T-shirts and Roller Skates

When I was seven I spent the entire summer wearing a light blue T-shirt that had a rainbow on it, cut-offs, and roller skates. I don’t know what it was about that shirt that made it my favorite, but I know it made me mad when I wasn’t allowed to wear it.  The skates had been a birthday gift and I wore them as much as possible, whether or not it was practical. (Have you ever tried roller skating in grass or on carpet? I don’t recommend it.)  I wore that shirt and those skates until they were far too small.  My mom finally had to intervene and hand them down to my sisters, and that was one of the few times I remember from grade school when I wasn’t happy to be growing.

When it meant handing down a favorite shirt or something as fabulous as red-wheeled roller skates, growing-up could be a pain.  But for the most part, getting bigger was fun.  I loved measuring how tall I was in comparison to my dad or older cousins.  It was exciting to get new gym shoes, to graduate to the next grade, and to achieve various milestones like learning to tie my own shoes or blow bubbles with bubble gum.  When I could finally reach something around the house that my little sisters were still too short to reach, I felt so grown up.  (Of course, they both grew to be taller than me, so that was short-lived. Pun intended.)

I think most of us probably liked the finally getting taller or finally getting to the next thing parts of growing-up.  At some point, though, we’re done getting taller. After that, growing becomes less about physical growth or milestones and morphs into something more difficult to navigate.  There are times we are more in control of this and can grow with purpose, investing in ourselves by pursuing education or life experiences or new opportunities.  Other times, the growing is more chaotic and out of our control, like when the unplanned happens or when are forced to adapt to the results of other people’s choices. 

Whether positive and deliberate or difficult and circumstantial, post-growing-up growing is rarely as fun as getting taller was – especially when it leads us to the realization that we’ve outgrown something.  Be it a relationship, a job, a belief, a practice, or anything else, it can be traumatic to realize that something that has been a part of our lives for years doesn’t fit anymore. Things that used to make us feel comfortable or grounded become constricting or impossible to keep up. We have to start rearranging our lives to accommodate the changes and it can be disorienting and distressing. 

Had I been an especially crafty kid, I probably could have turned that rainbow t-shirt into some kind of keepsake or fashioned it into a practical and functional item.  We don’t always have to get rid of things we grow out of, not if we can figure out how to make them work with where we’ve grown.  Relationships, jobs, beliefs, practices – some of these can be transformed into something worth keeping, in one capacity or another.  A very few of these things are even valuable enough (far more valuable than an outgrown t-shirt, obviously) that we should invest whatever effort is required to keep incorporating them as we grow, albeit in new and revised ways.

But old roller skates?  Sure, when they used to fit there was nothing more fun than zipping around in them, laughing and feeling the breeze in your face.  Yet when you can’t wear them anymore, they are useless.  I suppose you could have them bronzed so you’ll always have them around, unusable and taking up space.  Or I guess you could disassemble them and use all the parts to make some other kind of wheeled contraption, but it really is better to just get rid of them.  Some things would require infinitely more effort and resources than we have at our disposal to transform them, and even if we did, the results would be heavy and impractical.  This is when it’s important to realize there are things you have to stop trying to lug around.  Get rid of those things and stop allowing them weigh you down when you have other growing to do. 

I guess one of the biggest challenges of growing after you’re grown up is figuring out which outgrown things are the t-shirts and which are the roller skates.

On Bonhoeffer and Finding Balance

I’m working through my resolution books (I’ve finished three already) and currently reading “Life Together.”  I started it a couple months ago and feel like I’m barely making progress.  I’ve realized that part of what I love about writers like Barbara Brown Taylor and Rachel Held Evans and Richard Beck is that they leave some room in their writing for discussion.  The voice in which they write is one of explaining an understanding at which they have arrived and inviting the reader to consider it carefully.  Reading their work feels like an invitation to an on-going conversation.  My experience with Dietrich Bonhoeffer thus far is pretty much the opposite of that. 

I know he is revered by many, so this is probably somewhat sacrilegious, but it is exhausting trying to keep my mind in this book while I’m reading it.  Maybe it is the tone in translation or how different much of what he describes is from my own life, but reading it feels similar to attending a lecture where the person speaking begins by saying that questions are not permitted, as there is nothing he will say that is open for discussion.  For the first two sections, I had to force myself to ignore what felt like being dictated to and continue reading.

Thankfully, now that I’ve made it to the third section, I think I’m getting used to it. I even found myself drawn in to the part where he explains the importance of silence.  The larger context of the passage is about silence in the presence and contemplation of scripture, but I also found there some inspiration for my overall pursuit of listening to gain understanding.

“Silence does not mean being incapable of speech, just as speech does not mean idle talk…. There is a wonderful power in being silent – the power of clarification, purification, and focus on what is essential… Much that is unnecessary remains unsaid.  But what is essential and helpful can be said in a few words.”  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together

The silence – the listening for the purpose of understanding, the quieting my mind – it’s really hard for me.  I kind of suck at it, actually. I mean, I just wrote three-and-a-half paragraphs and I'm still not to the point of this post. Was all of that really essential?

When I’m alone, I feel like my thoughts go a million miles a minute.  I’m always writing in my head.  Or thinking of how I should explain myself.  Or trying to analyze situations and figure out how I feel about something.  When I’m having a conversation, I find myself talking until I feel I make sense, often explaining the subject in several different ways until I feel like I get my point across.  Sure, sometimes this is all fine, but mostly that is the opposite of focusing on what is essential or listening to understand.

I struggle to find the right balance.

To use the right words to speak from my heart.

To listen with the intent of gaining understanding.

To write with purpose and weave with words.

And most difficult for me right now: To discern when is the appropriate time and what are the appropriate words for each.  I believe what I should be aiming for with my speaking, my listening, and my writing can be summarized from the Bonhoeffer excerpt above – To appreciate the power of silence and to say the essential in few words while leaving the unnecessary unsaid.

What a simple and overwhelming aspiration. 

Boys and Girls

I have no idea what made me think of this, but as I was doing laundry this morning I thought of my first "real" boyfriend.  I write "real" because I guess he wasn't technically my "first" boyfriend.  My "technically first" boyfriend was a guy in second grade who asked me on the playground to be his girlfriend and then never talked to me again. I remember that guy had red hair and got in trouble for eating glue when we were in first grade.  I guess some things just aren't meant to be.

Anyway, my first "real" boyfriend was a guy I met at my first real (no quotes necessary) job when I was fifteen.  He was a grade younger than me and had beautiful blue eyes and hair like the kid from Terminator 2.  Other than seeing each other at work while we were working, we went on a total of three dates.  Only these weren't actual dates, they were things we planned to do with our friends and show up at the same place at the same time.  Did I mention I wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend?

He broke up with me after the work Christmas party because I wouldn't let him kiss me.  That worked out fine because by this time I had felt guilty enough about hiding the "relationship" from my parents that I'd told them he was my boyfriend and they'd insisted I tell him we could only be friends.

After that, my parents took the approach that if I wanted to go out with a boy for an activity (not a date, I wasn't allowed to call them dates), said boy had to call my dad and ask permission.  I think I've written about this before, so I'll try to summarize.  I wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend and I wasn't allowed to plan activities with boys who wouldn't ask my dad for permission.  It was also very rare that I was allowed to go anywhere in a car with a boy unless other people were present in the car as well.  In fact, I think it only happened twice before I was eighteen, both times to a homecoming dance with a friend, with strict instructions that I was to be returned home immediately after.

There were also several guys who I was allowed to go on an activity with and who jumped through all the hoops of calling my dad and finding other people to go too and then my parents decided they were too old or too fill-in-the-blank and there would be no future activities with those guys.  And my dad would tell them that the next time they called to ask if I could go out.  For me this was all was somewhat humiliating and socially limiting, but I can (mostly) understand why they did it.

All of this led me to thinking about the boys and.... ugh... girls. Or maybe it was thinking of the girl thing which got me started thinking about the old boyfriend thing. Not sure. Anyway, right now, girls are just other kids at the boys' school, other kids who sometimes come over to play.  I don't want to mess that up by breaching the subject too soon, so we haven't really talked about girls other than in the general, respecting-other-people way.  I keep telling myself I have time, but I know it's going to go so fast and we will be talking about girlfriends before I know it.

I'm not going to tell them they can't have a girlfriend.  I'm not going to try to control every decision they make.  But I kind of feel like I don't have a context for how this all works outside of the way I was raised.  And I kind of feel at a disadvantage because I've never been a boy.

As the boys get older, I worry about them feeling pressured to do things they shouldn't or behave in ways other than the ways they've been taught to behave.  I worry about them liking the wrong girls.  I worry about them not talking to me about what is going on in their lives.  I worry about them taking relationships too seriously or not seriously enough.  I worry about them getting their hearts broken and I worry about them breaking someone else's heart.  I just worry.  And I kind of feel that maybe the way the relationships of my youth were handled (for me) didn't fully prepare me for helping them navigate theirs.

Maybe.

Or maybe it did.  Or maybe it doesn't really matter. We're all doing the best we can. My parents were doing what they thought was the best thing for me just like I have to do what I think is best for my kids. It won't be perfect and I'm sure time will reveal mistakes I've made with them and ways in which I've failed them. But I'm doing my best. I hope and pray the way I'm raising them is teaching them to respect and value both others and themselves enough that they can make the right choices at the right times.

And I hope to raise them each to be the kind of guy who wouldn't dump a girl after three kind-of dates because she isn't ready to kiss him.

Not Less or More

I have started many drafts about my church issues.  Almost all of these drafts detail stories about youth group or courtship or leadership or homeschooling or secular music or gender roles or authority.  Most of these drafts start off coherent, but then descend into jumbled thoughts in run-on sentences and emotional ramblings because all the things listed above were completely intertwined during the same period of my life.

Along with those unfinished stories are multiple attempts to write about how those intertwined things have affected me since that time.  I've done a lot of writing about things I've sorted through, from thoughts about why in college I let guys talk over me in class without calling them out on it, to listing out words I didn't mean yet said anyway because I believed they were words I was expected to say because I was a girl.  I've spent a lot of time trying to put into words all the questions and doubts that I learned from a patriarchal view of religion that became part of who I was back then.  I've spent a lot of time trying to explain how I eventually realized that I'd learned to question things I should not question and that I'd learned to avoid questioning things I should.

I’d learned to question my right to speak.

I’d learned to question my right to disagree.

I’d learned to question my heart.

I’d learned not to question contradictions.

I’d learned not to question when someone else “heard God” for me.

I'd learned not to question the notion that I was somehow less because I am a girl.

As much as all of those things still bother me at times, there is no reason for me to share those stories in any more detail than what I've shared in the past and what I've written above.  The details of the stories don't matter anymore.  I’m no longer involved in that community.  I’m not going to try to go back and talk to those people about what happened.  It’s all still there in my back story, but continuing to hash out the details is only going to distract me.   

What I need to focus on now is figuring out what to do about church.  What I'm currently doing with staying home on Sundays is fine for now, but I can’t stay away from community with God’s people because I had some bad experiences years ago.  I can’t keep avoiding it because my more recent (admittedly half-hearted) attempts to find a place to serve with other Christians have been dismal failures.  I can’t keep hiding because I’m afraid of being overwhelmed with my baggage and damaging my kids with it.

I realize communities are comprised of people and therefore no community is perfect.  I’m not looking for perfection.  I am not perfect and would not fit in any community where perfection is the goal.  I know I need to be willing to listen to people with whom I disagree.  I know there will be times my heart or thoughts will be wrong and I need to be willing to admit that and seek forgiveness if necessary.  I know I should always be striving to be a better version of myself and to learn and stretch and grow. And I know now that I need to find a place where all of those things are possible and encouraged.

Yet it must also be a place where my faith questions won’t be met with hostility and where my self-doubts won’t be fanned back to life.  I need to find a place where the way community is lived-out reinforces, to me and to my sons, that my heart is not less because it beats in a female chest.  That my words are not less because they are spoken with a female mouth.  That I am not less.  I refuse to raise the boys in a Church community where they are taught that having a Y chromosome makes them more or better or gives them the right to control anyone else.  We need to be in a place where it is understood that we can all serve and learn and grow together, with all our differences and despite disagreements.  I need to keep looking until I find that community – flawed and imperfect as it may be – where no one is taught they are less.

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female.

For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

-  Galatians 3:26-28

untitled

I catch my breath when
I find these spaces,
the ones opened
in my soul by
all the ways in which
I am irrevocably flawed.

They no longer frighten me
as they did when I
pursued perfect,
yet I’m careful not to dwell
too long.

I pause
to take notice of the contrast
between all that’s there
and all that others see
and all I want to be.

Then I exhale
and resume the search
for truths that
transform imperfections
and illuminate the way.

Willing to be Wrong

I know homosexuality can be a divisive topic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has found that the differences in the way we approach the subject and differences in what we base our views on can make conversations about it heated and painful.  Words like "right" and "wrong" and "condone" and "agree with" and "choice" and "biology" are thrown around and often the discussion ends in frustration... or worse.

I've finally realized that for me, there is no sense in arguing.  From a scriptural perspective, there is so much debate over things like cultural context or which interpretation of what word was chosen over another and then how that was translated that I don't believe I can determine with one-hundred percent certainty what is "right" in regards to whether or not a person should be able to marry another person of the same gender.

And it makes no sense for me to argue over it because I've decided this is something about which I am willing to be wrong.

I believe in God’s grace.  I believe there are things the Church has gotten wrong in the past and that as difficult and disturbing as it is for me to wrap my mind around sometimes, His grace somehow covers even those things. I believe that if it turns out that I am wrong about homosexuality, God’s grace can cover that too.

I believe that telling an LGBT person that I don't agree with part of who they are would be like someone telling me that they realize I am a woman but they just can't accept that part of me.  I believe that telling an LGBT person that they should try to stop being LGBT would be similar to someone telling me that I should stop being a woman. I believe that if being "right" means advocating for or allowing discrimination and exclusion of LGBT persons, I will err on the side of love and inclusion.

I'm not trying to set myself as an example of what other Christians should believe.  That is something they have to prayerfully work out between their own heart and God.  I am simply saying that when I try to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and when I try to make it real in me that His love surpasses all knowledge, this is one of many things that kind of love looks like to me: it looks like treating my homosexual brothers and sisters the same way I would treat those who are heterosexual.

It means supporting the right of two consenting adults to marry. It means acknowledging and opposing discrimination whenever and wherever I encounter it.  It means showing love and working to gain understanding.  It means realizing that even if there are things that I may not fully be able to explain, I'm going to keep working to shift the balance to love and strive for understanding.

Of course, the other part of making this real is that it also means love for the people who disagree with me -- and not just the ones who respectfully disagree.  It means that I must make every effort to show the same respect and the same love to the people who say things that to me sound nothing like God's love or who advocate a position I think is wrong.  It isn't okay for me to err on the side of love for only one group or one school of thought and then behave as though God's love doesn't apply to the others.

My heart must cling to grace for every one of us and pray that regardless of which side is right, His love will cover over it all.

Weave: Wrestling With My Word

I know we aren't even a month in, but I'm already wrestling with my word.  It's difficult to describe, but the closest I can come to explaining how I feel about it is "disoriented."  Weave.  I know it was supposed to be one word for one year, and that was honestly my goal when I chose it. Yet somewhere along the way I realized this can't be just a fling and I began to think in terms of settling in together long-term.

Maybe I'm over-thinking it or overwhelmed or just overtired, but I feel borderline-anxiety when I stop and contemplate how all of it is going to work out.  I guess that isn't completely uncommon at the beginning of any serious relationship. After the initial exhilaration of the newness and potential, the realization that your life has changed forever by simply deciding to see where it goes can give pause to even the most confident of hearts.  It is exciting to think about all that could be, but also difficult not to wonder if it will be able to live up to the high hopes. Identifying the direction to pursue and the effort required has caused me to have similar thoughts about this whole "weave" thing.  It's a bit thrilling and intimidating all at once.

I realize now that I'm not going to end this year with some kind of finished product.  It was a bit naive of me to think that I could string together a collection of months on this effort and end up with a completed "coherent whole."  Admitting this realization is slightly freeing, but also unnerving. Even though I'm letting myself off the hook of having this wrapped up in the next eleven months, I feel an enormous amount of self-imposed pressure to get this year right, to not mess up what feels like laying the foundation of a long-term effort.

I guess that is where the disorientation is creeping in.  I'd entered this as something to live out and write about for a collection of months, but I can already feel a shift in the way I approach so many things.  This year can't be about having reached a specific goal by the time December 31st arrives.  I can already tell it is more about learning how and what to weave every day -- learning to be intentional about what I choose as the overall pattern of my life.  Sorting, reflecting, completing, speaking my heart, helping others, and learning to listen are things I've only begun to delve into and I know there is so much more I still have to learn.

I'm still getting to know my word, still wrestling with how it will fit into my life and how my life is going to look as it changes to accommodate the commitment.  This may be the beginning of a beautiful relationship, but I'm already feeling the weight of knowing we're in it for the long haul.  I'm already feeling the weight of committing to be a weaver.


Anyone else having unanticipated struggles with their word?  Also, I talked my friends Jenny and Jessica into joining me in the OneWord 365 effort.  Check out how their words are going to shape their 2013.