Greif: @ The Redeeming Things

Well, it seems I am a liar. Or, at least, I was wrong last April when I said I would be back in a month.

This summer was hard. I had no interest in writing, none at all, it was too painful to think deeply. But then school started, and as a writing major, I had to write again. So I wrote. I wrote pages and pages, and none of it was for an assignment. I had to drain out all the summer's stagnant waters to get to what was clean and pure. To heal.

Out of that came a blog post for my internship. I came back to the blogging world today on The Redeeming Things, a blog for the Twin Cities written by a collaboration of Christian writers from my church. You can find the blog post here.

It begins:

"C.S. Lewis concluded that, if God is good, suffering in this life must have a purpose. I fall under the category of one who believes God is good. Experiences sometimes challenge that mentality, but recently I have been learning the truth and comfort in C.S. Lewis’ words. This semester I had to read A Grief Observed for a class, and it enlightened me even more in my personal confrontation with grief.

You see, this summer I had a miscarriage.

The whole summer went by. And I didn’t realize how depressed I had become..." [read more]

Goodbye for Now

Hello world.

Before I say anything more, I would like to apologize. I am super cranky today, and I just can't handle my emotions. Aside from getting virtually no homework done last night (the school's computer server was down), I also found out that my husband has to work on my birthday. He asked for the day off, but so many people asked for that day off that, well, someone had to work. That someone is him.

I'm really having a hard time accepting that I'll be home alone eating Ramen on my couch on my birthday. It doesn't seem fair. It feels like a punishment. Will it steal my joy? No. But I have to say, I'm feeling discouraged.

So, instead of pretending all is well and writing something poetic and hopeful, I decided to just tell it like it is this morning. Nobody's life is perfect, and we can't expect them to be. Next month, when I'm looking for ways to make money by writing during a few weeks without employment, I won't even be thinking about this day.

I apologize because this is my last post for about a month, and it's not a great one. I have to finish this semester strong, and then I plan to get some hours in with the schools. So I'm sorry to leave you this way. If you haven't been around for long, please go back and read some of my previous posts. If you like what you read, please hit the little "follow" button. Or subscribe. You will be notified next time I post, and that way you won't miss a thing once I'm back. Also, it's always encouraging to gain more followers. You guys push me to do better.

See you in a month.

Our Story: The Wait

My husband and I waited until marriage to have sex. That's practically unheard of these days, I know. Sometimes I wonder if we only waited for fear of being caught in an awkward situation, but then I remember the times we had opportunity but parted ourselves anyway. There is one time in particular that frequently comes to mind, and occasionally I feel we should win some sort of medal for purity - though most of the world would just call us foolish.

One year, before my man graduated from high school (I was in my second year of college), I went to Orlando with his family. At the resort, I shared a room with his sister, and he and his brother slept on the hide-a-bed in the living room. On our last day there he and I were sent back up to the room for a forgotten key to return it to the office. While in the room, we thought to double check for any other forgotten items. We also, since we were alone, essentially locked in the room, took the opportunity to kiss without his family members making comments. Two young people rarely kiss in private without going horizontal, so it follows that we ended up on one of the beds, he on top of me. 

This, of course, would have been the opportune time for us to tear each others' clothes off. And oh, we wanted to. Between kisses we talked about how exciting it would be, and how no one would know. After all, society expected it of us anyway, right? Who would ever believe we didn't? 

But we stood up, grabbed the spare key, and returned it to the office. Then we crawled into the van with the rest of his family, unembarrassed, and watched the resort disappear into the endless line of Disney-themed hotels and chain restaurants. That's my favorite part.

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
    that you not stir up or awaken love
    until it pleases.

               Song of Solomon 8:4

String Theory

I'm posting a little late today because Mr. Wonderful and I both have a day off. We spent the extra time this morning sleeping in and eating a big breakfast. It was so nice. But now it's time to register for next year's classes. Senior year! I haven't decided if I want to go on to grad school yet, but I'll definitely leave that decision for the future. Far in the future.

I'm using the free internet access at McDonald's right now - kinda sketchy, I know -  so I'm a little anxious to get offline. Here's a flashfiction piece I'm working on for a class portfolio. I've really enjoyed writing these, so I hope you appreciate this one.

String Theory

            She didn’t care for love. Or boys, for that matter. She hardly had time for friends, and at her age, who needed a boyfriend anyway? She didn’t need a reason to dress up to be told she looked perfect.

            Her mother had her in enough extra-curriculars to keep her busy through college and beyond. She hoped to break free during college. Not that she didn’t enjoy the city chorus choir, volunteering Thursday nights at a local food shelter, voice lessons, piano lessons, lessons for every stringed instrument, enough to make her her own small orchestra.

            She loved knowing she was admired, especially when her mother was outwardly approving of her work. But it got to be tiresome. Each night she would come home just past dinner-time and instead of sitting down to relax, she would have a mountain of homework. Honors English literature, pre-calc, chemistry, and with the expectation from her mother and instructors that she would practice any one of her instruments for at least an hour each day.

            It was during one her of her longer practice sessions, in fact, that she broke her violin. She had felt the urge to do it before, but feared the consequences, the disappointment, and always talked herself out of it. At one o’clock in the morning in her basement practice room, driven by fatigue and pure frustration after getting the same two measures of music wrong for fifteen minutes, she did it. With both hands she raised the violin over her shoulder and swung it like an axe. Wood splintered into a thousand pieces in the most awful symphony she had heard from the three-thousand dollar instrument.  She stepped over the mess and went upstairs to bed, sleeping in fits.

            Her mother found out the next morning when she went to the basement to collect music for the next Sunday’s church service from the practice room.

            “Do you have any idea how upset I am with you?” was all her mother said when she flipped on the bedroom light.

            The satisfaction of the wood splitting musically in her fists faded like the final note of a cello concerto solo. Her parents used part of the college fund to buy her new violin. She would just have to make up for it in scholarships, her parents told her.

            She held the delicately crafted instrument, running her hand over the fingerboard and feeling out the strings before dragging her bow across them. The instrument shrieked to life, a voice more sure than her own.

Secret-Keeper

When I was senior in high school I once planned and hosted a surprise party for a friend. Actually, the friend was my ex-boyfriend, but we were good friends for awhile after our break-up. I remember how hard it was to get the chance to talk to his friends without him around or making him suspicious. It was so hard to plan the party without letting it slip that we were doing something so special for him. But the reward was that he really was surprised, and felt so good to have all his friends work so hard just for him.

Have you ever had really good news that you're not allowed to talk about... at least not yet? If you've ever been invited to a surprise party, you know how hard it is not to talk about something that's exciting. For me, well, I have two exciting secrets that are not yet to be revealed.

How does one go about not gushing about exciting news? For me, I think I may sort of over-compensate by being perhaps overly friendly to the bearer of the good news. When I find myself having a hard time not telling anyone I just contact the person whose secret it is to be told and talk to them about it. The problem with this is that when the conversation is over I then find myself bouncing with anticipation to tell others.

What I've realized, though, is that secret-keeping pays off when done for the right reasons. In my present situation, it's not actually my news to tell, and as excited as I am to talk about the news and make plans, I've committed to being faithful in keeping the secrets of others.

Get ready, because in the next few weeks (or in about a month), there will be an explosion of fantastic news on this blog. I am so excited to share with you the wonderful things happening in the lives of my family and friends.

I'm curious to know: how do you keep a secret, well, secret?

Pointing the Finger

Bad moods have the tendency to keep us from seeing things in the proper perspective.

Today is one of those days.

After reading Dr. Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages before getting married, I became a firm believer in love languages. I had thought that mine had something to do with getting one-on-one time with loved ones, and found that mine was Quality Time. So after a week of my husband working all night and a weekend of sharing him with friends and family, I was excited to spend the day with him on Monday. However, when he called work to get his hours for the week he found out he was scheduled to work, even though he had asked for it off. I hate to admit it, but I was inconsolably disappointed.

I wasn't angry with him, it wasn't his fault. After calling about seven different people who claimed they couldn't work his shift, he ended up going in and leaving me home alone for the night. This isn't the first time our plans have been cancelled because of a scheduling mistake or a last-minute phone call. Mostly, I felt let down by these people who he cancels plans to work for all the time, but who then won't do the same for him.

I've been thinking a lot about our culture that has sold itself to an entitlement mentality. Everyone tends to put themselves first without really considering others. Even I'm guilty of this more often than I would probably like to admit.

So, as much as I would like for someone to go in and talk to my husband's coworkers about teamwork and dedication, I realize that it's important for me to think of where I could give more of myself as well. It takes the effort of individuals to make a team function at its best. And I am my own responsibility.

Taste and See [for Yourselves]

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.
Hebrews 5:12-13

You know what I hate? I hate that this world demands evidence of every claim made by anyone, but that few actually go out to seek that evidence on their own. In our culture of instant self-gratification the "give it to me now" attitude often gets in the way of truth. This is frequently displayed in our culture, but I see it most often when I am sharing my faith with others.

It's no secret, on my blog or anywhere, that I am a Christian. This is never really a problem with anyone until I show my faith isn't only emotional, causing me to act on compassion and "do good", but also intellectual. Actually, people seem to most often have a problem with the intellectual part of Christianity.

Last week, for example, I found an image posted by an atheist friend on Facebook that depicted a timeline of how the Bible was made. The cartoon was not terribly inaccurate, many of the dates for different steps in the translation and compilation of the Bible were correct, but the motive and many of the "facts" were just completely wrong. I left a comment pointing out a specific part that wasn't right and said that the person who created it had obvious knowledge of events but was not educated in them.

Here's the deal: when I point out to people that things they believe about Christianity and the Bible are wrong and try to clarify meaning, they just don't believe me. For years I thought that they didn't believe me because I was uneducated and they thought perhaps they knew more about my faith than I did. However, I'm now seeing that even though I go to a Christian school and study the Bible, theology, and the history of Christianity, people still call BS when I try to clarify to them what true Christians believe. Now, instead of saying that I just don't know enough about what I believe, people will tell me, "that's just what they want you to think."

The past few years, this past year in particular, I have had the wonderful opportunity to learn under people who have traveled to Jerusalem and other parts of Israel to walk where Jesus walked and see the culture and the land first-hand. I have met men who have learned from the world's top theologians, and I have heard the testimony of a professor who worked hard, even lost a job, to bring the Dead Sea Scrolls to the public. The truth is out there, evidence is out there. Go look and see for yourselves!

Because the evidence is not hidden and the history is no secret, I do not apologize for my unfaltering faith. I will continue to unashamedly speak what I know, not because I merely believe what someone told me, but because I have done research. And I will continue to absorb as a sponge everything I need to know, from a historical and literary perspective, but also from one of faith in Him who makes the blind see and makes all things new.