Frigid Spirals

Have I really not posted since Sunday? It’s been a longer week than I thought.

Honestly, the past few days have felt like a year. This weekend (as alluded to in my last post) was quite an emotional bomb. At first I really kicked myself for being naive and putting my hope into someone like that, but you know, I’m not upset, because I had the courage to try. I remember this quote (from a James Bond movie of all places), “What’s the use of living if you can’t feel alive?” I guess that’s kind of where I am with that. Bitter sweet.

I think the Evil One knows that I can usually handle big things going wrong pretty well, but a lot of little ones will ruin my day. I’ve been crazy stressed this week with finals. One of my professors gave us back a final project to revamp with no feedback…the most frustrating thing in the world. I’ve studied so much my brain hurts. My internet was down for a day or so (another reason I didn’t post), and a bird unloaded on my car. I went to my last youth service with the youth group I’ve been working with this week (I’m going to miss those kids so much), and we just had the mother of all ice storms today. What a week!

Winter is the perfect visualization of everything I hate in life. It’s bleak, it’s dark, it’s dead. I struggle to find happiness in the winter. I get really depressed. I’ve actually had to medicate myself through winters with antidepressants in the past. This weekend was really bleak and dreary, which I think is why I was so wiped out by the events that happened. But today was horrible. I literally couldn’t get out of bed this morning. To go from sunny, bright days to no sunlight at all is the most horrible thing for me to experience. It takes my breath, it taps my energy, it freezes my soul. It’s bad enough that there’s nothing on the trees, very little green or brightness, and that it’s horribly cold. I can’t stand to be cold. It makes me feel so hopeless.

Everything’s frozen. I feel like my life is, as well. I actually set my desktop to a picture of a crying girl (I got it from Getty Images, it’s a beautiful shot), because I feel like that’s me, deep down inside. Crying. Fighting to get out, fighting for it to make sense, fighting for someone to understand the way I see things for a change.

I feel like it’s always a fight lately.

I was walking down the sidewalk tonight, and the trees were all leaning over, bowing under the weight of the ice with which they were stricken today. That is how I feel. Frozen, oppressed with more weight than I can bear, and dead. I can pinpoint all these things in my life that just aren’t going right, and I can’t fix them. All I can do when I pray is say that I don’t know what to do now. It’s all broken. It’s all bent. It’s all damaged.

Eventually, I know sun and warmth will come again. It always does. I just have to wait it out. But making it through the cold is hell.

Intact China

You ever have one of those odd moments in your life that you almost wish never happened, but that you will never be able to forget?

Okay, okay, that’s a little ambiguous, but if you’ve had one, you know what I’m talking about. They’re a mix between deja vu and a fleeting glimpse of a future that could have been but slips through your hands.

I had a chance to meet three new people last night. One of them I had been talking to online for a while, and the other two were her family and friend. One had the potential for something more than friendship, the others were there to make the evening less awkward. I took a roadtrip to a different city this weekend at her invitiation to meet her face-to-face for the first time, and to hang out. Well, nothing more than friendship will ever transpire here, and that awkwardness that comes with meeting someone online has set in again. Things are really wierd now.

But the part of the experience that really blows me away is this:

I met three really awesome people yesterday! Artistic, passionate, talkative, real people. Nothing about them was fake. I had a glimpse into their world, and it was really touching. I may very well never see them or talk to them again on this side of Heaven. But the fact that they crossed my path for just one evening has affected my life in a very tangible way. It almost hurts that three potential friendships were jerked away, like the tablecloth being pulled from beneath the china. Well, it was pulled successfully, because I’m still intact. But, in whatever small way, I will never be the same because I met them. I saw something angelic in them, something that glimmers, that only comes in His image. I had a chance to attend a concert that was an amazing worship experience for me. I was touched last night.

This type of thing has happened to me before, with different twists. It’s just one of those moments in life that come from stepping over the edge and seeing if you can fly. Sometimes you glide for a while, and sometimes you crash, but you always come out better for trying. And the song that was playing on the radio at the time will forever be associated with that moment in your mind, so you know it was unforgettable blip on the radar of your life. But that’s okay. It came and it went, and it was supposed to be that way for whatever reason. We have to hold onto those evenings, those weekends, those experiences. They make us just a little bit better than we were before they happened.

If any of the three of you read this, I’m glad that our paths crossed, however briefly. I hope you are, as well.

Santa Was Never On A Cross

I’m consistently bemused by how intelligence leads to a sincere lack of common sense.

I have some friends who are in grad school with me, or working on other advanced degress, and I have to laugh at them sometimes (in a friendly way). Because, God bless them, they’re so intelligent that they have no common sense. No idea of how to interact in public, or dress with some sense of fashion. I guess you could say they’re nerds. An innocent status of nerd-dom is one thing. But refusing to recognize something that’s just logical and practical for the sake of the fact that someone behind a desk had too much time on their hands and was thinking too much is another.

Symbols of the Christian faith have become under attack lately. The California suit against having “under God” in our pledge of allegiance, for example. I suppose it stands to reason that the next thing to be assaulted would be “Merry Christmas,” because that’s too faith-specific a way to wish good tidings during a holiday that, as many are, was named after its Founder.

The ACLU, bastions of intelligence that they are, has once again spent far too much time and energy pushing a “politically correct” alternative to the way things have traditionally been done. Now, I’m really not into tradition, don’t get me wrong. But forsaking it just for the sake of forsaking it, when it makes no sense? That’s stupid. But, I shouldn’t be surprised, because that’s what “political correctness” (aka, “carefully disguised bigotry”) specializes in.

Reducing “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays” is an affront to many faiths. If you celebrate Hannukah, has it ever occurred to you that “Happy Holidays” is a way of neutralizing your faith as well? This isn’t tolerance, it’s intolerance. Intolerance of not only Christianity, but of other faiths, as well.

To look at Christmas logically, the holiday was created as a memorial of the birthday of Jesus Christ. Whether you believe in Jesus’ divinity or not, you kind of have to recognize that He has been the most influential and controversial Person in history. His birth is the reason the holiday is commemorated. He is truly, to entertain the cliche, “the Reason for the season.” His birth, life, and death were turning points in human history. Santa Clause…well…somewhat less significant, wouldn’t you agree?

So I guess my question is, if we’re able to call Martin Luther King, Jr. day by its official name, why can’t we call Christmas by its offical name? Because it’s the same prinicple. Christmas was named after the Christ. Even if you’re not a Christian, that just makes sense. Its not an insult to anyone to wish them a “Merry Christmas,” regardless of their faith. It’s not an insult to me if I wish someone “Happy Hannukah.” Why would we presume the reverse?

I guess because the ACLU are experts at assuming the burden of an insult that doesn’t exist. Get over it, guys. We’re all adults, here. It will all be okay, I promise.

By the way, there’s this really cool grassroots movement called Operation: Just Say “Merry Christmas.” It’s kind of nice to see someone taking a stand on this whole issue. Check out their website and support them if you’re so inclined:

http://www.operationjustsaymerrychristmas.com

Whomever may be reading this, permit me to be among the first to wish you a Merry Christmas.

Color Outside the Lines

A Washington Post article on Monday alluded to the fact that Louisiana Governor Blanco was essentially in a position where she was struggling to keep her image in the face of federal government bullying just prior to Hurrican Katrina’s catastrophic landfall in New Orleans. I was having a conversation with a friend over lunch today about this very article, and the appearance that appropriate federal aid was delayed entering New Orleans in order for the Governor to protect her political image. Now, granted, that’s a pretty heavy assertion. But you have to admit, this is certainly what it looks like.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Katrina’s aftermath (there’s a phrase we’re sick of hearing) still held major time on CNN this morning. Many hurricane survivors were being given the mic in public forums, and they were, as they have over the past few weeks, accusing the powers-that-be of racism in delaying their response to help the disaster area.

Here we go again.

I will confess that I don’t know the exact demographics of New Orleans. I am certain, however, that there were Caucasians involved in the disaster. I would be willing to bet money that there were white people in the shelters as well as people of color. I have difficulty seeing officials in FEMA and the Bush administration setting around their desks saying, “hey, let’s stick it to black people.” I just seriously doubt that it went down that way.

So I guess what really jerks my chain here is this: why are we insistent upon being so juvenile as to create an issue here that doesn’t exist?

The survivors of Katrina went through hell, and I’m not saying that they didn’t. But there people of all different races and colors and backgrounds going through that hell, regardless of the primary demographic population of the Lower 9th. Whether or not the image battle that the Washington Post alluded to is true (I’d hope it’s not, but let’s face it, they are politicians), the fact is that the feds did screw this one up. But my point is that it was an equal opportunity screw-up, not a racially motivated one. To try to play the racist card in this situation is just wrong.

Should we be placing blame here? Absolutely, because lives were lost, many needlessly. We need to avoid that in the future. But let’s place the blame accurately. The feds let New Orleans down. The whole city. Not just one ethnic population. It was a poorly-managed trainwreck.

Let’s not make it out to be anything other than that.

Judging

The fact that Christians spend way too much time judging each other is one of my biggest soapboxes. It’s no wonder the lost don’t want what we have when they see us looking down on them in some condescending way because we somehow have gotten the impression that we’re better than they are.

So, I’ve always considered myself to be a very open-minded person. But last night, God took me to school.

I have this acquaintance at my second job. He’s a good guy. I knew he went to church, but I didn’t know about his relationship with Christ. About how real his Christianity is. I struggled to see substance.

Well, I ended up hanging out with he and his wife last night (at IHOP until the wee hours of the morning…go figure), and eventually, the conversation drifted toward church and spriritual matters. And I was absolutley blown away by how real this guy is, how completely genuine in his relationship with Christ.

So I started thinking about why it was that I struggled so much to see the substance. Because I quickly discovered last night that it was there. So why hadn’t I seen it?

It occurred to me that it’s because my mind has been poisoned, and I had, in some small way, fallen victim to the very closed-mindedness that I hate so much. I’m currently working on my master’s degree at a Christian university. As with any Christian university, there’s a lot of rules about appearance and so forth. But it occurred to me that I had allowed myself to get sucked into that narrow-minded idea of how you know a Christian. Because people in an educational setting talk about their faith all the time. I’m surrounded by people who talk about their faith. And they talk about it well. We know all the right words and phrases to use when talking about our Christianity, all the buzz words.

And I had never heard this guy say any of that. So I assumed his relationship with God wasn’t so deep.

Well, shame on me, because the more I’ve reflected on our conversation last night, and on the way I see this guy live his life, the more impressed I am with the fact that he lives his faith instead of talking about it. He’s real. Nothing fake about him. He makes mistakes. He does some things that would make “proper” Christians gasp and cover their mouths. But he never claimed to be perfect. He claimed to be who he is. And he lives God’s love.

Now, eventually the silent witness loses its effectiveness, and we must all be vocal about Jesus. Not everyone has the gift of evangelism, however. And the bottom line is that I know all kinds of people who can talk about their faith all day, and then not live it worth anything. I’m sick of that, to tell you the truth. I think a lot of people are, especially the lost.

So, that’s why I’m so impressed to see someone do it in the opposite order.

So, I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that, it doesn’t matter how you look, or what kind of clothes you wear, or the way you wear your hair, or the music you listen to, or how much Christian jargon you color your speech with. Your piety isn’t what God’s intrested in. He’s intrestested in how real you are. Who you are when you’re alone in your bedroom at night, who you are when no one but Him is looking around. The person you really are. Because if that’s solid, if your heart is right, then Christ will show in your life. To judge by appearance is legalism, and God hates that. To pay attention to someone’s heart coming out in their life…that’s true evidence of their relationship with our Savior.

I had a great time hanging out with someone that I’m sure will become a close friend last night. And when I got home, I spent several minutes apologizing to God. Because I had stereotyped. I had judged. I had done one of the things that I hate supremely.

Thank God He chose such a pleasant way in which to wake me up.