Getting centered

So I know I haven't posted since, I don't know, Christmas-something. And I also know that I should be studying for my 7:30 a.m. exam tomorrow...but I feel like I should do this now because I have finally realized something. Not that I have only come up with one thing to write about since I stopped writing. Quite the opposite, really. I suppose I stopped writing because I felt like no one reads this. But then I realized I am not writing this stuff to be recognized or praised by people but instead to wrestle with my thoughts and hope that by writing them out I will be able to see things more clearly.

Enough of my rambling...

I have rediscovered my deep respect and love for the music of mewithoutYou *(If you have not heard of them, contact me right away! I will hook you up because they will enrich your lives and melt your faces)* And through listening to the lyrics, I realized the major theme in (at least two of) their albums is that of forgiveness. For my Christian walk I always knew that forgiveness is a major component of Christianity but I had always felt like faith was at its center. A belief and trust in God was the center of it. Of my whole existence. But I finally realize that while that is a huge part- it is NOT the center. And honestly, praise God that it isn't! Because at least for me belief, faith, and trust is something I struggle with. Crazy, right? I feel like doubt creeps into my life daily and fully trusting God and having complete faith in my heavenly father is oftentimes hard to do. I want to believe in something tangible. Something I can understand. Something I can define and limit. But the existence of a wonderful, mysterious, and active moving God transcends my understanding. I will never understand his thoughts or his ways. And while I love that about God, it also makes it difficult sometimes to trust such a mysterious and awe-inspiring being. Jesus even talks about if we had just the faith the size of a mustard seed we would be able move mountains. This is just a hunch...but I'm guessing since mountains aren't moving everywhere all the time that I am not the only one who struggles with faith.

And so I finally understand that the center of our Christian faith is forgiveness. My whole relationship with God depends on his grace. It is because he forgives us for all the times we screw up and our foolishness that we have hope. Hope to be able to have a place in his kingdom. Hope to have the life that his grace gives us instead of the death our nature and the world offer us. And through God's grace we may put to death our sinful nature and instead truly live, free.

However, what is interesting about forgiveness is that God's forgiveness is so often tied to us being able to forgive others and ourselves.
"Find a friend and stay close with a melting heart
tell them everything you are most ashamed of-
our parents made so many mistakes,
but may we forgive them and forgive ourselves"
-"the sun and the moon," mewithoutYou

We are called to be like Christ and since at the center of Christ's heart was forgiveness then our hearts should be centered on forgiving others as well. And , for me, it is oftentimes hardest to forgive ourselves for what we have done. I spend so much time dwelling on my past failures it discourages me and tears me apart. God has forgiven me long before I even start to let it go so that I can focus on what is at hand.
Romans 4:7-8
7 “Oh, what joy for those
whose disobedience is forgiven,
whose sins are put out of sight.
8 Yes, what joy for those
whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.”

So I have been reading Romans and I came across this verse:

1: 19-20 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

This verse really stuck out to me because recently I have been thinking about my summer plans (I know it is a bit early but I'm excited) and have been really wanting to go out and see the world. I just get excited about seeing new places and new faces because there is so much beauty in our world. And not to go all American Beauty on you but sometimes my heart just can't take all of the beauty in this world. Like the passage says, in all the things God has created you can see his eternal power and divine nature. And part of this means us. humans. God created us and his glory is within us. I have always struggled with self image not just physically but spiritually as well. Sometimes I struggle to see the beauty in my life and instead only see it in others. So this verse was a good reminder that I am a beautiful creation of God. I need to remind myself everyday that God created me for his glory and that when I get down on myself and even hate myself that I am essentially hating the "eternal power and divine nature" of God.

I remember that I once taught a lesson on the golden rule "love your neighbor as yourself." What escapes people (especially myself) is that there are two sides to that. First, to love people. And second, to love yourself. For me self loathe is something I really struggle with while loving people I find is a whole lot easier. In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the main character tries to live a life of "reason, purpose, and self-esteem." I believe that that is how I want to live out my life. The culture we live in is constantly wanting us to hate ourselves so that we want to be like other people, that there is always room for improvement, that we are never good enough, and that we will never be complete. Think about it. Companies have made a fortune off of self-help books, pop-culture psychology, and image. We live in a world where not only 20 million American adults have been estimated to have depression but the fastest growing market for anti-depressants is pre-schooled age children. From the youngest age we are taught to hate ourselves.

I say, enough. It is about time we learn to love ourselves. As Shakespeare wrote in Henry V, "Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting."

a life that moves and flows

I could say that I haven't posted because I was busy but the truth is I wasn't. I have been almost afraid to post since I felt like more people are reading this which makes me feel a little nervous. I guess I was nervous because I felt like I had nothing worthy to say or any profound thoughts. However when I realized why I had not been posting I had to laugh at myself because that kinda defeated the purpose of starting the blog in the first place. If I am going to wait around for an epiphany then I might as well put that on the agenda right along with that novel I was planning to write two years ago.

Anyway... on to my thought of the day.

The other day, I was going to take an Advil for my headache and I was too lazy to get up to go to the bathroom to get water or to go to the water fountain outside my dorm. So instead I decided to use the couple sips of water that was leftover from a couple nights ago in my wine glass. (I know. not the most sanitary thing to do) and after I was done swallowing the pill I ended up having to go to the fountain anyway because the leftover water was so stagnant it tasted like liquid dust in my mouth. I thought nothing of it then but today that nasty water I drank got me thinking about my life.

Recently, I have felt completely unmotivated in all aspects of my life. I felt like I could just sit under a bridge for the rest of my life and let others pass me by. And I realized that I have become like that glass of stagnant forgotten water. Water ceases to be drinkable and fresh if it is not moved, flows, or has fresh water being added to it. Today I feel like I have not been adding anything to my life , that I have stopped being moved, and that I have ceased to have my life being stirred up. It is far to easy for me to feel satisfied by sitting under that bridge but when we become comfortable, bored, and lazy in our lives then our lives become stagnant and useless.

I feel like that was my problem with God for awhile. I became comfortable with where I was at spiritually and eventually comfortable leads to boredom and after that we lose the passion and wonder that first led to that relationship with the Father. So I realized that I need to challenge myself and continually feed that hunger for His word and to take those steps in faith. Like bodies of water that are rained upon and continuously move and flow, I need to continuously challenge myself so that I will produce fresh water.

"Stop trying to control everything and just let go!"

I hope that my readers do not expect me to be punctual about posting because they will be sorely disappointed. That being said, I am sorry for not posting in awhile but I have been so busy.

I have been thinking a lot about Fight Club recently and after I read my one of my brother's post I started to write him a comment that really was turning out to be a post in itself so the light bulb in my head went on and I realized that is what my next entry should be about.

My favorite scene in the movie Fight Club has consistently been when Tyler Durden and "Jack" are in the car and Tyler is telling "Jack" about hitting bottom and being able to finally let go at which "Jack" lets go of the steering wheel because he needs "to stop trying to control everything and just let go." After he lets go of the steering wheel the car swerves off the road and they crash at which Tyler yells "we just had a near-life experience."


This is why Chuck Palahniuk is my favorite author in a mater of a few pages he can sum up the basic human struggle how we try to control things, that we can't seem to "hit bottom," and the reality that until we die we can not live. Now I am not going to pretend that the book Fight Club is the guide to life or a very religious or spiritual book ; however, what Chuck Palahniuks books are about is humanity at its rawest, grittiest form that show through pain through death beauty and humanity can be created is ,perhaps, the only way that it can be.

I have been reading through the gospel John with a few people and one of the most reoccuring themes that I would read from what Jesus was teaching was the theme of through death comes true life. A few of the verses that really stuck out to me about this subject were (in NLT):

John 12 : 25 " those who love their life in this world will lose it. those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity."

John 10 :17 "I sacrifice my life so that I may take it back again"

John 5:24 "I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life."

Now it's easy to just say this, to just say" yeah,yeah Stephanie we must be dead to our old selves and to our sins and God gives us life in exchange." But I think too often we just pass over this message and miss just how radically awesome these statements are. When I watch/read fight club I think "man, this stuff is deep and radical." but what I have to remember is that this is the type of faith my Father calls me to have. Now, I don't think he wants us to neccessarily go out and blow up buildings and do "human sacrifices." But maybe the awesome and revolutionary stuff in Fight Club is not to far from what we are being called to do.

I have been reading over Fight Club again and one of components in the book that I don't believe is justly explained in the movie is that of the concept of "hitting bottom." they kind of skim over it in the movie but in the book is more of a focus. The whole story focuses around the characters struggle with himself (internally and quite literaly.) The character is really fighting himself throughout the story. He fights to discover who he is instead of what this world has defined him to be and he needs to fight to take back his identity from the world. He fights to "hit bottom" to cast off the things of this world that keeps him from living.

As Tyler says, "you need to realize that someday you will die until you realize this, you are useless." The character also fight to practice self-destruction because self-improvement is a myth. To try and improve the self more makes you cling to death. We must destroy ourselves so that we can instead cling to what really maters in life and after you "hit bottom" you will soon discover that focusing only on your desires and fulfilling what you think you desire will not give you life. So let's die so that we may truly live because death to the self will finally free us so that we may truly live.

I can do nothing on my own

I think that everyone is truly hollow and empty inside- at first. I guess a better way to describe us is as vacuums. We are an empty but because we are empty, we seek to quickly fill that empty space. I work as a cashier/stocker for a convenience store and the first thing they taught me was to pull all the items to the front and spread them out so it looks like it is fully stocked.

Isn't that what we all try to do? Create the illusion of being full. Or we try to fill our emptiness with whatever is readily available, or what gives us the most satisfaction at the time. Money, self-loathe, relationships, sex, alcohol, the next boyfriend, the next friend, the next party, even things that our culture tries to tell us will fill us like education, marriage, or family. The problem with trying to fill that emptiness with these things is that they will eventually let you down and reveal that emptiness that still consumes us.

( And to those who are skeptical about relationships with friends, family, or significant others not being substantially filling: "you know the saying about always hurting the one you love? well, it goes both ways."- fight club. it's true, think about it.)

I'm finally realizing this. Only I had tried to fill myself with self-loathing and a false image of a God that didn't really care and was impersonal. I am now realizing what David meant when he wrote in Psalms that He delites in every aspect of our lives. I am now learning what Paul actually meant when he wrote "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." To me this doesn't just mean that we can accomplish anything through God but also that without him we are nothing. Without Christ, the doors all seem closed and road seems longer. You feel like if you could just keep your head above water than you could do it. You could become successful on your own. But guess what!? You can't tread water forever, you will eventually drown from tiring yourself in your efforts. Luckily, God raises you up. As Christ says those who listen to his message and believe are raised from the dead. "but they have already passed from death into life.(john 5:24)"

When I was reading tonight I came across this verse (in the new living translation) :

John 5:30 "I can do nothing on my own"

Mind you, this is Jesus Christ talking. If Christ says that he can do nothing on his own than how can we expect to do anything!

An end to a means?

So I tried something new today because I felt like God was leading me to do so. I shared where I was really at spiritually with my small group. Normally, I give vague answers when they asked. I told them about how I struggle with depression and that I don't really know where I'm at spiritually. This was a HUGE step for me because , frankly, I'm ashamed to let people know this about me. And right now, I feel better because I shared this with them (and those who are reading this.) Maybe this means that I am starting (baby steps) to actually let people in more and not "live inside my mind." Frankly, I find this exciting. Not going to lie, I actually danced today in gladness.

I talked with one of my professors today and she asked me what did I want to do with my political science degree. And I told her about how I was torn between political science and the culinary arts. And to my surprised she exclaimed "Me too!" She told me that she was happy to see me at Ohio State studying politics and that I should never lose my love for cooking because its good to have wide interests and that I that they can feed off of each other. I think this was the answer I was looking for and she had no idea how much she helped me out. So now I want to continue politics. I'm thinking about going into teaching and research. Because there is so much more potential for me there. I was even thinking about "what if I taught abroad or even in Korea or Japan?" I can see more opportunity and even happiness for me there. (and ,of course, I would love to be the second person in our family to earn a phd )

Jon Shah (our preacher) said something that really stuck with me. He said that feeling compassion is not enough. Merely feeling is easy and it so easy to just be a bystander. That we need to act. Too often do I feel compassion but not act on it because I feel like I have my own problems to deal with and that it's simply inconvenient. At small group tonight, Meghan challenged us to show radical love to someone in our life that we feel God has placed in our lives for us to do so. At first, I thought of someone but when I got home I realized God has placed someone in my life that I feel needs me right now. It was the last person I expected but it soon came clear that this is the person. Jon Shah also said something Sunday that has got me thinking. He quoted this guy from campus crusade : "Evey time I find my self alone with someone, I beleive it to be a God ordained encounter." So it got me thinking, am I missing things? I think I am. I God wants everyday for me to be radical and revolutionary but I am missing the point of life almost everyday. Like I said the other day when I quoted Emmanuel Kant, "we must treat everyone as an end instead of a means." There are no means to an end; there are only life changing decisions being made everyday. Let's try not to overlook them.

lost

The problem with being an American is you have nothing but opportunity laid out before you. Am I the only one who finds this intimidating. I wish I never had taken post secondary classes because I'm technically a sophomore and am well on my way to pursue an education, career, and life choice in political science. I love political science and am discovering I have a passion for political theory in international relations. But I am also discovering more and more that I love food, I love cooking, I love going to restaurants. I am torn between two passions and time is clearly running out for me to decide. I want someone to tell me do this. It's the better choice. But I am responsible for that choice and it scares the shit out of me. What should I do? I have no idea.