To Love a Soldier

Recently, I have been around a lot of military men. My brother-in-law went off to basic training this January, the couple I live with has 2 sons in military, and my new best friend also has a little brother and father in the military.
Being single and finding men in uniform intriguingly attractive, I began asking my friend what it was like dating army men, having an army dad and brother, and what it was like for her mom. She said, basically, the good-byes never get easier, the distance  never seems smaller, but for some the love never dims.

 I started thinking to myself if I would be able to do that. If I could date and be married to a man who would be deployed for months on end, no guarantee of any contact. I think of myself lying in bed, the kids all tucked in for the night, wishing with all my heart that when I roll over, I will be face to face with the man I love. But it's just me in a king size bed, all alone. Being so close to someone, to love and care for someone so much that I married him but now he's away, doing work and fighting wars.

In your single years you battle loneliness like it's a never ending cold. Being married to an army man... in your heart you're not alone, you're one half of a whole, but he's not with you. It's a whole different level of loneliness because you're not just sitting alone at your desk anymore. You're at a table for two staring at the empty chair knowing exactly who would fill it if only they could be here with you.

As I thought about this feeling, I felt familiar with it. Like I have felt this way before. Then I realized what it was.
Jesus came and stole my heart and vowed through sickness and health, poverty and riches, he would be there. 'Til death do us...cleave. It's like I'm engaged to a man at war! He is waiting for me. As I toil through my life here on earth, he's with me in my heart. He's fighting for me. Although I can't see him and so often I don't even hear from him, I know he loves me and I love him.

 Our wedding day will be the day the war is won. When I can finally be with him completely. You know how Paul says "To live is Christ, and to die is gain." it's like... to live as God's betrothed, to be the army wife, it's all for him. The loneliness, the pains, and the small victories, it is all because I love my Man at war. To die is gain, the war within is won. When I die I will FINALLY be with my Man, my Love, his battle will be won and we can be home, together.

Oh! How I long for the day I will audibly hear his loving voice and physically feel his arms wrapped around me and see his beautiful face! To know that every hint of the threat of loneliness is completely banished forever. To be with my Love! To die would indeed be gain. But I'm here, on earth, alive. And that is no small sacrifice. I will strive to live as a dedicated army wife. Help raise his family, the kingdom of God, and stay true and faithful to him until the day when we will be together at last and forever.

Thank you all who serve our country. The sacrifices you have made are a testament to your heart and dedication. And thank you to all who love and are committed to those who are serving. Your decision and faithfulness have not gone unnoticed. 

The Greatest Question

What if all your games, all your books, your tv shows and sports, what if all that was taken away? What would you do? "Be bored out of my mind" most would answer. But in truth, you'd be bored INTO your mind.

That sounds strange but think about it. What is left once all convenience and entertainment is removed? Nothing but you and your own thoughts. So when we get bored it's nothing more than fear or lack of curiosity to discover the depths of ourselves.

So often I find myself cranking up the music while driving or falling asleep to the tv, not so much because I enjoy it, but because I don't want to be alone with myself. If I'm never alone with myself, how will I ever know who I am or what I feel?
Emotions are strong. There's no denying that. How much more important is it then that we understand ourselves?

I just imagine the unexplored minds of the people around me. There are geniuses among us but we never find them because they never took the time to dig their well of personality. Instead they sit satisfied playing Madden or reading Sherlock Holmes or watching Pretty Little Liars. They sit there completely blind to the inward beauty of the human mind because they're too afraid to be alone with themselves.
Oh the adventures and mysteries within you! Will you willingly lay idle when such a treasure waits to be found?

Don't know where to start? Here, right now, start asking yourself "why?". Why do I enjoy this? Why do I get the butterflies in my stomach when he looks me in the eye? Why is that funny? Why does it hurt?

Why... it's the beginning to all the greatest questions in life.

What is It You Seek?

What is happiness? It's what we all are searching for, the thing that gets me is that we seem to know what we're searching for. Do you know what happiness looks like? Well, I felt God wanted me to find that out. Find out what it means to be happy and what other people think it means to be happy. I devised a few questions and started asking. 

How to be Happy: Barbra

I wish I had taken notes as this lovely woman answered my questions!

Barbra is an older woman who has spent the entirety of the last 3 years in bed.

“The only time I get out of bed is when the EMTs roll me onto their canvas and carry me out.” She has mitochondrial disease, a genetic disorder she was born with. She said when she was younger it showed itself mostly with muscle disease and as she got older she had to be fed through a tube. “I don’t eat any food anymore.” She said. And about 3 years ago her bones began to break. She said in a very short period she had over 15 fractures: back, ankles, wrists, she’s now confined to her bed. But this woman radiates happiness, “joy” as she calls it.

I started with asking her what makes her happy, what gives her joy in life. 

Even if I’d taken notes I wouldn't have been able to write it all down! “Friends, seeing people create things, a new bird at the bird feeder...” And the list goes on. She could probably list a million beautiful things she sees and experiences just from where she lays on her bed. Finding the beauty in the little things, she mentioned, is an important gift. 

How many times do you have these joyful moments a week? 

“All the time! I couldn't count them!” she said with a grin and a throw of her hand. All the time. I answered these questions myself and said a max of 4 times a week! But this woman whose entire world consists of her bedroom says she can’t even count how many times she’s happy in a week.

Can you find this “joy” in tough times? You’ve had your fair share, more than most people.

 She lovingly rebuked me, saying everyone has their own pains. She said how blessed she was for having people around her. “Without my friends, family, and church family, I’m not sure what I would have done. It would have been much harder.” And she said she looks to her Lord for her needs. She had a friend who made a list of Bible verses that were about fear, “Antidotes for fear” she called them. She read them every night and after awhile she said they became a part of her thinking. And how that effected her was huge.

How do you suggest creating more happy moments in your life?

She told me a story of an “ah-ha” moment she had when she was my age. She was in a really troubling time and just down in the dumps. “I was in the line to get food in the cafeteria,” she said, “When I heard two boys behind me. One said basically ‘if you want to be happy you have to learn to give to people’”. She told stories of her different caregivers who’d come in with their own problems and sometimes would just sit and talk to her “I guess ‘cause they figured they had a captive audience,” she laughed. She said when you’re more aware of your mortality it opens your eyes to a lot of things. She realized one day that sometimes it’s her job to help the people that come through her door. “If they leave here feeling better, having a good day, then I feel happy.” She feels like she has purpose in life when she helps others in whatever ways she can. You can’t really separate a feeling of purpose in life, from happiness. Over all she said to be happy you have to make an effort to make people happy, to think about someone besides yourself, to help people. Interestingly enough I got the same response from a friend when asked these questions and I myself as well answered “Invest more in people”.

I really do wish I had recorded or at least taken notes of the conversation I had with this woman. She is truly inspirational. She can’t even eat food anymore and she has more happy moments in a week than I do, is that not challenging or what?

Lesson Number One: Love People.

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.