All My Fountains

I am an affirmation addict.  I know there are girls like me, and I even think there are enough of us to form a club.  A new haircut, a well planned outfit, or a hilarious Facebook status are just complement inducers to an addict like me.  (The 'Like' button on Facebook is my emotional heroin.)  

Today, though, something I have known for a long time made the journey from brain knowledge to heart belief.  No human being (or "So-and-so liked your status" notification) can fill my need for affirmation.  There are no people who have the ability to tell me I am good enough, not even a close friend of mine who can love me enough like I truly need to be loved.

It is not that my friends are terrible at loving me.  They are actually quite good at it, and I am thankful everyday to be so lucky.  All they can give, though, cannot fill or sustain me.

Built into me was this question, "Am I good enough?"  The world tells me no, but the purpose of the question is not to leave me wanting or hurting or hearing no after no after no.  The purpose of the intrinsic question of worth is that my soul will for all its days seek the answer and someday hear, "Of course you are."  

Sometimes when I ask this question of others, I will get a "Yep" or a "Sure" or an "Uh-huh."  More often than not, my friends provide me with the "Yes" I want to hear.  But since they are imperfect people too, sometimes when I ask this question of them it's like that feeling when you think there's one more stair and there isn't.  It's necessary to have friends who make you feel valued, but they are simply unable to attend to your emotional needs all the time (it would actually be an unhealthy relationship if they did only attend to your needs all the time).  

If you get a chance, read Erwin McManus' book Soul Cravings.  I just finished the section on love, and here's how I would summarize it: We were made for love.  (The last chapter of the section is two sentences long: "All you need is love.  God is love."  When someone loves me, it is supposed to point me to God.  It's a silly analogy, but I think of free samples.  One would have to be sneaky, patient, and/or desperate enough to make a meal out of free samples, and it's likely that even if one was able to get many samples, it would not make a very fulfilling meal.  The samples are supposed to point you to the product.  They are supposed to make your hungry brain go, "Ooh!  This is good!  I think I want some more."  

I have tried to live off of those free samples of affirmation.  It is my struggle, part of my story, and a cycle of which I regularly find myself at the bottom.  Someone offers me a sample of their love and affection - by giving me a compliment, acting happy to see me, spending time with me - and I say, "Hmm... if I'm sneaky enough, maybe I can get enough of this to make a meal."  But I go home hungry.  

When others' opinions of me are the ones that matter, I will be left wanting.  

However, when I ask God to affirm me, to answer my question loud and clear with a "You were knit together" or an "I have made you whole" or "You are worthy of my friendship" or, one of my favorites, "You have an important purpose and are worthy of the community I have built around you."

Then, because of the nature of God, I am overflowing, and instead of trying to live off the bite size pieces of affirmation those around me have to offer, their bites add to the abundance.

This makes me laugh and makes me sick at the same time.

I stole this from here.

Parkinson's Law Prof. Cyril Northcote Parkinson

‘WORK EXPANDS SO AS TO FILL THE TIME AVAILABLE FOR ITS COMPLETION’ General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase 'It is the busiest man who has time to spare.' Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half an hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar box in the next street. The total effort that would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety, and toil. Granted that work (and especially paperwork) is thus elastic in its demands on time, it is manifest that there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned. A lack of real activity does not, of necessity, result in leisure. A lack of occupation is not necessarily revealed by a manifest idleness. The thing to be done swells in importance and complexity in a direct ratio with the time to be spent. This fact is widely recognized, but less attention has been paid to its wider implications, more especially in the field of public administration. Politicians and taxpayers have assumed (with occasional phases of doubt) that a rising total in the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done. Cynics, in questioning this belief, have imagined that the multiplication of officials must have left some of them idle or all of them able to work for shorter hours. But this is a matter in which faith and doubt seem equally misplaced. The fact is that the number of the officials and the quantity of the work are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson's Law and would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish, or even disappear. The importance of Parkinson's Law lies in the fact that it is a law of growth based upon an analysis of the factors by which that growth is controlled. The validity of this recently discovered law must rest mainly on statistical proofs, which will follow. Of more interest to the general reader is the explanation of the factors underlying the general tendency to which this law gives definition. Omitting technicalities (which are numerous) we may distinguish at the outset two motive forces. They can be represented for the present purpose by two almost axiomatic statements, thus: (1) 'An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals' and (2) 'Officials make work for each other.' To comprehend Factor One, we must picture a civil servant, called A, who finds himself overworked. Whether this overwork is real or imaginary is immaterial, but we should observe, in passing, that A's sensation (or illusion) might easily result from his own decreasing energy: a normal symptom of middle age. For this real or imagined overwork there are, broadly speaking, three possible remedies. He may resign; he may ask to halve the work with a colleague called B; he may demand the assistance of two subordinates, to be called C and D. There is probably no instance, however, in history of A choosing any but the third alternative. By resignation he would lose his pension rights. By having B appointed, on his own level in the hierarchy, he would merely bring in a rival for promotion to W's vacancy when W (at long last) retires. So A would rather have C and D, junior men, below him. They will add to his consequence and, by dividing the work into two categories, as between C and D, he will have the merit of being the only man who comprehends them both. It is essential to realize at this point that C and D are, as it were, inseparable. To appoint C alone would have been impossible. Why? Because C, if by himself, would divide the work with A and so assume almost the equal status that has been refused in the first instance to B; a status the more emphasized if C is A's only possible successor. Subordinates must thus number two or more, each being thus kept in order by fear of the other's promotion. When C complains in turn of being overworked (as he certainly will) A will, with the concurrence of C, advise the appointment of two assistants to help C. But he can then avert internal friction only by advising the appointment of two more assistants to help D, whose position is much the same. With this recruitment of E, F, G and H the promotion of A is now practically certain. Seven officials are now doing what one did before. This is where Factor Two comes into operation. For these seven make so much work for each other that all are fully occupied and A is actually working harder than ever. An incoming document may well come before each of them in turn. Official E decides that it falls within the province of F, who places a draft reply before C, who amends it drastically before consulting D, who asks G to deal with it. But G goes on leave at this point, handing the file over to H, who drafts a minute that is signed by D and returned to C, who revises his draft accordingly and lays the new version before A. What does A do? He would have every excuse for signing the thing unread, for he has many other matters on his mind. Knowing now that he is to succeed W next year, he has to decide whether C or D should succeed to his own office. He had to agree to G's going on leave even if not yet strictly entitled to it. He is worried whether H should not have gone instead, for reasons of health. He has looked pale recently – partly but not solely because of his domestic troubles. Then there is the business of F's special increment of salary for the period of the conference and E's application for transfer to the Ministry of Pensions. A has heard that D is in love with a married typist and that G and F are no longer on speaking terms – no-one seems to know why. So A might be tempted to sign C's draft and have done with it. But A is a conscientious man. Beset as he is with problems created by his colleagues for themselves and for him – created by the mere fact of these officials' existence – he is not the man to shirk his duty. He reads through the draft with care, deletes the fussy paragraphs added by C and H, and restores the thing to the form preferred in the first instance by the able (if quarrelsome) F. He corrects the English – none of these young men can write grammatically – and finally produces the same reply he would have written if officials C to H had never been born. Far more people have taken far longer to produce the same result. No-one has been idle. All have done their best. And it is late in the evening before A finally quits his office and begins the return journey to Ealing. The last of the office lights are being turned off in the gathering dusk that marks the end of another day's administrative toil. Among the last to leave, A reflects with bowed shoulders and a wry smile that late hours, like grey hairs, are among the penalties of success. C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress, London, John Murray (1958) I also know from experience that expenses expand to fit salaries, clutter expands to fit available space, and negative experiences expand to fit negative attitudes.

I am at the point in the semester (unfortunately I do reach this point around this time every semester) when it all feels meaningless.  I work hard at school for about a month until the first tests come along and I feel like the things I thought were enough aren't and the things I thought mattered don't and I start to realize that the hard work I was doing wasn't quite cutting it.  I start feeling like the time and stress and effort I put in never matches the grade I get back or the feeling of accomplishment I would like to experience.  The present feels too overwhelming and the future feels too far and there is too much to do in the time that I have outside of class while the time I spend in class seems to get longer with every passing lecture.  With every To Do List crossed off, there is another that has already formed.  With every decision made comes a few more that must be made, not to mention the doubt that shadows each decision and the sometimes changing my mind just to change it right back.

There is too much to do.  So I have to accept that I will never find rest in this life.  Even when I have a productive day, the next day will just bring new tasks.  But if I need peace and rest and serenity, where will I find it?

Somewhere else.

The Lord is my shepherd;
      I have all that I need.
 He lets me rest in green meadows;
      he leads me beside peaceful streams.
 He renews my strength.
 He guides me along right paths,
      bringing honor to his name.


Psalm 23:1-3

Seth Godin says if one wants to get better at writing, one should write everyday.  So, I am taking his advice and trying to write at least more often.  I write what I am thinking about, and today I am thinking about love.

There are clichés about love that I have rolled my eyes at, mostly from songs that I thought were about overenthusiastic, unrealistic, idealized versions of love.  I was bitter towards these songs when I thought they were setting up unreachable expectations for relationships.  At the risk of sounding cliché myself, I now know that is not the case.  There is love that captivates, makes the world seem brighter, makes ordinary things seem profound, gives hope.  This love is the kind that I can't believe I was lucky enough to find, that sometimes just makes me smile for no reason, that has made me better, and that has made me believe in seemingly impossible things... I could go on, but I will restrict myself, even though this love is one that wants to share with the world without reservation and doesn't care how it will be received by others because it has been felt by the two it was made for.

Someone once told me they would know they had found the one person they wanted to love for the rest of their life when that person was someone with whom they served the kingdom better than on their own.  At the time, I was not entirely sure that was possible (or very romantic).  I was dating someone who distracted me from my kingdom work and made it harder for me to love God (that's a deal breaker, ladies).  I also didn't want to believe that someone else (besides Jesus) could make me more whole of a person.  I thought that meant that without that someone I was less whole of a person.  It is difficult for me to explain, but easy now for me to understand.  I am not less of a person when I am single, and anyone who thinks that of themselves has some emotional issues to work through.  However, there are people in my life that make it easier for me to be whole when they are around.  So now, I agree with whoever told me this (I forget who it was...).  Entering into a godly marriage means in part that the two are a more powerful force in God's kingdom than the individuals are on their own.  And I do think that is very romantic.  Love has a much greater purpose than being fallen into.

Love between two people is empty without knowing from where it originates.  As big as this human kind of love feels, even when it is just right, it pales in comparison to the Love that created the world, that survived even after it was put to death, that gave me life, that has healed me and made me whole, and that fights for me every day of my life.

The purpose of love - any kind of love - is to point to the one true lover himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Fvd3yqoL8

Productivity?

Today was the most productive day of my week, but none of the things I did were on my To Do List, so I didn't get to cross them off.  I feel less accomplished at the end of the day when I don't have an empty or entirely crossed-off To Do List.

The To Do List and Productivity Maestro as well as my Productivity and Organizational mentor, Robin Fisher, told me once that she sits down at the end of the day sometimes to write a faux To Do List of all the things she did that day just so she can cross them off.  It's funny that crossing things off gives us so much satisfaction.

Speaking of To Do Lists, I found a wonderful tool for keeping track of tasks.  I think it is my new favorite website.  It's called RememberTheMilk.com, and I love it.  I am going to highly recommend it to all of my friends.  Not only can you access it from anywhere, you can also email tasks to it or have others email tasks.  Also, the crossing off process doesn't take away all satisfaction even though it's digital.  When you've completed all your tasks, it says, "Woohoo!"  :)

I also found a really great blog this week on study habits and being productive as a student.  I am going to start reading through some of the archives (I guess I'll add that to my To Do List).  It provides really helpful concepts and tools for being the best students you can be without constantly being buried under a pile of books or forsaking an actual life for studies all the time.  My favorite post so far battles the extremes of an overworked A student vs. a slack off C student with a new option: the Zen Valedictorian.  How can you be relaxed AND getting the grades you want?  Simple, read this blog.

Thinking a lot about parenting this week...

From my room, I can hear the twins practicing their clarinet and trumpet together.  I love it!  (They are practicing their chromatic scales, which has me feeling very nostalgic about my days in band.)  It's gotten me thinking about what I will encourage... suggest... mandate... that my children do to be better people.

It is important to me that if I have children, they will... 

Play instruments and read music.  They get to choose what instruments... kind of.  My mom let me choose any other instrument I wanted after at least a year in piano lessons. 

Play team sports, at least when they are young, but this won't be as strong of a suggestion as playing music.  

Read lots and lots of books.  And they should be able to tell me what they thought of each book and why.

Be an involved member of each community they belong to (home, school, friends, etc.).  It is important to me that they contribute to and invest in the lives of the people around them.  I want to someday teach my kids to be more of a blessing than a burden wherever they go.  At home, they'll participate in the working of the home and contribute to community in that way by being part of a team.  

Handle money well.

The more I think about it, the more excited I am about my maybe someday family.

Update (9/13): After helping one of the girls just now with her current events assignment, I have decided I also want my children to be up to date with what is going on in the news.  I would do so at their level, i.e. I would not simply turn on the news for them to watch, but we would talk about what is going on in the world in a way that would not depress or overwhelm them once they were at an age where such a thing were appropriate.  

I am house/teenage sitting for a family this week that I have known for years and I am amazed at how their house runs.  I love it.  I almost want to take notes.  Their children are almost completely self-sufficient.  I am basically just hanging out and enjoying their company.  Oh yeah, they're pleasant to be around.  But there are two things I love best.

1. They are charitable.  They belong to an enriched community that takes care of each other's needs.  The girls' mother donates all kinds of things, money, and time to their schools.  Supplies, thank you treats to the administration and teachers, all kinds of things.  I can tell how much they have invested in their community by how well their community takes care of their children in their absence.
2. You would never know.  You can tell they are a healthy, loving family, but their health is so... normal.  They are the way family should be without seeming perfect.  Those "perfect" families usually just make me cringe, anyway.  Like I said, I have known this family for years.  I have valued them and looked up to the parents as a model for functional family building, but only since being amidst the inner workings of their daily life as a family have I seen them go way beyond happy and healthy in little ways that have huge impacts.

I am excited to someday work with a family towards health and happiness.  I am excited to raise children that I will enjoy spending time with.  I hope to teach children to become better versions of themselves each day and I look forward to watching them on days they succeed and days they struggle.  I am excited to read them the Chronicles of Narnia (I just finished the third to last book in the series) and to teach them things I have learned both in books and through life experience.  I am happy that my friends and I practice living in a community where we care for each other's needs and that we have healthy role models that do the same so that someday we can all raise families that don't strive for perfection or better-than-other-families-ness but for conquering the hurdles that come our way together and fighting for our relationships with one another.

I love that God built us for community and enabled, encouraged, and expected us to build our own around us as well.

More thoughts on eternity...

This post is the love child of the two proceeding it.  I recently had a conversation about eternity with one of the campus ministers from Faith Community Church.

Campus ministers from Faith hang out on sidewalks during school hours at the University of Arizona and ask passing students if they have time for a quick survey.  The first question on the survey: "Do you believe you are going to Heaven when you die?"

I used to answer with a quick and sure, "Yes."  I would try to be friendly as they asked the rest of their questions, telling them that I think I'm going to heaven because I have a relationship with Jesus and that, yes, I do belong to a church.  After that they would thank me for my time and tell me to have a great day.

I soon got tired of having this exact same conversation with every campus minister that stopped me, so I began to look for ways to take the conversation in a different direction.  I would ask them how they became a Christian and try subtly to make a point to them that most people find Christ through personal relationships, not through people they meet on the sidewalk.

The other night, I answered their first question, "I don't know."  She gave me a puzzled look, and I began telling her how I thought maybe Christ would restore this place, that there would be a New Heaven and a New Earth and this New Earth would feel heavenly because it would be Eden restored to its former glory, but it would look pretty similar to what we know of Earth now.

She grouped me in with the Lost and Searching.  I could see it in her eyes and hear it in her further questions. I appreciated that she played along for a bit and participated in my discussion, but when I told her I had to go she asked if she could pray for clarity for me.

This is the "I'm on the correct side of the line" attitude I'm talking about.  She didn't pray for clarity for Christians in general, she didn't even pray for her own clarity as well as mine.  She asked God to "make my paths straight" and "clear up any questions I had."  She told me, through a prayer, that I was wrong.

That's quite a few assumptions for someone who just met me on the sidewalk.

I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, that he suffered on a cross to reconcile all of humanity and creation back to God.  I believe that following this faith is the best way to live (obviously, or I wouldn't find worth in living this way).  I believe that because of my faith and the fact that through Christ my soul has been reconciled to God, I will live forever with Him.  I have centered my life on these beliefs because I think they are true, right, and good.

But here's the thing.  I don't know for sure.  That's why it's called faith.  I shouldn't blindly believe, but even after questioning and wrestling and studying and praying, I can't know with 100% certainty that I am right and anyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong.  So neither should I act like I am right and everyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong.

What the hell?

Over the summer, I read Rob Bell's Love Wins and Francis Chan's Erasing Hell.  I read these books solely due to the controversy surrounding them and my desire to be a part of the conversation.

Starting a conversation is what I feel Rob Bell was trying to accomplish with his book.  I do believe, if he could ever find time, Rob Bell would be willing to sit down with me and have an open discussion about our thoughts on hell.  I do not think Francis Chan would enjoy such a thing at all.  In fact, I think while Rob Bell was trying to encourage thought and initiate discussion, Francis Chan was attempting to shut it down and argued many times that it is too dangerous to have questions about the eternal fate of humanity.  While reading the beginning chapters of Erasing Hell (throughout which Francis Chan makes several remarks explicitly referring to Rob Bell, even sometimes by name), I remember telling a friend it was as if Rob Bell was saying, "Hey, guys, can we talk about this?"  And Francis Chan was covering his ears saying, "La, la, la, I'm not listening.  I'm not listening!"

So here are just a few of my thoughts on Love Wins, Erasing Hell, and eternity:

1. Love Wins is not a book about hell.  I like that Rob Bell took the focus of the Gospel off of a line drawn in the sand with heaven on this side and hell on the other and put the focus instead on a loving God who sent his son Jesus to redeem us and reconcile all of creation back to Him.  When I have a line in the sand view of the Gospel, I also have a line in the sand view of people, i.e. I judge them.  Sharing the message of Christ does not mean getting people on my side of the line; it means loving people on a soul level and sharing with them a message of redemption and reconciliation.
2. There are verses and concepts in the Bible that I struggle with, but I am going to follow Rob Bell's example of bringing my questions into a discussion with my community.  When an idea or passage of Scripture makes me uncomfortable, I will not consider it dangerous to examine my discomfort and possibly even question some things I have for so long believed.  Actually, it is more dangerous to stifle such a thing than to encourage it. 
3. I welcome discussion on the matter, but as far as knowing for sure the fate of my soul after I die... I guess I will cross that bridge when I come to it.  Walking in relationship with Jesus, I trust God with my tomorrow even if I have no way of knowing what tomorrow looks like.  I will trust God with eternity in the same way.  I can plan, study, anticipate, prepare, speculate, discuss, etc. (which I do think are all beneficial), but I will not know what the other side of death looks like until I see it for myself.

Many times controversy sparks the best conversation.  As I have watched pieces of this discussion unfold, I only wish individuals could participate without condemning others along the way.