Words are important. They are necessary for communication - the fun kind and the necessary kind - they're used in music, learning, and literature. I love words - I legitimately love them, in full knowledge that "love" is a strong word and I should not use it trivially, and I don't think I am. I love reading words and I love writing words. I love what they do together. I love that a bunch of letters that look kind of like some quite well-groomed giraffes can be spaced near to each other and make so much sense that I want to cry because the person who put them together gets my heart. I love that these conduits of functional communication can be turned into pages and chapters and series of sincerely heartfelt written expression.
Words make so much sense to me, and if they don't, they just need to be rearranged once or twice until they do. I have always loved words, to the point where I decided that I should put words together and then let people read them on purpose. It was going well. I was doing good things, saving the world, etc., and occasionally writing about Jesus.
Then the other day I was trying to write a blog post and I edited and edited (I had been editing this one thing for weeks already) and it wasn't getting better. No matter what I did to it, it was still not great. And I got so sad. I thought I had lost my writing ability and it cut me down. I felt like maybe I was evaporating into thin air in the middle of a coffee shop. My existence was no longer necessary.
I was hit by this significantly more than I should have been. I thought maybe I was having an almost-quarter-life crisis (that is not even a thing, so I guess a plain old emotional crisis), but as I talked to my roommate about it, I realized that I was having less of a crisis and more of a tantrum. Tantrums are different now that I'm not six years old so I don't have the same symptoms...but still I have tantrums. These days, tantrums usually include long-term pouting and ordering fries - just fries at restaurants and expecting everyone and everything around me to conform to my standard of perfection and know exactly how to make me feel happy and fulfilled (yes, even and especially the inanimate objects).
I had made an idol out of my writing. I thought it was mine. I was convinced by myself that I was the best writer ever and that all the words I wrote were true because I wrote them and that I deserved recognition and praise and honor and a few book offers. I subconsciously but quite vainly thought that I was God's gift to literature (never mind that I have a small blog and that I'm a nineteen year old girl who has only taken two college English classes ever). I wanted to think those wonderful and affirming things about myself, so I did. My ego was pretty inflated, not unlike a cream puff.
Not that I'm a bad writer (because, now that I have come back to my senses, I don't think that I am) or that being a good writer is bad or knowing that you are good at something makes it automatically an idol, because those things aren't necessarily true, but I was off and I was wrong. My perspective of myself and the reason I was writing were skewed and then I fell hard, because old habits and vanity die hard.
In a small amount of time, I went from major vanity and overconfidence to no self-esteem. Out of nowhere, I felt that I did not have and had never had any original thoughts to share, that all of my words sounded obnoxious, that I somehow sounded too old-fashioned and too much like a millennial at the same time, and that I was destined to fail at anything I could ever consider trying in the future.
The thing about my mind is that it doesn't stop to think about things. It tends toward the drastically, dastardly overdramatic, without my giving it permission to overreact to things. So instead of being slightly discouraged, I was crushed. My heart felt extinguished. I wondered, now that I obviously could not continue writing because I was so terrible at it, what I would do with my future free time. I thought that writing was my "thing" and now I wouldn't have a thing and I would be doomed to be aimless and move home and drop out of college and be a potato (of the couch variety) for the rest of my life. I liked having a cool, thought-provoking, vocabulary-expanding, therapeutic hobby. I very much wanted attention from people who thought I was wise and articulate.
I also wanted to write about Jesus, and I wanted to share Him with people. It wasn't really an afterthought; it just was not as much of a priority as eloquence and literary glory were. I wanted people to read my words and know automatically from whatever it was they were reading (even if it wasn't something explicitly about Jesus) that I love Jesus and I wanted them to feel inspired and convicted but in a mostly positive way after they were finished and then I wanted them to love me more because of it.
I had taken something good, something God-given and God-created, and tried to make it mine. But, as I did not create the universe and/or everything in it, I was unsuccessful in trying to own all of literature. I wanted writing to be my thing. I wanted to lead people to Jesus when I felt like it, I wanted to be adorable and witty when I felt like, and I wanted to express thoughtful but not annoying social commentary when I felt like it. I like to control things, and I was trying to control the way people saw me - as a flawless, cute, genuine, wispy-haired, intriguing writer girl who also loves Jesus but not in an inconvenient way - and it did not work.
I am a perfectly adequate writer. I am not the worst; I am a competent English-speaking and -writing individual. I want to continue to practice so that I can improve. But writing is not the only way I can (and do) represent God to the world.
I am representing Him all the time. On bad days where I'm wearing a baseball cap to school because I am in such a bad mood that I don't want to make eye contact with even one person and also on those days where I am so happy that springtime is finally here that I can't not skip around on my way to class.
Whether or not I am consciously aware of it, whether or not I am ready, whether or not I want to, I'm showing the world who God is. I committed to having Him in my heart for the rest of my life, which means that I am representing Him through my heart and life for the rest of my life. This means that all of my accomplishments and all of my mistakes and all of the things in between are examples of what a child of God does and is.
I've been given the ability to write and I am thankful for it and love it, but that does not make it mine. I want my life to be glory to Christ, which means that I use the things He has given me to make Him bigger, not me. If I was amazing at everything, He would not be glorified in anything. He must increase and I must decrease.
Love,
Lauralicious
Friday, April 25, 2014
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Bananas
One time an old man told me that he didn't buy green bananas anymore because he was ready to go to Heaven at any point. He was very old.
However, some (younger) people like to buy their bananas green, and some like to buy them when they are yellow, and some people like to wait until they are a little freckly, because different people like their bananas at different levels of ripeness. And while a person may feel strongly about what level of ripeness is the best-tasting, they are not wrong or right. It is a matter of opinion, because it is a banana, and not a matter of moral law.
But what about when a banana gets past the freckly stage and is straight-up brown? The store doesn't even sell them when they are this overripe. Nobody eats bananas after they turn kind of squishy. People eat them earlier solely because they think brown bananas are gross and want to avoid having to have brown bananas in their mouth and/or home. I've started to feel like people are bananas, and I'm a brown one.
I am sitting on a shelf waiting for exciting life things to happen, but not a lot is and I'm generally fine with that until I realize that all my fellow banana friends are gone. My friends are doing exciting things and I am be-bopping along. I'm busy and I'm doing life, too, but if you were to ask me what's going on, I would say "nothing much," and it's been this way for a good long while now. I am jealous of people who have lots of exciting things going on.
Yesterday afternoon, I walked by the pantry in my apartment. I keep my food on the top left half-shelf and when I quite hungrily looked up there for a snack, I saw that I have two brown bananas on my half-shelf. And then I remembered that I need to make banana bread muffins soon.
Brown bananas are the only kind you can use for banana bread muffins. They're soft and turn into muffins so readily because they are easily squishable. That doesn't mean that people who are brown bananas are so apathetic and hopeless that they'll do anything; it means that they are willing to be turned into something better, even if it means that they themselves have to change (and change is scary). They lose their whole shape and color and turn into something better, something with chocolate chips.
Green and yellow bananas are harder to squish. And I don't mean that they are bad or lazy or that brown bananas are superior, because they're not. They know different suffering than brown bananas. But I like them. They are cool and they are my friends.
But brown bananas aren't bad either. They can be taken from the half-shelf at the top left corner of the pantry and turned into something that no banana ever even knew was a possibility. And so I can say, with the potential of my life being turned into the life of a muffin, there is hope for me yet.
Love,
Lauralicious
However, some (younger) people like to buy their bananas green, and some like to buy them when they are yellow, and some people like to wait until they are a little freckly, because different people like their bananas at different levels of ripeness. And while a person may feel strongly about what level of ripeness is the best-tasting, they are not wrong or right. It is a matter of opinion, because it is a banana, and not a matter of moral law.
But what about when a banana gets past the freckly stage and is straight-up brown? The store doesn't even sell them when they are this overripe. Nobody eats bananas after they turn kind of squishy. People eat them earlier solely because they think brown bananas are gross and want to avoid having to have brown bananas in their mouth and/or home. I've started to feel like people are bananas, and I'm a brown one.
I am sitting on a shelf waiting for exciting life things to happen, but not a lot is and I'm generally fine with that until I realize that all my fellow banana friends are gone. My friends are doing exciting things and I am be-bopping along. I'm busy and I'm doing life, too, but if you were to ask me what's going on, I would say "nothing much," and it's been this way for a good long while now. I am jealous of people who have lots of exciting things going on.
Yesterday afternoon, I walked by the pantry in my apartment. I keep my food on the top left half-shelf and when I quite hungrily looked up there for a snack, I saw that I have two brown bananas on my half-shelf. And then I remembered that I need to make banana bread muffins soon.
Brown bananas are the only kind you can use for banana bread muffins. They're soft and turn into muffins so readily because they are easily squishable. That doesn't mean that people who are brown bananas are so apathetic and hopeless that they'll do anything; it means that they are willing to be turned into something better, even if it means that they themselves have to change (and change is scary). They lose their whole shape and color and turn into something better, something with chocolate chips.
Green and yellow bananas are harder to squish. And I don't mean that they are bad or lazy or that brown bananas are superior, because they're not. They know different suffering than brown bananas. But I like them. They are cool and they are my friends.
But brown bananas aren't bad either. They can be taken from the half-shelf at the top left corner of the pantry and turned into something that no banana ever even knew was a possibility. And so I can say, with the potential of my life being turned into the life of a muffin, there is hope for me yet.
Love,
Lauralicious
Thursday, April 3, 2014
It Must be Really Great to be Meg Ryan
I don't think that I would mind
Being an icon of American entertainment,
The romantic interest in a host of 90's classics,
A timeless vision of blue eyes and a lovable smile.
She's cute even when she has a cold.
She is adorable and feisty
And never seems to have to reap the consequences
Of feisty rages at Tom Hanks/Billy Crystal/other male movie stars
The only consequences she reaps are those of love and success and happy endings.
I don't know what she's up to these days
Because the 90's are over and I don't know her personally (unfortunately).
I just know that
She brought joy and
Hope and
Unrealistic romantic expectations
To people all over America (the world?).
She is a pretty great lady,
And I'm not her.
I mainly know this because I don't get much mail
And I only know one person named Harry
(his last name is Potter and he's slightly fictional)
And I've never been to Seattle.
I love her characters,
And I wish I was one of them
(or all of them?)
But characters aren't real.
People are real.
And I'm a person.
But still, it must be really great to be Meg Ryan.
That is all.
Love,
Lauralicious
Being an icon of American entertainment,
The romantic interest in a host of 90's classics,
A timeless vision of blue eyes and a lovable smile.
She's cute even when she has a cold.
She is adorable and feisty
And never seems to have to reap the consequences
Of feisty rages at Tom Hanks/Billy Crystal/other male movie stars
The only consequences she reaps are those of love and success and happy endings.
I don't know what she's up to these days
Because the 90's are over and I don't know her personally (unfortunately).
I just know that
She brought joy and
Hope and
Unrealistic romantic expectations
To people all over America (the world?).
She is a pretty great lady,
And I'm not her.
I mainly know this because I don't get much mail
And I only know one person named Harry
(his last name is Potter and he's slightly fictional)
And I've never been to Seattle.
I love her characters,
And I wish I was one of them
(or all of them?)
But characters aren't real.
People are real.
And I'm a person.
But still, it must be really great to be Meg Ryan.
That is all.
Love,
Lauralicious
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Turns Out I'm Not a Saint
Being an American and a sinner, I'm really selfish. I think about all things in terms of me. I don't like that. So over Christmas break, I decided to start using my money to help people besides myself. One of my youth interns in high school supported a child through Compassion International, and I remembered hearing about how much she loved it. I love children and I love the friend who told me about it, so that's how I decided that it was a good idea.
And once I had decided to do it, I realized how wonderful I was. I was so altruistic, generous, helpful, selfless, bursting with love. I felt confident that the child I would sponsor would love me more than bread. I couldn't wait.
On the Compassion website was a list of children who needed support. The list encompassed pages and pages of children: boys and girls of all nationalities and ages. I didn't know how I was going to decide on a child, but I had assumed I would have a super cute little girl. I couldn't decide between all of the cute little girls and I didn't want to pick just one child because they all need help. There was an option to classify the list in order of who had been waiting the longest, so I did that, and the person who had been the very longest was my new friend, an Ethiopian teenage boy. And I decided right there: he's my guy.
I don't think that cute little girls don't need support, because everybody on the whole list needed support (and it was a long list). Picking one person meant that no one else on the list could have my help. That was really hard because I wanted everybody to be mine. But since I am too poor to financially support every needy child in the whole world, I stuck with my guy.
He and I get to write letters back and forth, and I got my first one from him last week. I was really excited. I opened it and...he's older than me. He wrote in the letter that he's twenty, and I'm still nineteen.
I had imagined that supporting a child through Compassion would mean praying for them daily and sending them stickers in the mail and in return, they would love me more than life itself. And here I am with this boy who is older than I am. I absolutely pray for him every day but I don't know if he wants my stickers and he definitely does not love me more than life itself, because that's unrealistic and not the point at all. The point was to further God's kingdom, and I thought I knew that until I realized that he's older than me. He isn't a child, because he's twenty years old. He's a sinner, just like me. He's a sinner in Ethiopia and I'm a sinner here.
This is about more than giving money. This is about where my heart lies. Because that is where my treasure will be also.
Love,
Lauralicious
And once I had decided to do it, I realized how wonderful I was. I was so altruistic, generous, helpful, selfless, bursting with love. I felt confident that the child I would sponsor would love me more than bread. I couldn't wait.
On the Compassion website was a list of children who needed support. The list encompassed pages and pages of children: boys and girls of all nationalities and ages. I didn't know how I was going to decide on a child, but I had assumed I would have a super cute little girl. I couldn't decide between all of the cute little girls and I didn't want to pick just one child because they all need help. There was an option to classify the list in order of who had been waiting the longest, so I did that, and the person who had been the very longest was my new friend, an Ethiopian teenage boy. And I decided right there: he's my guy.
I don't think that cute little girls don't need support, because everybody on the whole list needed support (and it was a long list). Picking one person meant that no one else on the list could have my help. That was really hard because I wanted everybody to be mine. But since I am too poor to financially support every needy child in the whole world, I stuck with my guy.
He and I get to write letters back and forth, and I got my first one from him last week. I was really excited. I opened it and...he's older than me. He wrote in the letter that he's twenty, and I'm still nineteen.
I had imagined that supporting a child through Compassion would mean praying for them daily and sending them stickers in the mail and in return, they would love me more than life itself. And here I am with this boy who is older than I am. I absolutely pray for him every day but I don't know if he wants my stickers and he definitely does not love me more than life itself, because that's unrealistic and not the point at all. The point was to further God's kingdom, and I thought I knew that until I realized that he's older than me. He isn't a child, because he's twenty years old. He's a sinner, just like me. He's a sinner in Ethiopia and I'm a sinner here.
This is about more than giving money. This is about where my heart lies. Because that is where my treasure will be also.
Love,
Lauralicious
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)