Compliance and International Stuff

I feel something changing inside of me as far as my attitude toward law school and it feels really good.

I think it started when I realized that I don’t have to actually be a lawyer. All of the cases we’ve read all year and all of the circumstances that we’ve studied have just left a terrible taste in my mouth for litigation and my resulting idea of what it looks like “to be a lawyer” makes my soul die a few small deaths every time I envision myself in the role.

No, thank you.

But what kind of law student am I if I don’t want to practice law? Well, a law student that knows my mind—and soul—I hope.

So, this summer something presented itself to me that started to resonate and the more I learned about it I began to like it and feel like it might be my thing: Compliance. More on that in a moment.

I went to law school today to sit at a table help promote the UST International Law Association to the incoming students, an organization of which I am now a part of in the capacity of “Communications.” Tonight I am going to a BBQ at the international law Professor’s house...I’m already more law school “social” this week than pretty much all last year. It’s so weird, but strangely good! But anyway, I was at school today thinking about where I was a year ago when I was in “orientation” like these (poor) fresh students. So far from where I am now.

A year ago I was feeling like I needed to “buy in” to the whole being a lawyer thing because, after all, if God made it so clear that I’m supposed to do this law school thing then I’m obviously supposed to be some corporate lawyer, right? Wrong. Thank God.

A year ago a huge part of me felt like I was renouncing a lot of who I was when I signed up for law school. But I was prepared to do it. God had made my path to law school very clear and if I was going to do this law thing then I was going to, of course, do it all the way—after all everyone else said I’d be good at it, right? But 1L year did a number on me mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I’d be lying if I said that I didn't end up with a lot of questions before and during the first two weeks of the study abroad program.

But these questions began to be answered, one by one.

First of all, in more ways than one going back to Italy felt like reopening an old wound. I was 18 years old when went to Italy for the first time and fell in love with it right away. That was the year that I met Erica, and the entire Saltarelli family and little did I know what they would end up meaning to me. I watched the 3 girls grow up to become young women and they watched me make my own way in life too. We only saw one another every once in a while—mostly when I found my way back to Naples—but there was a bond that continued to deepen. And later the Mulino happened. And then Marco. And Italy just became a place that I never forgot but was relegated to an uncomfortable corner of my heart.

“Why?” I found myself asking in Italy this summer, why does this place keep growing deeper and deeper for me, it doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of my life so why do I keep coming back to this thing I love to just give it up again and again and hurt all over…every time?

“Darling, I haven’t forgotten the way I created you. Don’t give up on the international side of you. I haven’t.”

I heard this in my soul on the way to school one day. And then stuff started to make sense. Maybe Italy wasn’t as incongruent in my life as I thought it was…maybe I was supposed to love this. And, oh this language! I want to learn every word and expression of it, I LOVE IT. Could it be? Could it be that it was something I was supposed to actually pursue and not just keep giving it up in “sacrifice” as an act of obedience to God? Could it be that He gave me this heart for the language and the place for an eventual purpose?

Time will still tell, in all reality, but if anything at least I feel as if I’ve been given permission to pursue it. This is in addition to the newfound lease to pursue writing and pursue Compliance instead of practicing law. Wow. All of these things that I didn’t realize I was holding on to all the while thinking I was "obeying." In the end obeying looked just like getting familiar with how I was created and instead of fighting against it in feigned “worship” rather working with it. Novel.

This brings me back to “Compliance.” Compliance is an area that is growing, both nationally and internationally. It is a huge, broad field but in short it’s this (or, as a disclaimer, this is what I understand it to be): A Compliance Officer works for an organization or company for the purpose of knowing and understanding local laws, ordinances, and company policies, etc and then formulates plans of actions to align the organization/company's practices with said laws or policies and motivates others to get onboard.

If this is how Compliance really works then it is completely up my alley and I’m very, very excited about it (YES, I already know I’m a nerd). Also, it turns out my school is kind of on the front lines of training people in this field in the Midwest region. And I landed an externship in the field this semester (thank you, God!) and so I will be exploring what this could mean for my career direction first hand.

So, THAT happened and then I found out this week that my law mentor is from Cameroon and speaks French and practices international law and then the thing with the UST International Law Association presented itself as well. All of these things fit me!

I have no idea how these thing eventually gel or fit together, I just know that the degree to which all of it fits with me and this freedom to be me that I have been given and to choose my path accordingly has given me so much more impetus in what I am doing and, most importantly: the knowledge that I have not been forgotten is getting me going once again.

What a year it has been. I’m very glad I’m not a 1L again, and I’m actually kind of excited for what 2L will bring.

I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD SAY THAT.

(Day 9)

14 Hours

14 hours in a car today (the majority of which were spent in Nebraska) leave me with surprisingly little to say at the moment. But discipline says that I must articulate something.

I finished Anna Karenina today (on audiobook). I have so many thoughts, but I couldn't begin to start now. I'm still processing but there are themes of unrequited feminism, unfulfilled and misdirected life purpose, family, etc all going on in my head. And a few unanswered questions regarding Anna's death and its effect on Vronsky too.

It's so hard not to see God in literature anyway, and then the Russians so passionately and wonderfully weave His message into their stories. I feel as if I am a "sister soul" of Dostoyevsky (as the French would say) and now I'm beginning to know Tolstoy as well. Tolstoy, I will say, does a jarring and impeccable job of getting inside a woman's head. It makes me wonder if what we think are female struggles are more just human than they are female and if maybe few men are willing to be honest about it. Maybe we'll never know. But Fyodor and Leo are two individuals to whom I one day hope to address myself on the other side of things for we will have much to discuss.

Anyway, I can now watch the movie. I'm looking forward to it. But that's really all--because I'm looking forward to bed too.

(Day 8)

Edenic "Consummation"?

They didn’t have to try very hard but my sister and brother-in-law talked me into staying another day in Denver on my trek back home to Minnesota. All Shelli had to say is “art museum…library across the street” and I made my decision.

So, I’m coffee shop, library, and art museum hopping this morning instead of sitting in the driver’s seat. Thinking. And getting my soul filled with art and writing.

This whole idea of “gifting” is going deeper and deeper for me. I guess that was part of the purpose of what happened this summer. But the more I think about it the more I have the distinct conviction that the notion of personal gifting (or whatever you want to call it) is actually not peripheral but very central to the gospel message. I’ve never made the connection before but it seems glaringly clear to me now…and therefore something that I can’t not live and pursue. In faith and freedom.

Here it is: Jesus didn’t come just so that we wouldn’t go to Hell. He didn’t just come so that we would have “life.” He came for a whole ‘nother thing that’s above and beyond that: He came that we would have life to the fullest.* There’s so much packed into that little phrase. He didn’t come so just so that I wouldn’t perish. His very heart is that I would begin my long, arduous, and profoundly rewarding trek back to, well, “Eden.”

In using the word Eden I do not refer to geography. In Scripture, the Garden of Eden is not only an actual place but it also represents what God originally intended our communion with Him to look like. Furthermore, just as the Garden’s very design and purpose was to be context to foster said communion with God, so was our very existence for the same purpose—which means that such Communion is the consummation of our existence. So basically, the Garden was a place for that to happen and now remains a reminder of the pinnacle of how things were meant to be. Then, skip forward thousands of years (how many thousands I do not care to dispute), Jesus made that Edenic Communion a possibility once more.

So that’s what faith is about. It’s infinitely more than just not going to Hell. The idea that “not going to Hell” is all Christianity is about may be one of the most terrible and, unfortunately, effective lies. In truth it’s essentially about “getting back to Eden,” if you will.

That said, there’s another deeper nuance to the idea of Eden. I think the best word that I can use right now to describe it is “uniqueness.” (I’m still mulling this over, but) I think that maybe inherent in the idea of Free Will is the idea of Uniqueness. Uniqueness is tied in with the autonomy that is innate in Free Will (which necessarily also prescribes the freedom to not choose this Consummation that I’ve described, but that’s another blogpost). All of that to say: I think that if we’re designed to make choices then we necessarily are also designed to be unique on and individual to individual basis (I realize that I’m stating the obvious, but please just allow me to explore—however poorly—the underlying philosophy).

So, if the Consummation that Eden represents is the very purpose of our existence then that must naturally mean that the Consummation of our Uniqueness is at the center of the Heart of God as well.

And that is why I’m beginning to think that the idea of gifting is so married to the fullness of the Gospel: God wants us to become everything He created each of our unique selves to be. That takes figuring out the unique talents, gifts, strengths (whatever your brand of appellation for them happens to be)—and maybe some of the weaknesses too—and allowing God to place in you in a spot where those qualities He gave you will be refined, honed, channeled and brought to their ultimate, again (not to overuse the word) consummation.

The Christian walk therefore, in it’s truest form, makes its adherents anything but homogenous; and that’s the beauty of it. The Body of Christ, when we are all walking in the Light and Path that we are designed to then everyone is, yes, “on the same page” but that does not mean that we are all the same. Actually, if two or more are "on the same page" then that is because we are reading the same pages and are in the same Spirit. This means that the Church being what it’s supposed to be—that is, every individual on this path back to Eden, a path that inherently requires a very real corporate community to healthfully accomplish—would be the most perfect representation of Diversity that could ever exist.

And this why “gifting” is so essential to the heart of the Gospel.  The Gospel essentially says, “be made whole, be restored to your original design, just be the YOU that you were created to be. It’s not as easy or simple as it sounds but it’s what you were created for and therefore your soul will never stop longing for it until you get on this truest of Bandwagons that ever existed….”

So: I need to be me. I need to allow this artist in me to be and to blossom, even if I’ve never seen myself this way because it’s “impractical.” I don’t get to make the rules, I don’t get to decide what’s “practical” and what’s not. The Edenic Economy has completely different rules and I’m finally kind of starting to read the “Rulebook” with this hermeneutic. It’s Truth, and it’s freeing because, well, because “…the truth will make you free….”**

When you look at it this way, it’s a wonder anyone sees the Gospel as a constraint on life. It’s actually is as real as it gets.

(Day 7)

*John 10:10

**John 8:32

(Day 6)

I don't have much to say today.

I spent the day in the car between Salt Lake City, UT and Denver, CO. I spent most of that time listening to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I have some thoughts brewing, but I won't begin to express them until I've finished the audiobook. I think it was Hemingway that once commented on how deeply the Russians make you feel. It's so true.

I'm realizing that in going back to Minnesota I am going to be entering into a period of time when there will be very little spiritual "in-pour" into my life and I need to learn what that looks like and how to be healthy with that. Should be interesting. But I'm glad that I'm aware that I need to change some of my expectations on that front, and that I'll need to be more vigilant about self-care (as my sister calls it).

I mean, if I'm ever going to live overseas I need to at least understand this. Alaska was rich in friendship and now Katie, my last remnant of that (and a strong one) is gone. Lord, help me.

That's all.

(Day 6)

Road Trip

Sometimes you just need your best friends.

I got back to Minnesota (from Europe) drained. Emotionally drained from all the good and bad and realized that while I had had a steady stream of emotional outpour I was running on low myself—I realized that very little in-pour had happened this summer. It was time. I knew where I needed to go. So I called Karissa and asked if I could drive out. Then I told Abby I was going…just to see if she could make it happen. Didn’t take much for her to be in on the weekend.

The morning after the retreat I hit the road to Utah and spent 2 days by myself in a car with Tolstoy, stopped in Denver to sleep and spend some quality time with my sister and then arrived here in Utah on Tuesday. I leave Utah tomorrow, but this has been good. And the mountains…ahhhhh….

Karissa and her husband Matt are foster parents. There’s been a lot of outpour from their lives too in the last year as well. Abby’s in a better place than she feels she’s been in a while and, seriously, talk about a breath of fresh air to all be together! I never cease to be amazed at how blessed I am in these two. On the friendship front, God has been incredibly good to me.

Every once in a while (usually exactly when I need it) I am reminded of what the deepness of friendship can mean. None of us are blind to each other’s faults and we’ve walked through a lot of ugly together. So. Many. Tears. But the joy—oh the joy. And the grace. Wow. I think I needed to be reminded that I have this beautiful thing in Abby and Karissa and to be filled up by it. It’s amazing how I can be filled by them just “being them” and just knowing that they know me and they know me well and not only do they still love me but they love me very, very deeply and they still respect me.

And it’s mutual. I feel as if I’ve very poorly summarized what these two mean to me but beyond all that I’m not sure I have words. So, suffice it to say, I needed to come to Utah and I’m so glad I hopped in that car. I’ll go home filled up. :)

(Day 5)

A "Released" Amateur

I said that I wanted to write more about “writing.” Here goes.

I’ve never seen myself as an artist. I’ve actually seen a lot of things about myself and things that I love as simply fragmented and incoherent aspects of me and I’ve often struggled to figure out how they fit together and even tried to get rid of some because they just “didn’t make sense.”

The fact that I love to write has always been one of those things. It never really made sense or seemed useful (by the classic American standard: money). Also the fact that I love Italy, the fact that I also love mountains, but the fact that I’m a bookworm too and then the fact that…*sigh* the list goes on.

But this summer I feel like God has been addressing these things one after another and telling me to be me. If I am going to encourage others to be everything they are meant to be then I must explore this in my own life and God gives me unqualified permission to love the things he created me to love.

That said, I’m beginning to come to grips with the artist’s soul in me, and it feels really good. It’s not an academic degree, it’s no formation or education in me, it’s actually a part of my constitution. And I need to cultivate that. Because He gave it to me. Period.

It started with a question that someone in Italy posed me this summer. I was describing the whole legal education thing and what that meant for me and they said: “But what about your passion for art and literature?”

I had never had anyone ask me that before. It made me think, and then it surprised me how much it made me think. In my culture, art and literature is highly impractical and so in a way it is considered respectable to not pursue it. In Italy, it seems that this is less so. So, I thought a lot about that question. This summer I admonished someone to become all they were meant to be through Christ and then realized that there were areas of my life to which I needed to apply that very principle.

But this release has not been difficult, it’s been so freeing and it feels great. I ruminated on this question for a while and discussed it with a fellow writer friend. She encouraged me to ignore the “amateur” part and bolstered my already burgeoning conviction that I just need to sit down and start doing this.

And in all of the discipline I’ve learned all of these years I’ve never applied any of it to my writing. And it’s day 4 and I love this so far! I feel that what I’m offering on a daily basis (thus far) isn’t as deep as some of the posts that mustered in the past but I feel like I’m covering a breadth that I’ve hitherto never explored.

As far as the literature part goes, I have dared to sign up for a highly "impractical" course in law school called "Law and Literature." Only because I love literature. And that's okay. I'm really excited about the books (and plays) we'll be reading and having a forum to discuss it.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I will not always be able to say this so I’m just going to take advantage of the opportunity now: I love this “being who I’m supposed to be” thing. :)

(Day 4)

Common Denominator: It's Not About Me

I eventually want to talk more about how this whole resolve to “write” came about but it's difficult to do without taking a moment to explain the difficult part of being in Italy this last summer. And it’s hard to talk about the “difficult” vaguely, but since I want to move on to talking about the very positive things that have born out of the painful situation so far, I’m going to try.

Over the last couple of years I have been exploring the idea of “spiritual gifts” and what that means in the Church today (the church meaning the biblical version which may or may not correspond with where I spend my Sunday mornings) and in my life today. I had come to some conclusions but as soon as I’d felt that I’d nailed some things down in my theology and was feeling more “confident” in my own “gifting” then all of that mental and heart work was put powerfully into question in Italy. I'll come back to this, but this last weekend was extremely timely as I needed to sort through some of said question. And I did.

First of all, during the retreat I was able to articulate what the common denominator is between all of my supposed gifts: intercession. Not “intercession” in the sense of intercessory prayer—even though that happens sometimes—but intercession in the sense that all of my gifts (it’s still hard not to use that word without quotation marks) are gifts that go between things:

•  Prophecy (not telling the future, it’s truth-telling) goes between a truth and a person.
•  Teaching/Discipleship goes between knowledge and/or wisdom and a person.
• Communication (still thinking about this one, I’m not always effective at it, but I do have a heart for it which plays very directly into my love for language) goes between ideas and people. 
• Advocacy (enough said).

All of these things share one common denominator: they’re not really about me. I’m often meant to be a "go between" and my gifts center around relaying something that has nothing to do with me. This was incredibly enlightening to me because it made me realize where my weakness then lies: when I make it about me. That means, when I take personally however the situation goes--good or bad.

I think of all these gifts I’ve struggled most with the prophecy. Paul tells us we’re all supposed to seek it out and desire it but frankly it’s the one I find the hardest. It’s so many things but the words "isolating" and "painful" are the first to pop into mind.

Ever since my prayer life took off, things got harder. But I remember a couple of years ago, before I went to law school I could feel God asking me to say yes to “intercession.” In my head at the time that meant "intercessory prayer," of course, and the idea freaked me out. But I remember being facedown in tears on Secora’s living room floor in the dead of winter and saying “yes” to God about it with her as a witness.  I had no idea that what I was getting into was way broader than merely spending hours in my closet in prayer at odd and random times for who knows what--well, basically way broader than the small idea I had in my head. Actually, it turns out, He’d been breeding this in me for years.

So yeah, prayer and “prophecy” got harder. I started hearing things. I started getting insight into things that I couldn’t always talk about or even feel like I could trust. I started seeing situations as if they were on a completely different plane of existence than the one I was waking up in every morning. I don’t know if all of this makes sense but suffice it to say that while it got more and more painful it also has gotten (as I’ve written so many times before) more and more REAL. But I often doubt it. I often doubt whether or not my spirit hears things or my flesh gets in the way and I mess things up. It’s such a fine line to walk and one that take extraordinary sensitivity and investment. It’s exhausting.

But just as I was starting to get in a groove about this, God threw me a curveball this summer: I felt Him ask me to do something far and beyond what I’d ever heard before and it was, well, kinda crazy.  I was asked to be far more vulnerable that I was comfortable being and I was asked to go into a far more vulnerable place than I would have ever been comfortable going and there was no small measure of "relay" involved. 

I didn’t know if I was hearing right. I fasted for 3 days to get to the bottom of it and I did: "GO." I knew it wasn’t me because there wasn't an atom in me that wanted to perform this aforementioned "relay." And I went. 

And it did not go well….Yeah, suffice it to say, it did not go well. The situation is very complex--indeed far more than I had any idea--and the whole affair ended up taking a direction I could have never foreseen. And really, it all ended up being far more personal even for me than I had expected the situation to be. It's messy loving people. But anyway, it goes perhaps without saying that it kind of rocked my emotional world. What was that? It's still kind of painful even to write that, actually.

Anyway, it took a month of processing to get to the point where I was even ready to pursue the idea of gifting again. I thought I was sure about all of this stuff (FINALLY) and then this happened. And while all of the logical, biblical mantras ring true about “prophets” (again, truth-bearers not fortune-tellers) being perennially misunderstood blah blah blah, it doesn’t make the heart heal faster.

And then I went on the retreat. And then I realized this common denominator about these strengths I’ve felt and been told I have. And then I realized that there is an inherent weakness in this “common denominator” and that is that I can easily make the thing I’m called to relay—in whatever context—all about me instead of the thing and instead of God.

And that’s what I did this summer. That’s why the whole thing was so painful. And that’s what God wants to deal with in me before I can move on and grow in my gifts and be who I was created to be. That's at least part of why He allowed this to happen. I have to trust that I'm not crazy and that God knows what He's doing. That relay was His not mine and it's not. About. Me.

This is just a sliver of what went on this last month and particularly this last weekend but I’ll write about more later (I know I keep saying that). But this was the most healing portion, I think.

In other news, after my ode to the Facebook sabbatical I’m back on. But back on with boundaries. Also, I’ve noticed that with this commitment to write every day I am more content to just write about one thing—I don’t feel so much pressure to get my entire heart out on the page. I’m incredibly grateful for that. And tomorrow I'll try to tackle the subject of this newfound impetus to write.

Here’s to growth and God.

(Day 3)