Criticism

I don't take criticism very well, even if it's constructive. I find that a lot of my self esteem is based on what others think of me, and so to hear a negative comment of any kind tends to make me feel like a bad person. That being said, I realize that that is a flaw in myself, and something that should be worked on. And maybe that's one of the things God is trying to teach me while I am here. I have spent the majority of my working life being told by my bosses how wonderful I am, how much they love me, etc. etc. etc. It's a real shift for me to go from that, to a consistent stream of some kind of criticism or another. This does not mean it is bad, in fact it probably means that my character just needs to realize  that I am not as amazing a worker as I thought I was, and therefore need to take some of my pride down a notch or two as well.

While all of this is good, it does not make it easy, or fun. I feel like there is a lot about myself, and my beliefs that I am only now beginning to understand. I feel like they are things that I thought I had dealt with, or that I did not realize as problems. I spent a lot of time in past bad situations, however, justifying to myself why I did nothing wrong. It was always the other person's fault. It was a miss-communication on their end, or they just decided that they didn't like me, or or or. I never once looked at the part that I played in everything. I was never the one at fault. I did nothing to aid in the miss-communication, or I kept to myself, so how could I have done anything wrong? Even as far back as high school, I refused to look at myself as anything but a victim. That is wrong. I am not a victim, and while the part I played might be smaller in some circumstances than in others, there was still a part that I played. Learning to accept this is probably the hardest thing of all.

Accepting it does not mean believing myself to be a bad person, or even the reason that situations went from good to bad. It does mean, however, that I am not perfect (what a shock! ;) ) and that I need to accept my short comings for what they are, instead of trying to brush them off as someone else's fault. Until I do this, I won't really begin to grow, as a person, as a friend, as a girlfriend, as an employee. Everything will always be someone else's fault, and that's not an acceptable way to view the world. Besides souring relationships, it prevents me from really getting to know people, and makes me bitter an angry at everyone, because hey, I didn't do anything, so everyone's just picking on me. If everyone's gonna pick on me, then why should I want to give anyone a chance right? It's not right, and it's not fair.

I know it won't be easy, but God help me, if I can learn to really go above and beyond people's expectations, not to make them happy, but because God calls us to do our best, then I think the rest of everything will fall into place :) and maybe I'll finally, actually stop basing so much of my self worth on other people's opinions :P.

Homesick

As difficult as it is for me to admit it, I am homesick. It's fun to be here, and I know I'll enjoy exploring things some, especially as my stay extends, but often, I just want to be at home again. Part of that, I'm sure is because I have a very open ended stay. I can stay past September if I want to, or I can go home. I don't know what my feelings will be come September, but I tend to think that this would be easier if I knew for sure, one way or the other, how long I am going to be here. It prevents me from feeling like I have failed, as well. If I set September as my end date, then when I pack up and leave in September, it will be because I chose to, not because I wasn't able to make it past the 5 months. That's a very helpful thing for my pride :P. I am leery of setting a return date too much past that, because I don't want to commit to staying here, then have a hard time finding work, which would be another failure. I also, however, don't want to set September as a hard and fast leaving time, because what if it gets here, and I've so connected to the people in the area that I'm ready to leave yet? It makes for a difficult situation, to be sure. I suppose I could say that I will stay through the end of December, but really, job openings seem to follow the school year, so if I quit and go home in December, I'm not going to have an easy time finding work. This makes me think that my options are really, to either leave in September, or stay until next may. I'm not sure which one to choose.

Joy

Everyone needs a day of rest. I know this, because I spent several months without really getting a full day of rest. The result was a very exhausted me. When I moved to Texas, I moved in part because I was tired of working so hard. I wanted a break, to be able to hang out with people, to have time for self-improvement, etc. And that has happened, for the most part.

But I have noticed something else as well. In removing myself so far from everyone I am close with, the ability to be alone is no longer an option, most of the time it is unavoidable. While I like spending time alone, away from people, I also like to have the option of spending time with them.

I noticed today, for the first time in a while, that I slept until 1:00 in the afternoon. I wasn't that tired, I hadn't worked that hard yesterday, but still, I slept. I've noticed that this seems to happen more when I think that whatever work it is that I am doing is of little consequence. I'll do it, but I won't do it well, and all motivation to have mastery over my sleep patterns disappears. For three months after I graduated, I managed to wake myself up around 7 am, most days of the week. Sure, I was exhausted, but I wanted to do the work that I was doing, and that gave me the ability to get myself out of bed in the morning.

This tells me two things: first that the overwhelming desire to sleep links largely with how I view the work that I am doing. Second, this tells me that I am capable of overcoming it. That, to me, is huge. I may continue to be tired, but as long as I have the desire to get up in the morning, more than the desire to continue sleeping, I will have conquered.

Because today was my day off, I did not have anything that I was required to do. For the first time since I got here, I didn't really WANT to do anything. This, too, bothered me. It reminded me too much of a few years ago when I had no drive what my work, whether it was school or my job. I ditched as often as possible. This scares me a little bit, because I do not want to fall back into that habit, and yet it takes so much ENERGY to go do anything. Part of me says it is because I have worked so hard, for so long, that now that I have a little bit of a break, I want more. But the other side of me says that's wrong. It's not because I am too tired, it is because when I do not have a clear purpose given to me, I feel like there is no specific purpose, so I do nothing.

This seems to be a flaw in myself, because if I was truly a hard worker, I would do no matter the kind of work (this was also evident in my school work, as I always did better when the subject material was to my liking.) But how do I change this? If I make myself do the work, am I not a hard worker? But doing the work is not the problem, enjoying it is. That is the challenge, then. Learning to enjoy life, when it does not seem purposeful.

Spiritual Disciplines

As I mentioned here, I have been reading Richard Foster's book Celebration of Discipline. The chapter I am on currently is talking about fasting. Foster notes that there is a lot of controversy over whether or not people should fast, and how long they should fast, and what they should fast for. There is also a chapter on meditation, which also is an issue filled with controversy for Christians. The meditation Foster speaks of is not the eastern, mystical, close your eyes and start floating kind, but simply a decision to train your thoughts to be constantly turned towards God. Other authors I have read have also mentioned the benefits of this practice, and yet it is one that, in the modern church, is not only ignored, but almost taboo. Certain forms of praying also seem to be rejected in favor of others, prayer for things like real healing, or for God to actively engage himself with our country. Prayers for lives to be changed. Sure we say that we pray daily, in our devotions, or over our food, but the majority of the time, that is where our prayer life ends.

My question is this: if the early church utilized such practices, why do we not do so any longer? Why do we reject that which those who walked and talked with Jesus saw fit to help them grow in their faith? It bothers me that the church seems to have put up a wall around itself, almost in fear of the spiritual. When people say they have heard from God, our first response is skepticism, or downright disbelief. Other times people say that they under satanic attack, but they are treated as if they were simply struggling with themselves, or a sin that was commonly in their lives.

The spiritual disciplines, to me, seem to be at the heart of opening yourself to God and His direction, and yet so few people even know what they are (I didn't, until recently). Perhaps, instead of shying away from those things which allow us to draw near to God, in every way humanly possible, they should instead be embraced and practiced regularly. Perhaps, we should stop doubting what other people say about their experiences, and try for ourselves whatever it is that has allowed them this clarity of thought.

Prayer

I have recently started reading Richard Foster's book "Celebration of Discipline," and while I agree with most of what he has said so far, the chapter on prayer bothered me. He spoke specifically about intercessory prayer, and how powerful it is, but started with the idea that we must learn how to do it correctly in order for it to work. He used the disciples request for Jesus to teach them to pray as an example. His reasoning was that they were religious Jews, who had grown up with prayer as an integral part of their lives, and yet they must not have been doing it correctly because they needed Jesus to teach them how to pray.

So far, that makes sense, but a few pages later on, he says that prayer is only powerful when it is done correctly, with a knowledge of what God's will is. This means that if we are not in tune with God and his will, then the things we pray for will not be responded to in the way that we want. He used the generic example of great aunt Lucy's arthritis that you've been praying for for 20 years, and it still hasn't been healed as an example. Now, I get that if it is not God's will for her to be healed, then she won't be healed, but he does say that when we pray for healing, and trust that it is God's will for that person to be healed, then they will be (he used another example of a child named Julie that was really sick, and he simply trusted that it was God's will for her to be healed, laid hands on her, prayed for God to make her well, and the next morning she was.)

Now, the problem I have with it is this: while I agree that prayer is powerful, and God does change his mind when we pray according to his will, to say that someone will be healed, or not healed depending on how correctly you pray bothers me. It's different than saying you didn't have enough faith, and granted, the chapter was kind of confusing, but to say that it is always God's will for that person to be healed, or you can change God's mind so long as you ask him in the correct manner, seems off to me. It puts way too much of the responsibility on us.

Should we learn to pray the way Jesus did, with power and authority? Absolutely. Is prayer powerful? Without a doubt. But God still has the ability to say no to our petition, and Richard Forster's take it seems to take that option out of the equation.

Pulling teeth

I have always viewed writing as something that is boring, something that had to be done in order to make it through school. I could do it, but I never got good grades on my papers unless I first sent them to a few of my friends to edit. Once they had been edited, I usually got A's and B's. I had always viewed this as a writing problem, because it did not come naturally to me. It was something I had to work at, and therefore must be something that I was not very good at.

Then I did my my first Paper Project for Torrey. My mentor wanted me to do one about writing because I struggled with it so much. This goal of this particular project was to help me to appreciate it more, because the assumption was that I wasn't very good at it because I didn't like it. I'm still not sure how successful the project was, but it did help to, at least, dislike writing a little less.

When I did my next paper project, turning the book Jane Eyre into a series of radio drama type dialogues, the most common question I got was "How long did you spend writing this?" My initial writing of each dialogue took about 2 hours, and they were all roughly 5,000 words. Their reaction? "Don't tell your mentor that's all the time you spent on this, but it's really good." Then I wrote a creative paper for the Meta-torrey I took last fall. I never actually got the grade back on that one, but when given to friends, the general consensus was that it was well written, and I got an A in the class. It took me a total of 3 hours to write it, and I had to struggle to limit myself to the 4500 word limit.

So, it seems from experience, that I may not actually be a bad writer, as I previously thought, but there does seem to be a part of me that refuses to do something REALLY WELL if I don't have a vested interest in it.

This was made particularly apparent during the fiction semester of Torrey. All previous semesters, I had done fairly well, but it was really hard for me to connect to the books we were reading. They presented great ideas, and I had thoughts about those ideas, but to put it bluntly, they were boring to me. I did the work because I had to, and learned from it, but not the way I could have if I had been able to truly invest myself in it. When we read the books during the fiction semester, I was not only interested, I LOVED it. The stories, the characters, all of it made sense, and I felt like I was finally connecting on more than just an intellectual level with the reading.

While obviously something that could, and probably should, be worked on, knowing this about myself allows me to acknowledge that I'm not actually a bad writer, or a bad student, I just have to find what truly interests me, and go from there.

All of that being said, I think ignoring jobs that require an above average ability to write is limiting myself to this idea that "I can't." I can, and it's time I proved it to myself, if to no-one else.

Passion

Over the last few years, I have become increasingly aware of the fact that those who become Christians late in life, those who are not raised in Christian homes, seem to have a passion that is lacking in those who are raised in the Christian culture. I don't mean that those born into a Christian family don't love God to the same degree, or even that they are lacking in the spiritual walk, but there is not as much urgency, there does not seem to be as much of a desire to reach out to others, or even to lead others in their walk. They are not as excited about Christianity.

While this may not be a major problem, the tendency of complacency of these Christians, the tendency to take for granted their faith, and all of things that God has given them, seems to lead to the occurrence of those young people that leave the church when they become adults. When something is as much a part of your life as Christianity is when you are raised with it, you tend to forget that it is not something that all people are able to experience, and even fail to note the necessity of it in your life.

You also lack the memories, or even the knowledge, of what life is like without Christ. A friend of mine recently shared her testimony, and the difference between her life now, and what it was before she became a Christian is vastly different. It also explains her passion for God, and desire to help others grow in him.

What really makes me think, though, is the fact that this complacency often pervades our Christian walk. It prevents us from desiring to grow in God, because we don't really know what it is like to be without Him, so why should we put in the effort to know Him more? There is no real basis of comparison, so even having an understanding of what growth looks like is difficult. There is an inability to see a difference because, really, there was no difference in how we lived before we became Christians, to how we lived after we became Christians.

This lack of difference seems to not only make growth hard, but, in some cases, leads to a lack of understanding of what growth looks like. I am not saying that children should not be raised with Christian principles; that would obviously be wrong; what I am saying is that there should be more done to show existing Christians what a walk with Christ actually looks like, instead of focusing only on outreach. How can we reach others, if we ourselves do not truly understand what a life with Christ looks like?