Month: May 2012

Categories Reflections

Quote: Your feelings are not truth

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I was cleaning our office while watching a sermon clip (gotta love multitasking–cleaning is the only reason I can excuse taking time out of my day to watch any of those videos bloggers link to or embed), when I found last year’s notebook.

Rifling through the pages, I found a quote that I certainly needed:

“Remember, your feelings are not the basis of truth. God’s Word is our authority. What He says is true, whether or not we feel it. The more we understand God’s Word and live by it, the more our feelings will reflect His character and love.”
~Robert S. McGee

God’s Word is truth. Reality. Life.

May I understand and live by it–and, in doing so, be conformed to the image of Christ.

Categories Reflections

Swinging furiously

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I’ve always been one for wild mood swings. In high school, I remember flying high on the town one night–and then lying on the kitchen floor the next day thinking I would be better off dead.

I’ve evened out quite a bit in the past dozen or so years. By the grace of God, I’ve grown more responsive to His Spirit–and less inclined to follow my emotions.

But stress and sleep deprivation have a way of increasing my emotional sensitivity. Which means that I’m currently just one drop away from overflowing.

So I hear something disappointing that I would normally brush off? Now I’m close to tears. I hear good news and I’m through the roof. I stop to think and I’m in the depths of melancholy.

The difference between my 27-year-old-swings and my 15-year-old-swings is that my teenage melancholy had plenty of time to produce poetry and self-reflective writing–whereas my 27-year-old self barely has time to eat, much less write poetry.

Nevertheless, I rifled through my notebook today and found one little bit from the past five months that might be considered poetry (actually, it’s just writing in verse, not poetry at all).

My brother is getting married tomorrow
I had a tough day at work
I am single
Other women don’t have to work

I am tempted to look at this life
and feel sorry for myself
Poor me, without anyone
With only a job that drives me nuts
Poor me. Sad me. Woe is me.

The snake sinks its fangs into my flesh
Its poison courses through my veins
Poor me. Sad me. Woe is me.

And the prophet cries out:
“Lift up your eyes,
Behold the curse.”

Shuddering, I lift my eyes
to the snake on a pole
a Man who waited longer than I
who died single and still waits for His bride
A Man who had a task no one could covet.
The Cursed Snake upon a tree

I gaze on Him, the poison drains
My suffering’s small
compared to His
My suffering worthwhile
so long as I am His.

Since the day I wrote those words, my work has only intensified. My loneliness has only increased. It’s not just that I’m single, it’s that I’m alone. I feel isolated from family, friends, coworkers. I’m in a struggle none of them can grasp and I don’t have time or energy to be or have “fun”. I spend time with people, but it’s rarely heart-nourishing time. Sometimes I wonder if I have a heart to be nourished anymore, or if I’ve dumped it all into my work.

The feelings that inspired my melancholy words have only grown–the poison entering my heart so it can be pumped through my veins.

Do I really dare open my heart to you? I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want to poison you too.

So I cover my pain with smiles and the assurance that someday this will end. Maybe in six months, a year? Then I can be again.

Working to keep the pot from boiling over, working to keep you from seeing the emotion roiling beneath the surface.

Now I’ve let you see.

Please, please…point me to Jesus. ‘Cause when I get stressed and sleep-deprived, I have a hard time pointing myself.

Categories Everyday Life

Archived

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Every morning, the e-mail arrives in my inbox “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, Here are your ___ matches”.

Every morning, I delete those messages unread.

Perhaps I’m an odd duck among eHarmony subscribers, but I don’t initiate contact with guys.

Why not?

‘Cause I’m there to be found, not to find. I’m interested in marriage–and I’m a complementarian.

So I ignore those messages unless I get the one saying “So-and-so wants to get to know you.”

Then I’ll log in and communicate with the ones who want to get to know me.

Except that sometimes, when I get bored, I’ll read through the matches who haven’t contacted me, archiving the unsuitable ones.

After all, I reason, I’m doing those guys a favor–decreasing how many matches they have to sort through.

So…what does it mean if you’ve been archived?

  1. Your profile does not evidence that Christ is the center of your life.
    The one thing you are most passionate about should be Christ. Always. It’s wonderful that you love your family or your job or hard work or sports (okay, maybe I have a harder time with that last one). But you should be most passionate about Christ. If you aren’t, you aren’t for me.
  2. You don’t want kids
    I want kids. You don’t. I don’t know why you don’t want kids but I do know that I could never marry a man who didn’t want kids. Why lead you on?

There you go. That’s why I archive.

Short list, huh?

I keep it that way on purpose.

A profile is a tiny snapshot of someone’s life. There’s no way that I can know enough (apart from the above) from the few questions on an eHarmony profile to give a definitive yes or no to a guy.

Which means that I ignore bad grammar (or at least try to) and give the guy a chance. After all, I know people who have terrible grammar who are nonetheless wonderful people.

I ignore a silly choice for the last book you read and enjoyed. Truth be told, I know some very intelligent, well-informed people who aren’t big readers. And that’s okay. I’m not going to nix you on the basis of that.

I ignore mentions of video games and sports (even though I’m not much of a fan of either). So I’m not a fan. That doesn’t mean that my boyfriend or husband couldn’t be (well…honestly, this one’s hard for me. I’d have to see what being a fan of sports and/or video games looked like in order to determine that would be okay.)

The point is, there’s a lot I DON’T know based on the eHarmony profile. Which means I’m not going to be picky about getting to know guys initially.

Turns out, the more I experience in life, the more I agree with that one guy in that one book our college/career women’s Bible Study read last summer.

The most important area of compatibility is Christ.

29 Dimensions may increase the odds that your “matches” will be compatible in that one area–but really, it’s that one area that counts.

Otherwise, you’ll be archived.

(In the course of writing this post, I discovered one more automatic archive item. If your favorite author/preacher is Joel Osteen, you’re going to be archived. No ifs, ands, or buts.)

Categories Reading My Library

It’ll “B” Forever

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I was inclined to despair as I thought of how long I’d been working on the “B” picture books in my library’s collection. Surely I’d been at it at least as long as it had taken me to complete the whole “A” section. And I had only gotten to “BO”.

Then, I counted up how many books I’d read in the B’s already–and came up with 635. That’d be 179 more books than are found in the entire “A” section.

I feel a little better about how slowly I’ve been progressing through the B’s.

Here are a couple of my recent favorites:

If you’re not from the prairie… by David Bouchard
(Images by Henry Ripplinger)

Where you’re from makes a difference. It affects who you are, what kind of person you become. You can’t truly know a person until you know their background, their context.

I am from the prairie.

And if you’re not from the prairie…

“You don’t know the wind,
You can’t know the wind.

Our cold winds of winter cut right to the core,
Hot summer wind devils can blow down the door.
As children we know when we play any game,
The wind will be there, yet we play just the same.

If you’re not from the prairie,
You don’t know the wind.”

There’s plenty more you don’t know if you’re not from the prairie–plenty more that David Bouchard shares in this lovely tribute to prairie life (modern-day prairie life, not just the romanticized “prairie novel” life).

Paired with the lyrical prose are stunning scenes of prairie life painted by Henry Ripplinger, a prairie boy from Saskatchewan. Highly worth reading and seeing.

Blue Moo by Sandra Boynton

Frankly, I was a bit baffled by this book when I first opened it up. It wasn’t a story book. It–I couldn’t figure out what it was. But then I popped in the CD and fell in love. The book has illustrations and original lyrics to 18 hilarious songs, played in a variety of styles from doo-wop to blues to tango.

In the style of the Beach Boys’ iconic car songs, “Speed Turtle” includes:

“It is compact, streamlined, built to last,
shiny and green and so incredibly fast–

It’s a speed turtle! Whoa-ho!
It’s a speed turtle! Oh, no!
Man alive, it’s in overdrive. Go, little turtle, go go”

And my favorite song of all, “Your Personal Penguin” has me singing:

“I want to be your personal penguin
I want to walk right by your side…
I want to be your personal penguin from now on.”

This book/CD combo is too great not to share, so I pulled it out and popped in the disc when my friend Gena and her children (third and fifth grade?) were over one evening. C and N (as well as Gena, Anna, and I) had a blast singing and dancing along, all the while enjoying the illustrations and enjoyably laid out lyrics.

I’m contemplating buying myself a copy.

Reading My LibraryI’m still reading my way through the children’s picture book section of my no-longer-local library. For more comments on children’s books, see the rest of my Reading My Library posts or check out Carrie’s blog Reading My Library, which chronicles her and her children’s trip through the children’s section of their local library.