On being an introvert

I have long thought of myself as an introvert, but in the last few years I've had so many people tell me otherwise that I wasn't sure. Then I recently had it explained that being an introvert has nothing to do with how well you like people (which is what I was told, if I don't like spending a good amount of time alone, then I must be an extrovert) but more with how much energy is gained by being around people. I am consistently exhausted by spending time with people, specifically if it is a large group. One or two I can usually handle ok, certainly far better for far longer than a larger group (large being anything more than 3 usually). Thus the conclusion that I am, indeed, an introvert.

Seeing myself this way also explains a few things about myself. I have also, for a long time, felt socially awkward, unable to do or say the right thing if I was in a larger group, thus resulting in my silence (and therefore my dislike of large gatherings). I even beat myself up for it a few times, wondering what was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just act like everybody else? When I talked with one other person I was fine. There were no issues about me saying the wrong thing, or anything like that. I figured maybe it was just a desire for attention, the need to say something so that others wouldn't forget about me, but that didn't really seem to fit either since I can quite happily sit in a corner with my nose in a book for hours on end with no desire to talk with anyone else at all.

The same person who explained to me that being an introvert does not mean you would prefer to be a hermit also explained that the issues I seem to have socially in large group settings are simply because I'm an introvert. It's natural for introverts to not relate well to lots of people because they aren't MADE to relate well to lots of people. Do you know how happy that made me feel? It means there isn't anything "wrong" with me. There is nothing for me to "fix," it's ok that I sometimes say something that seems to come from left field because introverts trying to become extroverts just creates a big mess anyway. It's also ok that I like to read, prefer reading to spending time socializing in a large group. It's just me, and there's nothing wrong with that :D

Love your enemies

Growing up in a christian home, I was taught all the basic beliefs of Christianity. Most of them made sense, but one I had a really hard time agreeing with was "love your enemies." I began to think about it the other day, and I realized the reason I had a hard time with it is because I was looking at "love" the wrong way. I had always taken it to mean, in this case anyway, that to love your enemies meant you had to like them. You had to *shudder* be friends with them even. Well, I didn't want to be friends with those who had hurt me. I wanted nothing to do with them. So I wasn't going to love them. Then I realized, to love does not mean to like. I can love my siblings, but I'm not always going to like them, or get along with them. In fact, to like someone seems, to me anyway, to be the weakest form of love. To like someone is to appreciate them for their good qualities. To love someone is different. It is to take the good with the bad, and remain faithful anyways. In loving your enemies, you don't have to like them, you don't have to be friends with them. What is required, however, is a willingness to look at this person as a human being, to do for them what you would do for any human, to give them shelter when they are cold, food when they are hungry. It is to treat them with respect, and ultimately, to forgive them for their actions against you. A good example would be something I heard from the movie "The Interpreter." In an African village, if a man committed murder, he would be taken to the river, tied up, and thrown in. The family of the deceased then had the option of either allowing him to drown, or saving him. If he drowned, they had their justice, but if they saved him, they had the healing that comes with forgiveness. I think those who chose to save the drowning man were truly "loving their enemies." It's not an easy thing, but it is worthwhile.

RIP Patches

I would have posted this sooner, but I wanted to wait till I thought maybe I could get through it without crying...nope...

Patches died on June 5th 2010. I wasn't there when my parents and Phillip and took him in because I was in England at the time, but they said it was very easy on him. He just went to sleep.

We had him for 12 years. He was crazy a lot of the time and only about half trained, but he was my best friend. He was always there for me when I needed him, and even when I didn't. He followed me around everywhere...I couldn't get up to go to the bathroom without him following me down the hall. He was my first dog that I really remember anything about. We had another dog when I was younger, but Patches was mine.

When was nine, almost ten years old, my mom finally told me that if I could do all my chores for a month without being asked, I could get a dog. When that month was up, I joyfully started looking through the greensheets and the classified ads in the newspaper, looking for the puppy that I wanted. Some friends of ours helped me out by showing me how to use the greensheets, and even doing some research on what kind of dog I wanted. After several weeks of looking, these same friends, who occasionally checked out the local animal shelters to see what kinds of animals they had, called my parents one night and told them that they had seen what looked to be a 6 month old puppy. He seemed to be very well behaved(the calmest in the kennel) and said we might want to take a look at him. The next day we went down there and there he was, as cute as could be. He didn't bark, or jump or anything. He SEEMED like a perfect angel. He went up for adoption that Saturday, and my dad went to go pick him up. Thus began our time with Patches.

The calmness didn't last more than week, and we soon had our hands full. He was lovable and calm as long as nothing new or exciting was happening, but anytime someone came home, or someone new came in the door, up he got that was that. One time he ran circles around the chair my dad was sitting in because he had so much energy he couldn't sit down. The high school students who met him when we had Bible quiz practice at our house nicknamed him "the psycho dog of death" :P

Another of his nicknames was Houdini. We found out shortly after we got him that if there was a hole somewhere, he would get out. He always came back, though. The day after we got him, we left him outside while we went to church and found the neighbor kids playing with him when we got back. He had gotten out through our fence to the school behind out house and found his way around to our street again. He was nothing if not smart. :) He even managed to figure out a way IN to our house when he was left outside while we were gone. That was the last time we left him outside.

He was my constant companion. It didn't matter where I went, he wanted to follow. When I was in Jr. High, my friend Lauren and I would take a day and spend it hiking in the foothills by my house. He got himself caught in some barbed wire once so I left him at home for a few weeks while his leg healed. Rather than laying under the coffee table in our front room(his usual hiding spot when we left) he sat at the window and watched me leave, howling all the while. He hated being left behind, so if it was possible for me to take him along, I did. I'm pretty sure the foothills were his favorite place to go. So much exploring to be done! Aside from the hikes, and the bike rides(oh the bike rides! he loved running next to me as I rode on my bike.) he also slept with me every night, right next to my bed. He wasn't allowed on the furniture, so he waited until everyone was asleep, then crawled up and laid down, sometimes at my feet, sometimes next to me. I remember one time he almost pushed me off the bed because HE didn't have enough room.

Throughout all the years, he never left me, never abandoned me, never rejected me. If I was crying, he was willing to let me use his shoulder, even though he didn't like it very much. He was my reading buddy and listening ear. He didn't care about anything as long as I was there, and he was GREAT at using his facial expressions to guilt trip me every time I left without him. He truly was my best friend. RIP buddy. I miss you.

hmmm...

I was sitting in Sunday School yesterday, and after the lesson was over, a thought popped into my head. I'm gonna try to explore it a little bit here and see where it goes...

God is all knowing. He always has been and always will be. He knew that man would fall when He created Adam and Eve, so he created them with a plan in mind, that is, He created them knowing that their creation meant that Jesus would one day have to die on the cross to correct their mistake. Ok, fine, but something I hadn't thought about before was the creation of Lucifer. God made him, and in in making him, also gave him his status as most powerful angel. This means that when God created Lucifer, He also knew that Lucifer would be the one to tempt Eve to eat the fruit. So why create Lucifer? God could have created man with a free will, and made another angel that would not have fallen, or made Lucifer so that he would not fall. But He didn't. Instead He made everything. He was the one, essentially, who set things in motion for the fall to happen. Why? Because in knowing everything in advance, He could have made it otherwise. This sort of points back to a question I asked here about the possible good side of the fall. God could have, if He had wanted to, made everything different. But He didn't. It happened the way it did, and it seems like the biggest reason for that is His desire for us to know Him. He doesn't just want us to just know part of Him, or one side, but all of Him. This wouldn't be possible without the fall.

Now that makes me wonder though, knowing that God knew ahead of time what would happen when He created Lucifer and doing it anyway, if the fall was not just God turning a bad situation into something good, but necessary. He would not create us to be robots, and in order for us to have free will, we had to fall. That would mean that the fall in itself was good...responses on this one would be nice because I'm not sure how I feel about that, and I've run out of ideas :P

My prayer for you

Father in Heaven,
you have given Alex a spirit of adventure. You have given him the desire to explore, and experience new situations. I know that going to Alaska is a great opportunity for him, and that it will be a great adventure. He also has the desire, Lord, to live as you want him to, to be able to support himself. This a good desire to have Lord, and again it seems as though going to Alaska is the best way to accomplish this goal. Knowing this Lord, I pray that you will make his trip to Alaska a profitable one, one that will grow him in You as a person. Lord give him the strength to stay focused on what he needs to do and to make the most he can out of this trip. Help him Lord to remain focused on You, and to do everything for Your glory. He can do all things through You who strengthen him Lord. Help him to remember this when things seem hard, and to run to You when the task seems impossible. Help him to be truly excited about this opportunity God, and help him to stay that way. :) Keep him safe and healthy Lord. Thank You God for Your provision, for your grace, and for Your mercy. Thank you that you know all things before they happen, and give us what we need when we need it. Thank you Lord for what you do in us and through us.
In your Name,
Amen

Lent

While I do not attend a church that practices Lent, some of my family members do, and a lot of the kids in my Torrey group do. This makes it hard to go through the season of Lent without thinking about. Why is it such a big deal? does it really matter if you give something up for 40 days before Easter? While the technical answer is no(i.e. you won't go to hell just because you didn't observe Lent) the spiritual answer, I think, is yes. The reason for Lent is explained much better by one of my friends here (that may have gotten it from one of his, I'm not sure :P) anyway, what I got from reading this was that the practice of Lent is good for your soul. Or at least, it's supposed to be. It often comes across to those, like me, from a more evangelical background as just one more rule to follow, it seems a little legalistic. However, when you take the time to stop and think about what it can really do for you, the practice of not just giving something up because you have to, but because you want to, because Christ did and that's the least you can do, it makes more sense.

Thinking about it on these lines then raises the question, at least for me, why don't we do that more often? Aren't we called as Christians to give of ourselves, give up ourselves, in order to follow Christ? I think that far too often it seems too easy to give up and take the easy road. So, with this in mind, I think I might just give Lent a shot. I'm not giving something up just to say that I did it, but because it seems like it could have some real worth. So, while I am struggling to make everything in my life work together well, it seems that giving up a little bit more of that sleep I love so dearly would be beneficial. Not just to say that I slept less though. I also want to start regularly going to chapel in the mornings too. I know technically Lent started on Wednesday, but it doesn't hurt to start now :P God help me to drag my lazy butt out of bed in the mornings :P

Reflecting

Today's Torrey session was on "King Lear". It was a good discussion, but it was also a Reynolds' led discussion, which made it even more enjoyable. The interesting thing was that we talked about being true to yourself. Most of the characters in "King Lear" do not know themselves, which is why the events unfold the way that they do. If Lear knew himself, and his position better he would not have tried to split up his kingdom. It turns out that Lear's daughter Cordelia is really the only one who truly knows herself, and she is married off to France for refusing to go along with Lear's idea.

In knowing yourself, you have to be willing and able to go to the extreme. There are two possible extremes, the good extreme and the bad extreme. Many of the world's leaders have gone to the extreme and found themselves, but have lost themselves along the way. Lennon was one such man. He killed many people and found out that he was a bloody tyrant. Cordelia, in "King Lear," on the other hand, went to the extreme, but the good extreme. She found herself and was made whole, rather than finding herself and losing some of herself in the process.

Happiness was something else we talked about. Not the fickle happiness that most people think about, but true happiness, joy. True happiness is finding the median, the average, it has to do with thriving in your circumstances, and not wishing for what you do not have. One person's average is not the same as another person's average, but it is your personal average that matters, not someone else's average.

That being said, the American culture thrives on "finding yourself." People say that if you can find yourself, you can be true to yourself, and thus be happy. What they do not realize is that because "finding yourself" requires a move to the extreme, it is not good to remain there. To find yourself is ok, but to focus too much on that, rather than on thriving where you are placed, will only bring dissatisfaction. Too much understanding is not necessary. Sometimes no understanding is needed, because the reasons behind something won't change the current situation, and could only bring about a longing for what is not. Reflecting is ok, but too much, or the wrong kind, is harmful.