The Toilet Room Mural

It started with one verse. 

It turns out that this is my roommate Beth's verse of the year. She's focusing on letting the old things fall away and growing in the new things that God reveals to her. 

I didn't know all of that at the time that I designed this mural, so that made it all even more cool. 

As you can maybe see from the bottom-right corner, this is our toilet room. I say 'toilet room' because our bathroom is actually comprised of three rooms: a room with a toilet, a room with a shower, and the room that connects them both with mirrors and sinks and cabinets. It's a great setup. Anyway, the toilet room was quite boring with its blank white walls. 

By the end of the first weekend at school, this is how far I had gotten. The tree was done and the birds were flying out of the branches. But then it sat that way for about two more weeks because I didn't have time to complete it. 

It was a work in progress. 

Then, I finally got some time this weekend to finish the other half: the roots and fish. 

And here it is, the final product. Now we and all of our guests have something to look at when we go to the bathroom. No more yawning blank white space.

I felt this weird tension during the two weeks in which the mural was incomplete. It didn't look bad, by any means. It didn't even look like it was, in fact, incomplete. If you hadn't seen the original sketch, you wouldn't know that there was more to be done. But I knew. Every time I went to the bathroom, I saw that mural and knew that it wasn't finished yet. 

I feel that way with my life too. I am a work in progress. Some days I feel like I'm getting closer to being the person I'm meant to be, while other days I feel like I'm getting farther away. There is a gap between the person I want to be and the person that I am. There is tension in that gap. It is uncomfortable in that gap because I know that, in a perfect world, there would be no gap. One of life's great journeys is to close the gap. Or, rather, to let God close the gap, since I know that I haven't exactly proven capable at it so far. I'm still a work in progress. 

Good thing God is a patient artist.

Imperfections and Intercessory Drawing

Brace yourselves, this post gets weird. 

I have this sketchbook. This sketchbook went to Spain with me and became a scrapbook of sorts. I drew in it on occasion, but much more often, I wrote in it or taped in pictures or knickknacks or mementos to help me remember my time in Spain. In fact, the Spain portion of the book is a pretty accurate portrayal of culture shock and homesickness. 

Whenever I did draw, it was always visual representations of how I was feeling. 

This one is how I felt when I left the U.S.; as if there was a clean hole where my heart should have been.

  

This one came from an entire week of feeling this terrible sense of dread everywhere I went. 

Continually crashing into someone's self-made walls...

This one is perhaps the best visual representation of how I felt during my semester abroad.

So those ones were all from during my time in Spain. I didn't use my sketchbook nearly as often once I got back to the States, probably because I had other outlets available to me. I didn't do any drawing in my book for over a year. Then, about two weeks ago, I started drawing again. It wasn't the raw emotional drawing I had done before; mostly just ideas for the apartment and sketches of designs I'd like to decorate with. 

Then one night, this little guy flowed out through my pencil. 

I can tell you right now that this drawing was born out of several weeks in a row of engagement notices every few days from friends of mine. As happy as I am for them that they have found the person they want to spend their lives with, it serves to remind me that I haven't found that person. That person that is completely right for me. This drawing is of two people holding the "heart" of the other. That's how I feel right now. Like I'm holding onto a piece of someone else and desperately searching for that person who has the piece of me. 

Then, a few nights later, this little gem came out...

Now here's where it gets weird. I've never felt this emotion. Sure, I have a few OCD-like tendencies, but never have I felt compelled to measure the distances between my books and notebooks and pens and the edges of the desk. I've never felt compelled to wash my hands because I couldn't cope with an obsessive thought. I've never experienced the seemingly endless task of arranging one's life perfectly in order to stave off anxiety and a sense of doom. 

But while I was drawing, I did feel all of those things. During the last twenty-four hours, I've been trying to think of a way to describe what exactly went on during the time I was drawing. I can only describe it as intercessory drawing. 

You've heard of intercessory prayer, right? From what I've experienced, intercession happens when a person puts themselves into the place of the person they are praying for and opens him- or herself up to feel the emotions, pain, and struggles that that person is feeling. From that weak place, the intercessor can more adequately pray for the person. I've been learning how to do it ever since a spiritual gifts survey from church told me I had the gift of intercession. 

Anyway, as I was drawing, I unconsciously put myself in the place of the girl I was drawing, with her ruler in hand, trying in vain to align her books and pencils just so, failing miserably, but doing it anyway. I don't think I was drawing for myself. I think I was drawing for someone else. At the end, I wondered if there might be someone for whom this drawing conveyed the emotion inside of her. 

Maybe by me putting this picture up here, you will be affected by it. Maybe you'll see it and think, Yeah, I can identify with that girl, trying to make her life perfect but failing. I know I've tried it. I always think that if I can just control some of the aspects of my life, more and more of it will fall into perfect place. If you've been reading this blog at all, you'll know that my life is never in its perfect place. But where's the need for a perfect God and His perfect love if I've already got a perfect life? 

The imperfect catches the eye not simply because it is not perfect, but because it is determined to prove its worth anyway. There is beauty in imperfection. It is less obvious, but more rewarding. More meaningful. More real. 

If you're struggling today to be perfect, spoiler alert: you can't do it alone. God will make you perfect, but it takes time. His time, not ours. Let the beauty of your imperfections shine anyway. I'll try to do it too. 

God? I'm scared.

[Context: Last night was rough. I typed all of this out some time after midnight because I couldn't fall asleep. It's mostly a prayer, and I wanted to make sure it was still worth publishing once day came. Basically, I just laid in bed and said all the things I was scared about.]

God?
I'm scared that I won't be able to fall asleep tonight.
I'm scared that I'll feel lonely forever.
I'm scared that no one is going to want to marry me.
I'm scared that I won't make enough money to go to grad school.
I'm scared that my capstones are going to bury me.
I'm scared that my closest friends are going to keep getting engaged and eventually I'll be the only one left.
I'm scared that someone really close to me is going to die soon because no one close to me has ever died.
I'm scared that I'm getting really really really really tired again like before.
I'm scared that my depression will never go away.

[Amazingly, after saying all of these things, I felt better. I've never heard God's voice audibly before, but in my mind, a phrase kept repeating: "My grace is sufficient for you. My grace is sufficient for you. Sufficient." And then I think I fell right to sleep because the next thing I remember is hearing my phone alarm song.]

God is good.

The OCD Monster

So here's an interesting story...

I was working in the ole candy store tonight and after the dinner rush subsided, I had a chance to look around and see what a hot mess the store had become in all the mayhem. Boxes on the floor, empty ice cream containers on every surface, and containers of candy everywhere thanks to our new shipment. I started darting around like a crazy person, breaking down boxes and tidying up. After a few trips to drop off bags of trash and a stack of cardboard, I took a good look at the shelves underneath the candy counters. Boxes of Sour Geckos were in nine different locations. 50¢ candy was on the shelf beneath the 5¢ candy. Several half-full boxes of Gummi Hot Dogs were scattered around. The candy was out of control.

There is little that irks me more than unnecessary disorganization.

Something snapped inside me and I became singularly obsessed with organizing the candy as soon as possible. I looked like a maniac, pulling boxes off of one shelf and tossing them onto the floor near the shelf on which they were supposed to sit. It's a good thing there weren't any customers around because I was wearing my crazy eyes.

Several other small incidents contributed to my psychosis later that night, but I won't list them for you. Let's just say that I became so agitated and worked up and ready to snap that I put myself to work in the back stock room. I was so afraid that I would let loose on a customer who said the wrong thing. It was better for all involved that I just go and work on something else with no people around.

So I grabbed a cloth and set to work on wiping down freezers and shelves and restocking and organizing and consolidating. Let me just say that I am the queen of consolidation. I absolutely love it. Anyway, I started moving faster and faster, flitting from job to job and definitely not doing them in the most efficient way possible. I'm usually very efficient (unless I am purposely trying to drag out a job), but my brain was so full of little tasks that I kept adding to my mental list. I ended up not even finishing jobs because I was so agitated.

When I got around to the freezer, I sat on a stool and scrubbed at the smallest spots for minutes on end. I was determined to scrub every square inch completely clean. I wanted every tiny blemish gone. I had become obsessed by the thought that I had to get the freezer clean before I could relax.

Anyone who knows me, most especially my mother, will tell you that I am not an obsessive cleaner. I like to have things neat, I don't like to have food laying around, and I definitely don't like visible grime. But am I immediately going to grab a washcloth and wipe up after my roommates? No. Therefore, this obsessive frenetic cleaning was completely out of character for me.

It was scary. It was unnerving. I didn't know how to handle it. I've never been diagnosed with full-blown Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I do have obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Here's the difference: my life is not ruled by obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors to assuage those thoughts. But, from time to time, I get overcome by obsessive thoughts that simply will not go away. Case in point: I got unreasonably upset about being pulled away from cleaning that freezer because of an ice cream rush. In my right mind, I would jump at the chance to get out of cleaning. My mom can testify to the fact that I put off my weekly chores as long as possible when I was younger. But tonight, all I wanted to do was clean. Maybe "wanted" isn't the right word...it was more like a force inside of me was compelling me to clean.

I've calmed down now, but at the time, it was scary. Whenever I talk to my psychiatrist about these little sparring matches with the OCD monster, he tells me to ride it out. Don't try to fight it, because that will make it worse. Just ride it out. Do what you have to do and survive each episode.

So I guess that's what I'll do. I don't have a better solution or answer right now.

Op-Ed: Let's Talk About Sex

....is the title of the documentary I watched the afternoon.

But seriously, let's talk about sex.

I'd always been a little chicken to cover this topic on the blog, but, like almost anyone my age, I think about sex a lot. It's not like an obsession, or anything, but whenever I see someone get married, I start wondering when it will be my turn. Not just to get married, but also to have someone to be physically close to. I want that so badly. I want to feel that deepest of all human connections. I'll say it: I want to have sex.

Not now, obviously. Not with some rando. But with my husband, whoever that turns out to be.

The documentary spent a lot of time drawing comparisons and contrasts between the approach to and concept of sex in different societies. In the United States, sex is pretty taboo. The media tries to make us think that it isn't, but how many parents are comfortable talking about sex with their kids? Most teenagers are educated about sex by a combination of primetime television, the music industry, and Google Images. I'll admit openly that a lot of my knowledge of how sex actually works and what certain body parts look like came from a series of covert internet searches. I didn't feel comfortable talking sex with my parents, and I figured they wouldn't either.

Europe is a different story. Sex education begins as early as third grade in some countries and it's treated like any other topic of conversation. Sex is not controversial there. Sex is not embarrassing there. I remember experiencing this little phenomenon while I was in Spain. My host sister absolutely loves the show Sex and the City. It came on during primetime, which I thought was a little odd, since every episode has at least one sex scene. My host-nephew would watch the show with us, and Carol had no problem with that. Once, when he was at his dad's for the week, I mentioned to Carol that I found it interesting that Sex and the City was on so early and how easy it would be for kids to find it. She didn't really get where I was going, so I told her about how shows like that are on way late at night because they're considered raunchy and highly inappropriate for kids. She said, "Why? It's just sex. It's normal. Everybody does it. It would be like censoring a show that shows people eating or going to the bathroom."

Interesting take on it, huh? But she was right. Sex is stigmatized in American culture, probably because of abstinence-only sex education and the vocal conservative religious community. Teenagers grow up with the notion that sex is something secretive, something controversial, something wrong. And what do teenagers do when they are told they're not supposed to do something? They immediately want to explore it. And why not? Why take someone's else word when you could find out for yourself? If I saw how much pleasure the people on TV get from having sex but am told by my parents and teachers that sex is bad, who am I more likely to believe? I'd want to figure out for myself who's right about sex and who's wrong. The discrepancy between how the media portrays sex and how parents and teachers portray sex is astounding. Mixed signals fly and kids remain unprepared when they start exploring.

My sex education at a Christian school went like this:
4th grade: The classes were split into girls and boys and the girls watched a video about periods and growing up. I have no idea what the boys did.
5th grade: Another video about periods and growing up, but with a bonus of how babies are made. AKA exactly what sexual intercourse is.
6th grade: Yet another video about periods, plus a side of reproduction, and a Q&A session about sexual processes. I distinctly remember one of the girls in my class asking what a condom was, and the teacher got pretty embarrassed and described it as being similar to a raincoat. I didn't figure out what a condom actually was until I saw the movie Never Been Kissed, which features the quintessential sex ed scene in which the students have to put a condom on a banana.
8th grade: A set of six classes, one per week, about teen pregnancy and STIs conducted by a counselor from Pregnancy Resource Center. For the first time ever, we were in with the boys to talk about such things as chlamydia and semen. This was my first real taste of abstinence-only sex education.

After 8th grade, all formal sex education stopped. We were left to our own devices (our friends and Google) to learn about sex. Oh, the revelations we reached. If we're not supposed to have sex under any circumstances until we get married, then what the heck is a condom for? What would a woman need with a diaphragm? Hmmm, there must be other options than just saying no.

I don't think that abstinence-only sex education works. Adolescents the world over start exploring their sexuality at roughly the same age, regardless of the society they live in. The difference is that some adolescents know how to explore responsibly, and others wind up pregnant. I'll give you one guess where the U.S. falls on that spectrum. The rate of teen pregnancy in the U.S. is more than three times higher than the next leading country because our students are told to simply say no when faced with a sexual situation. Then, when they give in to their hormones and have sex and experience consequences like a baby or an infection, we shake our heads and lament the direction in which our youth are headed.

It's like giving an eight-year-old a box of matches but not a bucket of water. Most eight-year-olds know what matches do and, if given the opportunity, will jump at the chance to play with fire. It's dangerous, it's exciting, and it's just a little bit wrong. If they aren't given a way to put out the fires they start, things can spin out of control pretty quickly.

I think it's the same way with sex. We feed our kids just enough information to intrigue them, and then we shut down discussion by saying that sex is wrong and that they shouldn't do it. Of course they're going to want to give it a try now that you told them they couldn't do it. Sexuality is something that every human being was born with and exploring it is only natural. Unfortunately, they're not equipped to explore it responsibly. We don't teach them what condoms are for, we don't teach them about getting tested and treated for STIs, we don't even admit that sex is as much fun as everyone says it is. If we would just take all the mystery out of sex, kids wouldn't be nearly as interested in it.

Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that sex should happen between two people who are married. But I'm also a firm believer in the fact that you can't actually control what other people do (or want to do). I know everyone says that, but if everyone actually believed it, we wouldn't have legislation about making abortion illegal or that abstinence is the only right option when faced with sex. If two teenagers really want to have sex, a parent or teacher telling them they can't is not going to stop them. It will probably make them want to do it that much more. Instead, why not approach the topic with them from all sides, put forth all opinions, and show them how to exercise responsibility? In Europe, teenagers can get condoms for free from the nurses's office at school or from their doctor's office. Consequently, their teenage pregnancy rates are 1 in 10, as opposed to 7 in 10 here in the U.S. Some people would be horrified by the availability of  condoms, but I think it's pretty smart. They're not going to abstain just because you tell them to. You'd be better off saving your breath and giving them a condom so that they can dispel the mystery of sex for themselves.

If you're trying to discuss sex from a Christian worldview, it's important to not only discuss exactly what sex is and how to do it responsibly, but also just exactly why you want them to wait until they're married. In all my years of school, I only ever heard that the Bible says to wait and that sex outside of marriage is a sin. All that does is make a person feel really guilty about engaging in sex when they're told they shouldn't. I plan to tell my kids exactly why I think they should wait:

To me, sex is more than just a cliche gift that you "give" to your spouse on your wedding night. It's a deep physical and emotional connection that is designed to be shared with just one person. I take that very seriously. I crave that connection exactly because I know how special and important and awesome it is and I don't want to tarnish it by wasting it. It's a sign of the highest respect to save my first experience of sex for my husband. God designed it to be great. The human race probably would have died out if sex wasn't so much fun. Knowing that I waited to experience it with my husband, and that my husband waited to experience it with me, that we respect each other that much without even knowing each other yet...it's hard to describe the feeling that that thought gives me. I say that I can't wait to have sex, but really I can - because someone else loves me and respects me enough to wait too.

I think that if I can convey this feeling to my children, maybe I won't have to resort to pregnancy statistics and nasty images of STIs. Instead of guilting them into waiting with warnings of God's wrath for those who participate in premarital sex, I want to teach them to actually want to wait.

A Prayer for You, Kates

Honey, this sucks. The OPI sucks.
I wish I knew how to help you. I wish I knew what to say that would help. I hope I've held back from saying things that wouldn't help. If I could give you my OPI score, I would do it in a heartbeat. I feel a little bit guilty because I have it and don't need it. Have you ever noticed that you and I have exactly what the other needs? You have the passion for teaching and Spanish, which I need, and I have the OPI score, which you need. Life is weird sometimes.

I could tell you that God has a plan, but you already know that. And I don't find that super helpful when I'm upset. I could tell you to be patient and wait for what God has in store, but I don't like it when people say that to me either. I could even say that teaching Spanish may not be what you're supposed to be doing, but I'm pretty sure that that is the last thing you want to hear and I'm afraid you might smack me.

So here's what I will tell you: I'm praying for you. I'm here to listen. I like smashing things, if your anger ever needs an outlet.

You'll figure it out. You're strong. You're a fighter. Eventually, it will all make sense. I love you.

Love, Andrea

Floating

One of my favorite things to do on Lake Michigan is float. I'm not much of a daredevil when it comes to motorized water activities, so floating on a raft or inner tube is just enough danger for me. I would often do this at the Conference Grounds with my housemates. We'd take our tubes down to the beach and wade out to the first sandbar. That sandbar is awesome because the water is only about waist-deep there. We'd hoist ourselves up onto our rafts, stretch out, and just relax. Feel the waves passing beneath our bodies, feel the sun on our faces, miles away from the rest of civilization, almost.

Sometimes I'd find myself carried way down shore even though I felt like I hadn't moved. The waves were just subtle enough to become unnoticed. But when I opened my eyes and looked around, I didn't recognize the shoreline. The first time this happened, I had a moment of minor panic because I figured I had floated at least a mile. A few more moments of looking around and studying the beach told me that I was only four or five properties down. All I had to do was paddle to shore and just walk back and I'd be back at the Conference Grounds.

If only it was so easy in real life as walking back.

I've had an overwhelming sense of floating this summer. And not good floating, like the moments after a first kiss. I'm talking about the feeling you get when you're laying in bed at night after a long day on the water and you feel like you're still out there. You feel like you're moving up and down with the whims of the waves and just when you feel steady again, another invisible wave nudges you off-balance again. That's the feeling I've had this summer throughout the fatigue, the tiredness, the sickness, the medication changes, and the fact that even though I graduated, I'm not done yet. All of the friends I graduated with have packed their summers with weddings, job interviews, and moving truck rentals. I'm just floating along here, buying textbooks for another semester. And even though I know that this is exactly where I'm supposed to be, it doesn't mitigate how I feel.

I don't really have a happy wrap-up lesson to end this post with, probably because this season of my life is not happily wrapped up yet. I'm just out here floating until I can get back to shore and walk to back to where I once again recognize my surroundings.