Life goes on! Thankfully.

There are a lot of things going on right now. I don’t just mean things in the world, although those are happening too, but I also refer to life. My life.

Currently I have the beginnings of a terrible onset of allergies. I let loose a sneeze like a cannon in church last night much to my shock and horror. It was one of those embarrassing moments when you feel like everyone is looking at you because you just distracted them horribly but what else was there to do? Sneezes must be sneezed.

In addition to this, each day since I arrived back from St. Louis I’ve tried to refrain from eating sugar but each day I have failed. There are mini candy bars scattered all around the office and what, pray tell, am I supposed to do with mini candy bars? Like 13 year old prima donnas, they beg for attention, their true dark natures hidden beneath a façade of crinkly wrappers (I refer to both the teenage girls AND the candy bars). So I eat them and then I regret the sugar consumption and vow once again to try and not eat sugar. But…it’s hard. Not eating sugar reminds me of that one heiress, when asked how she kept her figure replied, “all you do is eat less”.

!!!!

But I digress. Political things aside, weight loss issues aside (with a vengeance) life is beautiful and good and full of wonderful things. Thanksgiving is almost here, Christmas is right after that, and life continues although for many who voted for Hillary Clinton, it seems like it should have ended this morning around 2 am. I’m glad I don’t care about politics that much anymore although I used to. What a relief! And what a time to be moving and breathing and living.

Election Day 2016: a follow-up

It’s a gloomy day. A foreboding, gloomy day. That line belongs out of a Bronte sister novel or some kind of novel (the kind with murders and elopements). Perhaps it is foreboding because of the election. In reality  it’s just another day in The Woodlands, Texas and the sun is probably shining elsewhere. Who knows? 

There is a strange feeling in the atmosphere. It’s of anticipation and slight dread and overall peace combined. I have had many, many people talk to me about this election today at work. All agree that each candidate is unsuitable and the unspoken question is: what happens next? And who would we consider suitable?

I have a theory and it partially explains why people are so unwilling to commit themselves to either candidate. This immense polarization between candidates leaves polite people at a standstill. We all have our opinions, we all voted for someone (some of us with a secret ballot, unwilling to commit themselves – I am one of these) yet none of us want to discuss anything. We are all noncommittally taking, or rather, not taking, a position in this election, unwilling to be put in either camp. It’s because none of us want to be seen as something we are not. We don’t want to be seen as another cog in the Democrat-wheel, lurking in the dank political shadows where politicians bribe each other and greed takes over, yet we don’t want to be tarred with the Donald Trump brush that shouts and screams and doesn’t make a lot of sense. So we are just staying quiet. We’re voting, but staying quiet.

I wonder what would have happened if there had been a suitable candidate this year? Would we have voted for him or her? Would we be as willing to keep silent about our opinions?

Tonight I will go to church and learn more about Jesus and His will and plan for my life. I don’t think it will have to do anything with Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton – and just a thought, but how horrible would it be if it did? I’m so glad our lives can rise above politics and political events. God’s stories are far greater than ours.

In the end I’m reminded of one of my favorite verses in the Bible: “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” It’s a small verse but it says a great deal.

Happy Election Day! In spite of.

Election Day 2016

I would be sadly amiss if I didn’t post anything about the looming presidential election. Several million people have voted already (I am sure) and maybe you are one of them. I am one of them. I voted early because standing in line on Tuesday to support a list of laughable candidates was not appealing to me. 

This presidential election is not the most important election of our time. Regardless of what people might think, it really just is not. The most important presidential election has been every presidential election to date. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. It just comes as pure common sense that every election has led us to where we are; therefore, they have all been equally important.

As a Christian, I have heard many, many things about this election. Some of my fellow Christians have become remarkably vocal. Some have become remarkably silent. I have waxed both silent and vocal because I teeter between wanting to be a political junkie who must. be. heard. versus being an actual Christian who tries to love everyone, regardless of if they’re voting for abortion rights or gay marriage or other decidedly unchristian things.

This idea that all elections are important and that we should all have our voice heard is quite true. Unfortunately, there are quite a few people who don’t believe this way. I’ve heard many people, some of whom are my close friends, tell me that they weren’t voting because God is in control and whatever will happen He has planned out anyway. This response used to baffle and annoy me. Baffle, because it was true and I didn’t have a response and annoy because it wasn’t true yet I still did not have a response. Now, some odd years later, I know what I would say if someone confronted me with that statement. Regardless of if you are Christian or not, voting is important. It’s important because, although one can be a Christian, it’s not their only label. We are Christians in spiritual practice, but Americans in everything else we say and do. We pay taxes, drive on roads provided by the government, fight in wars, protest accordingly, practice our Amendment rights, etc. We are Americans AND we are Christians. The two are separate, distinct parts of our makeup. You can be an American without being Christian but you can’t be a Christian without being an American unless you weren’t born here in which case that’s another story. And that’s why you should vote. God does have everything in control and I find it completely unsurprising that this election wraps up with two of the most disliked candidates in the history of the United States (that I know of, perhaps this is not the only time). But just because He has it under control does not make you any less American.

One thing I have heard quite a bit this election is the phrase, “Jesus for president!” I’ve said it myself quite a few times and even wondered if I should write Him in. This theory of Jesus being the president is, of course, quite unrealistic. He would have a hard time being seen during the inaugural speech and it wouldn’t be fair to the other nations because He could read the thoughts and intents of their leaders. But never mind, Jesus for president is a great idea although an inherently kind of…silly one.

So tomorrow it happens! Luckily the Lord did foreordain that tomorrow I have church so I won’t be forced to venture out of my apartment to glue myself to a TV for election results. I will instead have things in their rightful place and will be focused on the One who really should be president (even if it’s a false idea) and that’s better than anything else.

Waiting

Full confession: I am a control freak, Type A, excessively perfectionistic type of personality.

I hate it when I can’t figure something out or when someone rejects my perfect solution. I have tried and failed at doing puzzles because the mismatched pieces make me feel anxious. I hate numbers that don’t match, and I don’t clean my house because when I finally start, I can’t stop because everything must be absolutely in order as well as be absolutely clean. (To my mother who’s reading this: I hope you buy that excuse.) 

Since God made me this way, I try to be myself but I am also very aware of how much most people dislike excessively Type A personalities so I temper myself a lot. A happy medium if you will. Sometimes it works, other times it fails miserably.

Because of my personality being how it is, I usually spend excessive amounts of my day planning and trying to figure stuff out. You can find several worst case scenarios with solutions in my back pocket just in case - (yes, I have a 401k and a rainy day savings account that I check religiously). Because I cannot help myself, even my downtime is planned out so really, it's not downtime, it's just another box to check off of my list. Relaxation = done! Approaching it from that perspective belies the point but that's another subject for another time.

What does all of this mean? It really boils down to the fact that I’m horrible at waiting because I plan my life out so I don’t have to wait and thus, I have been rendered incredibly impatient. This differentiates me from precisely no one else on the planet because we all hate waiting - it's a universal human trait. It isn't clear if we were born impatient but somewhere along the line, we all became that way. Waiting is HARD and if you don’t do it right, it’s exhausting.

That last sentence may have caught you off guard. It’s fine, many people don’t think about waiting except to think about how much they hate it. Most of us don’t consider that there’s a wrong way and a right way to wait. But there are means and methods to both.

The Bible does speak about waiting but oftentimes not in a direct fashion. However, the Bible is full of people who waited. Off the top of my head, I can automatically think of four people who were great for God yet still spent most of their time…waiting. There is Job, who waited while everything was taken from him. There is Abraham, who waited a whole century for his son, Isaac. Moses, who spent 40  years waiting in the desert, wandering in circles. The Apostle Paul, many people don’t consider him as someone who waited, but he spent most of his time in prison writing letters and waiting to be free. All of them waited. All of them felt impatient. And luckily for us, their stories are written down so we can learn the right and wrong ways to wait.

I actually want to pull this verse from Isaiah that illustrates how to wait. It’s a famous verse, many people quote it consistently, and it’s fully relevant to what I’m writing today.

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

This verse is used as an encouragement tool to those who are waiting, as it very well should be. But if you look at it closely, it’s also a set of instructions on how to wait. Zing!

So what do you do while you’re waiting? First, you renew your strength. Renewing your strength makes it sound as though you completely stop what you’re doing but that’s actually not the case. Any athlete who runs or does weights knows that the best way to improve your performance is to keep on going. You give yourself routine breaks of course, but you always keep doing what you’re doing. You never stop. Part of renewing your strength is maybe to take a break from one area and focus on another. This is why people who are serious about building their muscles work out their legs one day, then the next day they work out a completely different part of their body. They don’t stop, except for maybe one day a week, but they alternate the areas they exercise. They switch it up. 

Alternating ties in with the second part of the verse – flying with the wings of eagles. Eagles are known for their ability to soar, to ride high above the clouds and above all the other birds. Occasionally it becomes necessary to adopt an eagle-like mentality. You have to take a break, remove yourself from the situation and try to give your brain a fresh start. Soaring like an eagle gives you the ability to approach things with a new perspective. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you look at things from the outside of a situation, and perhaps from another person’s point of view. When you’re waiting, this can be key especially if the situation you’re waiting on doesn’t seem to be moving in the slightest. Also, a key note to take from this…when you’re soaring like an eagle, mountains actually don’t seem that tall or that big. This can be helpful to remember because mountains usually come across as unbending, unyielding, and definitely non-climbable. If your problem looks mountain-like, and most of them usually do, then approach it like an eagle from far above. It will seem much smaller from up top.  

And finally, the last part of the verse entails running without being weary and walking without being faint. This means that you are to never stop moving while you’re waiting. I think this is the most important key to successful waiting. When you’re waiting, you don’t stop working. Sometimes it seems as though you are getting absolutely nowhere but rest assured, if you keep walking, keep moving, keep running, keep going forward, then the waiting will not be in vain. Because although sometimes we think we're waiting on God to start working, the truth might be that He's waiting on you.