Author: Lily

The Flasher or Why I am a Feminist

I was eight years old the day I saw the flasher. I was riding my bike home from a friend’s house around the corner from mine. I was in the height of my American Girl days*, wearing a dress and an apron and lace-up boots, my hair in a thick golden braid that fell all the way down my back and kissed the bike seat, pedaling down the sidewalk on my pink bike with the white tires, pink streamers flying from the handlebars.  I turned the corner onto my street and was surprised to see a man in a tan truck parked on the street in front of my friend Paige’s house. We lived in a quiet neighborhood with lots of kids and no through-traffic. There weren’t many strangers around. I was even more surprised when he got out of his truck and I realized he wasn’t wearing pants or underwear. I thought maybe he was going to pee on the side of the road. (I had a brother, after all. I knew boys did that sort of thing.) I sped up and passed him on my bike. He stared at me as I went past. His eyes were bright blue.

***

I was too young to know about exhibitionists. Of course, I knew that people weren’t supposed to take their clothes off in public, but it never occurred to me that the man was doing it on purpose to show me his penis, much less that this was an actual crime. I can’t imagine how disturbed my mom must have been when I came inside.

Me (more confused than bothered): Mom, I saw something weird on the way home from Emily’s. This man got out of his truck and he wasn’t wearing any pants! I thought maybe he needed to use the bathroom, but he never did.

Mom: What? Where? Did he say anything to you? Did he touch you? What did he look like? Is he still there?

I still didn’t understand what a big deal it was until the policeman showed up. My mom, obviously fearful for me and the neighborhood of kids we lived in, had called the police to report the incident. The policeman asked me to describe the man. “Dirty blond hair, scruffy face, gray t-shirt, no pants. Bright blue eyes,” I recited, heart-pounding because I was talking to a policeman, etching that face into my memory forever.

***

For years after the incident, I had this fantasy of the man with the bright blue eyes outside of my window, trying to peek in so he could see me when I changed my clothes. Taking baths became a sort of torture. In the bathroom was a high transom window far above the bathtub, but in my mind, I saw the man with the gray shirt and the bright blue eyes on a ladder, leaned against the brick outside, peering down at me while I bathed. I perfected the art of the 90-second bath, jumping in and out with barely enough time to get wet.  My mom couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her doll-carrying, dress-up playing, tea-party hosting girly-girl who suddenly never wanted to take a bath. I don’t know why I never told her what I was afraid of, but I was eight and children aren’t logical.

***

I grew up in a very conservative household in a very conservative school and church environment. I developed early, suddenly sprouting breasts while I was still a child. These two facts together meant I was taught from a very early age about modesty. Keeping myself covered so that I didn’t attract attention to my body. My mother dutifully explained the basics of my anatomy, of what was happening to my body and why and the very simplest version of what sex was. (I didn’t believe her for a while. I remember feeling bad that she would tell me such a weird lie because it made me feel gross to think about it.) I continued to take record-breaking showers, convinced that the man with the blue eyes was only more interested now.

It was several more years before I learned the words for what exactly I was afraid of. I knew that I was afraid of men, but I couldn’t name my fears – of sex, of being raped or molested, of lewd remarks, of stares that made me feel dirty. And as I grew, a rising fear that my own body would betray me. I was weighed down with the heaviness of it. Sick with the shame of having breasts.

It wasn’t as though it was all I thought about. I played and read and sang and did my homework. But at night in my bed I would pray, “God, I know I told a lie today, but I’m sorry. Please don’t let me get raped.” It wasn’t exactly that I thought God would punish me for bad behavior by letting me be raped. I just thought maybe if I didn’t behave well enough, I couldn’t guarantee that he would protect me.

***

I lived a relatively privileged life and still, there were years I spent in daily fear that I would be harmed, simply because I was a girl-child. I grew up looking at my body with shame and with fear of what it might possibly attract. And I never understood this as being fundamentally wrong. It was just the way the world was.

I am a feminist because I don’t think little girls and grown women should live in fear of their own bodies, afraid that they might attract violence simply because of their anatomy. I am a feminist because I believe that women should be free from the fear of bodily harm, of discrimination, of social injustice, and of inequality in all of its forms.

But I am also a feminist because I believe men should be free from the stereotype that they are some sort of sexual animals, always poised to attack. Men should be free of having genuine kindness towards women judged as an action with ulterior motive. And men, too, should be free from the fear of any form of bodily harm, discrimination, social injustice, or inequality.

I don’t particularly like the word “feminist” because I think it’s too small of a word. It doesn’t reach far enough. I am a feminist, but not because I only believe in equality for women. Equality cannot be FOR someone at the expense of someone else. I am a feminist because I believe in the right of every human being to have equal access to health care, education, job opportunities, adequate food, clean water, adequate shelter, and freedom from bodily harm. I am a feminist because I believe in fighting for and insisting upon equality for all who are marginalized, be they women, minorities, orphans, the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, or anyone else who is treated as less than a valued human being by society.

I want to delve into all of that. But right now, I want to acknowledge where it started for me. I am a feminist because 8-year-old little girls should be able to take baths without being afraid.

* American Girl is a popular brand of historical books, (highly overpriced) dolls, clothes and accessories wildly popular with the 10 and under crowd when I was in elementary school. In fact, they are still fairly popular. I had Felicity, in case you were wondering.

When You Feel You Don’t Belong

I moved out of my parents home when I was 18-years old. I left my life in Louisiana and headed off to college outside of Chicago. Other than for a few months the summer after my freshman year, I never lived at home again.

When I left home my sisters were 13 and 11. My parents were in their mid-40’s, and known for being the strictest parents among the other students in my graduating class. My grandparents were building a house next door to my family’s house. My brother was 25, still newly-returned from deployment in Iraq.

I started college and I grew and changed at an almost alarming rate, absorbing everything around me, then cracking off the shell of myself like an insect shedding its exoskeleton again and again, crawling out of my old self, growing into something new that seemed to have only just solidified when I burst through it again. Through the end of my teens and the beginning of my twenties my opinions on almost everything changed. Sometimes more than once. I learned different ways of thinking and acting. Different ways of handling conflict and disagreement. Ways that I could love better and more truly. And ways that I was deeply flawed and broken. I am still learning these things, but at the time all of this was accelerated by my environment. I was surrounded by good people who were different than me, challenging my mind and my heart in a million ways.

I lived far away from my family during all this change, but I was still tethered to them. I grew into adulthood and falteringly learned to have respectful disagreements with my parents. I learned to give words to feelings I hadn’t been able to express in my silent and submissive teenage years. I tried to know my sisters even as they became unknowable to us all, draping themselves in this or that garment of adolescence. Trying on identities the same way we tried on ball gowns together in the JC Penney’s dressing room when I came home each Christmas. I felt tethered to them when my grandparents moved into the house next door and became an everyday part of their lives. I felt tethered when we lost my brother to shadows for a time, flying home from school, waking my mom up to surprise her and crawling into bed with her so we could cry together.

And then I was in love and there was a glow around everything, and my sisters didn’t understand what was so special about this, why I was so serious about him, why I wanted to get married so young, how I could possibly know he was “the one.” My parents were cautious, but kind, and my heart broke open to let in a new love and I started the halting process of bringing someone new into our family.

All of these changes came and yet, to me, my family was constant. Seeing me change and accepting who I was now. And now. And now. But in these last few years since I’ve taken this bearded man’s name as my own and tried to learn how to build a home big enough for just him and me – and also, all of his family and all of mine (because we never truly go into marriage alone)- these last few years I’ve felt my family changing too- becoming people I no longer know.

I visited my parent’s house last spring for my youngest sister’s high school graduation. I felt like I was in a house full of strangers. My parents’ bodies are fit and strong, toned from the hard workouts and clean diets of people I don’t recognize. My sisters are women now – something that, to me, has happened breathtakingly fast, in the mere month’s worth of days I’ve spent with them over the past few years. My brother is 32. He owns a gym that my parents go to every day and has a kindergartner who runs around catching frogs and calling him, ‘Dad.’ My grandfather has somehow begun to look frail inside of his large frame, and though my grandmother is as beautiful as ever, I can see that the death of her sister last year has marked her, made her more aware of life’s fragility. Both of my sisters and my mother are in college now. My mother is chasing a dream she gave up for us long ago. And my father has relaxed into life – without the responsibility of raising children, he has found less use for his stern face and loud voice and has more time for laughing. He has mellowed, less concerned with being right and more concerned with loving well.

My family is beautiful and yet, it’s a family I can no longer find my place in. They have changed and I have changed, but they have changed together, in each others’ presence, and in some of the same ways. They have grown together. And I have grown apart. They speak a language I can’t understand. My parents aren’t the people I grew up knowing. In many ways, they are better people. I don’t begrudge them that, but they still feel like strangers to me walking around inside my parents’ skin.

Somehow, I failed to understand that my family, particularly my parents, could change too -that I wasn’t the only one. I was unprepared and, oh, how this has hurt me. Awakening to find myself outside of the one place I always felt I belonged. But they are still my family. They are the ones who loved me when I dressed up like Laura Ingalls Wilder ever day for a year or more. They are the ones who reserved judgment when I totaled my mom’s car 3 days after I got my license. They are the ones who didn’t laugh when I accidentally dyed my hair green. The ones who cheered for me when I graduated from college and danced with me at my wedding. The ones who send me care packages in South Korea, even though it costs a fortune to mail them.

They are my family. For years, they shifted around me, making room for me in all my various forms. Maybe now I am the one who needs to shift. To get to know who they are now, and find out if there’s still a place for me. If there’s somewhere I might fit. If I can still belong.

Family

Sorry that this is a picture of a picture, but I didn’t have anything recent and digital where we were all together.

I Suck at Marriage, but My Marriage Doesn’t Suck

I’ll be the first to tell you that I suck at marriage. Let me give you an example.

A few weeks ago we were sitting on a bench outside a perfect little neighborhood boulangerie in Australia, eating pain au chocolat in the sunshine when Jonathan told me he was thinking of applying to grad school so that he could potentially start a program when we return from Korea. “What do you think?” he asked me.

Do you know what the first thing out of my mouth was? I’ll give you a hint – it wasn’t “I think that’s great and I support you in your dreams of getting your Masters,” and it wasn’t “Where do you want to apply? Let’s start thinking about how we could make that work.” It was (imagine this with an extremely whiny voice), “But if you start grad school right away we won’t have time to do any traveling after our contract is over because you will have to go back right away for school, and traveling is basically the entire reason I came to Korea!” I actually said that. While we were sitting on a sunny bench on an idyllic tree-lined street in the trendy part of SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.

Of course, when I came to my senses later I apologized sincerely for how selfish and spoiled and inconsiderate I’d been. But the point is…that’s still the stupid first thing that came out of my mouth. Everyone knows that one of the first rules of relationships is to show support of the other person’s dreams and goals. But seven years into this relationship and I still can’t seem to manage that simple task. I think we can all agree that this was a fail.

*****

Sometimes I really suck at marriage. I have unrealistic expectations. I am moody and unpredictable. I am unsupportive. I am bossy. I am lazy. I am inconsiderate. I am whiny. I am demanding. I am terribly selfish. Jonathan is mostly perfect, but every once in a blue moon he loses patience with me too. He hurts my feelings. He pulls away because I’ve become too prickly to handle. We are broken people and we fail to love each other well in so many ways.

 And yet, we have an extraordinary, impossibly beautiful marriage.

*****

We aren’t the oldest and most experienced of married couples. We don’t have a perfect marriage. But we’ve learned some things along the way. We’ve learned we don’t believe in molding our marriage to meet anyone else’s expectations. Everyone seems to have an opinion – that we got married too young, that we should have kids by now, how our home should be run, who should be “in charge.” And we shake our heads and laugh. Because we aren’t interested in what anyone else thinks our marriage should look like. We aren’t interested divvying up our roles according to some chart or in having children based on someone else’s timeline, and we couldn’t care less about who is “in charge.” People say, “You’ve been together since you were nineteen? Aren’t you afraid that you’ve lost who you are?!” And we laugh again. Because we haven’t lost who we are. Together we are becoming the people we are meant to be.

Because our marriage isn’t about keeping score. It’s not about who’s pulling their weight or who’s in charge or who’s loving the best. It’s about heaping grace on one another until our marriage is dripping with it. It’s about soaking in that grace, from God and from each other, becoming so heavy with it that it overwhelms our disappointments, our failures, our hidden ugliness. It’s the kind of grace that changes us.

Our marriage is about understanding that every day of our lives together we are living out a miracle. It’s the miracle we wrote in our wedding vows, “I choose you, today and every day…” The miracle is not just that we fell in love when we were nineteen. And it isn’t just that we made these vows four Junes ago. The miracle is that when I come home from work each night Jonathan wraps his arms around me in a hug so big it lifts me up off of the floor. It’s that I chose him on my wedding day and I chose him again when I woke up this morning. That I will choose him tomorrow and that I will choose him on the day I die. The miracle is God giving two broken, unfaithful people the measure of grace necessary to choose this kind of love on a daily basis. The miracle is that after being together for seven years, I am still in awe that I get to choose him.

Sometimes I suck at marriage. But my marriage doesn’t suck.

place cards

wedding

Image credits: Rings and place card image by Taylor Rae Photography. Wedding image by Asharae Marie, now co-owner of Grain & Compass. 

When Swearing is Caring: Because Sometimes “Shit” is the Right Word

We sat in the corner of the faculty room in the cafeteria, beside the window that looked out over the “Saga ‘O’”, a circular drive at the front of campus where people often caught rides. I could see the new (and somewhat contested) Jumbo-tron on the football field sticking up over the trees, and the ever-present train tracks that bordered our college campus to the south – a clear line between our little community and the rest of the town. My college had a program called, “Dine-with-a-Mind” where a student could get a coupon to share a meal with a professor. It was the spring of my senior year and it was the first time I had tried it.

I sat with my professor, an unpretentious, no-nonsense sort of woman in her late 30’s. I’d taken several classes with her over the years and had come to deeply admire and respect her. That semester I was auditing a class she was teaching on women writers. I was twenty-two years old, I was engaged, and I hated men with a fury that scared me. I sat at that table with my professor hoping that she had a magical answer for how to reconcile everything I was feeling with the wedding I was planning and the life I was about to start as one man’s wife. I loved Jonathan. In my mind, my relationship with him was something altogether separate from how I felt about men. But the intensity of my rage was problematic, even if it wasn’t directed at him.

So I sat with my professor and I told her, “I’m getting married this summer, and I think I hate men.” I told her how the things we talked about in class had moved me – men and their unacknowledged privilege and their dismissive treatment of women. Men, with their sexuality that seems biologically designed for dominance and subjugation. “How do you reconcile all of that with marrying a man, loving him well, being a wife?” I asked.

It was hardly a question I could expect a simple answer to. And she didn’t give me one. Instead she asked me about the men in my life. I told her, haltingly, apologetically, stumbling around the words that felt too big in my mouth that “I guess” my feelings had something to do with my grandfather who was an alcoholic and my brother who was an alcoholic and my father who was manipulative and verbally abusive, and who ultimately left me at the age of 8 and who I hadn’t seen since.

She looked at me across the table, looked straight at me, not uncomfortably away like so many others have, and simply said, “Lily, I’m so sorry.”

I shrugged, looked down at my plate, gave a half-smile. “It’s ok.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not OK. It’s shit. Let’s just call it what it is.”

“Ok,” I whispered. “You’re right. It’s shit.”

****

If you know me, you probably know that I don’t use a lot of profanity. In fact, it’s pretty rare for me to curse unless I’m repeating something, reading something, or occasionally, trying to use the shock value of it to make my mom or husband laugh (rightly or wrongly – you can judge me for that).

I’m not usually offended by other people cursing, but I grew up in a conservative Christian family and attended a conservative evangelical Christian school from kindergarten through high school. I didn’t listen to secular music and had only seen a handful of carefully-selected movies that were rated higher than PG. Growing up, I don’t remember ever hearing either of my parents curse. I once tattled on a classmate for saying the word, “crap,” at recess (In retrospect, I’m sure my teacher was horrified when I told her I’d heard him say “the c-word.”)

Swearing was always an easy measuring stick for determining what kind of person someone was. Everyone knew that God didn’t approve of that kind of language, so if someone used it, it was pretty clear where they stood with God. After all, Christians were supposed to be “set apart,” and being set apart was all about the things you didn’t do – no drinking, no smoking, no cursing, no gambling, no sex outside of marriage, no pornography, no secular music, no R-rated movies, no “sinfully erotic” dancing. (That last bit was an actual line from a Community Covenant I once had to sign).

Sitting across the table from my professor, I admit, I was a little shocked to hear her say, “shit.” But while I was surprised, I wasn’t offended. Part of me thought, “You’re supposed to be some sort of mentor here. Why aren’t you telling me that God wants to heal me and encouraging me to pray about it more?” The other part of me thought, “Thank God, she actually gets it.” And even if it wasn’t what I expected to hear from my Christian professor (maybe precisely because it wasn’t what I expected to hear), it was exactly the right thing to say. Because telling me, “No, it’s not ok. It’s shit,” gave me permission not to make light of something that was really pretty terrible. To fully acknowledge it for the wrong that it was (is).

When my husband read this piece he said, “But couldn’t she have used another word that communicated that she understood how bad and wrong the situation was?” And the answer, for me, is no. She couldn’t have used a different word with quite the same effect. It was the use of this particular word from someone who doesn’t throw it about flippantly that made me understand the fullness of what she was trying to say to me. She could have used a prettier word. Something more polite. But it wouldn’t have been the right word. It wouldn’t have been true.

****

In my childhood and young adulthood I looked down on curse words and those who used them – as if this handful of words was inherently so much worse than all the other hateful and ugly things I could say with the right combination of non-swear words. Growing up, I got in trouble for saying “sucks” or even (occasionally) “that stinks!” In those situations, my parents always claimed that the problem had more to do with my attitude than with the specific words. While I think it’s a little over the top to punish a kid for saying, “that stinks!” I have to say, I agree with the sentiment. At its core, I think profanity is about what’s in our hearts more than it is the specific combination of syllables we’ve uttered. Profanity is a verbal overflow of the unkind, ungracious, and unloving corners of our hearts.

To me, profanity is any time I use my words to hurt or demean others. It is any time I am careless or dismissive in what I say – whether that’s using a curse word flippantly as a filler in my conversation because I can’t think of better adjectives, or swearing out of frustration when I miss the green light. But I believe it can also be profanity to use a trite Christian platitude to dismiss a question I am too selfish or lazy to think about. Sometimes profanity is calling someone an insulting name or using a word like “fuck” to devalue something as beautiful and holy as sex. And sometimes, it is saying, “I’ll pray for you,” when we have no intention of doing so. Sometimes it’s telling someone, “God works all things together for good,” instead of sitting beside them and stretching your heart to help them hold their pain.

There’s a sort of trend among the new hipster evangelicals to embrace this new sort of “cool” Christianity that says it’s ok to like craft beer and make your own whiskey, to have tattoos and smoke pipes and swear. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. It’s that person who thinks that being a Christian who swears is such a notable attribute, they make sure they include it in the “about” section of their DIY blog. Even though I like some of these things too (tattoos and DIY projects for example), I want to make it clear that I am not writing this to become a member of the “Christians Who Curse” club where we congratulate ourselves on how we have rejected the legalism of our parent’s generation by fully embracing all we once stood against. This is not about championing the things we used to avoid but now embrace. It is about asking the right questions.

As a reader (and a writer) I believe that words have power. It is important to me to find and use the right word for a feeling, an image, a situation. And sometimes the right word isn’t a word you’d hear in Sunday school or from a pulpit. It might sound like I’m advocating cursing or encouraging people to do more of it, but really, that’s kind of the opposite of what I’m saying. I’m saying that if we see our words as precious and powerful, we will understand that the very power of these words is in restraint. Because when we reserve our strongest words to express some of our strongest, most complex feelings, in some small way we are redeeming them.

There’s a reason that “curse” words are curse words. It’s because they express something deeply wrong in the world, in our situation, in our relationships. They express brokenness, irreverence and contempt for something sacred. And sometimes, in our moments of greatest pain, of greatest need, of greatest confusion, I believe they can be the right words to express the depth of the wrongness of what we are experiencing.

****

There is a family I know whose 3-year-old son was diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening disease for which there is no cure. By all accounts, this family has handled the situation with astonishing grace and have become beacons of hope in their community. But I don’t think that grace diminishes the pain, the fear, the anger, and the questions they must also feel. And every time I see a Facebook update where they beg prayers because their son is in the hospital again – because he isn’t responding to his medication and their final resort will be a lung transplant (and how do we pray for a pair of 3-year-old lungs to become available?), because they’ve had to take their older children out of school because their son’s immune system is too fragile to handle to threat of the other kids bringing home germs – when I see these real, honest, big and terrible needs, I can’t help but feel angry at the responses. “I know your miracle is just around the corner! God works all things together for good! I’m believing that God has promised him a long life!”

This isn’t my story, and these words might be tremendously encouraging to that family (I hope that they are). But if that was me, those kinds of responses would make me sick (in fact, they do make me sick). If that was me, I would be screaming, “Bullshit! You don’t know that my miracle is around the corner. How could you possibly know that?!” I would want to say, “Yes, God is still good, yes, God works all things together for good, but all things are not good right now. Right now things are broken and wrong and I need you to meet me in that now, not tell me that I should be looking past it.” I would say, “God never promised any of us a long life. You can’t just believe something because you want it to be true!”

People don’t say these things to be cruel. Oftentimes I think they say them because they simply don’t know what to say. But that doesn’t make those words any less hurtful. I’m not the one in this situation, but if it was me, I think I’d rather have someone hear my desperation, hear that nearly unbearable pain, and instead of being frightened by my pain and by my need and trying to put a band-aid on it with a little, “Everything’s going to be ok,” simply sit across from me and look me in the eye and say, “That’s shit. I am so sorry.”

Free and Unashamed: In which I admit that I think about food all the time and hate when people say to “Let go and let God.”

A few weeks ago I watched this video for the first time. I was a little late to the game with this one – the video had been circulating a few weeks previous, but for some reason, I hadn’t ever watched it. Until one afternoon, sitting at my desk, with my classroom full of hyper Korean kids (they’re not my class, they were just in my room). And it absolutely wrecked me. If you haven’t seen this video, watch it before you read the rest of this post.

“What is it specifically?” my mother asked when I sent her the link, weeping.

How to say, “It is everything”? It’s the words for what is wrong with me. With so many women that I know. It is the pain and the struggle of being a woman in a world that holds us to absurd standards. Expectations that fill us with righteous indignation because we know they are wrong, but still somehow leave us feeling unworthy that we don’t measure up.

This girl (her name is also Lily so it doesn’t really help to use her name in this case), is talking about traits and behaviors she saw modeled by and inherited from her mother. I don’t necessarily feel that I learned these from my mother, but from countless women who have come before me and surrounded me as I grew. These are my personal struggles, but they are the personal struggles of so many of us. We lead lives of violent inner turmoil, resenting and also being controlled by external images, expectations, and messages about our value that we have somehow internalized. These particular lines really shook me:

“And I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking, making space for the men in their lives, not knowing how to fill it up again when they leave…”

This made me think of my grandmother, who has lost herself in being my grandfather’s wife– a man who undoubtedly loves her, but also has her utterly convinced that she is dependent on him. That she couldn’t take care of herself if he weren’t around. She’s been schooled in her own incompetence all of her married life (and perhaps longer), even as she fixes his plate and irons his shirts. To any observer, it’s clear that she is entirely capable of self-sufficiency. She’s been made to feel less-than for the sake of his need to feel important – a strong leader in a household that no longer requires management. My grandparents are of a different generation, but still, I see the looks and hear the concerned murmurs from many younger people who look at my marriage and frown, unable to understand this relationship in which both of us lead and both of us serve.

“My brother never thinks before he speak, I have been taught to filter. ‘How can anyone have a relationship to food?’ he asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs. I want to say, ‘We come from difference, Jonas. You have been taught to grow out. I have been taught to grow in…I learned to absorb.’”

Up until these past few years of my life, I lived in such fear of displeasing others that I could rarely express my own opinion. In the worst cases, I was afraid to express my opinion because I didn’t really believe I was entitled to one. The concept of “Authority” has always been strong in my family/school/childhood church, but in me the concept never rang true. Somehow the lines got crossed in my mind. Rather than learning what it truly meant to respect authority, I learned how to repress myself. To subjugate myself under someone else and call this good.

“Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark – a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled. Deciding how many bites is too many, how much space she deserves to occupy.”

This makes me physically ache. For me, this isn’t about my mother – this has been the story of my own life. Possibly it started all the way back when I was 10 years old at summer camp and I overheard some boys behind me on the soccer field, “Hey, look! That girl’s butt jiggles when she runs!”  Certainly it’s been my story since I was 15 or 16. Every day of my life. Frantically counting the calories. Obsessing over every bite that goes into my mouth and calling it “self-control.” Or not. Aggressively ignoring what I am eating. And later being consumed by a self-loathing that makes Hitler look like a saint. I don’t remember what it’s like to go through a day and not think about what I’ve eaten, what I’m going to eat, what I should be eating, what I shouldn’t have eaten, the size of my body, the way that I look, the way that my clothes fit, whether I can congratulate myself for having sufficient self-control or if I must shame myself into a better day tomorrow. I must force my unwilling body to run half marathons and then full marathons to prove I can be disciplined.

(I admit that there have been a few brief periods of my life when I had a short break from this – after the bout with salmonella that left me (unhealthy) but skinny, having lost 20 lbs in 10 days before my sophomore year of college. Right after I got married and found that the time I had spent worrying about my body pre-honeymoon was unnecessary because I was so unconditionally loved. And last spring after I lost 27 lbs and felt that I’d won a small victory over myself and my self-destructive habits. But that came crashing down quickly after moving to a country whose staple foods are rice, sodium, and all the meat is half fat.)

Unlike many girls, I didn’t learn to count my calories or call myself fat from my mother. From my mom I learned what I should be able to be – she has been thin for my whole life. She almost never indulges. She has always been able to say no to food with an ease that makes my all-consuming battle with it feel all the more humiliating . In my mother I saw modeled a self-control and a discipline that I simply lack. I felt that she was living proof that it was possible and I failed to measure up. Again and again and again. (And again today.)

“I asked 5 questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word, ‘Sorry.'”

This is me. This is me. This is me. I have spent so much time apologizing for things I have no business being sorry for. Why should anyone feel sorry for needing to ask a question? Or sorry that someone else’s expectations of them weren’t met. Sometimes I think these murmured apologies that season my conversation like salt from a shaker is really me apologizing for what I feel is the inconvenience of my existence. Like my being here at all is a burden. It makes me furious that anyone should be made to feel that way. And so I am angry. But also, I am sorry for being angry.

“I don’t know the capstone requirements for the sociology major because I spent the whole meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza.”

This made me laugh, even though it isn’t funny. I can’t tell you how many meetings, recitals, graduations, concerts, and events I’ve only been half-present for because there was a war being waged in my mind about the food. About what I could permit myself or not permit myself. My rationale behind it. “How much space do I deserve to occupy?”

Listening to Lily’s poem was like having words put on every inadequacy I have felt since I was a child and simultaneously exposing the inherently flawed basis of those inadequacies. I am angry at a world that has made me feel this way, but at the same time, this is so deeply ingrained that I don’t know how to shake it.

I shared these comments with my mother and she told me a story about herself – one she’d never told me before. The story of how 26-year-old her broke free from a life-long struggle for perfection. The struggle for a perfect body that made food her enemy and a perfect life that made her avoid confrontation by not having an opinion. The struggle to be perfectly likeable and agreeable that made her ignore her own wants and needs, pushing herself under a rug in order to please others (or often, let others stomp all over her).  That at 26 (the age I am now except that she already had a 6 year old and a soft tangle of arms and legs and blue eyes that would be me in her belly) she realized that no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t change the way she felt about food or finances or keeping other people happy. And that instead of trying harder or trying to be more disciplined or more self-controlled (which inevitably leads to self-loathing), she learned to stop trying. She wrote to me, “I became humble.  I had to become brutally honest with myself and admit to myself that I could not fix it/control it.  I had no power over it and life had just become crazy.  I realized that the ONLY person who could supernaturally ‘adjust’ me was God.  But I had to let him.”

I was so thankful that my mom shared this with me. I wish I had known these things about her as a teenager and young adult (well, young-er adult). I think something many parents have been missing with my generation and possibly the current one is how valuable it is to let your children see and understand what it looks like to struggle well. Because no matter what you do, your children will struggle. And if all they’ve seen are the victories, they won’t know what to do when the time comes to struggle. It’s like the physics teacher I had in high school who was great at solving all the problems, but who couldn’t explain to me how to do them. Life is lived in the process so much more than in the conclusions.

I’ll finish this post, then, by sharing something about my process. Right now, I don’t understand what the heck it means to “Let go” of something. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard some form of “Let go and let God” in my lifetime. Most of the time it makes me want to scream. Because often it’s just code for, “I don’t know what to tell you, but this phrase is something ‘spiritual’ people say and so it sounds like a real thing.” You see, I’ve tried “letting go” in so many different situations. I’ve knelt with my arms stretched as far as they can reach or spread myself across the floor with my face pressed into rough carpet fibers, trying to find the correct posture, the arrangement of limbs that will accomplish this mysterious goal, chanting prayers over and over like a mantra, “I’m letting go. I’m giving this to you. I don’t want to carry this anymore. I can’t do it on my own. I’m letting go,” each iteration more soulful and heartfelt than the last, only to find that, in fact, this changes nothing. It simply makes me a failure at letting go. (Ha!)

I value my mother’s story. I believe her words were genuine and described a true transformative experience for her. But I admit that I have yet to figure out how to “stop trying.” So far I’ve tried it in the shower, at my desk, while running, in bed, at a temple and on a mountain. So far none of this insisting I am “letting go” has been successful. I am being a little sarcastic here – I know it’s not a magical ritual or formula. But I am admitting that I can’t seem to figure out how to do something that sounds as simple as doing nothing.

Women, so many of us are broken. But I believe (I have to believe) that we can be whole again. That we can live lives free and unashamed. That we can learn to turn our amazing capacity for love towards ourselves. I don’t know how yet, but I am hopeful we can learn together.

I Sing of Gratitude (Reprise)

In honor of both Thanksgiving and (I guess) Throw-back-Thursday, I re-visited a cute little something I wrote back when I was 23 and a baby and a newlywed. I’ve changed a lot from the person I was then, but I like being reminded of her from time to time. Bless her heart. (If you are not an American from the South, this is our way of saying, “What a darling little idiot,” in the sweetest voice imaginable).

In this case, I think cute little me actually made some good points. In my original post, I wrote about discovering that gratitude is  key in marriage. It’s been three years since I wrote that, but I still think it’s true and I am still glad that we are intentional about expressing gratitude every day, even for the routine things like making the bed, doing the dishes, and taking out the trash. More importantly though, in that post I shared a passage that is still one of the most moving things I have ever read about gratitude and I think it’s worth sharing again, today of all days.

In college I read an essay called “A Country Road Song” by Andre Dubus from his collection, Meditations from a Movable Chair. It is one of the most beautiful and moving pieces I’ve ever read. At the age of 49, Dubus suffered a devastating injury when he stopped on the side of the road to assist with a fatal accident. While pulling the survivor out of the way, he was hit by another car. He was injured so badly that he eventually lost one of his legs and was paralyzed in the other. Dubus wrote about the consequences of his accident in many of his essays, but this particular one is about his memories of running.  I cry every time I read it because it overwhelms me that a man could feel and express this kind of intense gratitude in the face of such incredible loss. If you have a chance, you should read the entire essay because it is so much better than just this small portion. But for now, read this and let it change your idea of gratitude the way it’s changed mine.

” When I ran, when I walked, there was no time: there was only my body, my breath, the trees and hills and sky…I always felt grateful, but I did not know it was gratitude and so I never thanked God. Eight years ago, on a starlight night in July, a car hit me…and in September a surgeon cut off my left leg… It is now time to sing of my gratitude: for legs and hills and trees and seasons…I mourn this, and I sing in gratitude for loving this, and in gratitude for all the roads I ran on and walked on, for the hills I climbed and descended, for trees and grass and sky, and for being spared losing running and walking sooner than I did: ten years sooner, or eight seasons, or three; or one day.”

“I sing of my gratitude…for being spared losing running and walking sooner than I did: ten years sooner, or eight seasons, or three; or one day.”

Hope for the Evangelically Screwed Up: An Invitation to an Honest Conversation

After my last blog post where I touched on some of the ways that my evangelical Christian background damaged me, I received an email from a woman I deeply admire and respect. She is a mother of five who I used to babysit for when I was in high school and whom I have remained in contact with over the years. I actually thought of her as I wrote my last post, knowing that she subscribes to my blog and would read it. Honestly, I was worried that some of the things I said there would be hurtful to her or would cause her to see me differently. What I wrote was true and I have no desire to hide that, but there is a part of me that just hates letting people down. So when I received her email in my inbox, I opened it with some hesitation. I was worried. This woman is tremendously gracious. I was not afraid she would berate me or say anything unkind. I was, however, afraid she might be disappointed. Imagine my surprise when I opened her email and found it overflowing with gratitude for sharing my story. She shared with me that she had recently been struck by the realization that she had become one of those people I talked about – looking for the right formula to raise kids to be Christ-followers. Imposing certain protocols to ensure their safety from the secular world. “I naively believed that I could single-handedly keep them from the world (pardon the drama).  No account for individual personalities or even more, God’s faithfulness. I believed that they could skip over the part about being insecure, faking it, etc. if only we did things a certain way.  This has been a tremendous burden.” In the end she asked me to share any advice I had for her as a mother. I was blown away by her candor and her graciousness and deeply humbled that she would ask for my thoughts. Me in all my 25 year old wisdom. Ha.

I will be the first person to tell you that I am not in any way qualified to give advice. Probably not about life in general and certainly not about parenting. However, I have spent the eight years since leaving my parent’s home and my charismatic evangelical church trying to forge a way into adulthood. In many ways I am still trying to do this. I can’t speak authoritatively about what it means to be a parent, or even what it means to be an adult, a Christian, a woman. All I can do is speak from my own experience. I wanted to share a little bit of my ongoing conversation with this woman. I have spent much of the past few years grappling with my faith, my evangelical upbringing and the corresponding unhealthy understanding of God, of myself, of the church that I developed. I am only just starting to write about these things, but I believe that writing about them is a crucial part of the process for me. Another crucial element is dialogue. It is continuous conversation with others, throwing around ideas, trying to put words to the wrongs we’ve suffered, to the pain we’ve caused, to the grace we’ve received. It’s something I cannot do alone. So I am sharing it.

The following is an excerpt from a long email I sent back to this mother. This friend.

“Maybe it isn’t possible to avoid the struggles so common to adolescence and young adulthood. Maybe struggling with identity, with insecurity, with our bodies and with the pressure of the expectations of others is unavoidable. Because even if we remove ourselves from the world’s version of these things, they emerge again in different ways- inside of the church, in the youth group, in homeschool groups, in families.

Sometimes, in trying so hard to teach kids the ‘right’ way to act, I think what we have inadvertently communicated is that these actions are what make us holy. That these actions are the mark of true believers. In trying to teach children to act rightly, we’ve become judgmental of others, assuming that certain actions we don’t approve of indicate the state of their hearts.

We try to tell our children not to judge others based on how they look, but we do it all the time. And I think the worst part of this is that we aren’t just judging what sort of personality they have or whether they are nice or not, we are judging their hearts and their relationship with God based on outward elements we have come to believe are signs of rebellion or impurity. Who are we to judge other people’s hearts that way? That’s not the biblical principle of looking at the “fruit” in someone’s life. We aren’t looking at people and asking, “Are they kind? Are they patient? Are they full of grace towards others? Do they speak with wisdom? Are they humble?” We are looking at people and saying, “Are they dressed the way I think a Christian should dress? Are they listening to music I think a Christian should listen to?” 

Something that really shaped me in my tween and teen years was the implication that the only thing keeping me from all sorts of inappropriate behavior was my parents’ strictness. That their vigilance was all that stood between me and a life of sin. This was something I inferred, not something they ever said to me, but regardless of what made me feel that way, it simply wasn’t true…. No, I don’t think they should have let me do whatever I wanted, but I had a genuine desire to do right. While my parents always verbally affirmed that they trusted me and that it was the world and others they didn’t trust, their actions communicated that they didn’t. Jonathan has often commented in conversations we’ve had about my childhood and adolescence that my parents seemed to act out of fear a lot when it came to making decisions. From the outside it looked very much like they didn’t trust me to make good decisions. And I think that’s true. And as a result, I also came to believe that I couldn’t make good decisions. But I wanted to be good and I wanted to please my parents and please God. So the only way I knew to accomplish that was to hold fast to what I did know – follow the rules that have been set for you and don’t associate with anyone who doesn’t follow them. I knew how my parents and the church leaders responded to people who didn’t act the way they expected them to. And I didn’t want my parents or leaders to ever look at me the way they looked at those people. So there was always an incredible amount of pressure to act the way they expected me to act. So much of my “right” actions were not based on the conviction that this was the right way to act, but were based on fear that if I didn’t act the way I knew the church leaders and my parents expected me to act, my heart and my intentions would be judged.

And the thing that really bothers me is that these prescribed actions are so arbitrary. They are man-made distinctions. Being modest is biblical, but it’s the evangelical subculture that has decided that wearing spaghetti straps means your heart is impure. (Not to mention how this kind of judgment skews our perspective of our bodies and of our sexuality, but that is another enormous topic for another time). ” 

I love my parents dearly and I know that in every parenting decision they made they genuinely were doing the best they could at the time. This isn’t about pointing fingers or calling anyone out or living in the past. What it is about is healing and growing. It’s about dialoguing with a new generation of parents (which many of my friends are newly a part of or on the cusp of joining) about ways we can change. It’s about wrongs we can acknowledge, lies we can reject, judgment we can stop passing. It is about hope we can have, grace we can extend, and life we can give. I don’t know where all of my questions about faith and Christianity and God and the church will ultimately take me, but I think it starts here with an honest conversation.

When We Were On Fire, A Synchroblog : Reflections on Evangelical Christianity and How I Lost the Fire

I’ve gotten saved at least a hundred times.  The first time I remember “asking Jesus into my heart” was when I was three or four years old. Sitting in a church pew with my grandmother at her Assemblies of God church where the average member was 65 years old, fascinated by the woman in the front row who always wore an elaborate hat and whose husband wore outfits that matched hers exactly, and by the woman who left her seat during each worship song to dance in the aisle. When the pastor gave the altar call at the end of his sermon, my grandmother asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart.  I must have said, yes, though I don’t really remember. Next thing I knew I was down on my knees facing my pew, my grandmother beside me asking me to repeat after her. I was wearing white tights but I could feel the prickly carpet through them, pressing into my knees. I got up halfway through the prayer and sat back down in my seat.

I figured that prayer probably didn’t count, so a few years later when I was six or seven I prayed again, on my own, solemnly and seriously. By that point I knew it was important to have a “moment” you could identify as the time you got saved. I wanted mine to be good, so I waited until we were on a family vacation in Arkansas. We rented a boat and took it out on the lake and I breathed in the clean mountain air and prayed that Jesus would wash my sins away.

Later I would describe my conversion experience saying, “I first prayed the prayer when I was four, but then I recommitted my life to God when I was six and could understand everything better.”  This is obviously an absurd thing to say, and yet, I often think that 6-year-old me probably “understood everything” better than I ever have since.

When I was 11 my family started attending a charismatic non-denominational church that was just starting in our area. The pastor gave an altar call after nearly every service. Often he would ask everyone to pray the prayer aloud together, I assume to make those who were praying for the first time feel more comfortable. I didn’t mind. I figured this was insurance, in case I hadn’t prayed it sincerely enough the time on the boat. Better safe than sorry.

I attended the same small Christian school from Kindergarten through high school. Everyone in this school was a “Christian,” at least nominally. We even had mandatory Bible class as part of our core curriculum and mandatory chapel once a week or so. In elementary school we were all the same. We memorized Bible verses together and went to Vacation Bible School in the summer and participated in Psalty musicals. But even in elementary school there were ways to distinguish yourself. At home I practiced turning the pages of my Bible at lightning speed so that I would be the fastest at Sword drills, I won the end-of-the-year Bible scholar award more than once, and one year I even won the role of Harmony the singing psalm-book and got to wear a huge book costume and paint my face pink. It was the high point of my musical theater career.

Entering high school was a milestone for me. I had always seemed older than my age, or at least, different from everyone else. Whether from any actual maturity or simply from the fact that I wrapped myself in books, living in imaginary worlds that left me completely out of touch with the realities of my peers, I don’t know.  All I knew was that I was finally old enough for Youth Group. I believed with conviction that Youth Group would change everything. This would be the place where I belonged. Upon entering high school at my little Christian school, it became essential to me to separate myself from those who were only nominal Christians. I was more than just a Christian. I was “on fire.” I was the kind of Christian who jumped up and down and stretched my hands into the air in worship. I led the school’s mission team on overseas mission trips and worked myself up into a tearful frenzy at prayer meetings. I didn’t secretly smoke or drink or go to parties like some of my peers. I genuinely believed that my church and youth group were the only ones worth being a part of. There were many other churches, but only mine with its loud music and emotionally overwrought teenagers and jumping worshippers, was full of life. Full of the Spirit. I used the language of my fellow “on fire” believers and signed my letters with phrases like, “Because He Lives,”  or “Washed in the blood.” People in my church were known to answer a causal “How are you?” with something like, “I’m blessed and highly favored.”

But my years in Youth Group were tumultuous at best. During my time in this magical group we went through 6 different youth pastors. Every time I would start to connect with someone, they would leave. The head pastor of my church stressed from the pulpit the importance of discipleship. Asking an older or more mature Christian to mentor you was clear evidence that you were “on fire” and mature. So I asked. I asked four different women if they would disciple me, pour into me, pass this magic fire on to me. The first was deemed an inappropriate choice by church leaders further up in the hierarchy. The second and third both said yes, but never made any effort to be available, even when I called them or tried to set up times to meet. They were always too busy for me. The fourth was an absolute delight of a woman, but unbeknownst to me she was going through her painful journey with the burden of being on-fire and she only had so much to give.

I gradually gave up on the idea of anyone really knowing me or caring about me personally.  I came to understand that my value to the youth group was closely connected to how frequently and obviously I “served” the church. I actually remember scrubbing the toilets in the building that the youth group used with great vigor, convinced that others would see my servant’s heart and be moved by how spiritually mature I was. There was a spiritual hierarchy in the youth group and you were either a leader or a target to be prayed into salvation.  If you fell somewhere in between, you were irrelevant. So I became a leader.

By 16, I was on a team with high school seniors and college students, leading the high school youth group. I was the youngest person on the team and I was proud of it.  Being part of the team I could cover up the pain of nobody knowing me, of nobody caring to know me, with a sense of belonging. I could lay hands on people and pray in my prayer language and advise people to “ask the Lord to reveal himself in this situation” as an answer to any problem they might pose.  I worked as a counselor at church camp and once we’d all sung ourselves hoarse and cried all our tears, I prayed into the ears of my emotionally exhausted peers that they would, “never lose their fire.”

I wasn’t allowed to date in high school, but that was mostly OK with me. After all, I could always cover the fact that no one had ever asked me out with a proud declaration that I had “kissed dating goodbye.” I remember oh-so-solemnly signing a commitment not only to stay abstinent, but not to kiss anyone other than my husband. I can’t remember now whether the commitment was no kissing until marriage or just until engagement (either way, it was a moot point because it was a commitment I didn’t keep). I vividly remember being appalled when hearing about other girls who had boyfriends…some who even kissed their boyfriends. Clearly these girls were not serious about purity.

At some point, I started to see these ways that I was different from my peer as a points of pride, badges of honor. In some unspoken way, I understood that even if no one really knew me, if no one cared about me, I could still belong if I could make this my identity.  I would be pure. I would be spiritual. I would be the godliest, humblest servant of them all. I might not have tons of friends, but people would know that I was a serious and committed Christian. Someday a godly man would be attracted to the beauty of my purity and would sweep me off my feet. (Jonathan has since informed me that my purity ring was shockingly not the thing that attracted him to me).

At 18, I packed my bags and headed off to Wheaton College, alma mater of such spiritual giants as Billy Graham and Jim and Elisabeth Eliot. I wasn’t naïve though. After attending Christian school all of my life I knew there would be people at Wheaton who weren’t “really” Christians. Or even if they were, I would certainly find people who weren’t on fire like I was. I would have to take a stand, refuse to compromise, and show them what it meant to really love Jesus.

At Wheaton I found people from all kinds of backgrounds – some similar to mine, some even more extreme, more “on fire” than I was, and then those “others” I had prepared myself for: the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Lutherans, the Baptists, the ANGLICANS, and a whole slew of denominations I never knew existed – Evangelical Free and Christian and Missionary Alliance. I was right about Wheaton in some ways. I didn’t find a lot of people who thought true worship meant jumping up and down with your hands in the air in a dark room while the electric guitar screamed at a deafening decibel. But what I did find was grace.

I met people, many people who enveloped me in grace. Who didn’t care what I had done or what I could contribute. Who weren’t judging my actions to rank me on their relative holiness scale. They simply loved me. Wanted to know me. Challenged me to use my mind when it came to my faith. Helped me realize that “on fire” as I understood it was just a construct of a sub-culture that had little to do with Jesus and whom I no longer wanted to be a part of.

If 15-year-old me could see 25-year-old me she would judge the hell out of her. After all, 25-year-old me wears spaghetti strap tops, generally dislikes CCM (contemporary Christian music), didn’t kiss dating good-bye, doesn’t speak in tongues, and occasionally drinks margaritas. Twenty-five year old me is married to a Presbyterian! (AKA: barely Christian, possible completely spiritually dead), “believes” in evolution, and has voted Democrat once or twice.  If 15-year-old me saw 25-year-old me she would rank her pretty low on the holiness scale. Probably below “real” Christian. But I don’t care. Because 15-year-old me isn’t someone whose opinion I care about. And the people whose opinions I do care about aren’t interested in how many “Acquire the fire” rallies I’ve been to, whether or not I listen to secular music, or how fast I can find I Thessalonians. These people are interested in knowing me, and more than knowing me, loving me.

When I was on fire, I measured my worth against the depth of my commitment which was indicated by the visible extent of my witness and by how essential a place I held in the hierarchy of the church. Now I am not on fire. But now I love and know that I am loved. Now I find extraordinary grace in ordinary things. I may have lost the fire, but it is now that I am most real and true and alive.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

This blog post is part of a synchroblog project started by Addie Zierman who recently published her first memoir, When We Were on Fire. I did not find out about the synchroblog project in time to officially contribute, but Addie’s words have resonated with me and I wanted to participate. I was also inspired to participate when I read my friend and fellow blogger Briana Meade’s contribution to the synchroblog. For those who read this and relate in a big way or small, I encourage you to check out Addie’s book, her blog, and the other blogs you will find linked on her page. Also, your comments are always appreciated!

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Just Around the River Bend: Nobody gets me like Pocahontas does

The past few months have been filled to the brim with activity. Trips and adventures, anticipation and hard goodbyes. Since my last post I have been to my sister’s high school graduation in Louisiana, to my best friend’s graduation from her Master’s program (see the picture – Master Christina), on a weekend getaway to Washington DC, on an anniversary cruise to the Bahamas, to visit sweet friends Thai and Lanise in Wilmington, had our dear friends Brandon and Christy visit us and went to a Durham Bulls game, and had a crazy girl’s weekend in Chicago/Wisconsin with my roomies. We found a wonderful girl to keep our sweet kitties while we are gone, sold both of our cars, and moved out of our beloved apartment in Raleigh. We said goodbye to a place we love and many of our closest friends, and drove 17 hours down to my parents’ house in Louisiana to store all of our furniture and visit my family and grandparents (aren’t they the cutest?) From there we spent a few days in Orange Beach, AL on vacation with Jonathan’s family (which included the sailboat cruise pictured below  – most terrifying thing I’ve ever done) before making the 14 hour drive back up to their home in Cincinnati where we have spent the last week trying to fit our entire lives into four 50-lb suitcases.Durham Bulls Game Washington DC Bahamas Landscape Bahamas Christina the Master Grandparents sailboat

Girls WeekendI have cried more times than I can count, but I am still incredibly excited about the adventure ahead of us. While it has been harder than I imagined saying goodbye to family, friends, pets, and a city I have come to think of as home, the prospect of all we will learn and see and experience in Korea and wherever else we may make it to on the way has given me hope and excitement about the future. The world feels full of possibilities and even the most ordinary things seem beautiful.

A few months ago I was watching Pocahontas on Netflix (hurray Netflix for getting that contract with Disney, but boo for not being available in South Korea) and as I was singing aloud at the top of my lungs to “Just Around the River Bend” (what…you mean you don’t do that every time you watch a Disney movie? What…you mean you don’t just watch Disney movies by yourself?) I was really overwhelmed by the lyrics. Pocahontas is trying to decide whether to do what is expected and traditional by marrying Kocoum or keep chasing her dreams.

You have to admit, Pocahontas is pretty bad-butt.

You have to admit, Pocahontas is pretty bad-butt.

“Should I choose the smoothest course
Steady as the beating drum?
Should I marry Kocoum?
Is all my dreaming at an end?
Or do you still wait for me, Dream Giver
Just around the river bend?”

And I wept. (What, you mean you don’t weep openly while singing along to Disney songs in Disney movies that you are watching by yourself?) Because I knew exactly what Pocahontas was asking…well, not the marrying Kocoum part, but the rest. Should I choose the smoothest course (stay put, settle down, find a desk job, start a family)? Is all my dreaming at an end? Or do you still wait for me, Dream Giver? I thought, “Pocahontas really gets it.” She gets what it is like to feel deep down that there is something else out there for her, even though everyone else is content to stay where they are and do what is expected. Pocahontas understands what it means to follow the Dream Giver (even though her Dream Giver was probably some sort of weird-looking cloud spirit, judging from the controversial Mother Willow).

“Just Around the River Bend,” has become an anthem for me over these last few months. In the harder moments as well as in the exciting times I have been spurred on thinking about what I might find beyond this particular river bend. I think the Dream Giver is still waiting for me there.

Jonathan and I have set up a new blog to chronicle our Korean adventure together: Two Sore Thumbs…Because two redheads living in Korea stick out like sore thumbs. We would love for you to follow us there so we can continue to share life with you, even from the other side of the world.  Such Small Hands will stay up and may still be used occasionally for non-Korea related posts, but most of our adventures will be posted to Two Sore Thumbs. Hope you check us out!

People Are the Worst: A Rant

As many of you know, I recently lost almost 30 lbs over the course of 3 months. I was unhealthy and I felt bad both physically and emotionally. I had a friend introduce me to a program she had done to lose weight and create better habits for long-term health. I was fed-up with trying to do it on my own so I decided to follow my friend’s example and I made some pretty dramatic changes in my diet and my habits. I had fantastic success. Not just with losing weight, but with ridding my body of all the junk I had been putting into it. I felt like I was starting over. I was losing pounds, but with each healthy choice I made I was also reclaiming my health and gaining the power to master my cravings and destructive habits. I felt revitalized and excited about life.

When I reached my goal, I was offered the opportunity to become a health coach. Just like the friend who shared the program with me, I could become certified to share the hope  and the health I had found with my friends and family. Now, here are a couple of things you should know about me:

  1. I am the worst salesperson in the world. This is because I don’t like being pressured into things and am therefore uncomfortable being aggressive towards other people when it seems clear that they are uninterested.  I rarely hold strong opinions, I hate arguments, and I am turned off by anyone who thinks they know all the answers.
  2. I am moved deeply by instances where people realize their potential and feel proud of themselves (in a good way) and validated for the work they have done. I weep openly while watching shows like The Biggest Loser, The Voice, the Olympics, even What Not to Wear, because something about seeing people achieve something they never thought they could resonates with something deeply ingrained in me, whether it is losing 100 lbs or catching the attention of a pop star or just being confident about who they are and not trying to hide themselves from the world. 

I told my coach, “Thanks for the opportunity, and I would love to coach others, but I am terrible at sales. And I hate it very much” She said, “You are not selling the products. You just share your story and then you will have the opportunity to walk alongside anyone who is interested in doing the program you did .” I said, “Oh. I would like that very much. I love helping people. I love sharing their successes. I could really enjoy doing that.”

 So I did it. I went through the process of being certified as a health coach.  Then I started putting up some before and after pictures on facebook, telling people I had become a health coach and would love to help my friends reach their health goals. I probably didn’t communicate it perfectly, but I had only the purest of intentions. I thought, “This makes me really uncomfortable, but this is how I found out about this program and maybe this will help some of my friends too.” So in spite of my own discomfort I did it. I put up (somewhat embarrassing) pictures of myself and I told people my version of the “good news.” And here is what I found out.

People are the worst. Certainly there were many people who complimented me on my new trimmer body, which was kind. But there were also many people who were mean. Who responded to me as though I had singled them out and told them they needed to lose weight, when all I had done was post something publicly on my own wall. Some people chose to “unfriend” me (because apparently we are in the 6th grade). Some people responded that they thought I was incredibly arrogant and just wanted to brag about my own accomplishments. Some thought I was trying to guilt them into buying something. Many asked what I had done to lose the weight, only to be disappointed when I told them how I had changed my habits. And some (my personal favorite) thought that I had joined a weird cult because it didn’t “sound like me.” Even those closest to me were only nominally supportive. When it came to helping me in a substantive way, nobody wanted a part of it.

All of this was deeply hurtful to me. I in no way expected everyone I knew to undertake the program I did. In fact, I spoke to a couple of people whom I actually advised not to do it because I don’t believe it’s the right thing for them. I didn’t expect everyone I knew to be super positive about it, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for this.

I understand now why so many people are afraid to try new things. Because the minute you do something out of the ordinary for you, people attack you. They do not want you to grow or to change. They want you to stay exactly as they expect you to be. This experience ended like many such experiences do – with me crying on the phone to my mom, who still possesses the magical power to make everything, no matter how dismal, better. And at least I learned my lesson. I probably should have known this before, but the school of hard knocks has just confirmed, sometimes people really are just the worst.

To the few of you reading this rant…let’s all go home and think about how much we collectively suck…and what we could maybe do to fix that.