Quote from Marva January 30, 2009

I found a photocopied, highlighted page in the bottom of my bag that I take to work every day.  It’s from that book that I talked about a while ago – “Unfettered Hope” by Marva Dawn.  Here’s what I highlighted:

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement to feed and house the destitute, once translated Jesus’ words this way: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you odd” (John 8:31-32).  If we live the Christian practices of discernment and fortitude, generosity and collaboration for the sake of the poor, we will be viewed as odd in a society dedicated to consumerism.

Hmmm.  Hmmm.  Hmmm.  Does the truth make me odd?  Well, people might think I’m odd, but I don’t think it’s because of the truth that I know.  I would say that if someone came and looked at my life, compared it to anyone else’s, there would be nothing remarkable or odd.  Pretty average.  Pretty normal.  I’m not doing anything that would specifically make people say, hmmm that girl, there’s something different about her…  WHY NOT?  Because I get sucked into living with the grain of culture.  Mainly I get sucked into believing that what I see is what matters, that what I see is reality, that this world is the important thing.  Well, I think it is important BUT there is an invisible reality that I need to be more tuned into.  I have a very strong desire to live counterculturally, not just for the sake of doing that but because I believe that our culture and our ways of living here are not cool, do not help me get closer to God or other human beings.  So what am I going to do.  Small steps I guess.  It’s not like one day we can wake up and say I’m free from the shackles of my culture!  No, it’s more like making the small decisions against culture and for God.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that everything is either/or here…I think that God can be found here in North America for sure.  BUT, overall, I think we are called to live counterculturally, in a way that we can be salt and light in the world instead of just blending in.  So how will the truth make us odd?

January 28, 2009

Yesterday I went to get a few groceries and my total came to about $40.  For what I had bought it seemed like a lot of moolah, but I had bought some calcium, so I thought maybe that was expensive or something and just paid the bill.  When I got home I thought hmmmm I wonder what happened there…how much was that calcium?  Turns out, it wasn’t the calcium’s fault, it was the head of lettuce that I paid $19.47 for.  She entered 11 heads of lettuce instead of 1.  ARG!  So I’m hoping they will be kind to me and give me my money back when I take in the receipt.  Otherwise, that will be the most expensive head of lettuce (hopefully) that I will ever buy!  Note to self: check receipt before leaving store.

A day to remember January 27, 2009

Ok, this is a day that goes down in my history as AWESOME.  This morning, I threw my LAST PAPER for my LAST CLASS in the mailbox.  It seriously felt like someone should be there taking a picture to capture the moment.  Fairly anti-climactic overall, but still, what a relief.  Last paper topic?  Anger and murder (Mt.5:21-26) – what a funny topic to end on…B-bye stupid paper.  B-bye distance learning theology class.  So, I still have a boatload of work to do, but I’m done my classes!  20 classes.  Probably about 100 papers, average of 10 pages each.  NO WONDER I’M FEELING DONE.  Now it’s time to finish my research project and start studying for the dreaded oral comprehensive exam.  But I’m takin’ tonight off…going for supper with Greg to celebrate!!

January 26, 2009

Nothing much to report today.  Had a dentist appointment.  It’s over.  YAY.  I’m telling you, those TWO MINUTES (I thought it used to be one?) of sitting there with 2 trays full of minty goop with an air hose in between are 2 very very long minutes.  2 long minutes of trying not to gag.  These minutes take much much longer than the minutes when I hit snooze on my alarm clock.  I need to rig something up to make those last minutes in bed much less pleasurable than they are so that I can drag myself out quicker.  I tell you, if the choice was between getting out of bed immediately or holding trays of minty goop in my mouth while laying in bed, I’d pick getting up every time.  As much as I dislike hanging out at the dentist office, after being in Kenya I see how much of a privilege it actually is to be able to get my teeth looked after.  That helps me despise the dentist visit a little bit less.  Also helpful is the fact that I have a great dentist.

Hmmm what else do I have rattling around in my brain today.  Well, I do have a very important question about tea.  I bought some Red Rose decaf tea yesterday (I’ve been trying to cut back on caffeine because it makes me crazy) and it is SUPER weak.  It’s disgusting.  I’m wondering if maybe I got a bad batch or is it always weak and gross like that?  No matter how long I leave that tea bag sit in the water it stays weak.  Bleh.  Maybe I need to try a different brand or something.

Another torturous Saturday January 24, 2009

Here I sit…just me and my laptop and a pile of notes to write a paper that I don’t care about. Every word is a struggle. If I let myself think about how much I loathe this paper, how much I don’t care, how much I long to be doing something else, I’ll quit immediately. So I just plod on…just keep going…and I notice a high level of frustration just below the surface of my skin but I have to ignore it and just do what I have to do. The dust on my plant leaves is calling out to me. The oven that I haven’t cleaned in about 2 years is calling out to me. These things seem much more important at this point than finishing this utterly boring and useless paper. But here I sit. Just me and my laptop and my pile of notes. As the people at Nike once said, “Just do it,” which has become something I say to myself many, many times a week. JUST DO IT. STOP THINKING ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU HATE IT AND JUST DO IT.

Is this really all I have to work with? January 22, 2009

Lately I’ve been a bit frustrated with my personality.  I have found myself thinking, is this really what I have to work with for the rest of my life?!  I say things I don’t mean.  I think things I want to stop thinking.  I act in ways that I don’t want to act.  I seem to go through intense periods of learning about a certain aspect of myself and generally, in the end, the dust settles and I am okay with it, but in the meantime there is a gigantic struggle to make that part of me go away.  There is a struggle to become someone else when what I really need to do, I suppose, is embrace those parts of me that are less than desirable and work with them, giving all the crappy stuff to God to see what God can do with it.  In the end, it is not me who changes me anyway, it’s God.  So here ya go God.  Here are my crappy parts.  Happy Thursday

Happy (?) Monday January 19, 2009

Hope you all had a weekend that gave you energy to get back to work or to whatever it is that you’re doing on this fine day that we call Monday.  I feel much more like continuing to live when the weather is so warm.  The cold cold weather makes me want to crawl under 25 blankets – heavy ones like the ones my grandma used to make – and just hide there for days and days.  But the warm weather seems to bring new life to the ol’ soul.

I had a good weekend…I feel like I’m back to myself today.  Friday turned out to be somewhat of a disaster.  Stressful things at work kept happening…people screwing up on big things that I then had to fix.  And for some reason, Friday was one of those days where I just was not responding well to stress.  Not well AT ALL.  I don’t get how some days things can be so impossible to deal with and other days the same things would be handled by my brain in much, much better ways.  I think I was just tired, lacking sleep, and had too much caffeine.  Sometimes you add all those things up and BLAMO it’s a nightmare.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or because I have a tendency to be more anxious than I am calm, but these days overdoing it on caffeine can really wreak havoc on my brain.  Weird.  Anyway, I was fit to be tied by the time I got home Friday night, but have fully recovered and am back at it today.  WHEW. 

I had to withstand “one of those” conversations yesterday that are so frustrating and saddening to me.  You know, the ones where you’re in a group of women and there’s a bunch of food, and someone says, “Oh that looks so good but I gained 7.25 lbs over Christmas and I need to lose it” so they eat carrot sticks, which is fine, whatever.  But then someone latches on to the comment and says, “Oh, I hear ya…I need to lose 10 lbs, but it would only be 7 if I wouldnt’ have gained back that 3.”  And it just spirals out of control from there.  And I say, “Oh, really, I don’t even own a scale because the numbers on it really are meaningless” but my comment is ignored and the conversation gets really intense about the exact number of pounds that everyone has gained and needs to lose.  ARG.  This is all so meaningless…like really, what does it matter?  Be healthy people – be healthy in your mind and body and spirit.  These conversations are taking your focus and energy away from anything that actually matters.  You might be thinking, oh come on, relax.  Who cares?  And to that I say – no seriously, we need to stop having those conversations.  It’s pointless.  Women are about more than we weigh.  And by having those conversations, women themselves are supporting the idea that we are what we weigh, how we look, etc.  Can we please stay away from the vortex of the conversation where we all compare how much weight we have to lose?  I think the most beautiful people are those who are comfortable in their own skin, whether they are big, small, medium.  I am still not there, and I don’t know why it’s so hard to get there (well, ok, I have a few ideas), but that’s where I’m headed people.

Appetite is officially back! January 16, 2009

WOO!  I can eat normally again.  Back off all you people who are offering to eat my chips for me…THEY’RE MINE.

Hmmm what do I have to say today.  Not much…but I’ll come up with something…hold on – this could be preTTy random.

Work has been totally crazy busy lately, and I LOVE IT.  I know it won’t stay busy forever, but I sure do enjoy the times when it is crazy.

Thursday night tv is no longer amazing, which makes me sad.  I don’t really watch any tv at all, but there were a few shows that I watched from time to time like Amazing Race, Survivor that are both now done for a while.  Awwww   I did like Grey’s Anatomy for a while but after the Denny guy came back I kind of gave up on it.

Learning a few things about myself lately.  Like I’m probably a bit too intense.  I feel like I’m always forcing something, always working towards something (i.e. school) and I think my soul is tired of forcing things.  At this point I need to just keep going, but at the same time I’m trying to relax a bit into life, and see what can happen and what can become of things instead of forcing them.  Also learning that I’m very very hard on myself and have really high expectations that don’t need to be there.  This probably makes me really hard on other people too.  Sorry if I’m hard on you other people…please tell me and in doing so you’ll help me grow and will probably feel better about our relationship   Another thing I’m learning about myself is that I’m ALWAYS waiting for something and in doing so I miss most of my life as it is happening.  You name it, I have been/am waiting for it.  Marriage, house, job, degrees, kids, holidays, the list goes on and on.  And then I get what I’m waiting for and – it doesn’t totally change my life – shocking, I know.  ARG!  And knowing that does not help me as I wait for next things…I need to learn how to anticipate better, anticipate while enjoying life as it is now.

That’s it for now…more rattling around in my brain but I gotta get crackin’!

Embrace your appetite January 13, 2009

Ok, In the last 3 days I have learned once again to embrace my appetite, when I have one.  Usually when I’m hungry all the time and eating lots I can get ticked off at myself and frustrated.  However, at times I can remember that having an appetite and being able to eat is a sign of health – emotional and physical.  Ok, so sometimes people eat perhaps because of emotional things, which may not feel healthy.  What I’m talking about here is being so anxiety-ridden or so depressed that you completely lose your desire to eat.  It is not a fun place to be.  I have experienced times where a bag of ripple chips and a container of dip were sitting right in front of me and the thought of eating them nearly made me wretch.  So through those kinds of experiences, I have learned to embrace my appetite.  The last few days I’ve had THE FLU and it’s been terrible.  And I’ve barely eaten anything for 3 days.  And I cannot wait to be able to eat too much again…I always forget how TERRIBLE being sick is.  I’ve even stayed home from work and have not been able to enjoy that because the sickness has been ruling life.  Can’t read.  Can’t watch tv.  Fetal position only.  Brutal.  I think I’m starting to come out of it though people.  I cannot wait to be back to normal.

You need to start blogging January 10, 2009

Today is another one of those days when I need some serious distractions and wish that more people that I know were blogging so that I could read their stuff for a while. Ya, it’s a school work day. Every Saturday and Sunday from now until end of March will be school work. What a great way to wreck my weekends. Really, one of the things that gets me through are the little breaks I take, which usually involve some random task like dusting my plants, cleaning my blinds, or the much more enjoyable activity of reading the blogs of my friends. It is only when I’m feeling like I’m being tortured by having to sit and write meaningless papers about heaven and ethics, anger and murder, that doing something like dusting plants seems appealing. Anyway, just thought you should know that if YOU started a blog I think it would be really good for my mental health. Come on…do it. For me? Please?