Kindness and Kisses: Is the Chocolate Free?

A week ago, I stood in a room brimming with booths advertising student organizations for the upcoming school year. Representing my Christian fellowship group, I promoted the group to those who seemed interested and offered Hershey's Kisses to passersby.

Anyone who has worked in this sort of environment knows how easily the job can become rote. As the people pushed past, I found that within fifteen minutes it was hard to care much about individuals - hard to care about individuals whom I was inviting to come hear the gospel of a savior who cared so much He died on the cross and rose from the dead to redeem their brokenness. Thirty minutes, then forty, fifty... slowly the energy began to seep out of me.

Amid the amoeba of the crowd, a boy I had met and spoken with on several occasions strolled by, friendly and at ease. 

"Do you want a chocolate?" I called to him as he passed, knowing that a church group would not be his table of choice.

"Wait - you mean - is it free?" he queried, surprise and doubt underlining his words. "Like, I don't have to do anything?"

His question brought my brain's mindless bustling to an abrupt and startled halt, like a car slamming its brakes as a pedestrian unexpectedly crosses the road.

"Yeah," I answered, grinning slightly at his dubious expression. "You don’t have to do anything. Just chocolate. Totally free."

After he cheerfully took a Kiss and walked away, I couldn't walk away from his words or his obvious surprise. You aren't going to make me jump through some religious hoops for you just to get a piece of candy? he might as well have asked. No. No, I'm not. And yet, isn't that what we so often do?

As believers in Christ, we are called to live as light in the world, reflecting His goodness, His love, and His kindness. We carry the message of God’s grace - and yet many times we offer generosity only to try to drag others into churches and seminars and pressured belief. We trade sitting through a gospel presentation for a piece of candy. Consciously or not, we can start to change kindness into a tool of manipulation.

The church has tried to sell Jesus. It doesn't work. A gospel that is sold like a trinket is not the gospel of Christ. It may draw people, but it also creates a quid pro quo mentality that proves completely antithetical to the Jesus who unexpectedly fed five thousand after they had already heard Him; the Jesus who saved a woman from being stoned without first requiring any promise of future devotion; the Jesus who filled the fishermen’s nets because he cared about and valued their work. This modern kind of marketing misrepresents the love of the Cross; it trivializes the kindness of Christ. When bearers of mercy become bringers of merchandise, where has the gospel gone?

I’m all about inviting people in. I’m all about offering free food and help in the home and any other service a person needs, and I’m all about sharing the gospel as we do that – but only if the gift is first given unconditionally, without expecting anything from the recipient. Jesus asks for everything but requires nothing. He invites; he doesn’t demand. He interacts with people understanding that the choice to follow Him must be made freely for that choice to mean anything at all. 

In kindness Jesus proclaims laughter, life, and light; in kindness He calls us to share with those in need; in kindness He tells us His secret: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” We bear witness for a kingdom where hurts will be healed, knowledge will be made complete, and fear will be dispelled forever. This is the goodness in which we have been commanded to revel now. We are called to share it with all the world as freely and sacrificially as it has been shared with us. Faithfully, the sun rises and the flowers bloom to the delight of believers and unbelievers alike. The God who set the Earth spinning gives with overflowing kindness; can I freely give more than a little piece of chocolate?

Let Go

The first stanza of this poem began drifting around in my head during a particularly difficult week last summer. This past week, a conversation with a friend reminded me of it and prompted me to come back and finish it. (I may have also perhaps been putting off schoolwork that should have taken precedence. What can I say? The work got done in time, and poetry is good for the soul.) I'm glad I did.

Let Go

Some wounds we wish would never heal;
Some cuts we never care to close;
Some hurts we never want erased;
            Of these He says, "Let go."

The past might sear; it still does seal
That these dead thorns from rose once rose.
The pain proclaims the loss we've faced -
            And yet He says, "Let go."

"This is not just!" we scream. "To steal
Our joys of life, turn them to woes!
At least let us in wailing waste."
            He whispers still, "Let go."

"Let go the past, the hurt you feel,
Regrets your heart does yet enclose.
Through pain, I'll hold you safe, embraced.
            Please trust me now... Let go."

"Come laugh and joke, then dance a reel;
Feel water's rush; life ebbs and flows.
The hardest task? Become unbraced.
            Find joy right here. Let go."

"In dark, my light reigns sov'reign still;
From darkest darkness, Christ arose.
Redemption's seeds His blood encased - 
            Of this, do not let go."

Dance

"What's dancing like?" he asks me, the early April breeze tugging at my hair.

To my own surprise, I have no reply.

"I don't know. It's... just... dancing," I answer lamely.

After years of dance, can it be possible that I have never thought through this question?

A week later, I stretch backstage before a performance and think again of the conversation.

For twelve years, I have done this, the rehearsals and performances. I can't remember what life was like before dance. Many of my closest friendships formed in the dance studio. Throughout my life, dance teachers have served as my mentors and role models. Dance has supplied countless analogies and explanations, and I see every sport, every step in terms of dance, but I can't answer this simple question.

What's dancing like?

How can you explain what it feels like to breathe?

Dance is movement. It's sound, rhythm, and shapes. It's breath, rising and ebbing. It's the juncture of visual and auditory, physical and mental, athletic and artistic.

Back in the wings, I wait in the dark silence between numbers. The music starts, and we step on stage. We dance of the Kingdom, of heaven coming down to this room, and the chorus courses through us and among us. It's a praise hymn, a battle cry, a declaration to make truth into reality here and now. We worship through movement. One song, one rhythm.

In modern dance classes, they tell you to breathe together. Listen to the breaths of the others dancing around you and breathe with them - and then move to that heaving rhythm. Under the glaring lights of the stage, our breaths draw us together like wind rustling through a field or a breeze tugging hair, and suddenly every dancer forms part of a greater movement, a piece of a whole. We become a body of bodies, and I trust the person at my side to catch me, lift me, and shift to or away from me in time with the music. We share our weight.

Through thick and thin, we've shared countless weights together over the years, ranging from health issues to heartaches to head battles. We've fallen and risen and fallen again, and every dancer knows that you have to let go of your tension in order to press forward into the choreography. Contract, release; plié, relevé; drop and then lift. We feel the expanse of space and time, and we move through it, every step accounted and every second counted in order to milk the full glory out of each moment.

The movement holds power and freedom. As the music ends, I grow conscious of each vein pulsating with rushing blood. With muscles exhausted and heart beating fast, I think I can feel every cell in my body teeming with life. When we come off stage, grinning and panting for breath, I whisper to myself, this is dance: it's life at its fullest, concentrated and rich and sweaty and beautiful.

On a Sunday in May, I perform for the last time with girls I have danced with since I was five years old. Shifting roles in close succession, we play evil hags and then fairy-like victors. We pour ourselves out on the stage. In the dressing rooms, we laugh and reminisce on childhood wishes and treasured memories while a whole new generation of young dancers lines up in the backstage hallway. When we take our final bows, the curtains close, and with them closes a year. For me, it marks the end of a chapter in my life.

My time here is finished, although I did not want it to end. I don't think I've really processed that it's over. I was raised in this dance studio. Leaving it seems like abandoning part of my identity, yet the lessons I learned in the studio are permanent, and they will remain true even when I step off the marley: share your weight with others; extend your arms fully; make sure strength does not become tension; don't be afraid to fall on the ground. Here, I have tasted pure joy. This is dance.

Home-Skoolled

Note: This memorandum draws from the author’s personal reflections on severely traumatic circumstances in early life. Please respect the trials the author has faced in overcoming such a difficult background.

            Walking through the grocery store the other day, I saw a mother trailed by her twenty-eight kids, all following in silent, slavish obedience. With pity, I realized they were probably home-schooled. Aggressively, the boys bared their teeth and growled in what could have almost resembled smiles and laughter had I not first recognized that they were undersocialized, given that they wore their pants so high that I couldn’t even see their boxers. How would they ever get a date? Long-haired and lanky, the girls wore no make-up. I was embarrassed when I realized I was looking at their actual, bare eyelashes. Having been home-schooled, they would have never learned in middle-school how revolting it is to leave the house without applying at least one bottle of mascara and either fuchsia or lime-green eye shadow. Walking past, my friend gave the mother a sidelong stare and whispered, “I’ve heard of people like them. They must know the Duggars.” Although I had concerns the moment I laid eyes on the family, my consternation grew when the six-month-old lost his cool, broke the façade of composure, and began to howl. Those honest, wailing tears confirmed my caring fears: the children were undoubtedly abused. Oh, yes. They were definitely home-schoolers.

            I, too, lived in such bondage for the first fourteen years of my life. Because I only participated in dance, piano, musicals, Sunday school, AWANA, co-op, taekwondo, babysitting, SCUBA diving, summer clubs, community outreach groups, field trips, and cotillions, there were days when I had to spend multiple hours interacting with no one apart from my family. Since I was never socialized, I literally got excited about interacting with other human beings. Without the mob-like guidance of wise friends constantly by my side at school, I never had the opportunity to truly look up to and emulate important world leaders like Britney Spears, Hillary Duff, or Miley Cyrus. Instead, I turned to inconsequential figures such as Mother Theresa, Eric Liddell, and Harriet Tubman. This observation alone makes it fair to state that home-schooling robbed me of any meaningful childhood.

            And that second part of home-schooling? The “schooling”? Yeah, that’s a total joke. If a home-schooler tells you they have an education, don’t believe them. No home-schooler has spent the necessary eight hours per day learning important school stuff, like how to stand in a cafeteria line, how to lie to a teacher about homework left in the band hall, or how to wait for those leisurely hand dryers in the bathroom to evaporate molecule by molecule of residual water on hands that are dirty again by the time they finish drying. (By the way, speaking of bathrooms, when I saw that family in the grocery store, one of the girls told her mom she needed to use the restroom. I almost offered to explain to her how public restrooms work since I figured she wouldn’t know how to use one, but then I thoughtfully decided against it, since the girl might be terrified if she had to speak to someone.) No, home-schoolers don’t get an education. I didn’t learn to read until I was four. Throughout the early years, I had to learn math at a pace that adjusted based on how confident I felt with the material, when instead I could have spent two weeks on content I understood immediately and one day on the most difficult topic of the year. This one home-schooler in my community did get National Merit, but I’m pretty sure that’s only because he checked the “home-schooled” box as his background ethnicity. (It’s all about affirmative action.) Plus, there’s no way a home-schooler could score well on the SAT anyway, given how limited his vocabulary tends to be. Without regular use of even basic four-letter words, how can anyone expect to develop a broad vocabulary?

            So, please, the next time you see a home-schooler, give them all your charitable pity. Make sure not to talk to them and to avoid any eye contact, though. You might just scare them out of their wits.

Waiting

The clock's ticking and nothing is changing.

This isn't my timetable, God.

But maybe that's the point.

The past several months of my life have been full of waiting - waiting on college admissions, waiting on friends, waiting on the right medication. Waiting. It's not fun.

Right now, I'm waiting for five universities to release their acceptance letters in the next two weeks. (I plan to have the ice cream and chocolate stocked and ready.) When I submitted those applications a few months ago, I spread my life before a group of strangers - my grades, how I spend my time outside of school, my dreams for the future, what my teachers think of me. I willingly invited these unknown admissions counselors to analyze each detail of my life, evaluate it, and decide whether I make the cut or not. Seriously, it feels a bit like being a daddy longlegs crawling across a stark white wall, readily visible and easily squashable.

Sure, the results will be what they will be, but the anticipation is a killer. If I could have it my way, I would have gotten the decision back the day I submitted the application. Over the course of my long eighteen years of experience, though, I've made an earth-shattering discovery: I can't snap my fingers like Mary Poppins and instantly put my life in order. It doesn't work. (Believe me, I've tried.) I don't control time.

But maybe that's the point.

Time - that dimension, that concept, that something that binds us. Lately, the bizarre idea of time flashes through my thoughts frequently. It's such an arbitrary thing, really.  Time. Our entire lives play out on this field of time that restricts us far more than gravity or any such "law of the universe" that we take for granted as an absolute. If I were controlling my life, my wishes would all become realities, and they would happen instantaneously. I would have what I wanted when I wanted it.

Guess what? I don't have that power... because I'm not in control.

But maybe that's the point.

Waiting forces me to recognize that the world doesn't run on my clock. When I'm waiting for things I want, the pretense of power is up. If I'm waiting for something, it is only because I am not capable of making it happen. Not that it won't happen. Just that I can't make it happen. I'm not in control.

If I'm not, who is?

The Person who controls time. The Person who lives outside of time. The Person who, for some reason unknown to me, created time as the framework in which I was to live.

And time might exist for exactly this reason: to teach me that I'm not in control and I don't have to be. To teach me to trust the One who is.

My whole life tells this story of my hands gripping tightly, trying unlawfully to wrest power from God, and Him slowly opening my hands to take that power back. So that I don't drown in this sinking ship. So that I can live in the fullness for which I was created. So that I can trust Him, know Him, and let His nearness be my good.

The waiting becomes a blessing.

When I started high school, He knew who my friends would be today. Six months ago, He saw each day that I would drag my body around in frustrated exhaustion. Today, He knows what schools will accept me and where I will choose to go. My life is spread before Him like a tapestry, a story that He sees fully from outside the bounds of time. I am living right against the strands of thread, and I am so small that a single strand can seem to overwhelm my whole world. God sees and knows that there is more. For now, I must simply trust Him that the tapestry is good.

In these moments of waiting, my fists slowly start to unclench. Sometimes focusing on the next big thing feels like the only option, and it seems impossible to think of anything else. It's not. God has called me to the here and now, to make the most of each moment, starting with the present. The "big things" that can overwhelm me don't disappear, but as my hands open, this joyful peace washes through me. Sometimes, I can even see a broader view of the tapestry.

And what I find there is that the whole of the tapestry declares the very same truth I have discovered up close to the thread: God is sovereign, and His goodness never fails. In that comfort, I will rest. Breathe. Wait.

On Blogging, Perseverance, and Grace

To be quite honest, I seriously considered deleting this blog for a while. Admittedly, I don't even know how to do that, but I've thought about it long enough to have gone through the deleting process several times over.

Actually, to be even more honest, I'm still considering it. For starters, I barely, if ever, post; hardly anyone ever reads, and I have done next to nothing to change that. Also, I'm not crazy about much of what I've written in this little corner of the web. Truth be told, my blog usually feels rather uncomfortable to me, and I think that comes across in what I write. Mostly, that stems from my own insecurities about writing and the knowledge that other people from various walks of my life will read my words. Talk about two of my biggest struggles - pleasing people and doubting my own abilities - combined into one! Add to that combination a hectic schedule and far too many thoughts not worth posting online, and the result is this blog.

As you can probably tell, that jumble of thoughts has swirled through my head for a while now.

Yet for some reason, I haven't deleted this little web address. Instead, I'm here, writing this post.

I'm writing it for several reasons: I'm stubborn; I refuse to let something simply die; I'm still holding out hope for this unfortunate little blog of mine; and most importantly, because I want to claim my story.

The thought of killing a blog cold bothers me. Doing that would feel like a miserable failure on my part, letting an endeavor end because I couldn't keep up with it. Really, by this point in my life that shouldn't even cause me a second thought, because I have let go of quite an assortment of failed endeavors over the years. Recently, though, situation after situation has shown me time and again how I still don't handle my own mistakes well. (Add that to my personal checklist of top priorities to work on this year.) Of course, a huge factor in why I don't like this blog is that to me it feels like a big poster displaying my mistakes and immaturities over the past couple years, in everything from silly, picky requests to overly pretentious statements I always seem to veer towards even when I don't intend to!

Yeah, I admit, there's also this part of me dreaming that one day I'll be some good ol' blogger who consistently posts things "worth" reading about all aspects of life... even when all sound reason warns me that will probably never happen. This post doesn't play into that imagined ideal, though. What I'm writing here stands independently of whatever future blogger or non-blogger I may become. This post matters because of that last reason, the crucial one, the one driving this post.

I want to claim my story.

In twenty years, I want to look back at my life and say, "Yeah, that's me." The girl who adored her siblings, stressed over school, loved to dance, enjoyed learning from Kindergarten through twelfth grade (despite years of getting teased), reacted in anger, planned movie nights, sought the people normally left out, worked slowly, reveled in stories and make-believe, was a hybrid home-public-schooler, treasured toddlers in her lap, talked too much and too bluntly, read the dictionary for fun, got distracted, quit piano lessons in high school and regretted it every day but never took it back up, considered Sherlock Holmes her superhero, preferred the 1800's to the modern age, and could sit for hours watching the dawn turn to morning while the birds pecked for worms beneath her window. That is me.

I'm not proud of every item on that list. I would do much differently if I could, but for each fact listed above and many more - they're all my story, every last piece of it. It's a tapestry of failures dyed in a deep, red blood of grace. At the end of my life, I want to look at my story spread in front of me and take it all for what it is. I don't want to hide from the parts I don't like or try to rip them out of the fabric, because heaven knows I can't. Instead, I want to have a vision clear enough to see the way each bump in the weave creates a bigger pattern, one that holds my name in every piece of thread and tells the glory of a God who has allowed every moment of my life to be exactly as it was and is.

To look at eternity, there's more than one vantage point. Certainly, I need to remember the one that will come at the end of my life, but there's more than that. There's now. The place I'm in right here at this moment also holds a window into eternity. When I see the bumps of my mistakes and failures, not just in twenty years but right now, I want to learn to really believe that they belong to a beautiful pattern, and scramble past that bump quickly to find what happens beyond it. I want to keep going so that one day I can have a tapestry as long as possible, long because every extra inch of thread means a moment of life fully lived. Yes, that means there will be far more bobbles and twists along the way, but I know that the God who created me is more than capable of weaving all the strings into a single, complete fabric, perfectly woven by a master Weaver.

At the end of it all, I want to find this: victories and vices alike covered in a beautiful, scandalous grace.

If you ever check this link again and find the address gone, you'll know I changed my mind. We'll realize together that this blog of mine with all its quips and quirks was a lost cause, and it wouldn't be the first or last one in my life.

Right now, though, the blog's still here. I'm still me. The words are still up. And every bit of it forms part of my story, so I'm not giving up on it yet.

Peeling Layers

" So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana... But just as I was going to put my foot into the water I looked down and saw that it was all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as it had been before. Oh, that's all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe. 

"Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good. 

"Then the lion said - but I don't know if it spoke - You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. 

"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know - if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away."

- Eustace, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

Some days it seems like the layers won't ever come off. When for what feels like the twenty-millionth time I find myself looking at the same ugly patches of my heart and mind, I can get downright discouraged. I look, and I see no progress and think, "What is the point of this? Why can't I get better? Why can't I be better already?" 

I have a drive for perfection. I want to be good, to be excellent in both heart and action. The only problem with that is, I'm not perfect. (Figures. I'm sure you're shocked.) I fall into the exact struggles that have followed me for years. And when my eyes see only failure, I am tempted to give up on seeking the good that Someone planted in me long ago, when He first made a garden and commanded it to bear fruit. That seed of longing for goodness is a gift; the yearning has weight. It carries life. Prying and prodding and peeling off ugly skin, I can dig deep in search of that sweetness. But I have discovered that once a layer of lies falls off, a new one waits underneath. 

Of all the things about growth, this may be the one I hate the most: that I can think I have learned a lesson, passed a test, and moved forward, only to find that in one month, two months, a year, two years, the very same struggle pops up again in a new form - or even (heaven forbid) the exact old one. Failure after a supposed victory has its own peculiarly beastly bite. When that dreaded foot or face or forearm sheds its scales reveals only another layer of scaly filth, the hard weight can ache. 

So I scratch and scrape and scramble to get it off, off and away from me, but there is always another underneath. And I cannot remove so many skins. Only the Lion can.

I may have quite a thing for C.S. Lewis, but I sincerely believe he had a thing for truth. And here, through the mouth of Eustace Clarence Scrubb, he found a keen one: when I reach a task too big to handle and am ready to give up on myself, the Person who knows me better than I know myself never, ever gives up on me. What I cannot do, He will, if I only let Him. That is His promise. 

Sometimes the skins seem so disgusting I don't even want to look at them. If I my own sunburned skin peeling off my shoulders grossed me out just this morning, am I really ready to deal with the even grosser prospect of a sinburned heart? Not really. Still, I want the ugliness gone more than I want to avoid it. If I face it, I can ask for it to be taken away. So I'll face it. And I'll ask. And I'll believe that the One I ask will do exactly as He has promised.

I can feel layers weighing heavily on me right now. Silly things, mostly. Mannerisms. Habits. Thoughtlessness. Daily failures - forgotten chores, impatient words, unsatisfactory work. Shoot, a virtually dead blog I never write on and nobody ever reads, without a post for a year, for Pete's sake! ;) Other things are less trivial. And yet, when that ache weighs almost unbearably, perhaps that is simply a call telling me it is time to peel.

Hope revives in this: the smaller I shrink, the closer I come to my true self. If I humble myself... If I ask... then the pain will be deep, but the relief will be sweeter. If I can learn to keep asking and trusting and watching as those skins fall off, then maybe I could live that way, with layers peeling and claws deep-healing and self shrinking all the while, asking as many times as needed for Him to continue stripping down the excess. One day, at the core of it all, I may just find the me I was made to be. 

For now, it comes in layers.

And when a layer peels off, oh, it is such fun to see.