldn't happen in real life." I also remember my almost immediate revulsion at my own words. 

How would I know what "real life" was, anyway? When did I slip on these grown-up boots? Why was I crushing Imagination under my heel? When did I stop wearing dandelion crowns?

I'd been warned of this by C.S. Lewis and J.M. Barrie. I didn't want to be a Susan. I wanted to have a Lucy-heart.

I often find myself wistfully wishing for the same unbridled, unadulterated creative imagination and enthusiasm of discovery that we enjoy in childhood...those moments, like in The Nutcracker, of peering through the keyhole to the trimming of the Christmas tree in the drawing room, moments of rosy-cheeked anticipation and delight. 


Little did I expect to find this feeling recently in a production of My Fair Lady at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. In fact, I think I settled into my seat somewhat begrudgingly at first. 

And then for the next two hours I was captivated by a musical that was anything but cliché.  

If it's done well, musical theater possesses the remarkable ability to transport both adults whose creative imaginations have dimmed and children who still experience the delights of life at the fullest and freshest into a uniquely charmed world.

It draws one's eye to the sparkle of a chandelier, the heartbreak and humor etched on all the faces, the harlequin colors of the ladies' skirts as they kick up their heels in whirlwind dance numbers. It satisfies one's soul with familiar and beloved melodies and new realizations about the interplay between selfishness and self-sacrifice that often characterizes relationships. It's earthly and yet ethereal at the same time.

The scene at the races was one of my favorite moments of the evening, for as the ensemble stepped forward, the gentlemen's sleek top hats and the ladies' lavishly feathered ones all descended from the ceiling on transparent cords to nestle right atop their respective wearers' awaiting heads. As the hats dropped slowly down like so many exquisite snowflakes, I watched as the audience looked up with enchanted surprise and collectively gasped at the gossamer loveliness and cleverness of the scene. On every face was pure, child-like delight. 

That night we biked back to our hotel in the dark, pedaling on old-fashioned bicycles. And we sang exuberantly, "I could have danced all night... I could have danced all night... and still...have begged...for more... I could have spread my wings...and done a thousand things...I've never done before..."

We all have to grow up, to some extent or another. But we can still peer through the keyhole. We can still play in the garden.

Recalculating

This has been a weird week so far.

After helping me pick up a huge stack of children's books I'd accidentally scattered all over the floor of the public library, this random guy asked me out to coffee, and I was a little bit surprised by how drawn-out and awkward my 'no, thanks' was (for future reference, saying "I don't know" and "Not right now" doesn't deter a potential suitor from standing there expectantly for wayyy longer than necessary. An "I have a boyfriend" would have been much more succinct and honest). 

When I got up one morning to go to the bathroom a big black spider fell right in front of my face (from the ceiling?? I have no idea where those things come from). I was too sleepy to be terrified and only said "Oh my gosh!" in a placid tone of voice and composedly smushed it with a kleenex. 

In the dining commons, I was waiting in line for the peanut butter, watching some guy slather a piece of bread with a shocking amount of jelly. He was taking an awfully long time, and I thought we could have a little bonding moment together, so I said, "Getting your fruit intake for the day, huh?" ...to which he made no response and promptly walked away. So much for an attempt at humor. 

While I was driving, the Mapquest app on my phone decided to stop working and repeatedly tried to get me to turn the WRONG way on a one-way street downtown. I found myself quite disconcerted. The phone started squawking "recalculating!" every time I made the executive decision not to head directly into oncoming traffic. 

I took the toddler I babysit on a walk to a little park. As I was holding him back from joining the ducks and turtles in the pond (which he seemed very keen on doing), a couple of people nearby starting chatting with me. They asked if I was his mother, and when I said no, they asked, "But someday, right? You look like you could be a mother. You'd make a great mother." Um, thanks?! 

I heard some Christian radio host break down on live air over the plethora of social media  choices she felt she had to keep up with... not sure if she was actually crying or just getting really worked up, but it was a bit disturbing.

I guess we never quite know what to expect.

The Real To-Do

The other day I was reading a segment from Søren Kierkegaard's 1835 journal entry because, you know, that's just the kind of thing one does in college. The attention of my thoughts were held captive by these words:

"What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know....The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."

It's that time of the semester when I feel swamped and irritable. When my highest aspiration is to get in bed and stay there, preferably in uninterrupted sleep, for more than four hours. When I wonder if I'm retaining any information -- let alone wisdom -- from a hefty daily reading load. When many conversations seem like grating noise in my ears, and I long to be left alone to think in quiet. 

It's that time when all too many of the people I pass by on campus have red-rimmed eyes from lack of sleep or from tears or from particularly debilitating colds (or some combination of these). Everyone's a bit on the oversensitive and griping edge about everything. 

It's that time when I wonder if I've become a second-rate friend and second-rate Christian, when I'm unhappy with where I allocate my time, and when what I want to be doing is very different from what I am doing or what I must do. 

And I daydream of hiking and sitting in the sunshine in a peaceful state of mind and knocking literature off my ever-swelling reading list and somehow producing prodigious amounts of visionary writing and traveling to fabulous places and cooking for myself and getting the ball rolling on future -- but palpable and substantive -- long-term plans (like a career?!). 

An awful lot of the current tasks set before me feel like chores from which I try to distract myself, and somehow I always feel a little bit behind, and a little bit angry at myself.

And my Bible sits on my desk collecting dorm room dust. And my friend's email sits there unanswered in my inbox. And a Christian life survey I fill out sends me into a fit of insecurity about what I'm doing with my life and how I'm doing it.

I often don't understand myself in these kinds of times. I get hung up on what I don't know -- which is an awful lot -- and don't pay attention to what I'm actually doing, how I'm doing it, and Who I'm actually living for. 

Why does anyone -- fellow college student, savvy adult, anyone -- ever think that "It'll get done" is an appropriate, helpful, or encouraging thing to say to a stressed out individual?! 'It' will only 'get done' when I DO it. Papers don't write themselves, attitudes of passionate learning don't complacently shape themselves, relational and spiritual disciplines don't just cultivate themselves. 

As I struggle to bite back words of irritation when I feel like someone is monopolizing my time or when I'm frustrated with or smothered by another tedious task on a to-do list, I'm reminded that I'm pretty sure I could figure out what God would have my responses be in each moment, and I'm pretty sure they would be ones of graciousness and diligence. And I'm perfectly capable of these kind of responses. Maybe that should go on my to-do list.

I'm reminded that I can still keep seeking and pursuing the idea and truth for which I can live and die. 

Much is asked of us because much has been given to us.

This Day Will Never Come Again

When my family was in Macedonia in January, my Dad's closest friend and mentor passed away. They had known each other for 39 years. Gib officiated at my parents' wedding; he baptized me when I was seven; he buried my Grandfather. And I can't even begin to describe how much he shaped my Dad's thoughts on theology, on fellowship, on marriage, on confession, on counseling. Gib was one of those incredibly rare people whose life is about serving others. There was something special about him, something transformed and transformative. After being in his presence or having a conversation with him, I felt like the "old self" in me -- that dark, ugly, fallen part -- would sort of shrivel up, overpowered by that sense of a "new self" committed to that which God had called me to -- the light, redemption, the truth that refines us and sets us free. This is the power of God at work through another human being, a human being who loves Him and listens to Him. 

I wasn't able to attend Gib's funeral back in Washington, because I'd returned to California and college life, but Dad sent me a copy of the eulogy he would speak at the memorial service. 

"Friendship and fellowship are fundamentally deepened by the knowledge that another human being is truly present with us in compassion, empathy and love," Dad wrote. "I knew that if Gib said he would pray for me, he did. ...I knew that he shared in my life -- a kind of presence that is hard to describe. This quality of service and 'bearing with me' made my world seem a little less lonely and inhospitable..." 

He ended with Paul's exhortation to Timothy: "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it." Like my Dad, I, too, could hear Gib's voice speaking these words. 

This might sound strange, but I remember that when Gib would talk with me, it was as if he assumed I was a good person, as if he trusted that I loved God. And the funny thing was, it made me want to be a good disciple of Christ. It made me be better, run back to the arms of my Heavenly Father. Gib had faith in me because he trusted that I was in God's hands. 

He didn't have to know I hadn't cracked open my Bible in months. He didn't have to know the decrepit state of my 'prayer life.' Because the way Gib spoke about God opened up these floodgates that let others, including myself, speak about God too. It seemed almost ridiculous to doubt God at all when I was around Gib, for Gib's faith was so unwavering, so... fiercely solid. This was evident in his eyes, and it was terrifying and lovely and challenging and calming all at once, sort of like the way we experience God, I suppose.

For months now I've had a little card with a Thomas Merton quote pinned to the bulletin board above my desk. On it is scrawled in bold blue script, "This day will never come again!" 

Now, as I think of Gib, this short sentence is imbued with a new depth of meaning.

Gib ran the race faithfully. I have no doubt he is one of those that God will greet with the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Among the sweetest words we could ever hear.   

How did you spend this day, this day that will never come again? Did you listen to God? Did you love God, and love others because of it? Did the power of God work through you? 

It really comes down to this: 

Did you perpetuate the darkness, or did you loft high the light? Are you honoring God with your daily life and interactions with others, or are you not?

Continue in what you have learned. Continue in what you have firmly believed. Know from whom you learned it. 

As he prepared for Gib's memorial service and the words he would speak there in commemoration of his dearest friend, my Dad told me, "I just want to honor Gib, and honor Jesus." 

There is no doubt in my mind that Dad did, and does. 

And there is no doubt in my mind that I just want to honor Gib and honor Jesus too.