Things I Don't Want to Do

Things I don’t want to do: Second semester of law school.

A part of me feels adolescent again given all of the emotional ups and owns that I’ve undergone in the last two weeks.

And then being flat on my back sick the last two days has given me ample time to think about this. I seriously don’t remember the last time I was too sick to go to school for more than a day….So I’ve been thinking. I’ve had plenty of time to think about how hard it is to be here right now. And if I’m honest with myself it’s for more reasons than just law school.

Twice in my life that I’ve considered not getting on an airplane. Coming back here after a (glorious) month repose from school of law was one of them.

I sat in the airport and January 15^th, 2015 and thought about all the reasons I didn’t want to come back. In short? This is hard. Just kidding, but half of me wants to jump ship and move back to Paris and study literature again…at least I am good at language and I think living there would be a lot less difficult this time around, right? My law school friends have a theory that I’m a Russian spy. That also sounds good right about now. (Too bad my Russian knowledge is limited to the Cyrillic alphabet and the phrase “I’m not Russian, I’m American”—which, by the way, I think I’m going to retire because I’m not sure that phrase will do me any intercultural good right now.)

The other half of me is so completely convinced I’m supposed to be here and am committed to seeing this through. I’m not going to quit, but I’m not going to hold back on being honest either. Right now I hate this and I just don’t mind saying it.

So, Thursday, January 15^th, I almost didn’t get on another airplane. While I was considering this, I actually walked by the gate at the Portland International Airport where I last wrestled with the issue. Gate C1. It was right before I moved to Alaska indefinitely:

It was the Fall of 2009 and I had just spent another summer working on the train in Alaska felt a strong direction to move there year round and substitute teach. At that point I thought my career was going to take the teaching direction. Alaska had more opportunity for me than Oregon and I was feeling the need to stay one spot for more than 4 months. I was emotionally exhausted from all the traveling I had done at the time and just needed a winter’s respite. God seemed to think Alaska was the place. I had flown home after the train season for my brother’s wedding and now I was dreading going back.

Part of the dread was some drama I had inadvertently been involved in over the summer that I didn’t want to return to, but much more of it was, frankly: fear. Fear because I really didn’t know many people there and I didn’t know how much I really cared to be in Alaska. My dad and my sister had driven me to the airport after 3 wonderful weeks home in Oregon and with tears in his eyes Dad hugged me and said “you know you don’t have to go.” Gut wrenching. As I sat at the gate his words replayed in my head. He was right. I was going to live month to month at a furnished place and there was no signed lease. Substitute teaching was entirely by my initiative. I was going to be driving my best friend's car that she would otherwise just store there for the winter. I actually had no commitments taking me back to Anchorage.

But then I sat there and contemplated all of the conversations I had had with others where I had challenged them to not settle for good, but to aim for best. That is, God’s best. All of those times I had counseled them to not fear and to listen to Him and DO IT. That fear is no way to live.  And I hated the realization that I had to get on that plane if I wanted my life to back up all of that advice that a part of me (at the moment) regretted shelling out. So I, not unreluntantly, boarded the aircraft. I remember that internal wrestling very clearly, a wrestling match that actually continued well into that winter in Alaska.

Then I remembered not just that fight with God in the airport, but also another fight when I met some girls at my new church in Anchorage, acquaintances that were very clearly divinely orchestrated. I cried and banged on my steering wheel on the way home that day and yelled at God that I didn’t want to get to know anybody new. That I was relationally exhausted. That I was going to obey and do it but, since He wanted my candor, I was letting Him know once again how I felt about the whole ordeal and how I just didn’t understand “what the hell He was doing.”

It’s funny to think back on those moments and fill in all of the life that has happened between those raw moments of “candor” and now.

Alaska’s now home. It has become so much a part of me that it’s actually a part of what makes being here so hard now. Funny how that works. And those girls that I didn’t want to get to know—but did? They are indisputably the biggest reasons that place has such a hold on me now, mountains aside. My life is there now. And actually, I had the utter privilege of being in one of those girls’ wedding over break.

All of this kind of flashed to the forefront of my mind and I sort of chuckled to myself while gazing at Gate C1 in PDX. “If you’d only known, Traci, how much you had waiting for you.”

Yeah, it’s true. If I had only known, that fight with God probably never would have happened and I wouldn’t have looked back or second guessed whether or not I should use my boarding pass. But then I never would have known what it meant to truly follow, either. I got on that plane in sheer trust that God knew what He was doing. And I was right.

Perhaps it was a Divine nudge that I had to walk by that gate to get to my flight this time. As much as I still didn’t really want to, I couldn’t help but see and feel the parallel with where I’m at now.

In many ways I find myself with a lot of the same questions that I did in that Fall of 2009: “God, what are you doing? Are you sure I’m supposed to be here? WHY? How long?” But added this time is “are you sure about this law thing? Because so far I’m not good at it. At all.”

I guess this is one advantage of getting older, you have past experience to draw upon. It almost doesn’t even need to be said that both this thing I’m doing now and Alaska were and are obviously new and game changing chapters in my life that were both clearly directed by Someone besides me. The problem is that there’s almost nothing “obvious” about it when you’re walking through it. “Obvious” in this case comes only in that annoyingly perfect hindsight.

I was articulating some of these thoughts to a friend, and telling her the story about how I almost didn’t get on that plane to Alaska and then almost didn’t again this time. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said “looks like you’ve got some of your answers, there.” She’s right. I may not like the answer to the slew of questions that I listed above because the answer sounds more like a non-answer, but it’s the right one nonetheless: “JUST TRUST ME.”

It only really takes but a fleeting moment of painful self-honesty to know to the core of me that if He knew what He was doing last time He knows what He’s doing this time, but it’s okay if it doesn’t hurt any less this time around.

So, there we go. There I go. I can choose to trust and know that God is going to blow me away with all he has in store for me here and in the field of law, or I can keep asking questions that He has already addressed (repeatedly) and live miserably daily. He will provide community, He will weave all this crazy together to make sense—there’s nothing about what’s going on here that Him “improvising” in my life. He’s hammering stuff out of me and working in me all the while He’s carrying out His promised design for my little, crazy, wild, amazing but humble life. Because He’s good. And thank GOD I don’t have to question that. Miserable is no way to live. Fear is no way to live either. But it strikes me how both of those things are often deliberate choices.

So, this time, I’m not going to be mad about who I meet or what I have to do, I want to just have eyes wide open and my heart too. God forgive me when I don’t, just know I want to. (And can I please stop being sick?) Let’s do this thing. 

Tertullian

If only the church--in the most broad (read: Biblical) sense of the word truly lived up to this:

I shall at once go on, then, to exhibit the peculiarities of the Christian society, that, as I have refuted the evil charged against it, I may point out its positive good. We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence God delights in. We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace, for the delay of the final consummation. We assemble to read our sacred writings, if any peculiarity of the times makes either forewarning or reminiscence needful.

However it be in that respect, with the sacred words we nourish our faith, we animate our hope, we make our confidence more stedfast; and no less by inculcations of God’s precepts we confirm good habits. In the same place also exhortations are made, rebukes and sacred censures are administered. For with a great gravity is the work of judging carried on among us, as befits those who feel assured that they are in the sight of God; and you have the most notable example of judgment to come when any one has sinned so grievously as to require his severance from us in prayer, in the congregation and in all sacred intercourse.

The tried men of our elders preside over us, obtaining that honour not by purchase, but by established character. There is no buying and selling of any sort in the things of God. Though we have our treasure-chest, it is not made up of purchase-money, as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are, as it were, piety’s deposit fund.

For they are not taken thence and spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in the prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.

But it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death. And they are wroth with us, too, because we call each other brethren; for no other reason, as I think, than because among themselves names of consanguinity are assumed in mere pretence of affection.  But we are your brethren as well, by the law of our common mother nature, though you are hardly men, because brothers so unkind.

At the same time, how much more fittingly they are called and counted brothers who have been led to the knowledge of God as their common Father, who have drunk in one spirit of holiness, who from the same womb of a common ignorance have agonized into the same light of truth! But on this very account, perhaps, we are regarded as having less claim to be held true brothers, that no tragedy makes a noise about our brotherhood, or that the family possessions, which generally destroy brotherhood among you, create fraternal bonds among us.

One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives.

Our feast explains itself by its name.  The Greeks call it agapè, i.e., affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy; not as it is with you, do parasites aspire to the glory of satisfying their licentious propensities, selling themselves for a belly-feast to all disgraceful treatment,—but as it is with God himself, a peculiar respect is shown to the lowly.

If the object of our feast be good, in the light of that consider its further regulations. As it is an act of religious service, it permits no vileness or immodesty. The participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer to God. As much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as befits the chaste.

They say it is enough, as those who remember that even during the night they have to worship God; they talk as those who know that the Lord is one of their auditors. After manual ablution, and the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing, as he can, a hymn to God, either one from the holy Scriptures or one of his own composing,—a proof of the measure of our drinking. As the feast commenced with prayer, so with prayer it is closed.

We go from it, not like troops of mischief-doers, nor bands of vagabonds, nor to break out into licentious acts, but to have as much care of our modesty and chastity as if we had been at a school of virtue rather than a banquet. Give the congregation of the Christians its due, and hold it unlawful, if it is like assemblies of the illicit sort: by all means let it be condemned, if any complaint can be validly laid against it, such as lies against secret factions.

But who has ever suffered harm from our assemblies? We are in our congregations just what we are when separated from each other; we are as a community what we are individuals; we injure nobody, we trouble nobody. When the upright, when the virtuous meet together, when the pious, when the pure assemble in congregation, you ought not to call that a faction, but a curia—[i.e., the court of God.]

Tertullian--Carthage, North Africa c. A.D. 200

Healing

Been thinking about "healing" since it's my word for next year. Been thinking about how undergoing healing is often far, far more painful in the onset than just suffering the thing that needs healing. It's excruciating. But it's this thing, that onset you have to get through and out of that pain God makes something more amazing than it could have ever been had that injury never existed. It's fact. And then you come out on the other side and wonder why you ever thought it would truly be easier to just hurt and never heal.I've also been thinking about how healing doesn't just happen to us, usually. We have to want it, and we have to go get it. This is the harder part of the equation for me, because so many people don't want it bad enough. Makes me lose faith in humanity a bit. Anyway, it's almost 6am and I've been awake since 2am. Words happen.

A difficult day’s made of difficult hours
Of a minute to minute fight not to cower.
The difficult knows its place in time
The difficult knows when it’s meant to chime.

“Count it all joy” is easily spoken
But harder to know in the midst of broken.
Healing can come, it does occasion
But inflicts itself not without pervasion.

Healing is often as painful as pain--
But worth the journey of eventual gain.
So healing is truer for the hurt and harrow
Of suffering its slings and terrible arrows,

Never fully grasped the joy of dawn’s break

If we know not black night’s gaping ache.

-T. Emerson

Caution: Profanity

When I am stressed or in pain I find that I think and I write. I know this is something common to most writers—if not all—but it never ceases to surprise me. Kind of counter intuitively, what often comes out is a theme that I did not even realize was playing in the inner workings of my soul until I see it in writing. This note is another surprise.

A conversation has been playing in my head for the last few weeks. It struck a chord with me, but with everything going on and exams I had set it aside. It is becoming clearer now (not that things have calmed down). ;)

“Do you like that song ‘All About that Bass’?” asked a new friend.

“I like the Jimmy Fallon version.” I laughed. “But everything’s better with Jimmy Fallon. But no, I don’t really like the song—mostly the message.”

“Why? I thought the message would be empowering to women?”

“Not really.”

I had actually never really articulated this or realized I felt this way until he asked:

“It’s frustrating because I feel like ‘feminism’ talks out of both sides of ‘her’ mouth; on one side she doesn’t want to be objectified, but on another she seeks to objectify women in a new and different way—in this case by ‘celebrating’ bigger size. In the end it’s still objectification and it bugs me.”

After pausing for a moment, I added, “And I don’t think that’s how beauty should be used.”

Seemingly puzzled, he then asked how I thought beauty should be used. Of course he did, and I slightly regretted the addendum. I shrugged the question off by saying that it was a long conversation, but apparently this conversation has been going on inside of me ever since.

Here it is:

I hate the way our society generally looks at women. I have never really considered myself a feminist until this last year. I’m not really sure what changed specifically, but I guess the deeper my faith gets I really care about the way God meant for our sexuality (and read: genders) to be. Male or female. That said, I also hate the way our society views men. It’s ugly. We generally tend to "empower" women at the expense of men and that's a recipe for social distaster if you ask me. What a vicious circle that sets into motion. There is some serious polarization between the genders that is unhealthy and ridiculous and downright defiant of God’s idea for us to value and celebrate each other: strengths and weaknesses and  what we have to bring to the table for each other.

I know that is all incredibly vague, but I do not feel that it is worth the time to go into detail. And if anyone were to disagree with that statement, I would love to have a conversation about it. I am certainly up for input.

But I think the direction the conversation took inside of me was to ask myself just exactly how do I think beauty should be used and what am I doing now that speaks to that? Also, one caveat before I proceed: this perspective is from a 30 year old single woman, that has never known anything but that, so I am allowing for my perspectives to change in the future should that status ever change, but meanwhile I hope and strive for an outlook as objective as possible given my humanity and relationship situation.

I have long remarked that a woman has incredible power over a man. That is not meant to be yet another gender polarizing statement. I have also long remarked—indeed HOURS of conversations with girlfriends bear testimony to this fact—that a man has inordinate power over a woman too. I am simply choosing to address my own gender because that is the only one I can change. Really, I am the only one I can change.

Anyway...a woman has incredible power over a man. Said power cannot be divorced from the idea of “beauty,” whatever that may mean to you. Beauty, I believe, cannot be confused with sex appeal though they arguably overlap--and should, I think, if we’re really biblical about it. But this beauty, I have noticed, has an immense and inexorable potency to hurt or to heal. It is downright scary. I am particularly passionate about this because I have consistently seen this power used by women to meet needs in their lives that sometimes, if not often, they did not even know they had. Coming from a woman: it’s diabolical. And I’m not going to lie, I’ve done it. I do it. And it's so hard to not give into it.

I mean, to wit I have not wrecked anyone’s life or home or whatever, but there are still moments when I know I “wield” this power. I hate it. I hate it and I love it. But this beauty has an at least equal, if not greater power to offer healing to the world and community around it (her), and to call the people she knows and loves around her to be who they are supposed to be, and to become better people. To call one another to integrity. What I mean is, if I’m honest with myself, I truly believe that a beautiful woman (and please note, it is the furthest thing from my heart to invoke or praise physical appearance by the usage of that word here, that is not what I am trying to address) can use her “power” inherent in God-given beauty to call others to be who God wants them to be. And if they don't know God: to call them to be just better people and think about the deeper questions.

Idealistic? ABSOLUTELY. Crazy? Maybe. Do I believe this? Yeah, I think I do. I have had this conversation a few times before with various people of both genders, but I have never before had the courage to put it to writing. And there the conversation continues and forces me to ask myself why I have never wanted to commit to such a lofty ideal in writing.

The answer in the rawest, most honest of terms may seem to mildly defy the very notion of integrity to some, but nevertheless let me just tell you that my experience of trying to live this ideal out is FUCKING HARD. And it just gets harder. Trying to be a woman of “integrity” (okay, I know I need to find a new word) in today’s world is ridiculously difficult. FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE at times.  And lonely, and a litany of sob words with which I do not need to regale my (veritably non-existent) reader. It just sucks. Some days, especially lately, I've just wanted to throw in the towel. Seems futile.

I think the reason the conversation got under my skin is because I have been at a point where I am questioning this ideal and wondering if choosing to at least try to live up to it will truly make a difference in the lives of the people around me. I sometimes get impatient and what to see that “difference” as immediately as possible, granted, but still after an entire decade of my 20s choosing this previously under-articulated ideology I have moments where I wonder if it is worth it.

And this the war inside me these last few weeks. Who do I want to be and why? What kind of woman do I want to be and why?? Maybe this whole thing I made up in my head about how a woman can change the world around her blah, blah, blah needs to be revamped….Maybe…maybe people don’t really change after all.

When committed to writing, like I said, this internalized debate surprises me. Such a subconscious war of will and faith and reevaluation is intense, and I did not realize it was waging inside me. But it makes so much sense, too. Besides law school, no wonder I have been so exhausted.

And then. And then I had a moment when someone spoke right to the issue (that I didn't even know existed) and told me not to lose my faith—or rather, that I should know just how beautiful that faith was and that I should just know, just know that it does make a difference. And to stay true to that—whatever I do.

Those words went deeper than I would have thought. Unnervingly deep, but very God and very good—that’s how He does. At the moment I wasn’t aware of this war or that a weapon was just handed me, but I think I have at least for a moment come to peace with this FUCKING HARD that spurred a redefinition—or revowal of the integrity that I want to have in my person and that means necessarily my gender. I may be just one woman, but I think that I really do want to continue to yearn for God’s best in the people around me and to work, indeed fight for it with all the woman in me. That, I think I’ve figured out, is (at least a significant part of) integrity.

But, just to clarify, I don’t think that ever makes it not fucking hard. I just think that I needed a revisit to my nicely packaged ideas about who I want to be. If women have the power to "make or break" anything at all, I want my life to "make." And it breaks my heart when women do not take this responsibility seriously and tear down the men around them, trying to make them who they think they should be and not who GOD wants them to be. I'm guilty of this, I know, but God knows I don't want to be.

Right now, I have some amazing people in my life. I didn’t expound much on the “hurt vs. heal” thing that I mentioned, but I am also learning about how much of a role humanity plays in the potential to use the afore described beauty to HURT and how much of a role God plays in beauty’s potential to be a vessel for HEALING. Basically, I’m learning how healing is God’s work not mine. And how sometimes I need to just shut up, shut up, shut up. Did I mention that’s fucking hard?

Also, I think my word for 2015 is “Healing.” I am excited for what this means, and even though it is excruciatingly difficult. The most exciting part is though, I have a feeling it means healing not just for myself but for people around me too--but then I’m no clairvoyant. Whatever it means, if anything, this song keeps coming to my mind....Good night.

This is something bigger than me....