Learning to Embrace My Puzzle Piece

If you know me well, you know that I enjoy quite a few rather nerdy hobbies. I enjoy quiet, solitary things, and one of them is jigsaw puzzles. I'm sure I inherited this trait from my dad, who used to spend hours and hours on a huge puzzle in our basement.

Tonight at my small group we were talking about the Kingdom of God, and what that means in the here and now. We talked about how we are to let the Holy Spirit flow through us, and when we do that, God is reflected uniquely in each of us. We all play a part in the Kingdom of God, and no one is the same. It's like we're all puzzle pieces.

Have you ever put together a puzzle only to find out that the last piece is missing? It's incredibly frustrating. I once put together a 500 piece puzzle, but there was a problem. There were definitely 500 pieces, but two of them were the same.

When I got to the end of the puzzle, I had an empty space and an extra piece that was of no use to me. As I was thinking about our small group conversation, I realized how important it is not only to realize that we reflect God uniquely, but that we need to realize that we shouldn't try to be just like someone else. It's easy for me to wish I looked like that person or had a more fun personality like this person. But if I change who I am, I not only leave a hole where I was created to fit, but I could steal the spot of someone else. I need to remember to work in my own strength and let other people find their places.

It's like magic

Last night I met with a group of people who is interested in bringing spiritual depth to our church culture. My friend has been wanting to do this for six months, and last night he was vision casting. He said that one time as a part of a fast, he sought to bring God into every single thing he did. So at one point when he was thinking about cars (he's a car guy), he stopped to ask God what He thought. My friend now has a huge network/group of people who are into cars, about half of them Christians.

Today as I was reading some Harry Potter, I recalled this conversation. Somewhat amused, I thought to myself, "I wonder what God thinks of Harry Potter." I realized that our love of magic, our desire to see the amazing, the impossible, is something put in us by God. God spoke, and the universe formed. Out of nothing. Jesus spoke and raised Lazarus from the dead. If we didn't use the word miracle, we'd probably say it was magic. Our love of creating is because we are made in the image of God, the creator of everything.

How cool would it be if heaven is where we get to create like God does? What if instead of painting a sunset, I could actually create a sunset? What if instead of sketching a seascape, I could actually create a cliff and rocks and waves? How amazing would that be? I have no idea what heaven will be like. It's just too much to imagine. But when I paint, when I create, it's a little bit of heaven on earth.

A New Year

It's a new year. Yes, 2013 is newly upon us, but it's also a new year for me, as I turned 27 yesterday. This is the time of year when I take a little time to reflect on the past year and think about what I'd like to happen in the future. To that end, I made a vision board.

I got the idea for a vision board from a blog I read, Woulda Coulda Shoulda. She made a collage out of magazines, and I liked the idea of having something to help focus my thoughts and desires. I brought home some old issues of magazines from work (perks of working in a reception area), and I spend some time paging through them and cutting out whatever caught my eye. When I assembled my collage, I used a few pictures from calenders to get started, then I just started adding things. I have a mix of pictures that I liked--things I thought were pretty or fun or just me--and words or phrases that encompassed the direction in which I'd like my life to head. Here's a picture (click for a larger version):

There is one thing that I purposely did not put on the collage, although it's still sort of a goal of this year. Boyfriend. I thought about it, but I didn't want to make it into something that I check off a to-do list. At my birthday party, however, my friends asked what one thing I'd like to happen in this next year. I thought about it, trying to decide how honest or serious to be, and I decided to just go for it. "I'd like to go on a date," I said.

I have never been on a date. I have hung out with guys who are friends, but I have never been on a real, actual, maybe-this-will-turn-into-something-romantic-down-the-line date. At this point in my life, I don't want to go on a date just to finally say I have. I can't picture myself as much of a casual dater. I have been giving a lot of thought lately to what I can do to get closer to my dream of marriage and kids. My counselor suggested that maybe I should start being more flirty with guys, like maybe post on a guy I admire's Facebook wall. One day I was on Facebook, staring at the profile of a guy I know, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Somehow writing "My therapist told me to post something flirty on your wall" didn't seem like it would get me many dates, so I just chuckled and moved on to something else. After a week of trying to figure out how to be flirty, I decided it's just not me. Neither is online dating. I sort of tried it, but my heart just wasn't in it.

The past few years I've been working steadily on becoming a better me. Because, as Andy Stanley puts it, "Am I the person the person I'm looking for is looking for?" And really, that's what my collage is about. Yes, I want to get married. But what if I don't? I still want to be a better person, a more whole, healthy person. I want to work through my inner demons, I want to enjoy my life and fill it with joy. I want a romantic relationship, but I don't want to put my life on hold in the meantime, nor do I want my happiness to revolve around my relationship status. It's really hard sometimes, especially on the days when loneliness creeps in. Whether or not I find love in 2013, however, I want to find joy and peace in my life. I want to learn to love myself, learn to love my friends, learn more about God's love, and maybe, just maybe, I'll find a little romance along the way.

What Is Normal, Anyway?

I think I have a mouse. I haven't seen one, but tonight I have heard two short squeaks that make me think there is one somewhere in my closet. I was immediately filled with dread, feeling like I just can't handle this. Because at my last apartment, I caught over 40 mice in less than two years. It was horrendous. And this weekend, when I pulled a wooden spoon out of my drawer and found two tiny bugs on my hand, I tried really hard not to freak out. Because at my last apartment, I had a horrible roach infestation for the last two months I lived there (yes, my last apartment building was not a happy place by the time I left). When I see signs of some pest in my living space, I start to panic, because I've seen what happens when they take over. What I try to remember is that it's probably normal to have a few pests now and then. 40 mice? Not normal. 1 or 2 a year, especially when it's cold? Probably normal, though not fun. A few bugs now and then? Normal. I mean, we always had ants in the summer growing up, and I never freaked out like I did with the roaches. In the southern states, it's weird if you DON'T have a bug guy to treat you for various pests.

It's so hard to keep an objective view of what normal is when you're in the midst of something. I remember clearly that I didn't think anything of the roaches at first, just figuring it was summer and it was typical to have some bugs. But then I realized they were roaches, and that there were a ton of them, and all of a sudden it felt so overwhelming. It crept up on me. I can't even remember which mouse it was when I went from "this is annoying" to "this is ridiculous" to "this is NOT right." You get in survival mode, and when you're focusing on surviving, it can be really hard to gauge where you are. When I was first diagnosed with depression, I was relieved to have someone tell me that it was NOT normal to feel as awful as I did for so long. I sort of knew that, but I had felt that way for so long and just kept pushing through that I really wasn't sure sometimes. I should have known something was up a lot sooner, when my grades started to suffer. For me, it was not normal to have learning be so difficult. It was like a flip switched, and all of a sudden I felt stupid in school. I would stare at a computer screen for hours, having no idea what to write for papers.

I think this is one of the reasons it's so important to have close friends. We all need to have people who know us intimately, people who can tell us when they start to see us veering off the path. I think having accountability like this can help ward off certain problems with habitual sins before we get far down that path. For example, if you are the sort to drink alcohol rarely or only moderately, if your friends see you start to drink frequently and heavily they can say something. It could be so easy to justify it to yourself. After all, don't we see on TV and in the movies that college and even high school students do it all the time? Don't we sometimes see grown adults being functional alcoholics presented as somewhat normal? We need people in our real life to give us perspective, to be honest with us. It's not easy. If you don't have a relationship built on trust and mutual friendship, it can be really easy to feel judged and get defensive. If you're hearing this kind of truth from someone you don't know well, it can be easy to say "What do they know, anyway?" and ignore the truth in what they spoke.

I have a friend who lives across the country, and we contact each other about once a week for some accountability stuff. We have a few specific things, but it's nice just to know I can be honest about everything. She's a safe space for me. And when I've been doing things that I'm not comfortable sharing with her, that's a really good barometer of whether or not I should be doing them. Because if I know she won't be happy to hear it, I know I shouldn't be doing it. We've talked about all sorts of things, and it goes both ways. We've also struggled with some of the same things, which helps with the whole not feeling judged thing.

It's a new year. I'm not big on making New Year's Resolutions, but I do like to look back and reflect a bit on the previous year. 2012 was filled with apartment/pest drama, but otherwise it really was a pretty good year. I've made some wonderful friends in that time, I've done a lot of things that I loved. I got to see some amazing shows, I read a lot of books, and I laughed a lot. I'm really happy to realize that my normal has shifted to a place that is mostly contentment and thankfulness. I'm so thankful for my job, my church, my friends, my family. I'm thankful that depression isn't my daily normal, even though I struggle with it sometimes. I'm thankful for fresh starts and forgiveness. I'm thankful that normal can change for the better, that there is always a bend in the road. Who knows what exciting things lie beyond?

Depression

Last week I read this article and sent myself an email reminder to write a blog about depression. So of course I forgot. And then today I was thinking about what I want next week to look like, what I want January to look like, and I started thinking about how I want to interact with my friends right now in light of the depression that's creeping in.

I was diagnosed with major depression in college. It was probably two years of feeling like life was not worth living, of feeling like there was no hope. Getting better and feeling more normal was a long, gradual process. As I look at the past two years, I can see a pattern emerging. Spring turns into summer and I'm enjoying life. I'm involved in activities, I'm seeing my friends on a regular basis, and things are good. Fall rolls around, and I love the cooler weather, the beautiful foliage, the golden sunlight. Once winter starts to set in, though, especially around the time we set our clocks back, I start to love life a little less. It's gradual and in dribs and drabs, but a bad day here and there becomes a bad week, and then I seem to have a bad month or so before spring hits.*

Everyone has good days and bad days. That roller coaster of emotion is just part of being human. When depression starts to set in, it's different. Where once I would wake up in the morning feeling emotionally recharged after a bad day, depression keeps the negative emotions rolling from one day to the next. I don't bounce back very quickly from emotionally difficult or draining situations. I have a much harder time joking with friends, having light conversation. Everything feels heavier. I will probably enjoy myself at events and when I'm with my friends, but often the happiness is gone by the time I reach my car. I feel like crying a lot more for no reason, and even though I can usually hold it in I'll get choked up more frequently. Sometimes my car is the only place I can let it out.

One of the biggest ways depression affects me is how it hits my faith. I constantly wrestle with my faith, whether I am in a season of health or a season of depression. I question, I doubt, I get angry, I long for neat and tidy answers that I can understand. When I am depressed, the joy goes out of my faith. I go through the motions because I know I can't base my faith entirely on my emotions.** I show up at church, I volunteer, I try to still be there for others. Leading is doable but difficult. I walk a very fine line between faking it and being genuine but not negative. It is hard. One thing I have said before is that I cannot hope for myself when it feels like this. I have to rely on my friends to hope and believe for me. That being said, here are things that are helpful for me when depression is dragging me down:***

1. Don't constantly quote scripture or talk about how everything will get better. Some people will disagree, but I find it insincere and grating. I don't need a friend to pull me out of my depression. I need a friend to walk through it with me. For me, that means letting me talk when I need to or not talking at all. I will be less likely to open up if I feel like I'm going to be brushed aside and fed a cliche (no matter how true the cliche may be).

2. Ask how I'm doing (but only if you really want to know). I hate trying to figure out how to be pleasant around people when I'm not doing well. People constantly ask, "How's it going?" but don't want to know if the answer isn't, "Good." I have yet to find a good way to answer vaguely that things could be better without making the entire conversation awkward, and I just hate being insincere and saying everything's fine when it's actually the opposite.

3. Pray for me, but not necessarily with me. I know that prayer is helpful, even when it doesn't feel like it. Sometimes all prayer is to me is knowing that my friends think I'm important enough to bring me up to God. I've found that when I'm feeling really depressed, it is hard and sometimes even painful to hear people speak hope over me. It really depends on the day and setting.

4. Spend time with me doing little things. I'm never one for huge events. It's just not my style. When I'm depressed, my desire to withdraw and become a hermit increases exponentially. A few weeks ago I spend an afternoon with a friend doing nothing. We watched movies, ate snacks, talked, and we made wearing sweatpants a requirement. That is the kind of thing that recharges me. I love going to dinner or coffee one on one, or just watching TV and doing nothing. Low-key things are best, especially since depressions saps my energy even lower than normal.

I don't often talk details about depression. We don't talk much about how we feel in my family, and when it comes to my friends I don't want to be the person who is always dragging things down and becoming a burden. It's tough to find a balance of leaning on friends but not pulling them under. I know that depression comes and goes, and it's just going to be part of my life. I hope that people continue to become educated about mental illness so that there won't be a stigma about it. So many people think they know what it's like and they just don't. If we could just love each other and accept that people need to get help in different ways, that would be a huge step forward.****

*It's so obvious as I write this that I probably have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). My therapist has been encouraging me for the last few winters to invest in a lightbox. Might be time to start saving up. Also, my cousin Rachel typically footnotes her blogs, and I realized that since I tend to be a lengthy aside person, I should totally do it, too.

**I hear repeatedly that faith cannot be based on emotion. I don't entirely agree. I think our emotions are tied to our belief, and if our emotions are constantly being dragged down, it can be really hard to believe things that are opposite of how you feel. I don't think there's any simple answer for how to deal with "desert" times.

***Everyone is different. With all the different personality types and different stages of life, of course depression will look very different for people. This is based on me, personally.

****Some people need medication to feel better. Some people need extensive therapy. No two people are going to respond to treatment the same way, so it's important not to pressure people away from help they need. I've been in regular counseling since late 2007, and it's helped tremendously. I've tried a bunch of different medications, and while none of them worked for me, I know people who felt better just weeks after starting meds.

Christmas Spirit

I am firmly in the camp that says Christmas shall not be celebrated before Thanksgiving. Period end of story. In previous years I've carefully pushed away all my friends' premature Christmas cheer. This year, however, the waiting to celebrate has continued.

I'm not sure why I'm not really in the Christmasy mood this year. I helped my mom decorate the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, and I loved seeing all the handmade ornaments. I haven't put up my own tree. It's actually still in the trunk of my car from when I moved in August. I have zero decorations on display in my apartment. And I doubt I'll get anything up before Christmas actually gets here.

Tonight I went shopping for an ugly Christmas sweater. I have a church party next week Friday, and if you know me you know I'm gung-ho when it comes to dressing up. I found an amazing outfit, but I bought some extra things to embellish, like 9 yards of sequins (not an exaggeration). I also found a gift for one of my aunts, and I was happy about that because it's so hard figuring out what to buy for people (except my sister, because I always find about a billion things she'd love).

I think this year Christmas will be less about the outward stuff and more about the little things. I'm excited to give presents to my family. I'm excited to take a whole week off of work and see extended family that I haven't seen since last Christmas. And I am enjoying a little Christmas music now and then. I'm missing my church's big Christmas service because I'll be out of town, and somehow it seems like I'm just missing all the big things I usually do. It's an unintentional change of pace, but I think it might be just what I need right now. This Christmas season I'm focusing on spending time with my friends and family and enjoying the freakishly warm weather.

Fog

Tonight I went to a worship night at church. It was still going when I left, because my attention span starts to short out after an hour or so, but it was really nice to just forget everything else that's going on. A lot of times on Sundays I'm volunteering, so it's times like tonight when I can just focus on God and really immerse myself in the worship.

It was foggy as I drove home. I recalled hearing that there was a fog advisory on the radio, and as I drove down the road, there were thick patches of fog and then patches where it was clear except for a haze around the street and traffic lights. As I drove across high places, I could see the fog gathering in low spots. And I thought how lovely the fog is, how mysterious, how quiet. I remember once in high school there was such thick fog that you could barely see the building from the student parking lot. Everything sounds different when it's foggy, everything looks softer because of the blurry edges. I have tried once or twice to paint fog, but it eludes me.

I think fog is a pretty good representation of the presence of the Lord. Sometimes it's thick and practically tangible, sometimes you can't feel it around you but you think you see it far off. Sometimes you notice a haze of it as your gaze wanders. It's not a perfect metaphor, but drifting through the mysterious fog reminded me of the wonderful mysteries of God's presence.

Definitions and Memories

Last night I was given the (optional) task by my counselor to writing about the topic of feeling like nothing. Vague, broad, and open to my interpretation. So I've been musing over what feelings I associate with the times I have felt like nothing. The words that come to mind first are embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated, and rejected. Not fun words.

I like to be correct in my language usage. Well, most of the time, anyway. I like to use the exact right word, and I have been known to use a thesaurus while writing in my private journal so that I could be very precise with expressing how I felt. I realized that while we often will ask people to share a time they were embarrassed, we don't usually ask for a story about when someone was humiliated. I decided to look up the definitions to see what nuanced differences there were.

According to dictionary.com, "embarrass" has a few meanings, the one I think most common is "to make uncomfortably self-conscious." "Humiliate" means "to cause (a person) a painful loss of pride, self-respect, or  dignity."

Whenever I'm asked to recount an embarrassing story, I struggle to remember something. It's not that I haven't been embarrassed, it's just that in the grand scheme of things, they don't stick out. However, I can remember in painful detail times when I felt humiliated. I don't mind the times I've blurted out stupid things or when a friend teases me and I know they're only teasing. I don't even mind the time I threw up all over the floor in college in front of someone right outside our classroom. People understand that. People understand that sometimes things aren't in your control. The things that hurt? It's the times when I felt people were judging me and finding me "less-than." It's those times, when you feel like people are laughing behind your back, when people look down on you, that are the ones that you remember. And you remember the feelings that go with it.

I don't really have a point to this, I guess. Just thinking about how it's the things where you felt strong emotions that you remember the most. Unfortunately for me, it tends to be the negative emotional events that I remember with more frequency than the positive things. So I make it a point to remind myself about the people who care about me, about the nights when I'm up late with friends laughing so hard I can't breathe. At this point in my life, I've reached a period of stability. Now I want to work on those deep, icky things that were too hard to work on when just everyday stuff felt hard. It's not fun to dredge through that stuff, but I think it's really important to deal with your baggage so that it doesn't follow you around your whole life.

Why arguing is never going to save someone

I am an external processor. I think best when I'm talking, which means that more often than is probably acceptable to admit, I end up talking to myself. I can make better sense of my thoughts when I say them out loud. Sometimes that makes journaling or blogging hard, because I can't organize my thoughts as well if I don't talk it out, but once I talk it out, I don't feel the need to write things down as much. Tonight I had a great conversation with a friend, and I wanted to write down some of the thoughts that came out.

I'm not sure it would be entirely accurate to call me a skeptic. I think it would be more fair to say that while I do have some firm beliefs, I also have a lot of questions. I used to feel really frustrated and sometimes guilty that I had all these questions but no satisfactory answers. Lately I've come to a place of being at peace even when I don't have the concrete answers I'd like.

Tonight I went with a few friends to a showing of a documentary called "Hellbound?" It was basically a look at some of the different schools of thought on hell. Three main schools of thought were shared: eternal torment, annihilation, and universalism, although annihilation was touched upon only briefly. I found it fascinating to watch people talk about their different views, the different ways the Church has viewed hell throughout history, and the different cultural and political aspects of power. It was a well-filmed documentary, and I think it's a great conversation starter. Here are some of my thoughts after watching the documentary and a Q & A with the director (Kevin Miller) and one of the interviewees (Greg Boyd).

I kept thinking about how my pastor quotes a verse from Romans 2 about how it is kindness that leads to repentance. People don't change their lives because someone tells them how horrible they are. I know that some people will pray for salvation out of fear, but I don't think true transformation occurs when people are just looking for fire insurance (a safeguard against hell).

There are so many things I don't know. When I was younger, it really freaked me out when my black and white world started to crumble. In college my experience of the world didn't line up with some of the things I'd always believed, and it created great cognitive dissonance. I didn't know how to believe that God loved me and had a plan for me when life was so hard, so painful. I had so many questions and no answers, and I felt guilty that I even had questions.

Over the last year, and particularly the last six months, my faith has matured and deepened, and I think that is in large part due to a shift in how I view the questions I have. I feel free to ask questions and admit that maybe I'm wrong. I used to think that if a non-Christian friend asked me a tough question and I didn't have a definitive answer, it would turn them away from God and it would be my fault if they went to hell. I used to get genuinely panicked at the thought of trying to save all my friends and family from hell, because if it was real and it was awful, I had to save them, and of course it was my job to save them. All I knew how to do was argue that I was right about heaven and Jesus. But arguments don't save people. Judging people doesn't save them. Why would they want to enter into a religion that is largely known for judging and condemning people?

Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God with everything you have and to love your neighbor. If I think about that in the big picture, I feel so free. All I have to do is love Jesus the best way I know how, to learn and grow and seek him, and then love the people around me. Treat them kindly; offer them help and support. Really, if all Christians stopped fighting about the details and just started loving people, don't you think the world would be a different place? When I think about the hot-button sin topics of today, I wonder if those are really the things that matter. If we stopped looking at certain sins like we're looking through a telescope and instead took a step back and looked for ways to love each other, wouldn't that be an amazing place to live? I'm not perfect. Far from it. And even though I've grown a lot, I'm never going to achieve perfection. So why do I expect other people to achieve something that I can't? Why is there an expectation of instant perfection instead of valuing the process and journey? Maybe it's enough if someone loves Jesus and tries their best to follow Him. We're never going to agree on the perfect list of things you have to do and say or not do or say in order to get to heaven, because that's not how grace works. If we're all works in progress, why don't we stop nitpicking the journey some people end up taking as long as they're walking towards Jesus? Maybe if we walked with them for a bit, we'd see how hard their walk is and appreciate that they're doing their best.

I have discovered that I love reading Rachel Held Evans' blog (www.rachelheldevans.com). Some of the things she writes or links to are uncomfortable. I don't agree with everything. But she's not afraid to ask tough questions, to ask that we read the Bible for what it is, not what we want it to be. Even when her views seem controversial against the mostly conservative views with which I'm accustomed, she treats people with dignity and respect. The comments from her readers spark discussion and thought, and I've learned that I do not have to agree with every point of a person's theology in order to respect them as a human being. I don't have to be definitively right about everything. When I enter into a conversation and I'm not put on the defensive right away, there is room for me to truly listen and reflect. Reading opinions that differ from mine has helped me to explore if my beliefs are based on things I've been told to believe or things I've read and discerned for myself. I actually found myself feeling more respected and elevated as a woman and as a person after I allowed myself to discard some beliefs I'd had simply because that's all I knew growing up.

I hope that I continue to ponder some of the questions and issues that have popped up lately. I want to be open to the possibility that other people might have insight where I do not, and I want to continue to learn to love people whether they agree with me or not. If I really trust God, then I want to trust that He is in control and doesn't need me to run the world for Him.

Move in together? Here's why I say no.

I don't think people should live together before they get married. Yes, my first reason is because of my faith, but after that comes a slew of statistics about why living together before marriage really isn't the great idea we're lead to believe it is.

A recent example from my life: I've been staying with various friends since I had a bed bug scare, and one of them told me the futon on her porch was already made up because a friend had gone through a bad breakup and needed a place to stay. I found out that I knew this friend, and it's the sort of thing where they really should have broken up a few years ago, but it wasn't financially possible because at the time one of them was a freelancer and wasn't making a lot of money. She stayed in a relationship largely because she couldn't move out.

People will make whatever choices they want, and that's their right. Someone I care a lot about recently made the decision to move in with the significant other, and I'm not happy about it. I still love that person and won't behave any differently, but it makes me sad that people don't know the facts. Moving in will not fix a relationship. It won't change the problems. And the statistics show that it's not beneficial in the long run (higher chance of domestic abuse, less satisfaction sexually, among other things).

Maybe you're not religious at all. I don't expect the fact that it's not God's ideal to mean anything to you if you don't follow God. I would just say to do some research. Check out some studies and educate yourself. Popular society (media, especially) is wrong.

(I'm not looking at any stats as I write this, but I've seen them footnoted in a book I read recently. If you're interested in more info, I can dig out the book and look up the info.)