You Are Not a Failure

(This is a blog post to myself about two months ago, and probably to myself at several points in the future. And if anyone else is in one of these times right now, it’s for you too. Welcome. I wish I could give you a hug too, but that’s one of the limitations of a blog that I don’t think they’ve figured out how to overcome yet.)

The following is a quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor who wrote lots of great books on discipleship, struggled with depression, and joined a plot to assassinate Hitler (and also had an awesome grandma).

Best resume ever, right? I want to be this guy.

“Our real trouble is not doubt about the way upon which we have set out, but our failure to be patient, to keep quiet. We still cannot imagine that today God really doesn’t want anything new for us, but simply to prove us in the old way. That is too petty, too monotonous, too undemanding for us. And we simply cannot be content with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be ‘unsuccessful’: and yet be on the right road.”

Wow. There’s a lot there. So much that I’m going to go through it again, broken up with a little bit of my own narration. You should probably be able to tell who said what.

“Our real trouble is not doubt about the way upon which we have set out, but our failure to be patient, to keep quiet.”

You can pray and pray about God’s will and end up in a place that feels frustrating and lonely and way too quiet, and wonder if God is even listening at all. Or you can make a ton of noise, trying to cover up the nagging feeling that things aren’t all right and they never will be. It’s hard to listen and wait, and most of the time, we feel like we shouldn’t have to.

It's More Blessed To Receive Than To Give

If you think I made a typo in the title, you’re wrong. In a Christian culture that emphasizes serving others and doing great things for God, it can be a strange message. But, here it goes: STOP GIVING.

Or, at least, stop just giving. Contrary to popular belief, being needy is not a spiritual weakness. Sometimes, giving too much and refusing to ever take from others can actually be a sin.

You might think that sounds crazy, right, or at least mildly anti-Christian. But wait. Wait right there. I have C.S. Lewis on my side for this one.

Take that.

But, just in case name-dropping a popular Christian writer isn’t enough for you to blindly accept my claim, here’s the actual logic behind it.

This is a passage from The Four Loves, where Lewis talks about charity, the love that’s completely undeserved: “This, though a sort of love we need, is not the sort we want. We want to be loved for our cleverness, beauty, generosity, fairness, usefulness. The first hint that anyone is offering us the highest love of all is a terrible shock.”

I Would Rather Not Need You

This title made me laugh, mostly because I know people would think it’s some kind of joke or exaggeration that I would explain later on.

But it’s completely not.

I actually mean that. I would rather not need you. If possible, I would like to be completely and ruggedly independent, like some sort of pioneer lumberjack, except without the beard. Or the lumber and its need to be cut down. Or the lack of indoor plumbing.

Anyway, let me explain this somewhat-hostile-sounding statement. For one of my classes, we read an excerpt from a book about compassion, titled (shockingly) Compassion. Here’s one part that struck me:

“We have lost the simple but difficult gift of being present to each other because we have been led to believe that presence must be useful….Simply being with someone is difficult because it asks of us that we share in the other’s vulnerability, enter with him or her into the experience of weakness and powerlessness, become part of uncertainty, and give up control and self-determination.”

While I read this, I thought, This is great. And really, really true.

As long as it’s your vulnerability. Your weakness. Your uncertainty. I can be the listening, hug-giving, encouragement-note-writing, deep-theological-truth-articulating superhero who is present with other people. I can field emotional breakdowns and give advice and pray for you without judging you for your struggles.

I love compassion as long as I’m the one giving it.

Playing Peek-a-Boo With Myself

Do you know why peek-a-boo is no longer a fun game for you?

If you answered, “Because I’m not a baby,” you’re pretty much exactly right. Brilliant, I know. So the real question is, why do babies find peek-a-boo so delightfully, giggle-inducingly fascinating?

Because, when they can’t see you for that brief instant, they think you disappear. That’s right. All you have to do to become a Houdini-class magician to a baby is hide your face with your hands. Enjoy it now. You will never be entertaining so easily ever again.

It’s a pretty big deal in child development. Mommy doesn’t cease to exist simply because she stepped into the hallway. Daddy is actually continuing to live and breathe when he’s not being monitored by the watchful eyes of the baby in the crib. That stunning revelation has a fancy psychological name: object permanence.

It doesn’t take us too long to realize that other people exist when we aren’t around. But, for most people, it’s much harder to deal with the idea that we exist when we’re not around.

Dirty Laundry List

Here are two really good options for how to have endless blog content: either be an expert on something or be a failure at a lot of things.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m the second one.

No, I mean it. As I was looking through entries to find ones I wanted to include on my Blog Birthday Top Ten List, I realized that many of my posts are about all the ways I mess up.

Here is a short list of some of the personal weaknesses and failures I’ve talked about. See any you can identify with? Doubt some of them really describe me? Read on, friend. Read on.

I am . . .

Arrogant: (Just a Little Heresy)

Paranoid: (Demonically Motivated Self-Censorship)

Generally a Jerk: (Tiny Heresies, Little Sins)

Afraid of Grace: (Low-Fat Grace)

Socially Awkward: (The Art of Accepting a Compliment) 

A Control Freak: (Learning the Hard Way)

Emotionally Needy: (Compass Hearts)

An Approval Seeker: (Living for Applause)

Self-deceived and a Compulsive Liar: (Just kidding. If this was true, then you wouldn’t be able to believe any of the other faults I identified in myself.)

Fail

I began my (brief) career in politics in my high school government class. We were doing some kind of simulation where some of us were political candidates, some were lobbyists, and some were voters, each with a certain amount of money and power, all trying to accomplish different goals.

Now, remember, this was supposed to be fun. But the way I have fun is a little different than the way most people have fun.

To accomplish the goal on my character sheet (the election of a certain candidate and passing of some laws) I cooked up this ridiculously complicated scheme, based entirely on using the fine-print government procedures of proxy voting and bribing certain lobbyist groups with Monopoly money and cookies. (Legal? Yes, technically. Ethical? Probably not, which is why I decided that year that I should never go into politics.)

I remember looking up from my research of Congressional bylaws and saying, “Amy, no one does stuff like this. This is not normal. No one cares. And to get this to work, you’re going to have to talk to those popular kids who already think you’re weird and convince them to play along.”

But, for some reason, I did it anyway.

I Didn't Want To Write This Stupid Blog Post

I’ve been avoiding writing this for months.

Even now, here are my thoughts: Why can’t I be the expert for once, the one who teaches lessons from someone else’s dumb mistakes, the kind of person you’d want to look up to? Why do I always write posts like this?

I’ll tell you why, self. Because it needs to be done. So there.

One day, I was on Facebook and I accidentally clicked the little history button at the bottom of my browser. It showed me how many times I had visited the site. I can’t remember now what the number was, but it was excessively, ridiculously huge. Like national-debt, I-can’t-believe-that’s-right, has-someone-been-hacking-my-computer-five-times-a-day-for-a-year huge.

You know how some people stress eat? Well, I think I stress Facebook.

The Art of Accepting a Compliment

I’ll give you the only two things I know for sure about graciously accepting compliments: first, it’s very important. And second, I’m awful at it.

Before you think that this is going to be a very short blog post, here’s an observation from a delightful little book called Try Giving Yourself Away by David Dunn, first published in 1953.

“Sincere compliments are among the finest gifts in the world, the most hungered for and the most appreciated by nearly all of us. Yet how few of us have learned to receive a compliment gracefully. Instead, we too often clumsily bat it back by making an awkward disclaimer which spoils the pleasure for both parties.”

At this point in the book, I always suspect that Mr. Dunn must have been thinking of me, 60 years into the future, and chuckling in amusement. Because that’s kind of how I deal with compliments.

It goes something like this: someone says something nice to me about my dress or the duet I sang with my sister or the blog post I wrote, and I blush and say, “Oh, thanks. Um…hey, look over there! It’s a…wall. How ‘bout that, huh? So, what do you think about the weather today?”

Sabbath Reflections: The Devil Made Me Do It

My roommate keeps a document of all the weird, out-of-context things I say. It’s getting pretty long by now. The main problem with this is that I have nothing to counter-blackmail her with if she ever decides to make this document public because she rarely says anything stupid. The other problem is that I find a lot of my own quotes funny and use them in blog posts, embarrassing myself in public for the sake of content. Sigh. The life of a writer.

Anyway, one of the early entries is this: “Satan is way sneakier than the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

This was after one of my classes watched a documentary on the advertisement industry and how they get people to buy their products. They have to create a want strong enough to make the consumer think it’s a need. They do this by using words, stories, or images to associate their product with a positive abstract concept such as family, acceptance, dominance, or beauty.

In my mind, it was a perfect jump from that to how Satan tempts us. He makes sin look good, or at least harmless. He targets specific weak points, just as different products have target audiences and intentionally appeal to their values. And Satan is sneaky. Most of the time, we don’t even know that we’re being tempted until it’s too late.

Sabbath Reflections: Why I Am Not Writing a Blog Post

I know what you’re thinking: this looks like a blog post to me. No, in fact, it is not. (Silly reader. If I can read your mind, don’t you think I know a blog post when I write one?) A blog post is a self-contained reflection based on the writer’s extensive knowledge and wisdom. This is an explanation of why you won’t be reading one of those today.

I’m going on a retreat with my jr. highers tomorrow, so I felt pressure to write a brilliant, witty, wise blog post after a marathon, mind-frying homework session.

This is not that blog post.

Sabbath Reflections: Compass Hearts

I didn’t really like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. It probably had a little bit to do with the fact that I was overloaded with gross, half-sea-creature villains growling and sliming all over the place. Mostly, though, it was because there wasn’t anyone I could cheer for.

The scene where all of the main characters are pointing their guns at everyone else, constantly shifting them, sums up the entire movie. No one trusts anyone, there aren’t clear distinctions between good and evil, and betrayal happens about every five minutes.

It reminds me of Jack’s compass, the one that points to whatever he wants most. In this movie, for the first time, he can’t find a heading, other than “Set sail in a general…that way direction.” He doesn’t know what he wants, or what he’s willing to do to get it.

I have the tendency to be like the Pirates of the Caribbean characters. Sometimes I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I’m afraid of what I want. Sometimes my compass seems to point in a hundred different directions, spinning around wildly as I try to ground myself in something, anything, and chart a course.

Sabbath Reflections: Don't Be These People

Writers groups are strange, confusing things. All writers talk about how important they are, yet most of us dread submitting our work for the critique of the group.

Why? Probably a lot of reasons (some of which have to do with insecurity or fear or anti-social hermit writer-ness, but I’ll deal with that later). I think one of the main reasons, though, is because sometimes writers can be jerks to other writers, even unintentionally.

As I was thinking about this post, I realized that writers’ groups resemble Bible study groups during prayer request time in a lot of ways, so I decided to compare them. Here are some bad examples from both groups:

Bible Study Member: The Person Who Brags Using Prayer Requests As a Front – Yeah, we get that we’re supposed to rejoice with those who rejoice. But when Joe just lost his job, it’s a little rude for Jane to go on and on about her promotion and salary and new office where she can actually grow houseplants because it has floor-to-ceiling windows.

Writers Group Equivalent: The Person Who Subtly Flaunts His Success – Again, nothing wrong with getting excited about places you’ve been published. But there’s a line there somewhere. Something that helps me is to picture myself as Joe or someone else in the group, listening to the words I’m saying. What would Joe think about Amy based on what she just said?

Sabbath Reflections: Living for Applause

I really want you to like me.

In fact, I care way too much about what you think about me (and my writing).

As a writer, I’m often forced to give others something I’ve written to get their feedback, on a criticism scale ranging from my mom to an editor.

Then I sit around and wonder what their reactions will be. I worry a little bit, but, because I’m a die-hard optimist, I mostly just hope.

In my starry-eyed daydreams, the reception to my writing goes something like, “Wow, this is a really deep thought. I admire Amy’s clear intelligence and spiritual maturity.”

Or, “Wow, what a great story. Clearly, Amy is a talented writer with a gift for clarity of expression and insight into the human condition.”

Or even, “Wow, this is a hilarious article. Amy must be a genuinely funny person. I want to hang out with her all the time because she probably makes witty comments every few seconds.”

I want people to like my writing so much that they like me too.