The Post Art Project Week 1

Cool art project time!

I’m teaming up with my bestie from high school, Samantha Johnson, for a year-long mail art project!   One of the struggles of living 100+ miles away from a friend is that the intimacy of communication can be… well, non-existent.  What better way to alleviate this than to do what we do best?  ART!!  Plus, who doesn’t like to receive snail mail?

If I had to sum up the theme in my body of artwork in one phrase, it would be:

Where are you going, Where have you been?

(Shout out to my girl, Joyce Carol Oates.  Can’t tell you how many times I read this in undergrad and yet did not get sick of it.)

I like art that communicates; moreover, I like art that responds.  Such is the basis of The Post Art Project.  Each week either I or Samantha will be responding to the work that the other created the week before.  After a year, we should have 52 separate works that, perhaps, could stand alone… but together, will do something beautiful.

We will be able to see where we are going, and where we have been.

Of course, no art is completely interesting if it’s allowed to fly fast and loose.  (A common misconception.)  There are a few constraints we will abide by in our creations.  They are:

1. Each work will be an original response to the work that came before it.  i.e. No recycling pre-existing work.

2.  Each work will be a square of dimension 6 in x 6 in.

3.  Each work will be a 2-dimensional work of any appropriate media: photography, painting, paper-stitching, print-making, pen & ink, even batik.  You name it!

4.  However, posterity is essential.  Materials will be of archival quality, and flimsy papers (such as photographs) will be mounted on card stock for protection.

5.  Each person gets one week to complete their work.  A digital copy of each work will be blogged every Monday of the following week.

6.  Each artist will safely keep the property of the other artist’s work, but will consider only the most recent work when responding.  This is to avoid “redundancy.”

7.  All art must be signed on the front and numbered on the back by artist.
Note:  Katie’s numbers will always be odd; Samantha’s numbers will always be even.

8.  Each artist will provide a complimentary artist statement with their work, but the work itself need only be considered when responding.

9.  Cycle will continue for one year; thus, each artist will contribute a total of 26 works.

10.  HAVE FUN!!  Good art never takes itself too seriously.  :D

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And now without further adieu, here is my addition for week one:

A Map of the Body (05/21/12)

The body is a map.  (The map is a body?)  The veins.  The memories.  The worry lines and wrinkles.  I looked in the mirror the other day and realized that, although I don’t have wrinkles yet, I can see where I will have them.  Crows feet will crease around my eyes because I laugh a lot.  Small lines will form across my forehead because I tend to concentrate very hard.  My eyes will one day bag.  My breasts will one day drop.  But all of this does not really bother me.

What bothers me are the wrinkles of my life.  At times it can feel like life is whipped like a sweet meringue.  Each wave flows seamlessly into the next, dissolving on the tongue.  At other times it can seem as broken and brittle as the cracks in asphalt.  I look at where I am now.  I look at where I have been.  Friendships, opportunities, plans… Sometimes it seems they don’t ebb, but rather crag.  The sweet whipped meringue of life becomes a jolting whiplash.

And how do I deal with all these things?  How does God deal with all these things?  Why does He bring people and places into our life for but a season?  Grand Rapids… Ann Arbor… Chicago… These are all a part of me.  Yet they are apart from me as well.  And they are all so separate in my mind.  One day I lived in Ann Arbor.  And then one day I did not.  I am tired.  Tired of rebuilding my life and establishing friends.  Tired of discovering who I am… and who I am not.  Sometimes I just want to be.  But the people.  The places.  The maps and veins and wrinkles of my life.  They never smooth. 

Sometimes I long for things without quite knowing what I’m longing for.

Maybe in Heaven, when we receive our new bodies, our new earth, what we really receive is something old.  Something beautiful but long forgotten.  Something we lost and spent the rest our life trying to get back.  Maybe in Heaven, God restores us to that place in our life, in the mirror, in the world, when things made the most sense.  When the meringue ebbed the most sweet.

—

Special thanks to Francesco Paolo Hayez for the anatomical model.

April’s Topic: Mere Christianity (Part 2)

This is the second post in a three part series on C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.  I realize this month has been a bit unorthodox.  In part 1 I shared my “testimony.”  (I put testimony in quotes because my poor summary of God’s plan for my life is only the tip of the iceberg, of course.)  In part 2 I will try to get more into the book.  Though perhaps, rather than saying this is a post about the book, it would be more correct to say this is a post in response to the book.

God works in us and through us in so many ways.  I could probably write whole novels on where He has been in my life.  And yet none of it would be necessary.  Because the true miracle of grace can be summed up in one beautiful name: Jesus Christ.  And some glorious day, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that HE is Lord. (Isaiah 45:23 & Romans 14:11)

Won’t that be amazing??

Until then, all I can really stress is that what makes any one testimony “interesting” is not where the person has been, but where the person is going.

My dad once said that someday he’d like to see someone stand up and give nothing more than the bare bones of their salvation– I was once a sinner, but now I’ve been set free.  He did not say this because he is a cynical person.  He said this because of the spiritual climate in West Michigan, where I am from.

I’d say that the religiously saturated environment of Grand Rapids breeds complacency.  The complacency breeds apathy.  And the apathy breeds… completely missing the point.  (Also known as hypocrisy.)  Basically, people do not ask what they can do for their savior… they ask what their savior can do for them.

(For the life of me, I can’t read that without a JFK voice.)

What happens when this pattern of thought becomes the norm?  I already told you in part 1, remember?  “If you were really a friend of Jesus, you wouldn’t be depressed… Because everyone knows once you become a Christian your life becomes super awesome 5000.”

That’s where my dad’s opinion comes in.  And I must remind myself in my day to day life that Jesus never promised us a prosperity salvation.  Or at least, not prosperity in our sense of the word.  Actually, He lets us know that according to our standards, it will be quite the opposite.  My hope is to prosper in every sense of God’s word… not my own.

—

At my bible study this past week we broke off into groups and talked/prayed with each other one-on-one.  Because of earlier conversation in the group, I asked my partner if she had ever had a season of “rebellion” in her walk with God.  She twisted her mouth and looked at the ceiling, as if to rack her brain for past sin.  “Hmmm… No.”  “Wow.  That’s great!” I said.  She laughed.  “Yeah well I have like the most boring testimony ever.“

She was joking, but it opened up a great conversation.  We talked about how every testimony is profound simply for the fact that it is an admission of salvation.  No one person was more lost than any other.  And no one person is less saved than any other.

I hope this stands out in part 1.  Yes, I shared some reckless details, but I recognize Christ in everything.  Yes, I wanted to die when I was twelve.  And there’s something very wrong with that, chemically as well as environmentally.  But I see how Satan was sifting and Christ was conditioning me toward His greater purpose even then.  At the time, I was so frustrated with “stuff”–I say this not to dismiss my feelings, but to avoid opening up a big can o’ worms…–that in my journal I wrote down a vow to NEVER forget what it’s like to be a kid.  To be so dismissed and so unheard.

So far I feel I have upheld that.  I have a deep passion for kids and “the way they work.”  I want to write books for children (as well as adults).  And I was serious when I mentioned in a previous post that I want to set up a darkroom someday and do a summer photography program for kids.  I’m already collecting 35mm cameras!!  When I was a substitute teacher, I used to let kids stay in from recess (if I wasn’t too tired) just because they wanted to talk.  They wanted to read their stories to me and tell me about their favorite Nintendo game.  They wanted to ask me questions about my life and tell me Michigan was either better or worse than Michigan State.  It was nice.

…Except for the days when the children were evil and the best interaction I got was a thoughtful note like this at the end of the day:

It reads: I am sorry for how bad I was and how mean I was to you.
I actually am a good person, but I didn’t take my medication.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure medication would have helped his behavior any.  But it’s sad to me that he was so young (first grade) and already chalked his behavior up to his being a “good person” or a “bad person.”  Where do kids get that??

I won’t be so cliche as to say my suicidal seasons made me who I am today.  Lord only knows how they have shaped me.  And I will never tell myself that they were desperate pleas for attention.  Many of them were private.  Though nevertheless a cry for help.  I don’t feel shame over them anymore.  I used to be so ashamed of wanting to kill myself… that I wanted to kill myself.  Isn’t that ridiculous?

Perhaps the reason I share myself so recklessly–on here and in life–is because I’m finally embracing the freedom from shame that God has afforded me.  Recently I realized (probably in March), that if I am fully and completely forgiven by GOD, the maker and Lord of the universe, the essence of righteousness and love, then why hide?  I want to be open and real with people.  Yes, I believe there is a boundary of emotional intimacy that belongs to God and that should not be shared, save for with a spouse.  But I believe my sanctification in this is outside of that boundary.

—

One thing I love about C.S. Lewis is that he spins such beautiful analogy.  If a writer really wants to win me over, he has to say things I would have never thought of in a shockingly simple way.  The way to my heart is through analogy.  :]  And Mere Christianity is full of it.

Here’s one such beautiful word picture:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

I find that so beautiful.

Often I think I pray for God to work in me and change my heart, but what I mean is the way that I see fit.  I pray to God and readily give him “a job to do,” but then when I find a hole in the wall I scream, “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING??” and once I calm down, maybe, “Um, you’re going to fix that, right?”

Luckily, though God may meet us where we’re at, He never leaves us as we were.

Two weekends ago, God started knocking down walls.  I knew what He was doing, and I was glad for it.  But yes, it hurt abominably.  (Oh Clive, take me away… ^_^)

The first wall came on Friday.

I attended a women’s conference.  And there were many reasons why I was skeptical walking in.  For one, the conference was titled Sex-Desire-Power.  For another, some of the tables had high heels as the center piece.  (Ohhh, that must be because this is a women’s conference, right??)  For quite another, I don’t know.  I just felt really guarded.  And kind of annoyed.  During the first two talks I was just praying non-stop that God would soften my heart… because I am usually so annoyed by that type of thing.  “God, I don’t know if I am correct to be annoyed or if this is just a part of my sarcastic self that rejects things as a defense mechanism, so please just show me what to feel…”

Things got a little better once we broke off into discussion.  The table mediator asked challenging questions, and we gave challenging answers.  We talked about how to combat lies and what it means to really meditate on God’s word.  We discussed how sin is often a result of inconvenience, rather than something that falls upon us.  We shared our vulnerabilities and ministered to each other.

At one point we talked about past unhealthy relationships with men.  I said something about how I would never let someone else come between my relationship with God ever again.  Heads nodded in approval.  Then I added, “And I will never come between a guy and his relationship with God ever again either.”

One girl looked right into my eyes and said, “But you know it’s impossible for you to do that, right?  That’s his responsibility, not yours.”  “Well, yeah…” I said, and went on this defensive spiel about how that’s really what I meant even if it’s not what I said.  “No, I don’t think you’re getting it,” she said.  “He was the man in the relationship!  He had a responsibility too!  And that was his fault.“  I opened my mouth to give my retort, but I was speechless.  And then it hit me:  She’s right.  I was carrying around such baggage, asking God to forgive me for how I had personally led Troy away from God and if he had never dated me he would have never sinned and everything would be spiritually perfect in his life and I am such an evil woman and all I do is destroy and corrupt and I’m evil… when I it wasn’t any of that at all.  It was just as much him as it was me.

And I burst into tears.

Which really annoyed me.

First of all, I cry alone.  I hate crying in front of others.  Second of all, it was just so typical.  Women’s conference… vulnerability… tears.  Ugh.  And yet here it was.  God dragged something out into the light and would not let me ignore it and said, “Did you know that you were thinking this?  Do you know how this could destroy you and any future relationships I bring to you?  Reject this lie.  Cling to my truth.”

Fine, God.  I’m glad I went to the freakin’ high heeled girly conference, OK?  Happy?

Not yet.

The second wall came on Saturday.

Despite my discovery of this truth on Friday, I was still wrestling with it come Saturday.  Yes, I have turned from past sin, but the memory is still there.  And this can be a huge stumbling block.  In one way it can make you feel so unworthy of God’s love and make you wonder if you should ask for forgiveness again.  (On principle, I won’t re-ask for forgiveness.  Rather, I ask for God to help me believe I’ve been forgiven.)  But in another way–perhaps a much worse way–it can creep up on you as a “nice” memory that “really wasn’t so bad” and I’m just going to think about it for a bit because it’s “nice.”  My emotions played tug of war all weekend.  And I was FREAKING OUT.

But I felt such love.  Because one of the girls I’ve been getting to know here let me drive over to her apartment AT MIDNIGHT and talk to her about what was up.  And for like two hours she just poured out the holy spirit on me.  She talked about her own past and how she can’t even remember how many sexual partners she had all through undergrad.  “But the funny thing is,” she said. “I feel like I’m a virgin.  And spiritually, I know that I am.  Because that’s grace.”  “But how will you ever get rid of what happened?” I asked.  “Don’t you worry that it will pop up someday when you think you are happy and just RUIN EVERYTHING?”  “No”–She was so confident!–”And I even think that on my wedding night it’s going to be like the first time!  I’m going to be nervous and have no idea what I’m doing and [blah blah blah]… A year ago, I realized that I could start praying to God to take these memories away from me.  I just laid my past sins at His feet and said, ‘Lord, these are yours.  You redeemed these on the cross.  So now I give them to you.‘  And it took awhile, but I don’t think about them anymore!  He doesn’t!  So why should I?“

YES.  He takes my sin and remembers it no more.  (Isaiah 43:25)  Praise God!

I had a similar conversation with another friend later on in the week.  Something very beautiful came of it.  We talked about how we got to where we currently are in our spiritual walk.  So of course we talked about our lives in undergrad… and the subsequent regret.  Finally she burst out,”But whatever.  These decisions are part of our future.  They are not a part of our past.”  ”Where have you heard that?” I gasped.  “I don’t know, I just made it up,” she said.  “That’s beautiful.  That’s from God.”

My past decisions will play into each one I make in the future–for good.  But they are no longer a part of my past.  I do not have to live by who I was.  But God will use everything for who He wants me to be.  And that is a beautiful thing.

And there were many more walls after that.

God still shows me who I am.  And compares it to who He wants me to be.  It’s painful, but I’m thankful that He won’t give me over to my evil desires.  That he finds me worth the discipline, worth the saving, worth His time.

During undergrad, I sang in my campus ministry’s band.  Sometimes I still think about how hard that was.  Not a week went by that I didn’t choke up at the words and have to stop singing.  I felt like they didn’t belong to me.  And I felt like God couldn’t love me.  I felt like I had betrayed Him and that He saw me as a lost cause for His greater purpose.  I felt useless and dirty and low.

One day one of the staff leaders pulled me aside and told me to smile more when I sang.  “What, does he want you to hike up your skirt a little more, too?  Would that make him happy?” my mother ranted when I told her.  Yes, I agree, he was completely wrong in the way that he chose to speak to me.  And I became bitter and eventually quit the campus ministry scene altogether…

But the issue wasn’t that I didn’t smile when I sang.  The issue was that I couldn’t smile when I sang.  Also, spiritually, I should not have been leading a crowd in worship.  But this terrified me.  To step down would be to condemn myself!  I was under the impression that if a person wasn’t “spiritually fit” for service, it meant that they were fallen from God.  That they were tainted somehow and beyond repair and that they could never return!  (Now where did I get this idea?  Just look at the Christian music industry–any time somebody comes forward about a sin they’ve committed they are shunned!!  Frankly, I’d rather listen to the music of a sinner who knows they’ve been redeemed than a pharisee.)

I hadn’t thought about the fact that sometimes a person should not be in a position of service, not because they are dirty or vile, but because they themselves need to be served.  This is one thing I still (humbly) charge campus ministry with today: they forget that, especially in a student ministry, the ministers themselves need to be ministered to.  There was no one I could talk to.  There was no one I could trust.  My bible study leaders blah-de-blahed about God on Thursday night, but then boozed it up all weekend.  I felt trapped and troubled by sin.  I was blinded by the stye in my own eye, yet helpless to find someone who could help me pluck it out.  What a mess.

I don’t know how to solve the campus ministry issue.  Perhaps just pray.  But as far as the personal part of it goes, I can only thank God for rescuing me when He did.  In explaining what God has done for me, I turn to Hosea.  I’ve been all about him lately.  In particular, chapter 2.  You should read it HERE.

Basically, last fall, God slammed on the brakes.  He said, “Stop!  You’re not listening to me!”  He took everything away.  He stripped me of all I had come to depend upon instead of Him.  He led me into the desert to be alone with Him.  And He said, “Now that I have your attention, I’d like you to look at your sin.”  He held my hand when I cried.  And I buried my face in His robes.  He whispered tenderly to me.  And He told me to lift up my head.  He began to give things back to me.  He whispered tenderly all the while.

And you know what’s beautiful?  The part where God strips me–verses 1-13 of Hosea 2–all went very fast.  It didn’t take for God towall me in so that I could not find my way.  But it wasverse 14wherein He took his time.

Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.

I love that.  God allures us.  He romances us.  He draws us in.  He wants us to be as in love with Him as He is with us.  For all the ways I have grieved the Holy Spirit in my life, I am in jaw-dropped awe that He never ceases to pursue me.  That it was important to Him to not only remind me of all the ways I love Him, but to remind me of all the ways He loves me as well.  A steadfast, burning, unconditional love.  My heart pounds at the thought.

If only I had understood this years ago.  Tonight, as I worshiped God at church, I thought of campus ministry so long ago.  How I did so many things wrong.  And how Satan used that against me for so long.  But how God has finally reclaimed that and is using it in me and for His glory instead.

Here’s part of a song that has been stuck in my head all week.  I think my apartment neighbors may be sick of hearing me sing/play it.  ^_^

Beautiful God
Laying Your majesty aside
You reached out in love to show me life
Lifted from darkness into light, Oh

King for a slave
Trading your righteousness for shame
Despite all my pride and foolish ways
Caught in your infinite embrace, Oh

And I find myself here on my knees again
Caught up in grace like an avalanche
Nothing compares to this love love love
Burning in my heart

—

I will tell you, my two main love languages are touch and affirmation.  Basically, I hug people and encourage them while desperately trying not to be a creeper…  For instance, the other day a coworker was really stressed out and upset.  “Boys are stupid” was all she said.  Without thinking twice I rubbed her arm and told her it was going to be OK.  Creeper, right?  Luckily, she didn’t bristle.  And her day got better.  But some people are weird about their personal space.

Lately, I’ve been trying to actively pursue the encouragement aspect.  For instance, I’ve decided to make a point of finding the pastor after a particularly rich sermon to thank him for the time he put into it and to let him know the spirit was moving through his words.  I can’t imagine what sort of spiritual attack our pastors must be under day after day.  I do not envy them.  I can only hope that even a small piece of encouragement can give them rest.

I also want to begin to pray that God will make hospitality one of my spiritual gifts in the body.  And that is what I chatted about with my friend.  She has a beautiful gift for welcoming people into the church and making them feel loved.  I want to be like that.  I want to pursue people and love them well.  God has been placing this on my heart.

—

So I just flipped through my copy of Mere Christianity and feel like I have to delve further into the book now.  But my word count is approaching 4,000… and believe it or not, I do have a limit.  So… I’m going to post a part 3.  Please don’t think me indulgent.

If even one thing from this post draws one person closer to God in some way then I’ll consider it worth every word.

We can also say that since it took C.S. Lewis three “books” in Mere Christianity to get out all he had to say, it will take me three posts to get out all I have to say too.  :]

—

Three fun piece of useless information to end this post:

1.  This week I received two parking tickets.  One was because they closed the right side of the street for cleaning and I didn’t move my car.  The second was because they closed the left side of the street for cleaning and I didn’t move my car.  I am not counting these toward my “I haven’t received a ticket in over three years” streak because I was not actually in the car when it happened.
2.  On June 1 I am going to go get myself a kitten.  It will be part birthday present and part celebration of the end of the semester.  In fact, I may adopt two of them.  This is because I am working 40 hour weeks instead of 20 hour weeks, and kittens that go unstimulated either destroy things or become very dull and boring.  I know I want one to be named Frida.  But I can’t decide on the other.  Suggestions please.  Freddy?
3.  A few days ago my supervisor caught me putting whole milk in a smoothie.  I thought we made them like frappuccinos–uber fattening 5000.  But smoothies come with 2% milk.  “Oops,” I said.  “I guess this one will be super delicious.  Can we just make her fat and laugh at her if I promise to use 2% from now on?”  He considered this for a moment.  “Umm, no.  As hilarious and gratifying as that might be, we have to make it correctly.  Dump it out.”  Stupid rules…  The customer was super thin.  It’s not like it would make that big of a difference.  ^_^

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You have finished part 2.  You can either revisit part 1 HERE.  Or read part 3 HERE (link tk).

Hanging In There

Hey guys,

Just wanted to let you know that I am still planning to delve into the genius of C.S. Lewis as part 2 of April’s Topic at some point.  But I’m just heading into my last three weeks of school right now, so I have to get other commitments out of the way first.

I also started a new job.  :D  Starbucks!!  I wear a cute green apron with a little siren lady on it and steam milk like nobody’s business.  Mmhmm I do.

So far I really enjoy the social aspect of the job.  I like talking with people as they wait for their drink.  And I can’t wait until I know the regulars.  Today one “regular” was like “You must be the new chick!”  And I was like, “Yeah!  You must be a regular dude!”  “Yeah!”  Blah blah blah.  I introduced myself while I made him his latte.  But when I handed it to him he still said, “Thanks, new chick!”  So I said, “You’re welcome, but hopefully next time I won’t be the new chick.” “Nah, you’ll be the new chick until there’s another new chick…”  Then he grinned and walked away.  (STORY OF MY LIFE RIGHT NOW!!)  Fortunately for him, he is just goofy enough for me to think he is funny instead of a jerk.  ^_^

So anyways.  Praise God for answering that prayer.  I now have a source of income.

…And coffee.  :]

I plan to publish Mere Christianity Part 2 on the 18th (Friday) or sometime soon thereafter.  But for now, I need to go pound some caffeine and get me some work done!!

Until next time,

Kitty

P.S.  Did you know that maybe drinking alcohol maybe might increase the risk of maybe getting breast cancer maybe?  Yeah… I somehow need to turn that into an article…

Rough Draft: The Silence of the Cannibal

In 1933, Fox Films released a series of eight one-reelers called “Baby Burlesks.”  The films, starring Shirley Temple, were exactly as they sound.  In “War Babies,” a diapered, half-naked Shirley—but she’s five, so that makes it OK, right?—shakes her hips and pouts her lips in a way that, today, would have parents and child advocacy groups alike crying foul.  But perhaps the least tasteful of all (ironically) is the last one to be released.  Entitled “Kid ‘in Africa,” the glamorous missionary Madam Cradlebait is on a “cannibal taming expedition” bound to “civilize all cannibals or bust.”  Plans are stalled, however, when she is kidnapped by her targets and placed in a large cooking pot.  They salt her, they taste the broth around her, and they invite friends over for the fixin’s via coconut phone.  (“Be right over!  If there’s anything I love, it’s stewed missionary!”)

All eight films draw a clear distinction between the virtues of black and white—we’re talking more than morals here—a not uncommon sentiment in the early twentieth century, unfortunately.  Temple herself later called the films “a cynical exploitation of our childish innocence,” citing the rampant sexism and racism prevalent in the all-too-clever story lampoons of famous films at the time.  Call it what you want—exploitation, racism, or just really bad production quality—the times may have changed (for the most part) in terms of female and African-American stereotype and equality in media-driven society, but one thing has not:  The public’s horrified fascination with cannibalism; in other words, people eating people.

This is really not OK.

The fascination is global.  1991 saw the release of The Silence of the Lambs, wherein a cannibalistic serial killer, played by Anthony Hopkins, was forever immortalized in the nightmares of children, teens, and adults.  (“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. [slurps]“)  Other popular titles to hit the big screen include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Soylent Green (1973), The Road (2009), and, you know, basically every other post-apocalyptic horror film ever.

Unlike every other post-apocalyptic horror film ever, though, these are more than just zombie armies hungry for brains.  At least in the zombie sense there is something inherently wrong with the creatures—they are the undead, an animated corpse of witchcraft.  By contrast, the terror of the cannibal seems to hinge on the very essence of his humanity.  At least, something has to keep those knuckles passing from popcorn to mouth at the box office year after year.  Something has to dilate the bright-eyed pupils in the blue-lit lust of the dark theater.  Something has to keep up the boxed sets and re-releases and B-movie sequel after sequel after sequel and classic horror movie fest will this be the next best thing… Something.

So strange and deliciously perverse is the attraction to this aversion that the 1970′s and 1980′s are even sometimes referred to as a “cannibal boom” in the horror film genre.  Called “exploitation films”—admitting it is the first step—these low budget productions promise what Tarantino made into an art: the shameless marriage of graphic violence and sexy sex.  And for what?  The viewer’s pleasure?  Of course!  Like Victorian society and its Dracula, all manner of physical and sexual repression may be gratified, hypothetically, so long as there is a clear distinction between good and evil… black and white.

A list of the best cannibal films on imdb.com pulls up such tantalizing titles as Eaten Alive! (1980), Cannibal Holocaust (1980), and Sacrifice! (1972).  Most titles feature a woman (they must be the most delicious), either naked or clothes torn, with back arched in fearful ecstasy, breasts poised toward the heavens, hips jutted, legs spread—the more tasteful covers (if one could really call them that) placing the 36 pt font with blood dipped serifs just in front of the, shall we say, main course.

This is really, really, really not OK.

Perhaps it is depictions such as these that leave society balking.  In a world increasingly geared toward tolerance and acceptance, something about cannibalism, or anthropophagi, the act of one human being consuming the flesh of another human being, just doesn’t make the cut.  We probably won’t see picketers with demands for equitable representation on the big screen lining Hollywood’s streets anytime soon.  Or at least, not in this century.

“We assume that cannibalism is always an aggressive, barbaric and degrading act,” explains Beth A. Conklin in an interview with David F. Salisbury, an associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University. “But that is a serious over-simplification, one that has kept us from realizing that cannibalism can have positive meanings and motives…”

She cites the Wari’ group of the Amazon rainforest as an example.  Up until the 1960′s, when government and missionary workers forced them to stop, this people practiced two forms of elaborate cannibalism via warfare and grief.  “Eating enemies was an intentional expression of anger and disdain for the enemy. But at funerals, when they consumed members of their own group who died naturally, it was done out of affection and respect for the dead person and as a way to help survivors cope with their grief,” she says. “In the past, the idea of leaving the body of a loved one in the dirt and letting it rot was as repulsive to the Wari’ as the idea of eating human flesh is to us.”

In the late 80′s and early 90′s, Eric House worked with groups of people in Papua New Guinea who at one point also practiced cannibalism.  And in some cases, still did.  He lived in the country for fifteen years as a missionary; however, unlike Madam Cradlebait, his goal was not to “civilize the cannibals or bust,” but to live within the already existing civilization and connect with the people on a deeper level.  He has since moved back to his home state, Michigan, but still speaks fluent Melanesian Pidgin, a trade language, and finds some words and phrases to be more succinct for communication.  At times, he rattles it off as if the average American will have any idea what he is talking about, and one must ask him (sometimes several times) to please translate.

House speaks fondly of the New Guinean people, but states that it was often difficult to receive straightforward answers from certain villagers because the color of his skin and his strict use of the pidgin dialect already gave away what his supposed “expectation” was for their response.  In the words of Dr. Karl Franklin, who also worked with the New Guinean people before House, “It was hard to find a group who would admit proudly that they were cannibalistic—It was usually the group ‘over there.’ “

“You see, Catholicism actually reached Papua New Guinea long before any of my team did,” House explains. “When I told certain villages about Jesus, for example, they already knew exactly who I was talking about and could even finish some of the stories.  This means they also knew exactly where the Catholics stand in terms of cannibalism, and would alter their answers accordingly.”  House is a white protestant, yet his childhood on Michigan farmland and subsequent love for agriculture connected him with the people on a personal level.  He would often sign himself up for the “language surveys” his team conducted (as a way to rectify the disastrous job he says Australia did in charting the country’s native languages after World War I), which gave him the opportunity to explore the diversity of country and work one-on-one with its people.  One language survey revolved around the different villages’ use of sorcery.

“When I asked them if they did posin [pronounced poy-sin, the Melanesian word for sorcery], they would always answer ‘Oh no, no one in this village would do something like that!’  Then they would point across the island at the next village four hours down the road.  ‘They do posin.  And they practice cannibalism too!’  Well, when I finally reached that village and asked them the same thing, they would also say, ‘Oh no, no one in this village would do something like that!’  And they would point back across the island at the village I was just at and say, ‘They are the ones who do posin.  And they eat people too!’ “

So who was telling the truth?  “I think it was a little of both.  I think both villages were probably doing posin and practicing cannibalism to a certain extent, but no one was doing it as much or as aggressively as the other village said they were.  I don’t think they were as straightforward in their answers as they would have been with someone who spoke their native language.”

Papua New Guinea boasts 841 indigenous languages.  In the past, this has created some strife between different tribes.  In the early twentieth century, when cannibalism was prevalent, different language groups engaged in tribal warfare.  House worked mainly with the Foré people of New Guinea.  He says that the practice in this tribe was to share the spoils, if you will, of a victory.  The choice part of the body, the brainstem, would go to the headman of the village.  Unfortunately, this is also where an encephalitis related virus sometimes lay dormant.  Also called the shaking disease, this type of virus can be seen in cattle who have been fed bone meal; that is, a ground up cereal of their own specie’s bones.  It’s called Mad Cow Disease (or bovine spongiform encephalopathy) when it happens to cattle.  But one can only imagine that if you saw your tribal leader come down with a form of Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (vCJD), wherein he violently lost control of his body and began to bang his head upside a wall, words would not express.

“No, I wouldn’t say they quit for any moral reason,” House goes on to say.  “Rather, I think they realized they were exterminating themselves.”  The disease would start a sort chain-like reaction amongst the tribe.

It was really not OK.

House suggests a reason for the people’s practice of cannibalism that is similar to theories presented by anthropologists and psychologists in the field: In a civilized Donner party of five fashion, people began to eat other people out of necessity for protein.  “Papua New Guinea really does not have a lot of resources for protein,” he says.  There is no room for pasture, and their agriculture does not include the wide expanse of farmlands one sees elsewhere.  “It was a nutritional issue, not a moral one.”

That may be so for the New Guinean people, but when it comes to the Wari’ of the Amazon rainforest, Conklin disagrees.  David F. Salsbury of Vanderbilt University explains Conklin’s reasoning:  “The Wari’ did not eat human flesh because they needed the protein.  They were not trying to absorb the dead person’s life force, courage or other qualities. They were not acting out aggression, dominance or a desire to hold onto the deceased.  Instead, Conklin concluded that the practice was deeply rooted in the world view of the Wari’ and their understanding of how memories affect the grieving process.”

Cannibalism.  A “serious over-simplification” indeed.

To be sure, many vicious forms of cannibalism have existed over the years.  Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror flick Psycho, for example, features a deeply disturbed sociopath, Norman Bates, who is based loosely off real-life cannibal and serial killer Ed Gein.  But surely such examples must be the exception, not the rule!  One could also argue that an overly sympathetic view of cannibalism is just as exploitative as an overly criminal one.

Yet when it comes to social media, this is more than just a question of the prevalence of good over evil justifying the sick side to our vicarious nature—our need to stab the knife, to sink our teeth, to arch our back and be ravaged… all the while seated on the other side of the movie screen, the page, the kindle, with the satisfaction that in the end we damn it all to hell where it belongs… but after just a bit more.

No. This is a question of racism, of sexism, of exploitation, of misogyny, of slavery, of sexuality, of morality, and even nutrition.  Of which none of us should wish to be a part. More so than even our beloved Shirley Temple in a pot, this should give us pause.

Because it’s really, really, really not OK.

April’s Topic: Mere Christianity (Part 1)

Last week I had a terrible dream.

I’d had enough, in the dream.  I decided I couldn’t take it anymore.  I dragged a dull blade into the bathroom and I slit my wrists.  I cut lengthwise down the arm.  And my cuts ran deep.  I congratulated myself for going through with it.  For being brave.  And I waited for the pain.  And the blood.  That never came.  Frustrated, I took the edge of my thumbnail and peeled back the skin.  I peeked inside.  Tried to see what was going on.  The skin went snap-snap-snap.  (I realize now that it’s the same snap-snap my laminated train pass makes with my fingers as I walk to the el.)  The image.  The dark, gaping seam of my arm.  And stranger still.  How I peered inside.  And how I realized that my body was already drained of blood.  And how I couldn’t die.  I cried angrily at God.  I felt like He had tricked me.  Because He wouldn’t let me die.

And I woke up with a tear-stained pillow.

—

I don’t know how to broach this subject…

The first time I tried to commit suicide I was twelve years old?  No.

I remember everything… down to what I was wearing.  The last thing my mother said.  The way my face looked in the mirror.  I remember what I was upset about.  And that I had been upset for months.

The first time Satan launched on all out spiritual attack on me I was only eight?  No.

The teacher said that if you did something really bad then Jesus wouldn’t let you into heaven.  I prayed thirty times a day that He wouldn’t make me go to hell.  Finally, my mother pulled me aside and asked me why I always cried during church.  I am very thankful for my mother.

Moral of the story: DON’T trust a so-called “Christian” school.

The first time I really made my faith my own I was sixteen?  OK.  Yes.  Let’s start there.

—

The difficulty in beginning when I made my faith my own is that it gives no credence to the fact that I was saved much earlier.  There is a certain sort of Christian out there who will tell you that one does not really become a Christian until one fully understands one’s salvation.  But that is impossible!  For who at any given moment truly understands one’s salvation?  And even then, who can fathom the depth and completeness of Christ’s love that He poured out for us on the cross as God’s wrath poured out on Him?  We see through a glass darkly.  Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that at any moment on this earth everything will all become too clear.  Now we only know in part.  Whether that part grows or shrinks throughout our life, it does not change the satisfaction of God’s grace.  Let’s not think that we cannot be accepted into God’s family until we ourselves can read the adoption papers.  Only when we see Him face-to-face will we know Him fully, even as we are fully known.  (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Rather, I think from one moment to the next, God chooses what He wants to reveal to us.  And you know?  That might be only just enough when we are young Christians suckling off spiritual milk.  Anything more would be too much.  We would choke.  And who is to say that God’s choice in the depth of His disclosure can make one any more saved from one moment to the next?  That is a lie against God, not man.  I stand assured that my “Dear Jesus, please come into my heart” prayer when I was four years old was no less real or redeeming than the shivers that went up my spine at sixteen.

Sixteen, when the fragile glass in which I had placed God shattered altogether, and I realized that He was pursuing me, and perhaps there was something to be said for loving the Lord MY God with all MY heart with all MY soul with all MY mind and with all MY strength.  This was more than just my parents’ God.  This was MY God, MY life, MY problems, and MY deliverance.  A new concept.

—

I was at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school.  (I went the year before as well.)  Just as the name suggests, it’s a “fine arts camp” in Michigan that offers an intensive “boot camp” atmosphere for the artistically inclined.  Ironically, it’s a lot of fun.  Even though I never asked to go.  My parents made me.  I played the french horn.

That summer, I audition for the international orchestra.  I will not only make it, but will be the youngest person ever selected to play principal horn.  “I usually only choose professionals to play principal and let the students play the other parts.  Do you at least want to play french horn professionally someday?” the director will ask me on the phone.  “No, I want to be an artist or a writer or something,” I will say.  He will sound disappointed, but stick with his decision nonetheless.  I will get to play some of the most famous french horn solos in front of international audiences.  It will be the most unique experience of my life, and also the most trying.

One of my mom’s french horn students (my mom is a music teacher) will also make it into the orchestra.  She will play last chair.  And hate me for it.  She will spread lies about me on tour.  And I will only find out about them when a friend tells me what is going on.  I will feel like no matter what I do, no matter how well I play, no matter how hard I work, that nothing is ever good enough.  When I succeed, my enemy will rile against me.  When I fail, my enemy will rejoice (and my director will humiliate me in front of everyone and say, “playing the french horn isn’t that hard!!  Hit the notes!!”)

I will make really great friends… and really great enemies.

(Except later, when one of my best friends at college begins to date a new guy, I will realize it is one of the (good looking) viola players from the international orchestra.  Small world.  She will tell him this.  And when we meet, he will say, “Oh thank God it’s YOU.  I was afraid it was going to be HER.”  It will be one of the best compliments I ever receive.  ^_^ )

I will go home from Europe having had one of the best and worst experiences of my life.  I will slump into a bottomless depression with no end.  The world will seem pointless.  Without color.  I will confess to my mother how desperately I want to kill myself.  And she will become sad… then terrified… then angry.  I will hear “stop feeling sorry for yourself” and “drop the act” and every other baby boomer bite-the-bullet phrase one can think of.  I will desperately WISH that I was acting.  I will desperately WISH that I knew exactly how much aspirin one should take…

I will go to the doctor and tell him that suicide is all I think about.  He will say “this sounds like normal teenage behavior…”  He will also tell me that it is “safe” to tell him anything.  But as soon as my mother is in the room he will tell her everything.  Some things that a mother shouldn’t have to hear.  It will break my heart.  And I will lose just a little more faith in the world.  Become more depressed.  More disoriented.  More hopeless.  More dead.  And more assured that everyone is against me.

One day, I will overhear my mother on the phone.  She will think I am asleep.  “Please, can you just tell me if you’re going to do something?  This is not my daughter.  She’s a very joyful, bubbly person.  Something is very, very wrong!!”  Then… “My daughter is not crazy!” and she’ll slam the receiver down.  I will walk into the kitchen.  “Oh, I’m sorry you heard that,” she will say.  And start to cry.  She’ll say that they refuse to treat me unless I check myself into a rehabilitation clinic for the psychotic.  Because only crazy people want to die.  It will be the first time I realize that she is on my side.

We will find a new doctor.  When I meet him, I’ll begin to repeat some of the things that my other “Christian” doctor said.  Not as his words, but as my own.  Because I believe them.  “I feel closer to God now than I’ve ever felt in my whole entire life.  Sometimes it feels like He is all I have.  But I know that if I really loved Him then I wouldn’t be so sad…”  “No!” he will cut me off.  “That is not true.  God loves you no matter what.  Sometimes sadness is just sadness.  And chemical imbalances are just chemical imbalances.”  He brought me back from broken to break through.

But all of that was yet to come.  Because for now I was just sixteen, and away at fine arts camp, wondering if I’d always feel “different” from my peers.

(I will, but now that I’m older I like it.)

On the first day of camp, a lot of free time is set aside so the campers can get to know each other.  Right off the bat, I knew there was something different about Susan.  My strategy for “befriending” a room usually involves starting with the person closest to me, then snowballing around until I know everyone.  But Susan grabbed the game of Taboo she had so thoughtfully packed with her things and announced, “Wanna play?” to the room.  Before we knew it, the whole cabin was gathered around in the circle that Susan had started.  We talked about boyfriends and music and blah.  We talked about faith.

Digression:  I find it fascinating that young people so often drift to the subject of faith… and that adults so quickly stomp it out.  My first year at Blue Lake (I was 15), I had a Buddhist counselor who would let us talk about any “religion” but Jesus.  (I mention her faith only because I find it ironic that we knew her faith, given she was so against talking about it.)  She didn’t want anyone to get “offended”…

She also gave me a bad behavior report because, since we couldn’t talk about Jesus, we talked about sex instead.  On the way out of camp my mom angrily read the report off the sheet of paper and demanded to know what we’d been talking about.  I told her the truth.  We talked about God… and our bodies… and boy bodies… AND THE PENIS.

Gravel flew as she whipped the car back into the cabin unit.  I was terrified.  But I found out right quick it wasn’t me who was in trouble.  She stormed back into my cabin and scolded the college-age counselor for treating sex like it was something to be ashamed of and not letting “teenage girls be teenage girls.”

Can I just say that I love my mother?  She is awesome.  End digression.

Susan was a Christian.  Big whoop.  I didn’t think much of it.  Except she was very nice.  And everyone liked her.  And she refused to participate in gossip.  And she was really funny.  I admired her quite a bit.  I wanted to be like her.  In a teenage girl sort of way.

One day I found that I was alone in the cabin.  I had an hour off between rehearsals and was finishing up the makeup and teeth brushing that I didn’t get done in the rush of the morning.  (Seriously.  Who functions before 7 am?  Not me.)  That’s when I saw it.  The softback journal lying open on her bed.  Turned face down.  Pages cracked.  Uncapped pen lying neatly on top.  What did this perfect person have to write about?  What part of her heart and her soul did she pour out?  (I think at this point her level of likeability was making me hate her.  I mean, who did she think she was?  Making her bed before breakfast… Psh.  What a bitch.)  Yet there it was.  Her diary.  So tempting.

Now before you open your mouth to call me a bad person, I’m just going to let you know right now…  If you leave your journal and me alone together in a room, I’m going to read it.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

The good news is I never dig up dirt on people.  I just try to understand them.  And before you say something stupid like, “Why don’t you just get to know people genuinely instead of snooping around?” I have to wonder if anyone but God could read your journal and not learning anything about you they NEVER EVER EVER would have EVER learned before.  For goodness sakes, I read through MY OWN journal just to learn more about MYSELF.  Why wouldn’t I take the opportunity to read someone else’s??  I’ve read all of my sisters’ journals.  And I told them I did, too.  (Once I was finished, of course. ^_^)  At first they hated me and tried to kill me.  But even now, when they’re referring to something from their childhood, I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, I read about that!  Here’s what I think…”  and they’ll get very excited that I know what they’re talking about.  It’s like I’m in their brain!!  (Scary music.)  So you see, it actually encourages discussion and intimacy.

But anyway.  That’s enough defending myself.  You should not be shocked or appalled now when I tell you that I made my way across the cabin, I studied exactly how her journal was laid across her bed (so I could put it back as is, of course–STEALTH), and then I picked that puppy up.

It read (something like):

Jonah 4

Sometimes I feel like I act a little bit like Jonah before God. I know that I should be sharing my faith more, but instead I run away and avoid the subject.  I sometimes have a bad attitude toward God and His call to share the gospel with the world…

I wish you could be inside the memory right now.  In the heat of July, a dead cold shiver ran up my spine.  I hear the rustle of the woods around the cabin.  I smell the fresh white pine of the rafters.  I feel the threaded backing of the journal, fibers criss-crossing beneath my finger tips.  I see the corner zipper of her purple sleeping bag.  It sags gently off the bed.  Her beaded costume jewelry.  Her oval, looking glass.  We see through a glass darkly.

And in that moment, it all became clear.

That true Christianity is a relationship, not a religion.  That I can seek God, just as He will seek me.  That I don’t have to wait until I’m older to understand Him or know Him or feel things about Him.  That I can even tell Him how I feel about Him–Lord, I’m angry with you… I’m sad…  I don’t understand what you’re doing, God.  That knowing God is NOW.

I wanted what she had.  And it was what God wanted, too.

I wanted to acknowledge my sin on a deeper level.  Not just as lying or swearing or watching bad television.  But as passivity, anxiety, and subtle disobedience.  I wanted what she had.  I wanted to seek and understand.  And in that way, maybe shine the same sort of light on the world that she shined forth all week.

When I got home from camp that summer, I did the first private bible study I’d ever done in my whole entire life.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d memorized verses and filled out worksheets for years.  But this was the first time I really sat down, read something, picked at it, pulled it apart, become frustrated with my lack of understanding, prayed to God to show me something, and asked myself, “What does this mean to me?  What does this mean for the world?  How does this apply to my life right now?”

It was really frustrating at first.  I started with Jonah.  And while the book seems so rich and relevant to me now, at the time it seemed like gibberish.  It was the story of a man who got swallowed by a whale.  And something about Ninevah.  Who cares.

Now it’s my favorite book of the bible.  I understand Jonah on so many levels.  I have mourned the vine and I have stunk of fish.  I have slit my wrists and peeled back the skin and shaken my fists at the sky in wait for the blood and I’ve cried, “It would be better for me to die than to live!!”  And God has patiently yet sternly said to me, time and time again, “Have you any right to be angry?”  “I do!” I have said.  “I am angry enough to die!”  “You are so concerned about your own life,” God has said.  “When all that is good comes from ME.  Do you really think I brought you here to suffer?  Do you really think I brought you here to die?  My son has paid the price.  My son has shed the blood.  Child, I have freed you.  Why do you stay beneath the vine?  Do you not believe that I can protect you?  Do you not think that if you are still here then it must be FOR something?  Go!!”

—

“You say that you’ve tried to kill yourself, but that something has always stopped you,” my doctor says.  He pauses.  “What was it?  Why didn’t you?”

—

Between my dormitory and the rest of campus was a pretty little bridge that stretched over Washtenaw.  It wasn’t so much that I wanted to but that the thought was there.  Taunting me.  I thought about what it would feel like to slip over the edge and drop into the traffic below.  I pondered whether it would kill me or just hurt me.  Death and guilt and guilt about death consumed me.

One night, on my way back from class, I stopped and stared over the edge.  I remember thinking it was beautiful.  But my heart gripped around in my chest.  Anxiety pulsed at my ears.  What’s the point?  What’s the point?  What’s the point? raged through my mind.  The cars whooshed below and a light breeze kicked up my hair.

A college student came along the other side of the bridge.  He carried a sack of equipment over his shoulder.  I held back my tears and waited for him to pass.  But he never did.  I turned around, annoyed, and found him stopped behind me.  The bag of equipment slumped at his feet and he rustled through it, taking out a light meter and motion picture camera and tripod.  “What are you doing?” I asked.  “I want to take a picture of the streetlights,” he said.  “What for?”  “I’m making a documentary about night shift workers.  I want to have a picture of the streetlights turning on in the opening shots.”  “Oh.”  I stepped behind the camera and watched.  He looked at his watch, looked at the sky, pressed a button, and waited while the camera worked its magic.  He smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders, embarrassed.  Perhaps fireworks were supposed to go off once he started filming and he worried I was disappointed.  I leaned against the bridge and watched the sky.  The blank, clear street lamp.  Waiting waiting waiting.

Then ding.  The light turned on.  Yellow flickered orange and the sky seemed to dim itself around it.  He pressed the button again.  I watched him gingerly place the stuff back in the bag.  I asked him what would happen if he threw the bag over the bridge.  How much he would have to pay to replace it all.  He said he didn’t know but that he didn’t want to find out.  He smiled and said he’d walk me home.  He lived in the dorm right next to mine.  We walked to the end of the bridge.  The sound of whooshing cars faded in the distance.  When we got to my dorm I said, “See ya.  Good luck with your film.”  I never asked him his name.  He never asked me mine.  And I never saw him again.

When stuff like that happens, I always wonder if the person exists in real life or for just that moment in time.  Really, I do.

I don’t mean to insinuate anything significant through this.  Maybe all I mean to say is that life is made up of very ordinary moments that make it altogether extraordinary.  Like getting to be one of the only persons to watch a streetlight turn on.  And then for all of eternity you were the only person who saw that moment, that time, that day.

Or maybe I’m just too eccentric for my own good.  I don’t know.

Sometimes I wonder how the film turned out.

—

“I eventually realized that the reason I want to die is because I actually want to live,” I say.  My doctor’s eyebrows raise.  Go on, they seem to say.  “I think I sometimes find life intolerable because I know what it’s like when it’s wonderful,” I say.  “It’s like I know what it should be.  And that in itself makes life worth living.  Because it’s like there’s this hope.  Even when things are really bad.  I think when it actually gets to the point that life isn’t worth living anymore, I won’t need to kill myself because I’ll already be dead.”  My doctor nods his head.  Scribbles some notes.  “I wish more people thought of that before they killed themselves,” he says.

—

When I think back to November, December, January, all I remember is dark.  Sometimes, even now, as I’m having fun, as someone makes me laugh, I marvel…  Physically, I couldn’t have handled this two months ago.  I laughed, but not like this.  I had fun, but not like this.  We serve a great healer.  A God who saves.  A God who hears us crying in the wilderness and comes to our rescue and clothes us in His majesty and splendor.

I didn’t even realize how deep in I was.  Looking back, that “in” was so much bigger than a break up.  Troy was just the catalyst.  God was doing something profound in my life, and He used him to shake things up, whether I realized it or not.  In my journal, “Why?” and “What are you doing, God?” and “What does this all mean??  What is all this for??” bleed across the pages.

I think I grasp the answers to these questions a little more each day.  Maybe.  At least, now I ask them more out of excitement than anguish.  I am awed by the way God works.  I don’t know many things about my future, but I do know that right now, right here, at this very moment in time, I am supposed to be here in Chicago.  And God is going to work something spectacular through this, in His time.

The desires of my heart have changed as well.  I used to be such a selfish person.  It makes me sick how terrible I was.  Last week at bible study we went around and said what our greatest desire in life was.  Now, more than ever, my greatest desire in life is to honor God in all that I do.  It wasn’t like that before.  I wanted to skirt around God and push my own boundaries and just get by on grace and half-assed prayers.  Now I pray constantly that God will make my heart to be ever more like His.

And can I just gush about my savior for a second?  He is so beautiful!!  He crafts greater stories than I could ever dream.  My testimony begins and ends with the fact that Jesus died on the cross in place of myself so that I am completely redeemed.  A precious jewel.  If He does nothing more for me in my life than this, it is more than enough (yet still He blesses through and through).

—

This is kind of embarrassing, but since the rest of this post is already so personal, and I’m posting this at the end, I figured I might as well dive right in.  I love my bible study because it is challenging me so much in my faith.  This week’s assignment is to think about how to give a 30 second run down of the gospel.  If all you had was one elevator ride with someone who knew nothing about the gospel, what would you say?  Last week’s assignment was to write out a Christ-centered life plan.  In Romans, Paul is very clear about his mission and purpose on this earth.  He counts his life as nothing, and at his life’s end he can truthfully say “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  (2 Timothy 4:7)  I want to say this too!  But I can’t without a clear vision of my purpose here on earth.

These are my desires…

I want to bring glory to God in all that I do.  I want my significance and self worth to always stem from the fact that Christ is a part of my life and that He saved me with no work or action on my part.  I want to remember this as people in my life reject me, accept me, befriend me, and unfriend me.  My worth begins and ends with Christ.

I want to walk worthy of the calling that I have received.  I want to surround myself with women that reflect the love of Christ in their life, and disciple a younger generation of women toward embracing the full measure of God’s beautiful grace and femininity in their heart.  I want to minister to women, young and old, who have been abused by or disenchanted in their thoughts about men… and perhaps contribute to a little less enmity between the sexes.  Because we are all God’s children and we are equally created in His image.  ie. In accordance with His heart!

I want to attract a husband who strives to be a man after God’s own heart.  I want him to be attracted to me first and foremost because of my heart for the Lord.  And I want him to be obnoxiously in love with God.  Obnoxiously.  (Because one can never be “too in love” with Jesus.)  I want him to celebrate God’s femininity in myself in the way that I will celebrate God’s masculinity in himself.  And also, in a world of portfolios and bank accounts (there are a lot of these in Chicago 0_o;;), I want him to be so on fire for his greater purpose in life, that if Jesus says, “Sell all your possessions and follow me,” it won’t even be an issue.  Not a second thought.  Done.  Sold.  Where He says go we will go.  And His people shall be our people.

…but all of this in His time.  I am in no hurry.

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My testimony is that I was lost but now I am found.  I was dead but now I am new.  I was blind but now I see.  Christ has rid me of myself and claimed me as His child.  And through this I am beyond personality.  I am more than I once was.  I am more myself than ever.

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You have finished part 1.  You can either go on to part 2 HERE.  Or skip to part 3 HERE. (link tk)