A Midsummer Morning's Dream

I took the roundabout way to the coffee shop this morning. I have a lot of work to do so I fully intended to get there A-SAP, but for some reason I ended up making a few different turns. At any rate, I found myself stopped in front of one of my favorite dichotomies: the local private catholic college preparatory and Central High (the most ethnically diverse, police-patrolled school in town). The two schools sit right next door to each other. As I passed the preppy Catholic school, the turning lane was full with Suburbans, Lexuses, and other shiny, window-tinted autos. Just on the other side, the sidewalks were lined with "the other" kids. The turning lane into the public high was empty, though I spotted a Chevy Cavalier dropping off a student in the parking lot.

A young girl got out and a guy about her same age helped her with her backpack. I thought, "What nice friends. They must carpool." But as she turned to walk towards class, he grabbed her hand. She coyly smiled and let him draw her in. He held her. She buried her face in his chest. She turned again to go, but he held onto her hand making her giggle. For the length of the red light, they embraced each other--obviously dreading their parting. Which is when it occurred to me that he didn't attend school. Dressed in basketball shorts and a t-shirt, he didn't appear to be going to work either. When she finally left his arms and headed for class, he hopped into the passenger seat of the Chevy. Apparently, someone was taking him to drop her off.

As the Chevy drove away I realized how desperate they both were for love. Desperate. Watching the way he seemed to care for her, touch her, hold her, want her near him, I suddenly felt rage for her parents*. I was disturbed that it was a boyfriend who gave her so much attention. It was a boyfriend who figured out a way to get her to school. I wondered what this boyfriend did with his time and if he was someone worth her love. It didn't matter, though. He was the only one there working for it.

[*Side note: in ancient Hebrew there is no word for parents. It's either mother or father. So when I say parents, I am merely being politically correct. For I really mean to say father.]

Here's to moving

The sludge has fallen to just below my knees. It had crept up to my shoulders, really hindering my walking, but know it is more manageable and I feel it slipping even more. Hopefully it will be at my ankles and then gone altogether.

As I prayed about fear and brokenness in my life I had this vision or image of myself walking through sludge. I was not sludge. I was me. But it was as if I was walking along the floor of a swimming pool of sludge as high as my shoulders--maybe even above my head. I was moving--able to walk and press forward. But the sludge, the fear and brokennes, the imperfection and chaos of life around me, remained.

I began to find peace in the midst of the sludge. I wasn't fighting it. I wasn't a part of it. But it did surround me and it didn't stop me. The only one who could stop me was me.

The peace began to fully settle in me as I realized that I didn't have to move the sludge. I didn't have to fight it, remove it, fix it or destroy it. I just had to keep moving, looking to the author of finisher of my faith.

Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own world? I cannot kick the idea that everything in my life is abnormal. Different. Strange. Wrong. 

Granted, I make plenty of lifestyle decisions that set me apart (the way I eat, my education, the music I listen to, to some degree even the clothes I wear). I understand those things. 

I mean that my entire generation does not belong. We are the misfit coutures in centuries of real living. And I can't believe how it only took a generation before us to completely isolate our lifestyle from the world and yet set the glamorous standard of what is not real. Idolized we are hated. Isolated we are invaded. 

And either way, we do not belong. At least, I don't think I do. 

I think back to how centuries of people lived. Functioned, breathed, begat, and flourished. Looking back at the centuries and centuries before us, home entertainment existed in conversation and storytelling. Transportation was a huge venture. Hospitals served as merciful women alongside battles. Food could only be made--not purchased while running errands around town. Babies came from mothers. And slept on floors with families. 

For centuries and centuries, air was clean. Weather determined life. Washing took place rarely. And soap did not come in bars with lotions in bottles. Industry defined itself as your willingness to work or not. Public health included the presence or absence of sewage in the street. 

It probably sounds like I am reminiscing the good days. Harkening to a time of old-fashioned values and inherent purity, but I am not so fooled. Or reminiscent. Just surprised at how centuries and centuries of people lived life in one way and yet with one century (the life of a generation or two) we have revolutionalized it all. And claim to be the only way. The best way. The greatest way. Other countries are pitied, pooh-poohed and anything or anyone not in a car wearing denim and cotton that was born in a sanitary hospital in a metropolitan environment is weird. But it's us. 

In a few decades we have redefined life like never before. And though we have yet to see the results, we assert its superiority. I guess I just find that arrogant. And undoubtedly unwise. I look around at us in comparison to the centuries that already were and feel strange. We are strange. I don't want to be so arrogant to say that just because it is, or worse, just because it's ours, it is right. Such thinking is wrong. And I think that's why I feel so strange. 

Laying It All Down

My husband and I have had a rough week. I've felt an awful lot like a lunatic at times--losing my mind and my temper fairly regularly. I am surprised, though.

Through all the craziness and frustration, I have a deep, inner urge to love him, to care for him, to be with him, near him. But no matter how deep the urge something even stronger doth protest otherwise. And I simply cannot open myself up to him.

I have shared some deep feelings with him and need him to respond. He is overcome with the pride monster at the moment, though, and can only see himself and his needs.

He has no idea what he's missing out on. If he could only lay down his pride, his way and consider how I feel, I would be on him like white on rice (a favorite saying of his--he is 1/4 Asian after all). My true desire is to be near him. I want to take care of him. I want to be with him. I want to love him and be in love him.

And I wonder if that's how God feels.

I know that when I first heard about the life-altering raw food diet, it literally went against everything I felt was normal. It felt almost wrong and my immediate reaction was opposition. (Note it wasn't my "gut" reaction, rather some internal instinct that immediately brought on deep-rooted antagonism. This may be what the Bible refers to as "flesh." Interesting.)

I fought the raw food agenda with everything I had. I don't know why. I didn't pursue it. I didn't consider it. It was an otherwise totally illogical, misplaced hostility.

But the matter wouldn't fade. Raw food kept pestering me--rather God refused to give up on His plan for me, as corny as that sounds. And so finally when I couldn't ignore it or argue against it, I jumped headfirst into it. You know, one extreme to another.

And I found amazing rewards in laying my animosity down. It has been eight months and I can't believe how my life has improved.

I wonder what else my pride is determined to steal from me?

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways," declares the Lord.

Isaiah 55:8