43: practicing life

Sometimes I surprise myself.

Sometimes I embarrass myself.

Sometimes I disappoint myself.

I don't know about you, but I can think pretty highly of myself. Especially when there's no experience to base my opinions on. I'm not going to do THAT. I know how to handle that SO much better! I've already conquered THAT sin.

And then there's times when I wonder.

I've been keeping Lisa-Jo's post "When Your Temper Scares You--Some Suggestions for Defusing" in my inbox because, in a moment of fearful honesty, I thought I might need to read it.

It's kinda scary to think how my latent temper might flare when I have kids.

Actually, it's really scary. Because I don't know how it will show itself.

Reading her blog post reminds me that everyone is sorta in the same boat. We're all practicing life. We're learning as we go. We all make mistakes, shocking, embarrassing, disappointing mistakes.

And damaging. And crawl-into-a-hole-and-die before I hurt anyone else mistakes. And take-me-now because I am such a sinner mistakes.

But God doesn't take us, and we don't crawl into a hole. We're not allowed to give up on practicing at this very real thing called life.

Lisa-Jo wrote:

I won’t carry the baggage of yesterday’s explosion or last week’s near melt down into tomorrow. I will practice grace on purpose.

I want to pray, Lord, don't let me need grace!

And then I want to cling to the hope that I am not the only one who does or will mess up and that a cloud of witnesses are likewise clinging to Him and His grace.




Now to figure out how to extend that grace to others....

42: it's not fair

I don't think it's fair for kids to hear their parents fight.

I don't think it's fair that the young women who always dreamed of nothing else but getting married and having a family are the ones who are not doing so and the ones who wanted a career are the ones that are.

I don't think it's fair when a person has a wonderful life and then one event alters it forever.

But . . . life isn't about fairness, is it?

And life isn't about everything being perfect or about me deserving everything to be perfect.

I can say that we live in a messy world and that's just how it is. But when the trite saying hits a little too close to home. Ouch! THAT'S NOT FAIR!

And then I take it out on God and rail against His sovereignty. Like a prisoner shaking the bars, demanding answers.

Ok, step back, Michelle.

Do you believe? Do you trust?

It's not about your little perfect world. It's not about ideal circumstances.

You've been saying He's your Rock no matter what.

And now, when things don't go according to your standard of fairness, will you give up on the idea that God is sovereign? That He is above all this turmoil? That you have to transcend this messiness down here and put your faith in the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God?

Go back to your idealism, Michelle. Not the idealism of perfect fairness, because, really, it just hurts to demand everything be fair. "Fairness" is like a knife; you use it to hurt yourself and you use it to demand answers from the grand silence.

Go back to what you believe. That it's not about you. It's about God. And God is good. And He has proven Himself over and over throughout many generations.

Now go and act on your belief. Remember your beliefs.

Civil War reenactment

41: letting go

Piles of books on my bed. Books to get rid of. Books to extricate myself from because they are becoming a burden instead of only a delight.

I love books, love to collect books, LOVE to shop for great deals. (25 cents? How can I say "no"!)

The other night at three in the morning God showed me that it's not just the space of three bookshelves in a rather small bedroom that is making me feel claustrophobic but the spiritual weighing down of incoming materialism. For example, could I get rid of all these if God called me to a foreign mission field? No.

So I got out the chopping block, hoping for God's strength to cut off that which I love and value and have emotional connections to.

I remember how my mom bought me that beautifully vellum-covered book, and it ended up not being a very good biography of Amy Carmichael, but I've been trying to give it a second chance for, oh, maybe 10 years.

I've idolized The White House Cookbook for a similar amount of time, guarding its gold leafed pages from abuse while not using it.

I have a lot of pride of pride of possession and noticed that I base most of my collection on someday/one day/what if.

What if one day I finally become a history teacher?

One day I'll be married.

Some day I'll want to read these Agatha Christie's even though right now I'd rather watch the BBC movie versions.

I need these Dickens books because they are a good addition to my library (even if I don't enjoy reading Dickens).

Won't my husband be impressed when he sees I own a book arguing against pacifism?

Via my library, I've built up city walls around me of my supposed wide-variety of interests. As I tore them down, I redefined myself and felt a bit like a blob. I'm not interested enough to read that? Or that? Or that?

But what about these Ravi Zacharias apologetic books? Am I going to get rid of all apologetic books and make myself look like a heathen who doesn't care?

To get rid of good history textbooks on the sheer acknowledgement that I will never be motivated again to read over 300 pages of size 8 font, even though the info is valuable?

I just don't need them right now.

The reality is that I'm not a mother or an apologist or a historian or even a "great reader."

So many good books. And I had to say "no."

God gave me grace. I sold/donated almost two shelves worth yesterday at a sale. And I still have how many shelves full of books? One purge at a time.

40: what a coinkadink!

One of those one in a thousand happenings where you meet a person (ok, a guy) that you've heard tell of (not in a matchmaking sense but in an informative sense) in person and feel like they (he) are looking at you for the next hour

 

and then you come home and go, wait a minute, I think he was one of the guys that sent me a message on ChristianMingle, so you go on said online dating site but don't recognize him,

 

and then, tonight, you go back on and click on the handsome guy's profile that sent you a message, look at his other pics, look at his profile info, FB google the guy's name you met in person, and go, OH YES, that was him, same picture, I just didn't recognize him, and he HAD sent me a message on ChristianMingle before we met,

 

so you wonder if he recognized you from online all that time we were in the same building...but too much time has passed for you to really care or feel too awkward but the coincidence is still rather funny,

 

and as he's divorced and you have already generally ruled out divorced men because you don't know what to do with Matthew 19 (is that the right chapter?),

 

it's not one of those girly OOOOOOOOOOHHH moments. :)

 

Like I said, one in a thousand.

39: life update

Neglectful, neglectful, neglectful.

So you know how this blog is supposed to center around online dating? Well, it might have to veer off because my life right now is revolving around preparing for the new school year.

Last year at this time I had just finished my first year teaching in a (Christian) school and was eagerly planning improvements for the next year.

I took a 6 week online grad class on classroom management. I went to a homeschool educational swap and bought up loads of children's books. I discovered Pinterest! And I broke down each subject by month and brainstormed field trips and activities.

Enter July 16.

I was told they couldn't afford to hire me back.

I wrote in my journal,

Losing a job is a lot like breaking up with a boyfriend. You know you are where you're supposed to be (God knows), but you are still emotionally at sea, unsure of the future. We went to Costco afterwards. Found the perfect stepladder for my class for $20. Saw how much vacuums cost. Didn't look at the supplementary school books display.

Thousands of minutes spent preparing for next year. . . .

Lord, what now?

All that time spent propelling forward to a point in time, only to have that point in time obliterated and all the propulsion for naught.

my friend and I's idea for a history/science wall garden for next year

$5 bench from a thrift store - isn't it darling?

About a month ago I got another call from the administration asking me to come back!

And I feel I've come full circle.

This year has been GOOD. God provided a terrific tutoring job with a 2nd grade boy who needed help with reading and behavior. I have learned so much that I wouldn't have learned otherwise, about how to be the authority figure and how to teach reading. Just lots of stuff I wouldn't have learned if I had spent the year juggling multiple subjects and multiple students.

God also had to break me of materialism and idolatry last summer. I was obsessing over the coming school year, which is why I didn't know what to do when the rug was pulled out from underneath me. I had learned too to enjoy shopping and was getting a thrill from buying stuff. But until December, when I got a second job, I had to stop being so fancy free because it was cutting into my savings.

Now I'm back trying to figure out how to healthily obsess over school. And also I'm trying to spend more time with God, because I didn't bolster my spiritual life this year like I should have, and I need to be strong in the Lord if I'm going to do a better job this year than two years ago.

God's also confronting me again about materialism and how although I've enjoyed buying bargains, all the stuff is weighing me down.

So basically, all day long I'm thinking about sorting children's books or painting a frame for the kids' artwork or washing the footlockers my grandma gave me for classroom storage.

But I'll try to get back to blogging. Because I also love writing, and if I don't write, I won't grow in it, right? Write. Right.

Later, gators.

FMF: View

So it's Sunday. So I've already written a post. So I've decided to do a Five Minute Friday post late anyway!

The topic: View.

It's all about your view, isn't it?

Does my view take into account that my Father is completely good and is in control and is working everything out for my good and His glory?

Does my view take into account that what is my Father's view of good may not be my view of what is good, but that's okay because what I really want is what He wants?

Does my view include believing God? Like, really believing Him.

Beau: "We're going to get through this. I'm not going to leave you. It'll work out."
Girl: "I know. I believe you."

Does my view include believing God, no matter what the circumstances may be?

And if it hasn't, if my view has faltered, if my view has lowered into the AAAAAHHHH! frame, am I willing to repent and move the binoculars up to the heavens? Am I willing to take the binos off the macro/microcosm of today and say, ok, I was wrong, but I can readjust, and take out the telescope and say,

"God, I believe in You. If injustice hits me tomorrow, I will still believe You. I will believe You to be good. I'm not going to stop."

Sometimes I have to remind myself of my life's force by re-proclaiming my faith in Him.

P.S. God, please help us.

38: don't read this post!!! (unless you're in, like, a really girly mood and don't have time to watch a chick-flick)

I have a subject on which I wish to muse, a subject which has no value for the reader, and yet I take it up with all the fervency of a girl and a writer and none of the purpose of particular edification.

The subject being chemical attraction.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of going to a play of Jane Austen's Persuasion. I love Persuasion. I just do. I love the melancholy sweetness of 8 years of waiting, loving, without hope. As I watched the play, I loved it for another reason too.

The romantic tension.

You know when you like someone, and you wonder if they like you, and when they are standing close by there's just this electrical zing-zing happening between you even though you might not even be talking to them?

Or when you glance their way, and they are looking at you, and your stomach flip-flops as you jerk your head away?

That is the glory of Persuasion.

Ok, so Captain Wentworth is trying to spite Anne. He was rejected by her after all.

But really, every moment that they are in the same room together, there's this tension. They are so super-aware of each other. And sitting in the audience, I was a basket case of nerves, clenching my fists in anticipation when they actually had to interact.

It's the beauty of not-knowing.

Did I say there is a beauty in not-knowing? Yes, there is.

It's the beauty of subtlety. It's the beauty of flirting. It's the beauty of tension.

And it's that beauty that I wonder if I would miss if I actually did meet a guy online. I know why he's on, he knows why I'm on. It's simply a matter of seeing if it'll work (beliefs, personality, values) before starting the "relationship." I would imagine everything would be rather upfront.

Unexpressed, pre-relationship attraction, ie. crushes, are juvenile and pointless . . . yet glorious when you're in your late 20's. I'm not sure if I want to give them up in favor of a straightforward relationship. (This is me being emotional over logical.)

Excuse me while I wax poetic.

Crushes are like tornadoes. Heaven temporarily touches earth, destroying all sense of order in its path, sucking all of life into its vortex, and you can't decide whether you want it to continue to wreak havoc (because it hurts so good!) or if you want it to go away so you can continue on with life (since we all know that 99.9% of crushes go nowhere in the long run).

Crushes are bursts of magic upon which love seizes and works a miracle.

Chemical attraction, romantic tension, not-knowing--*happy sigh.*

"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed. . . .

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. . . . Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you."

 

--Persuasion, chapter 23

 

P.S. I promise to return to some more sensible topic when next or next-next I take up keyboard and screen.