Don't Get Any Ideas.

There is an unavoidable dilemma at 22, in which every young man to whom I speak is seen through others' eyes as a "prospect."  I do not blame people for this.  I fully realize that matchmaking, even if passive, is the most entertaining thing people can do with women like me.  However, this does create a mental obstacle towards speaking to my brothers in Christ as I ought.

Firmly forgetting that someone will be speculating gently as to any future possibilities, I am at last able to speak normally to Obadiah and draw him out of his shell as I would any well deserving person.  [Don't get excited, my dear matchmakers.  I don't know an Obadiah.]  However, fearing opinions and shying from harmless speculations, I find myself refusing to speak to men at all, should they be remotely young and unattached.  

Such was my unvoiced strategy for many years, and certainly through high school.  In a college environment where everyone was the same age anyway, speaking to men became natural and easy for me.  In college ministry, I tried to make people comfortable.  Men, as well as women, like to feel welcome in new situations.  Unfortunately, when I would return to various multi-generational environments, I found myself reverting to old habits.

I became newly aware of this fault in myself when I entered into conversation with a young man who had been visiting the church for several weeks.  Why had I not introduced myself to him before?  I had noticed him before, in a rather scientifically offhand manner, as if his life had nothing to do with mine.  The problem is, it does have something to do with mine.  He belongs to the same God that I do.  We are inextricably linked by the same Holy Spirit who breathed life into both of us, and by the same Christ who took our sins in equal and extravagant measure so that we might die to sin and live to His righteousness.

Yet here I am, fearing other people's opinions, and therefore doing nothing to welcome, to invite, to encourage.  I believe very strongly in protecting reputations and not giving people reason to gossip, but the extremity to which I take these cautions is frequently overdone.  Shame on myself for inattention based on fear, or worse, pride, for isn't it pride that wants onlookers sure of my indifference?  An indifference, in fact, that is unloving, ungracious, and devoid of real humility.

People will always speculate when there are matches to be made.  I find it rather funny.  Meanwhile, people ought to feel welcome.  We are the Church after all.  

Chocolate Chip Expectations

I bit into a chocolate chip cookie today that had no chocolate chips.  I did not realize it at first.  I thought there would be at least one, somewhere, if I kept looking.  But no, no chocolate to be found.  Just cookie.  The cookie tasted good, of course, and had it been called a "Chipless Cookie," or "Vanilla Bread Cookie," or...something, I would doubtless have enjoyed it.  However, I put it on my plate with the expectation of chocolate chips, and was therefore disappointed.

Sometimes life is like that.  I was given the impression that my life would be different now--that I would be confident in my direction, or have an entirely different purpose.  Life is still good, but not what I expected.  It was sold me under a false idea.  Certain relationships were supposed to be wonderful, but ended up being forced and unnatural.  Classes that I looked forward to ended up being ugly. People I expect to like are disagreeable.  Life at home may not be as sweet as I hope.  All the time the world sets up expectations for us without following through, and all the time we let ourselves put hope on things that may not come true.

As a child, I was given some very profound insight: "When you give a mouse a cookie," explained the author, helpfully, "he's going to want some milk to go with it."  How odd to realize, all these years later, that the author was actually being satirical!  Mice.  We are mice, my friends, who have been given cookies.  Never really satisfied with what we have, always expecting a little more than we have been given, always returning, in the end, to the cookie.

For some reason, we like to think God owes us things.  As if we earned something better than He gives us.  As if Grace is only what we want, not the every moment He gives us.  As if grace upon grace is only figurative for the times we have everything we want.  God has given me life, and I complain that He hasn't given me my chocolate chips.

God hasn't promised us the chocolate chips.  But He did give us cookies.  And more often than not, out of His abundant lovingkindness, He even gives us milk to go with it.

I munch the next cookie, contentedly.  I have found chocolate once again, and this coffee is delicious.

The Search for Profundity

Thinking all the more about what to write next, I have been struck with something akin to stage fright, and have found myself therefore incapable of writing anything.  Apparently I can't discover marvelous things on command.

"Elise! Learn something profound! Gain some particular insight into your own human nature!"

It just doesn't work like that.  I guess when you're looking too hard, you can miss what's right in front of you.  Edgar Allan Poe--no, I must be honest--the dog Wishbone's version of The Purloined Letter taught me long ago that the best place to hide something is in plain sight.  At the time I wasn't greatly impressed, and continued to hide things in carved out books and bed springs, but the significance has since resonated.

The dishes need done.  My room needs organized for the fall.  My two youngest brothers just disappeared around the edge of a barn with a machete, an arrow, and old vegetables from the garden--I wonder why?

Sometimes righteousness isn't a big whiz-bang discovery or dolled up bad day.  Sometimes things just need to be done, like reading that chapter for Bible study, or rearranging my bookshelves for maximum efficiency.  Sometimes we think that if we're not learning something phenomenal and world-shaking, we aren't really close to God.  We don't feel God speaking to us, so we must be doing something wrong.

Before I become worked up, I think I shall just mildly declare these to be cumbersome lies that we need not embrace.  Righteousness isn't a collection of profound thoughts or feelings.  That's called philosophy.  Nietzsche and Freud were philosophers.

When I'm looking too hard for profundity, it escapes my attention.  The written word is surely the most marvelous creation I have ever been incapable of fully realizing, yet I didn't find myself incapable of realizing it because I was looking for something to realize.  Instead I was reading Acts, and the momentousness suddenly broke upon me like an overripe cucumber thrown by my youngest brother at a barn wall.

Life is too profound to give up in a futile search for significance.  I think I shall cease trying to define profundity, and instead, do the dishes.  Lunch will need to be made soon.

Seventeen Syllables

Whole stories to tell,

And seventeen syllables

Are more than I need.

When it comes to communication, I lack brevity.  A sentence, were I able to form it, might say as much as three of my paragraphs.  It is this concise writing quality that I find myself practicing when I scribble in my book of counted blessings.  With only three inches to ramble, I have to say what I mean immediately.  Yesterday, considering this, my eye fell on some old Chopin preludes.

317. delicate notes their own language

A single line of small letters can contain a great deal, I thought.  Inspiration seized me.

These delicate notes

Like their very only language

Music on a page.

There is something refreshingly simple and sweet about a form of poetry as short as the haiku.  I write more.

319. nearly ten years of life in pages

A row of journals,

Ten years of life on pages,

Looks into my past.

320. poetry spilling

Counting my blessings

A door into stronger life

Poetry spilling.

Like oil from the widow's jars, poetry spills out of thanksgiving.  Out of blessing.  Out of the grace I choose to behold.  I look at Miriam, after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground--or at Hannah when Samuel was born.  I listen to how Mary sang of her promised child.

My own poetry is humble, imitating the short lines of my 3x4 notebook.

"Jesus wept," it says,

Sadness of the Son of God.

Two words, much meaning.

Whole stories can be known in three short lines.  If I want to write to touch lives, perhaps I must first learn to thank, fully.  If I want to write to touch lives, perhaps I must first learn to put my own life into three verses.  Seventeen syllables may be just short enough to do it properly.

Thanksgiving calls forth

Words from my pen to sparkle

Grateful, the heart sings.