CK,
Oh my word, I miss you! Although I've been gone for a whole two weeks today, it feels like I just left- just hugged you yesterday, just choked back some serious tears, just sobbed in the airport listening to depressing music that did not at all help my mood. While I was there, CK, I swear I saw you like three times and all I wanted to tell you was that you would be okay and we would both make it through this crap. Telling you that you have changed my life seems very intimate and kind of weird. But I would be lying if I said it wasn't true. Coming back to Kentucky after living with all sorts of honest, broken, struggling, authentic people is like being on fire then getting dropped in ice water. You hiss for a few minutes, melt the ice a little, but overall, everything is the same except you're colder. I sat through work training at the writing center for three days. I moved into a new apartment over four days. I put bills in my name and built bookcases. I had friends over and scheduled my next semester. I felt like an adult, but I felt kind of empty. I feel kind of empty. I was terrified of going into my home church Sunday and being surrounded by a homogeneous lump of white, middle class attitude where nothing is wrong. But God heard that. And He made my pastor talk about how our church should not be for pretty people. He made my pastor talk about how we are all spiritually standing in a bread line, just trying to help each other out. I'm not ashamed to admit that at that point, tears were streaming down my face actively. Jesus has made me care so much about you and everyone else at DRM, and I wish I could just bottle that up and put it in the communion grape juice. I wonder how you would feel if you walked into my church. Would you see anyone who looked like you? Who talked like you? Who you felt you shared a past or even part of an identity with? I wonder, if I hadn't come to DRM, if I would have ever glanced at you twice, and knowing you and knowing myself, that breaks my heart for how entitled I am. And I don't want to say what I'm doing here is without purpose- it isn't. Mentoring young adults who are new to college and navigating life is important. Communication skills are less important. But what I want to be able to do is care for people's souls, and I got to do that this summer. I don't know how to do that here. I don't feel like I fit here anymore. But God is sovereign and my feelings are not truth. He is good. He loves me. He loves you. I hope I get to go to heaven with you. Fish out of water, Emily
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It's been a while, I know. Since my last post, I've moved home for the summer, which has been quite the adjustment, as usual. I've spent a lot of time on Netflix, but I've also had the privilege of working VBS with kindergarteners (we had 27 one night!) and joining a semi-regular Cru small group. I've gotten to know my church family, which has been such a blessing. Being away from my roommates has been difficult, but I've seen not only the church, but my life in a whole new way as I spend much of my time physically alone. What I thought would be unbearable has actually been extremely refreshing. I'm going to be a bible study leader in Cru next semester as well as taking a mixture of helpful and horrifying classes. For now, though, I'd like to focus on some recent revelation.
But I was. Almost every summer before college, I'd settle into some sort of online community where I'd socialize often instead of turning to friends from school. It was just my routine. Since getting back from Summer Project, though, I've been more conscious about my spiritual health and wasn't sure how that sort of environment fit in. When I thought of those communities, the word that came to mind was often depraved. I remember how easy it was for me in the past to get completely caught up in that culture and isolate from everything else. I lived two lives in middle school- one on the internet where I could do literally whatever I wanted, and would have done anything to be accepted, and one where I followed all the rules in my day-to-day life. I didn't want to go back to that. I was scared, selfish, and unsure. Those places are dark and carnal and didn't seem conducive at all to Christian growth. But I was wrong. That got shoved in my face by the Holy Spirit initially when my dear Christ-following Canadian friend sent me an email to check up on me and invited me to a new sort of community with some old friends called Discord. They had a server where the people who used to play together chatted and she asked me to join. Out of nowhere came an opportunity to reconnect with friends I hadn't talked to in ages and maybe even meet some new people. Just to give you an idea of our sort of friendship, I'll include one of my favorite images representative of it. I'm the purple one, in case you weren't sure. The first night reuniting with these old friends I had the opportunity to share the gospel with the green guy in that picture. He's culturally Catholic and about to start college in the fall. I got to talk about how we all suck in comparison to God's glory so we need Jesus to save us from our sin. Several others in the chat read along. To say I wasn't expecting that is certainly understating it. I anticipated life updates--not immediate opportunities to share Christ. As I met more of the people who had integrated into this community while I was away, I was ultimately struck by how broken all of these people are. One woman in particular, in a rare moment of vulnerability, shared how she'd just finished her last cancer treatment. That revelation was quickly followed by brushing off the intensity of that statement with making fun of the faults of others. At first, I bristled at the way she compensated for her brokenness, but then I realized we all do that. I was struck by how we all seek to compensate for where we struggle and how we're called to emulate Christ in the midst of our brokenness. He shocked the culture and brought healing with his message of redemption. Jesus walked right into the middle of the darkness and didn't flinch. And this was certainly darkness. People are hateful and quick to find fault. They're vulgar and seek inappropriate closeness. They point to other things to keep people from looking too closely at themselves. But we are each called to be light. We're called to go further than the personas people put up and bring light where there is none. Jesus brought grace and truth to both the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus. He looked past who they were in their (respectively different) sin and saw the people they were designed to be. I pray we all learn to do the same- to see people with the eyes of Jesus, because in reality, when the pit of others' sin looks to deep, it's because we've forgotten the enormity of our own. Paul was able to effectively minister after a past filled with the directed slaughter of Christians because he understood that Jesus meant redemption. He called himself the chiefest of sinners, and his words were proclaimed at my church on the pulpit last Sunday.
When we look at people who seem in too deep, we need to squash the impulse that whispers we are better. We are not. We will never be. But Jesus Christ is. and the world looks a lot different. On the surface, it doesn't look like much has changed. I remain a single twenty year old whose plans for the summer involve having no work prospects and far too much Netflix.
I have friends going to Hawaii, Ohio, Denver, Ethiopia, East Asia, and I will be spending my time in central Kentucky, avoiding the consistent droning of a television. I get to remain in campus housing for another two weeks. Pros: Silence, except for the sound of an absent roommate's fish tank. Clean space. Privacy. Locks on my bedroom door. Freedom to do what I want without explaining what I want. Being able to cook what I'd like to eat when I'm hungry. Controlling my own thermostat set at a perfectly frosty 68 degrees. Having a dishwasher. Cons: Silence- roommates are gone, and I am in a four-bedroom apartment by myself. I have far too little to do and I can't believe I'm going to write this, but at least on some level, idle minds are the devil's playground. My mind can focus on way too many things I can't control when I'm alone. One particularly problematic situation I no longer have any control over is this romance business. If you're at all familiar with my last few posts that are romantic in nature, you know I've been stuck on this guy who I met three years ago for quite a while. However, because I dislike emotion so greatly, I decided to ignore this affection for some time, allowing it to grow like a cancer or fester like an open wound. That imagery was great, right? I don't mean to call him cancer. He isn't bad for my health, although the stress of said feelings did lead me to quite a few nights running on an elliptical until I wanted to fall over. Anyway, I decided (with the help of a fabulous accountability partner) that I needed to woman up and be open with my stupid emotions so I could deal with this business. So I told him about most of my feelings while accidentally comparing him to a butterfly. He called me tenacious like a liger, so it all worked out in the end, though. The conversation was much less awkward than I anticipated. Neither of us ran in the opposite direction so that was fairly successful. When I asked for some direction about his feelings, though, all I got was a big question mark. There's another girl who he's been playing the will-we-or-won't-we game with for four and a half years. (Let me point out that once he said that I was immensely grateful I had taken the admonition to share my feelings.) He wasn't sure if he would-or-wouldn't. So I found out where that mess left him, but not where it left me. I walked on clouds for the next two or three days, floating in the ocean that is relief, pats on the back, and emotional adulthood. I was very satisfied with the way I handled the situation. That hasn't changed, obviously, but now a week post-confession, I find myself wallowing in uncertainty. I am not confused. I just don't know. Few things bother me more. I've considered outlets for this frustration: writing about the incident, writing indirectly about the incident through angry (or romantic) short stories, making his would-be family in The Sims 3 then killing the other girl while I swoop in to save the day (my accountability partner suggested this would be unwise), rear ending things with my car for fun, slaughtering a chicken with my bare hands, learning to crochet, eating coffee ice cream, crying into my pillow, and wearing lipstick to sleep. I can honestly say I've done five and a half of those things. I'll let you guess which ones. I keep going over and over in my mind about what I'm supposed to do. Should I text him? Should I leave him alone to stew about his feelings? Will stewing make him have feelings for me? Will my feelings for him provoke him to take action on his feelings for her, whatever they may be? Should I leave lovelorn voicemails on his cell while praying he doesn't answer his phone? Should I find his address and show up at his house? Throw rocks at his window? Hold a boombox above my head while playing "Check Yes or No" by George Strait? And because I have nothing to do, it's like I'm on a merry-go-round that never stops with "he will" on one side and "he won't" on the other and it's spinning so fast I can't even tell which one he's walking toward. I feel like that was a good metaphor. My accountability partner told me that the hardest part of this would be once I took my hands off it. I thought it would be when I told him. I almost backed out. But I can't back out of this part. So I will sit in my lonely apartment waiting for him to decide, to act, to tell me and this other girl if he has feelings or one of us or both of us or neither of us. This is pretty much what I've wanted for a year now. I've known I wanted this for a year now. I just want more resolution, and there isn't anything left for me to say to get it. Trusting God is hard. It's uncomfortable. I think I put this off so long because on some level I knew it would be so uncomfortable. It's like I'm sitting on a wooden bench alone outside the principal's office waiting to hear if it's me or someone else who gets to go in new directions. I guess this is what happens when you pray for patience. |
AuthorTwenty-something kind-of-adult woman trying to navigate her future, her calling, and her God. Archives
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