A Message I Sent to a Friend

I just read part of an article about "hipster faith" that one of my high school friends wrote about on his Tumblr and sent the link to Sally along with my own attached message to her. I'm putting it here as a reminder to myself.

"I was reading this thinking about my own tendency to betray the uncomfortable stigmatized norm of Christianity in our country, which I know we've discussed to some extent. I've been convicted recently about how scary it is to step into the extreme of this so-called "hipster faith" (or certain variants thereof), which I recognize as being more appealing to me if I don't check myself and my priorities. If anything, this article just reminds me how necessary it is to be constantly checking ourselves in a manner open to necessary conviction rather than settling on a new "right" way. I don't think hipster faith is really terrible unless it is only being performed for selfish ends, which I know it often can be for me when I start straying into looser practices. We're always gonna find something to point at in every Christian practice and say that it's wrong. The only way to deal with that reality is to be open to seeing where we're wrong as individuals and within our groups in order to fight hypocrisy and strive for the servant attitude of Jesus. I'm starting to see how much more constructive that would be than constantly pointing fingers of blame, which is all I ever want to do. I don't want to be sick of the church and not be able to do anything about it. I would rather be sick of the state of my own soul and then work with God to see a change there first."

PLUG

This is where I plug my class blog, because I want it to actually function properly--meaning I actually do need comments for it to work. Don't worry, I don't *need* them in the EVERYONE MUST LIKE ME AND MY BLOGGINZ sort of way, but the comments feed into a sort of project I'm doing with the blog. So if you'd like, check it out. Read the "About" section to understand my mission here, and then comment your quick song recommendation. I'd appreciate it greatly. Thanks, all.

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Here's a song!


The Shins - So Says I
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Yes Man and a Life Plan

Okay yes, I know there is too much blogging lately about what/where/why/how/plz_help with my life, and I know you probably don't/shouldn't really care all that much about it.

So I'm gonna name drop Zooey Deschanel right now to get you interested. *interest ignites*

Some of you may have made the connection. Zooey. Yes Man. She was in that. Yeah, I only saw that movie because I knew she starred in it. She played her typical strange, mysterious girl role, so I was inevitably endeared to her but that much more. I watched the movie with the Kirby over winter break, and I guess you could say I was inspired.

There was an overarching satirical theme mocking religious tradition (specifically Christian) in our country. Kirby looked over at my pure-holy-temple-Christian self at one point and asked, "This isn't offending you, is it?" With a hearty laugh and furrowed brow, I responded with a very strong, "No, not in the least." We've talked religion before. He knew what I meant with that response.

But I wasn't really inspired by the satire. If anything, it is a disappointing thing to watch when I let it bother me in that, "grr, you're attacking my people," sort of way, which I've all but entirely dismissed as a train of thought. I love my Christian brothers and sisters, but I see the flaws in them the same way I see the flaws in my non-Christian companions. It's not fair to expect a lot out of a sinful people. It is fair to expect a lot out of a perfect God. This is what I'm focusing on right now, and it's helping.

That being said, I was inspired by the "Yes Man" theme. Sure, it is extreme to say "yes" to absolutely everything requested of you, but I don't think it's too much to ask that we be willing to go and do. In a Jesus context, be willing to go and be a servant.

Through all of this applying for the DC Teaching Fellows and being invited to interview for it and now trying to prepare for the 6-hour interview session, my fears and doubts have been pretty consistently crushed by my desire for a "Yes Man" attitude. I would Christianize this and say it's a desire for the "Yes, God" attitude, but I think I'm not quite there. That's where I want to be, and I'm working on it.

The mindset that I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my life is futile. I know my life is not ultimately up to me or even about me. Being career-minded is a huge unnecessary burden, and I'm not looking for a life of such entrapment. This helps my yes--forcing a plan that laughs in the face of fear.

let's focus on tomorrow instead of right now

This funny thing has happened.

This funny thing where I applied for something and now they want me to interview.

And it's only January. This isn't the January wedding I would have anticipated, but I'm rolling with it in a haze of semi-denial.

Perhaps not denial as much as it hasn't really set in. I'm still going to classes and working and tutoring and playing with friends, and by "still" I mean all of that has just started again for the last time. During winter break, I figured I should start looking for jobs or something. It was another practice in planning a theoretical future, a safe and distant observation of possibilities. Suddenly the ideas, fears, and questions I had not all that long ago are that much closer to being real. Gaps are closing. I'm a hot potato bouncing on my parents' couch, and soon I'll be bouncing out the door instead of settling in for a nice summer's stay. It's exciting. Terrifying. And still a decision away.

It's only an interview.

Thoughts on Therapy or Therapeutic Thoughts--Pt. 2

I went to therapy again. I walked into the session this time with an agenda. During the first session, there was only so much that could be done or said about my psychological issues and what-not since we were limited to an hour. In retrospect, I probably could have increased my words per minute average and maybe gotten a little further. Time is of the essence, folks, especially in instances of restoring sanity.

So my mouth started moving the moment my butt plopped on the couch. One part of my personality that I find to be the most annoying/troubling (SPOILER ALERT) is my obsessive nature. I won't dive into it much here, because quite frankly, it's hard to explain. But I told dear Eva my woes and troubles with this tendency I have. We discussed why I am this way, which after years of psychoanalyzing myself I've basically already figured out, but when we proceeded to talk about how to change it, we were faced with two options:
1. Divert the fixation onto something healthy -- Eva's example: therapy for the rest of forever, or
2. KILL IT--the obsessive nature, that is, not the objects of obsession.

With regards to option number one, I know (stress here--know) that the correct biblical response would be to divert my fixation to God. Probably not in some creepy Mandy Moore in Saved! sort of way but in the I-know-God-can-sustain-me sort of way. I have a hard time talking about my struggles in this area, because I think I tend to rub up against the danger zone when it comes to my questions of faith. There are times a question will form in my mind, and it turns everything I believe upside-down in an instant. Fickle, I know. Foolish, yes probably. Dangerous, perhaps. Neurotic, most definitely. But to ignore those questions would only lead to an existential crisis later on. I know this because it has happened before. However, I do believe and can't help but believe in Truth. I believe it exists, and I believe it's God. Cryptic and open-ended as that may seem sometimes, it is my comfort. I would like to experience consistency of faith in salvation and constant appeals to God, and I do suppose that is what I should be striving for all the time. But sometimes it's not. That's all I can really say about it. It's just not.

As for option number two, I'm not really sure how to kill it. The obsession is like a hunger, but I've also discovered it is largely bred from fear. Fear of purposelessness, unimportance, unfounded routines, etc. Having a healthy fear of God would probably be helpful with this option, too. In general, I don't see how God is not the answer, but I also struggle at times to see how God is the answer. All I know is that God is the only thing that ever really makes sense, and there is a reason for that.

Motivated by a Lack of Motivation

We're beginning day three of our stay at my sister's house in Tennessee. We've had a very nice time so far. Once we arrived Monday night, we all sat around the living room and had our second Christmas. Leo is finally understanding the concept that there are more toys underneath all those odd, paper-wrapped, blobby objects. He seemed content enough to open a toy and start playing with it, so it was difficult to get him to move onto the next one. But just watching the scene, I couldn't help but think how unfortunate it is that we have to train him to not be content enough with that one toy to stay with it. He has to want more. Does he?

Seems to me that's a concept somewhere around the core of my self-diagnosed neurosis. Though the time to relax with everyone has been nice, my mind doesn't know how to relax. I've second-guessed, doubted, and tried reworking my rough plans for after graduation at least ten times since I got here. Good Lord, I have a whole semester of doing this ahead. And probably several freaking-out-don't-know-what-to-do blog posts, so here is my apology in advance for that. I'm caught in that place where I know it's not all about me and my choices and my desires and la-de-da, but then I also know I can't just sit around and watch the world happen around me either. This is the time in my life that I have to be proactive about everything I pursue. I suppose in those lovely days of being married and settled and what-not, a routine life develops. There is no life right now for me to even consider making a routine out of unless I want to sit on my parents' couch for ten years (I don't and I can't). So now I sit before doors 1, 2, and 3, too terrified to even touch the doorknob of any.

And as far as "rough plans" go, I'm currently looking at the New Teacher Project (TNTP), which was started by a girl who did Teach For America and decided to further the cause beyond the teach-for-two-years framework of Teach For America. TNTP makes a more direct effort at training teachers for careers and training them to be effective in high-need schools. The only way I think I qualify for this program is that I want the sort of change they want just as badly as they do. There's no guarantee I'd actually be an effective teacher. I'm a pretty terrible student myself, and I can't say I really care that much about academics. I like math because it's fun. I don't expect to go to a school and say, "Hey, see? This is fun!" and have everyone rigorously differentiating and integrating everything and its mother because I've shown them the light and the light is fun. If anything, I understand why they won't cooperate and just get the assignment done or bother studying for the test. I hated doing that, too, kid. No one ever lit my fire. I had who I imagine is one of the best math teachers in at least all of Virginia for my junior and senior years of high school, and I do strongly believe he's the reason I still loved math when I walked across the commencement stage. But I've seen his grief and his sorrow over the students who don't care and don't get it. I see that he is fueled by his ideal students, the students like me who get it and love it. He's in the dumps when he's lost in a swarm of unmotivated students.

And he is the one who is convinced that I need to be a math teacher. It all started one day in calculus my senior year when we were going over a challenging homework problem. He had the problem up on the board and random people were throwing out suggestions of how to start the problem and where to go with it. I sat and watched and noticed the guy next to me struggling with even the most basic of concepts we were discussing, so I turned to him to explain enough to get him caught up to where we were. Then, my teacher hushed all of the not-quite-right suggestions and asked me specifically how to do the problem. So I told him, and I explained why I did what I did. By chance, I was right (I wasn't always right), and that's when he said, "You need to be a math teacher." For the first time. I fought it long and hard, and I used my severe lack of motivation in college as an excuse still for not teaching. I hate school. I hate tests. I hate homework. Why on earth would I go into a classroom and expect my own students to be interested in doing these things? Do I really have to drag them along like my professors did for me in college? Will they shy away from me like I do with my professors because I can feel the shame of my "C-" in their classes when I look at their faces?

College isn't for me, but I did it. So here I stand with my barely respectable GPA thanks to all of my non-math classes, wondering if I should teach a bunch of unmotivated students like me. Maybe so. God will tell.

Thoughts on Therapy or Therapeutic Thoughts

I had my first counseling session ever yesterday. It didn't make me feel like as much of a crazy as I thought it might. In fact I came out seeing myself as a much more stable person than I thought I was. As far as the professionals and I know at this point, I'm not clinically depressed, meaning I don't need to be on medication for anything. I sat with Dr. Eva Abel yesterday and told her a lot of the stuff that you can likely find in the deep dark archives of this blog. We didn't get but so far considering these sessions are only an hour long and I'm used to conversations of this nature lasting until 4:00 a.m. with Sadie (because you can do stuff like that when you're in college). The doctor's take on the situation so far is that I am one of her "intelligent" patients, which I think means my depression phases are more a result of my thoughts and less on some sort of traumatic situation or period in the past. This I knew already. So she outlined a potential goal I could have if I continued therapy, which would be to accept that some questions will simply never be answered. I told her that is much easier said than done, and she agreed of course. I guess that's why it's a large, overarching goal. She also suggested I work on separating my deep thoughts from my emotions so that they will have less play on my behavior. Also easier said than done. This must be how therapists make money.

A weird part of everything is that this woman isn't a Christian therapist, so I'm not sure she can fully understand what it is I'm actually striving for intellectually--or rather, how I'm trying to figure out how faith can cooperate with intellect. She seems to think I should find a Christian leader person to talk to about this. That person should probably be my dad. I talk to him about it from time to time, but I may up the frequency. I think we'd both appreciate it.

Once the session was over, we scheduled to meet once more before I go back to school, because I don't think she's a quack and I enjoyed talking to her a lot. She's very expressive, which reminded me of Becca, and she has a certain spunk that reminded me of Noelle. And as silly as psychology seems to me, the truth of the matter is that I want desperately to talk about these things and if I can talk about them to someone who has made it her job to help me through it, well that just seems like a perfect situation.

Mumford & Sons have been playing in my car for over two months now, so as I was cranking up the heat in my freezing cold car and getting ready to back out of the parking space, I listened to what Marcus was singing:

"But you are not alone in this
And you are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand
Hold your hand"

So I thought about how God teaches me things in life--in talking to a psychologist who doesn't even know that God has a plan for me. I thought about finding truth in some of the most unexpected places and how important that has been in helping me understand God and His sufficiency even when I was running away from Him. I started to feel tented by God's sovereignty, and for once I wanted nothing but to curl up and rest within the comfort of His power over my mind, soul, and body.