Sometimes, is Beautiful

Sometimes, is beautiful, the scene out the
dirty motel window: a billboard says
“Report Rape” in wide, poorly aligned
capitals, six columns of tires that
almost look Corinthian flank the side
entrance of a boarded-up auto shop.

All it is is life. Things grow. Things spoil. To
be rotten means to have once been ripe. There
is no rotten without ripe, no beauty
without ugly, no good without evil.

If darkness is the absence of light; if
evil is the absence of good, then rotten
is merely the absence of ripe, and
sometimes, is beautiful: rotten, death,
reminds us that there once was life, a gift
undeserved, unrequested -- a gift I
now hold, precious, in my soul. It is sweet,
ripe, like the perfect peach, but should it rot,
I will not scorn the giver. Is the tree
responsible for the fate of the fallen
fruit? No, but he still gives life in spite of
the rotting flesh around him, and sometimes,
is beautiful.

Hi Honey! Please Don't Come Home!

From the moment we're born, we're self-centered, and yes, I mean from the very moment we are born. I was listening to the radio Tuesday, and I heard that a university recently conducted a study proving that newborns cry out for the manipulation of others around them just days after they are born. Although I've never doubted it before, now I have clinical proof -- I'm self-centered. If you're reading this, you're likely human -- and if you're not, you're a spam bot and need to get off my blog -- so you're self-centered too. That's right. It's all about me. Not really surprising how that became a literal fashion statement.

Fighting against self-centeredness is necessary, and when I say "fighting," I really do mean fighting -- sometimes resisting the urge to please only yourself to live only for yourself can be physically exhausting. Many people I know try -- and with God's help -- we manage to make a reasonable attempt at banishing our self-centeredness, but it's amazing how self-centeredness can creep back into our lives in such little ways.

Basic Training Graduation - Yay!

Like for instance, the phrase, "I wish you would come home."

And that, my friends, is a phrase I  use quite a bit. For those of you who don't know, my husband graduated Basic Training in March (yay!) and is now at Ft. Benning, GA at Officer Candidate School. This means that I get semi-regular and semi-frequent phone calls from him. Near the beginning of those phone calls, I almost always say, "I love you. I miss you. I wish you would come home."

Yep, I'm a jerk.

Here's why. When I tell my husband that I wish he would come home, I am speaking from my own emotions, desires, and needs. I wish he were here with me -- not following his calling, not doing something far greater than both of us combined. It's like I'm saying:

 "Yes, dear, I know God called you to do this, and I know people need your help, but don't you think you should, you know, give all that up and come home and hang out with me? Because, after all, it's all about me. I mean, even you should be all about me, right?"

 
 By saying, "I wish you would come home," I also create tension. I realized this when he responded, "It's not up to me." I wasn't trying to be self-centered. I was trying to show him how much I love him. What I did, though, was make him feel a tension between what he was called to do and the desires of someone he loves.

So, Aaron, I don't want you to come home. My self-centered nature might wish you were here to interact with, to talk with more regularly, to spend time with our daughter, and to make the day-to-day to do a little easier, but I don't want you to come home. I want you to follow the calling on your life, and to be able to focus on that calling. Not only am I proud of you, but I'm thankful for the chance to learn again to put myself aside for something bigger than you, me, everybody -- yes, even you spambots!

Being Human is Hard

This week, my to-do list was a mile long. Between copywriting, grading, teaching, and trying to feed my child, life got hectic. After several nights of only a few hours sleep, I laid down on the grass at the park per my daughter's request and was tempted to stay there. And this morning, after a thirty minute fight to get Charity to use the potty, I was ready to give up. My apartment, which I had paid to have cleaned the night previous, was a wreck. My child was screaming. My to-do list still hadn't been completed, and to top it all of I couldn't find the shin guards, and our soccer game was in an hour.

Just a few days ago, I was teaching a lesson in my Bible class about how God calls us and equips us. He never fails to provide the means for us to do what he has asked us to do. He not only gives us all the unique talents and abilities that we need to fill the purpose that he has set out for us, but he also gives us tools after he has called -- tools that allow us to accomplish a specific purpose.

But why does God so often call us to complete tasks that aren't -- seemingly -- within our skill set? I've often wondered why God gives us talents and abilities, only to call us to do something that has nothing to do with those talents and abilities.

For example, you can put me in a classroom, a non-profit, a planning committee and I'll exceed your expectations. My intuition will kick in, and I'll be able to solve problems without any stress or frustration, but give me a home to manage, and I'm breaking out in a cold sweat. The fact of the matter is that I'm not very domestic. I am easily overwhelmed by domestic tasks. Planning menus, figuring budgets, cleaning, and doing all of this wile simultaneously spending quality time with my child seems impossible -- now throw a career on top of that.

Yet God not only called me to be a mother and a wife, but he called my husband to serve in the Army Reserves, leaving me now in the initial six months of what will likely be many absences. My initial inclination to this was to say, "Why? Things were working out well the way they were. I had help. I was able to operate in my strengths and still follow my calling as a mother and a wife."

But I see two flaws in my logic here. First, following God shouldn't be something we squeeze in. We shouldn't treat God like a vegetable -- choking down what he wants us to do so we can get on to the good stuff.

Second, when I really look at the situation critically, I realize that things weren't really working out well the way they were. Sure, I was getting to "have it all" -- the career, the family -- but it was more stressful than anything. I felt like I was constantly trying to simply keep us together. I was in constant panic/disaster mode.

And this is where the "being human is hard" comes in. Unlike other species, God has given us the capability to play multiple roles. In fact, he has charged us with this -- he tells us that sometimes we must play roles that we are not used to or that we are just starting to understand. Yet, in all these roles, he calls us to follow him -- we are required to play multiple roles but all for the sake of the gospel, for the purpose to which he has called us. In 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, Paul says that he has been called to be all things to all people -- but not to advance his cause, not so that he can "have it all," but for "the sake of the gospel."

The multiple roles we play cause stress -- or rather, discord among the roles we play cause stress. Psychologists also often point to something called cognitive dissonance, which causes stress. Cognitive dissonance occurs when we say one thing, but do something that is contrary.

What I want to suggest applies to my life and perhaps others is that stress comes not from multiple roles but multiple roles in discord. Stress occurs when we have different roles and when all those roles aren't focused on the same thing -- "the sake of the gospel." I don't think we always know why God gives us certain talents and then seems to call us elsewhere. Maybe we needed those talents to develop the talents he would eventually equip us with. Maybe we really used those talents and weren't aware of them. Whatever the reason -- he does equip us, but we have to be open to that equipping.