Don't Judge a...

If you didn't already know this, every one is irreversibly screwed up; Christians, Muslims, agnostics, atheists, gays, racists, your mother, your best friend, that dude that just gave you the finger for going before him in the four-way. EVERYONE is messed up. There are no exceptions.

So why do we, all of us, have this completely backwards view that for some reason people who say they stand for a higher cause have to be that higher cause? Why is it, if I say I believe in God that suddenly I have to be perfectly emanating every attribute of his Holiness?

You hate church because of the hypocrites. You are against drinking alcohol because of all the drunks. You won't go green because of the psycho-hippies. When are we going to realize that our choices cannot depend solely on the humans we observe? News flash! Churches are not just full of hypocrites, they're full of human beings. Yes, I'm held to a higher standard because I profess to be a Jesus lover but does that mean I'm perfect? No! The exact opposite. If I was perfect I wouldn't need God. THAT'S. THE WHOLE. POINT. I cannot be God.

God is not who you see. God is not the pedophile priest, the father that has been MIA for 27 years, the book labels and televangelists shouting curses and warnings of Hell. He's not your respected pastor, or your loving grandmother, or prosperity gospel preacher, either. He is GOD for heaven's sake! THERE IS NONE LIKE HIM. Not a single person. We are not to look to the humans of this wack job world to accurately portray the God of the cosmos.

This is not a write off though. As a professing Christian, I am purposefully proclaiming to the world that I represent the God of Heaven. Here's where 'hypocrite' will be thrown in my face. But let me make a point. If an American ambassador has characteristically unpatriotic opinions of our nation, one does not immediately accuse America of being a treasonous, hell hole. In turn, it only makes sense that you can't judge a God by his pastor.

I came across this author recently that I have come to simply adore. I haven't finished a single one of his books, and I've watched just one movie of his but I feel like this man has got it right. Donald Miller tells his story with honesty unmatched in Christian culture. Something he said in Blue Like Jazz (the movie) just got me really thinking. We as "real" Christians can't live like we're better than those who have scarred the name of Christ for someone. We can never out shine the darkness with being cool and acceptable in today's culture. We, as Christians, can't like harmonize with an out of tune world in efforts to rewrite it in the proper key. We are the issue.

 All we can do is apologize, forgive and keep trying.

Different

Have you ever felt yourself being changed? Not so much by any specific event but just as you're driving down a highway you feel that... differentness in your heart. Sometimes it's a good feeling but often it's this ache inside you that says "You're never going to be the same".

I'm on a road trip with my parents, little sister and her husband and son. We just left my father's mother's house. As we're driving, I look at the Texas city-scape and the run-down buildings, all the differentness from my Kansas home.

I look back and see that because I visited my grandmother today, this visit has changed, has affected my view of her. As has every encounter we've ever had and every encounter we will have in the future. I don't think any less of her or anything but... because I visited her today, as my 19 year old self, I will never look at her or remember her the way I saw her when I was say 7 years old. She's not the same Grandma and I'm not the same Erika.

Sometimes I love the new, the changing, the freedom to transform and experience variety. But today I ache of loss. Today I wish I could feel the same I had back then. But I can't. And such is life.

Tapestry

As my count down to last days in Lawrence begins, I look back at the incredible adventure these 3 years have been and my heart... sinks. I'm sickened with this feeling of not-quite-sadness, a feeling like "I miss that feeling" I still have happiness everyday, But it's different, and it always will be.

What does that say about me and my life? What are good times worth if you can't remember them with a smile and warm heart?
Although I'm no longer getting lost driving in circles in between Baldwin City and Eudora, a pizza in my best friend's lap, and the Beatles cranked up on the stereo of my '91 GMC sonoma, I still have adventures like finding an abandoned campsite in the woods by the river and going to Hawaii. Although I'm not back stage wearing an old-lady costume hushing giggles from my cast mates while biting my tongue to hush myself, I still have fun walking down town with the same people, no destination in mind and planning the most adventurous lives we could live together.

The sad feeling of remembering the happy that's no longer there should never keep us from looking back at those times. Because if we don't draw out those memories, we'll forget what a wonderfully tangled life we've lived. Good and bad, hard and flippant, we are given the ability to remember and we should use it wisely.

Even though it hurts to look at what times have passed, look and look hard. Draw out the good and dwell on it. Build on it using moments from today. You should never get so caught up in todays pains that you forget yesterdays faundest memories.

The Lord is good always, always, always. Try to find out how good by looking back. God is amazing. What looks like a tangled mess of events to us, is a beautifully woven pattern to him... and He's just getting started.

No Return

I have a story to share. It’s about a young girl of seventeen. She had been around the world twice, finally fulfilled her dream of being an actress by joining the home-school drama group and was on track with what God had for her… or so she thought. Until every plan, every little anticipated next step was one day completely shattered. She swore to never enter a relationship in high school. She was completely and joyfully content with the idea of being single for many years to come. But then he came along.

It was really nothing. I should have over looked it entirely. But when a chronic introvert deems you an acceptable friend, how do you not feel special? Friends. That’s all we were. We had a few things in common, knew a lot of the same people, but I so often had that little sparkle in my heart when we were together. He seemed so … godly and super smart and he makes the most epic sound effects for his stories. It wasn't long before I started imagining myself with him as a couple, man and wife.

“No, no, no! Silly me,” I’d say to myself so often, “it won’t ever happen because you’re you.” But after a semester of getting to know each other he asked me if I liked him. Honestly, a cow in a book store would be stealthier than I was about my feelings for him. None-the-less he asked and I answered and so began our journey towards togetherness. Almost exactly a year and a half after our first date, he proposed. It was the most beautiful, spontaneous, personal proposal I could have ever imagined. It was perfect.

Three months later I left his apartment in tears. The ring sitting on his dining table, my heart in shreds. It was the second hardest thing I've ever done. A week later we met with our premarital counselors and told them what had happened. They deemed it wise and felt at peace with our decision to call off the wedding. They advised a separation period, no communication, no interaction. “Two months, I don’t know why but the Lord is telling me, two months,” the husband said over and over. So two months we did. As we walked to the car I turned to the man I almost married and said “Two months from today is…was our wedding day.”

And on my wedding day, after two months of nearly nothing, I met again with the man I almost married. He seemed so foreign to me, so different and distant. He and I spoke and … our love for each other never existed. He had never loved me. He said we could be friends, that he’d kind of like to but as tears soaked my face I shook my head. I love him. All I ever wanted was to be everything for him. That wouldn't go away if we were friends. It would just be pathetic because I’d drop everything in an instant to help him in any way I could. No, that day our connections, now burnt and frayed, were cut.

The day that was supposed to be the happiest of my life was then flooded with tears and a desire to be… extinct. How I wished myself not dead but gone: a wisp of air, a rock in the ocean. Just anything that meant I didn't have to feel all of this … the strings of life being severed in so many places. I wanted to run, disappear, never talk to anyone I knew ever again. But I recovered, quicker than I would have imagined.

 I didn't realize how much I truly loved this man until last night. I wondered around my apartment which was originally supposed to be ours and I felt a tug in my chest. Something telling me “you weren't supposed to be living alone here by now”. And I froze. It was the first bit of feeling I’d had in days. I wanted it to sink in, burn like a dagger of ice in my heart so that I could weep and feel the loss. But the more I tried to dwell on it the less it hurt. I even tried imagining the man I loved with a wedding band from another woman. The ring announcing the exact opposite of what I had imagined so many times over. And I smiled! My heart grew warm as I imagined the woman he would marry. I loved her for loving him. I appreciated her for being the woman he could love, the woman I could never be for him.

I miss him sometimes thinking to myself how it felt to be loved and then I’m reminded that he didn't love me. I have nothing to miss. I love him enough, though, that I will adore his future wife. If I could go back in time to that moment when we first connected, I would do it over again if only for me but for him… that moment on the bus I’d lean over, kiss him on the cheek, and never speak to him again. So he could forgo the guilt and heartache of the nearly 2 years. So he could have back the time we spent together. 

I loved without love in return. Funny how much I see God in it all. How much he loves with none in return. God as my lover, that's a new concept for me but I'm excited about it. Pain and lessons go hand in hand. But, that's just how life is. Thank you, God.

Hooked

Today I stumbled upon the perfect phrase to describe the way people can make me feel sometimes.
Grass on a fish hook.
There's a man fishing in the big blue. He's more than ready to catch him the biggest, prettiest fish he's ever seen. He'll be glowing when he brings her home. So he's out there with his line in the water and he gives it a routine little flick of the wrist. There's a tension on the line! Something has bit! He's more than excited as he quickly winds up the line, closing the deal. He pulls it out of the water with a huge smile on his face.
And in an instant, it fades. It is just a clump of grass that grabbed hold of his hook. He spends the following 2 minutes pulling off the grass and throwing it back in the water. Angry because of the wasted excitement and time. Once he cleans the hook, he casts it back into the blue. More attentive to the slack in the line as to avoid another run-in with the grass.
Grass isn't useless. You can easily list at least a dozen different ways grass is wonderful! Some people love it and think its beautiful, others like it but don't care. Nobody hates grass, though. But some how, even the most useful, nice, commonplace thing can be regarded as nothing but a burden. Nothing but trash. It just takes that one person.
Even if you're not a beautiful fish that everyone seems to be fishing for, don't let anyone let you think that you're worthless because you're a clump of grass.
You'll find someone who looks at you and appreciates what you are. Weather it be a friend, a family member, or a future spouse. They will see the beauty in the common place.
Stand tall little grass clump.

The First

I had to share this because it is probably the best written, most humorous bit of liturature I've ever written. This is an un-dramitized re-telling, believe it or not, of my actual first day of public school. Sophomore year. Lol. Enjoy!
I have to say I'm relatively confident, but every ounce of me was nervous and self-conscious that day. I was shaking and having troubles swallowing as I walked into the office and muttered in a half-dead voice, "There's a blue Ford pick-up with their lights on." The office lady was so kind, "What was that, dear? Oh! A car! Write it down here and we'll announce it later." I nodded, assuming trying to use my vocal chords was more trouble than a "yes, ma'am" is worth. I ducked my head as I entered the hallway.
If you ask me today, what my experience was then, I'll use the phrase "like a Disney movie". One thing they always show in Disney movies is the girl getting books knocked out of her hands by the love of her life in the hallways. One thing they fail to portray is the rules of the road, high school hallway edition. You'd think I would pick up on the rules pretty quick; they're basically the same as a highway. But within 2 minutes I seemed to have broken every untold law of the infamous senior hallway.
People were begining to stare. I was flustered and forgot where I was going so I shuffled to the side of the hallway and pulled out my schedule. A teacher noticed my struggles and helped me out. Turns out he was my art teacher! Easy enough. He hooked a thumb to the door and I walked in. High school students are a very different breed. All the girls look different in the same ways. As though there were only 3-5 hairstyles and colors that were acceptable and you could wear whatever clothes you wanted as long as they looked a certain way. The boys are easy to group too. One thing I can say high-schoolers are good at is following stereotypes. The categories were sporty, overdressed, dorky (normal), artsy, and I-don't-give-a-sh** the last of which normally involved a lot of black and skulls and/or cowboy boots.
In my first hour there were mostly sporty and dorky kids. I actually knew a couple of them from soccer and swim team. All I could think was I had to make a good imppression. I officially represented every homeschooler and christian in the entire metro area. The teacher, Mr. Harvey, came in and introdused himself. He was not only the art teacher but also the boys' varsity basketball coach and a darn good one at that. I made it through most of class without talking. But by the time class was over, I hated my teacher. He had rules like "You can only use wood, #2 pencils". I had been drawing with the same mechanical pencil for the past 5 years. There ain't no way some art teacher was gunna make me change that.
I left, worried and stressed as I tried to get to my next class. Geometry extended. I didn't do very well in my algebra 1 class so the counseler placed me in a 'slower paced' class. Oh how little he knew...
I was the first in class. The teacher was a young, kind of round man. Welcoming smile. He knew my name and shook my hand and returned to typing on his computer. I sat down at what has become my signature seat: second isle from the middle, second row from the front. I pulled out my notebook pretending to doodle. In all honesty I was shaking and trying not to show how nervous I was.
The first boy came in. He was tall but you couldn't tell because he was hunched over and wringing his hands. He looked around the room and seemed to be muttering to himself. "How you doin' John!" The teacher, Mr. Worthington, called out. John looked around, "I-I-I don't know..." John sat down two seats away from me and started scratching his desk. In that moment he was dubbed "Creepy John" in my head and I referred to him as such in all my stories.
Next came a girl in a wheel chair and her friend pushing it. The girl in the wheel chair you could hear from the other end of school. Her voice was the kind that made your ears bleed. Her friend was quiet and just laughed politely. They both had more piercings than I've ever seen on anyone in person, straitened gothic style hair and a whole stick of eyeliner. John suddenly growled and stood hunched in his seat as he screamed at the top of his lungs ( and please excuse the language), "CHLOE STORM, YOU BITCH! What are you doing here!?" I shook in my seat. Just then John charged for Chloe and she laughed! "Oh, John, it's good to see you too." He growled again and went for her throat till Mr. Worthington called him off. John dropped his arms and darkly slunk back to his seat. The others came one by one. Chris, a tall, ugly kid with a mole the size of a dinner plate on his neck. Becky, the druggy gone christian-ish. Lexi, bleach blond, cute as a button, brainless sweetheart. And two others, one dropped out of school and the other changed schools because she broke her hand on someone's face.
Then there was me...

The Open Door

As I finish the book "Paper Towns" by John Green, I've come to realize I don't much like reading because... I love it so much.
I thought the only reason I stopped reading for fun was because I started college, but no. That's not it at all. I stopped reading books because I can't stand the feeling once I've finished it. It's too similar to the daily aches and pains of growing older. The sense of "I can never go back." It's the feeling of "it's over." But worst of all it feels like saying Good-bye.

Over the years this has been my bigest fear and heart ache; saying good bye. I can't quite put it to words. You'll never be the same after this good bye. There's the possibility of never seeing that person again or sitting in your favorite spot in that house again. It's leaving the things you've learned to love hoping you'll learn to love like that again.

Good-bye opens the door to never-again. Never have I been so afraid of an open door.