It's a Wonderful Life

...I think about examples, how you act and what you dare
'Cause you never know who's watching or how far the story goes...
[Heather Dale -- One of Us]

Maybe it's inevitable that I resonated with those words, me being a child who grew up watching It's a Wonderful Life every year around Christmas time, learning my whole life that what you do affects others in ways you can't know.

I still think it would be nice to know, sometimes.

What's striking me is that there are people who I know have changed my life unconsciously. What do you say to them? Hi, you don't know me, but I'm so glad that you did what you did?

They didn't do it for me, they just did it because... that's who they are. It's who God made them to be. But sometimes I think about my life and how it ties in with the lives of those around me, and I think,

The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
[Psalm 16:6]

The particular example that brought this to mind is an older brother of a friend of mine. He's probably three or four years older than I am, and I've met him a few times -- when he was visiting the college, when he was at church with his fiancee. And he has no particular reason to know me, but I thank God for him and for the example he set.

See, the year before I came to college, his sister and another friend of mine roomed together, their freshman year. He was a good older brother, and showed his sister (and her roommate) some of the ropes of what you should know for college, things that you might not be taught in classrooms.

That all trickled down to me through the challenge, which is a story in its own right, the story of how this man's sister's roommate (feel like this should end up at 31 Flavors somehow?) decided to continue the mentoring process.

So, like he doesn't know and very possibly will never know how he helped to change my life, I expect that a lot goes on for all of us that we don't know. I know about him mostly through spending a lot of time digging out stories and piecing fragments together. I don't know of a way to thank him; I'm not sure that it would even be fair to try. Maybe it is better to just thank God, the Giver of all good gifts.

And then pay it forward.

Purpose, Prosperity, and a Pilgrim Heart

This weekend I was given the amazing opportunity to go to a conference in DC, hosted by AEI, called "Purpose & Prosperity: Exploring the Confluence of Faith, Economics, and Public Policy". Sounds like some pretty heady stuff, doesn't it?

I felt rather like Odysseus.

I walked into the conference and was overwhelmed by the affluence of it. AEI is well-funded, and they didn't skimp in hosting us, a bunch of college students. I could get used to this all too easily, to living in a world that is polished and professional. I could get used to a job where you get to look at the intricate puzzle of public policies and research the issues that drive these things, because I love mental puzzles a lot.

But I felt a little bit like I was listening to the sirens' song.

This isn't the world I come from, this world of metro tickets and business casual and a room full of predominantly white college students. Where I come from, my siblings and I look nothing alike, a family built by adoption, and people wear clothes from the Goodwill and I am used to walking to work.

The fact that this isn't what I'm used to doesn't mean that it's wrong. It is very necessary to discuss policies for this sprawling country, the one that somehow includes the metropolitan DC and Western Pennsylvania, where I've grown up. There are more factors than I can comprehend, and enough pieces to give anyone a headache, and the ideas are huge. I am beyond delighted that AEI is seeking to educate students about these things that really matter and really do affect us, and I love that they are being intentional about examining how faith fits with these things, and creating space for Christian students to learn and dialogue.

I loved the mental stimulation of a think tank, but I recently learned that I also love the feel of a piece of wood dremeled and sanded smooth, watching metal shavings curl off of a drill, and being awake till 5 am, working with a team of engineers on their senior project.

I don't know how to put the pieces together.

I am a college student with a minimum wage job, pulling weeds all summer. I'll be graduating in less than a year without debt. I sponsor a little girl in Guatemala. She has leprosy.

I wonder what I am doing with the vast wealth that God has showered upon me, that I did not earn.

C.S. Lewis offered this guideline for giving: "I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare."

What does that look like in my life as an individual? What should it look like in the life of a nation? Is that a responsible way to live? Is it wise?

And can life be segmented, so that I can say, Well, I will be independent financially and willing to depend on grace in my spiritual life? For myself at least, I am far too human for that. I am driven to draw closer to God by uncertainty about plans for the future and by huge storms and by the death of friends and by being forced to realize that I can't be secure in any area of life apart from Him.

Lewis again, this time from an exchange between two characters in The Great Divorce:

--I only want my rights. I'm not asking for anybody's bleeding charity.

--Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.

Is he right? How does this fit with entrepreneurship and good economic practices in a world superpower country? Where does grace fit into this whole issue of free enterprise and capitalism and Christian morality?

Maybe Odysseus is not the wanderer I identify with so much. Maybe what is waging war in my heart right now is the same thing that drew Abraham out of the land where he lived to a place where he did not know, going to live in the land of promise, wholly entrusting himself to the faithful God who had called him. Maybe it is right to feel out of place here, not wholly comfortable.

Maybe these are questions I'll be asking for the rest of my life.

(drawing by Pastor Micah Ramsey, 2009)

Broken Stories and the Goodness of God

All I know is the broken.

That's all that makes sense to me.

It's not a pleasant thought, but there it is. And along with that thought come the words of the Mumford & Sons song Roll Away Your Stone.

Darkness is a harsh term don’t you think?
And yet it dominates the things I see.

I realize this when I get quiet enough and still enough to look inside my own soul.

I'm realizing it again as I work on writing stories, pushing at new characters to see how they respond, digging deep into backstories to find what makes them how they are. I like writing stories; it helps me understand the real world around me better.

But I don't like what I find as I search for deeper connections, for motives and stories. I knew good characters are broken at points, but they are broken all the way back, and the further I go, the more there is deeply wrong with them.

Because it's what makes sense.

I don't like finding these things about my characters. It's bad enough that they're messy, and that these things fit into the stories -- I wish they didn't -- but that this sort of stuff makes sense in my head. I asked it the other night. Where do these characters come from? Why are they so messed up?

Because you live in a very messed up world, said a friend, or something along those lines.

A world where darkness and brokenness run all the way back, all the way down, to almost the very beginning. And in some ways, past the beginning of my history, of human history, back to Satan's rebellion.

So it makes sense that my characters are haunted by this same radical flawed-ness.

And while brokenness and darkness is all that makes sense to me, all that I know in one sense, I also know that it is not enough and find myself longing for something else so much that tears threaten.

I may know brokenness, know a world dominated by darkness, but I need grace, and I long for a world that is dominated by unfading light.

Mumford & Sons (a very... perplexing... band) offers this line later on in Roll Away Your Stone.

It seems that all my bridges have been burned,
But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works.

And I wonder: if that is how grace works, do I dare want it?

Do I have an option?

Not really, because hardwired into me, beyond knowing the broken, is the deeper knowledge that things are not the way they are supposed to be. That grace is needed.

I like Lifehouse's song Breathing.

I'm finding my way back to sanity again,
Though I don't really know what I'm going to do when I get there.
Take a breath and hold on tight,
Spin around one more time,
And gracefully fall back to the arms of Grace.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.
Where I want to be.

I'm looking past the shadows in my mind into the truth and I'm,
Trying to identify the voices in my head.
God which one's you?
Let me feel one more time what it feels like to feel alive,
And break these calluses off of me,
One more time.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside your door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.

I don't want a thing from you.
Bet you're tired of me waiting for the scraps to fall off your table to the ground.

'Cause I just want to be here now.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.

'Cause I am hanging on every word you say and,
Even if you don't want to speak tonight that's alright,
Alright with me.
'Cause I want nothing more than to sit outside Heaven's door and listen to you breathing,
Is where I want to be.
Yeah.
Where I want to be.
Where I want to be....

I'm a beggar at His table, sitting at His door, content just to hear Him breathing.

And instead, He makes a me a daughter and bride. Instead, He speaks to me and promises that all broken will be made new, that undying light will come in the end, and that all manner of thing shall be well.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

~ Julian of Norwich

And so I am all undone with awe and glory, broken in His hands and content with the taste of what is to come.

God is indeed good.

Weeds, sin, and hope

Pulling weeds tends to make me philosophical, because there is not a whole lot else going on. That means that I have an abundance of time to be philosophical this summer, as my full time job consists mostly of pulling weeds.

One thing that I tend to think about a lot with weeds is how they're like sin, how pulling them is like sanctification. So here are some thoughts for the week.

It leaves you far more sore and exhausted than you think you should be.

Especially for the first two or three days, I hurt all over. It was awful. I got back to the house where I was staying, went into the bedroom, and fell asleep on the floor for, oh, a good hour. And I felt absurd about it... I mean, all that I did all day was pull little plants out of the ground. It doesn't sound like it should be that hard.

I think I tend to do that with sin too. It can't be that hard to not be selfish. It can't be that exhausting to hold your tongue.

Yes it can.

The little weeds are often the worst.

The big ones are easy to spot and at least have something there for you to grab onto. The little ones are what really exasperate me, because they are everywhere and I can pull them up for hours on end and come away with only a few handfuls worth of green. I was afraid my boss would think that I was slacking, because it doesn't look like much in the barrel. And no one is going to walk past and think, Oh, how lovely, those nasty huge thistles are gone. Because... be realistic. No one even notices the tiny weeds. They certainly won't notice their absence.

I think the less visible, more ordinary -- more "acceptable" sins -- can easily be harder to uproot in our lives, too.

They come out easier after a storm.

After rain pounds the earth and lightning flashes overhead and thunder cracks, the dirt is soft and the weeds come out, with their roots still attached. So they won't grow back.

I don't like it, but I'm suspecting that sin comes out of our lives more completely and more readily after God has sent huge storms to get us ready.

A break is a wonderful thing.

Lunch break, especially... I come back from that and see weeds I was entirely missing before, and I am in a much better frame of mind to pull the weeds.

Maybe it helps with sin, too, to remember to look at something positive and not keep looking for nothing but the sin until our eyes glaze over.

The ones that look pretty can be the worst.

That one kind of speaks for itself as far as sin goes.

As far as weeds? Well, one word. Buttercups. My landlady and I discussed this... she had a good description of them -- snakey roots. They never all come out.

Weeds seem to like growing near similar looking plants.

Sure, laying mulch and planting other flowers may help to keep them at a minimum, but some will sneak in there. And they will probably be the sort that look nearly exactly like the flowers that are supposed to be growing there.

I'm pretty sure The Screwtape Letters speaks to this.

The stupid things keep coming back.

Enough said.

~~~~

But there is hope. The flowers grow, along with the pile of weeds. People walk past and smile. My supervisor is pleased. He's looking more at how diligently I am working and how well weeded the flower beds are rather than what I've gotten rid of. (I think Dallas Willard would approve of this perspective, because he'd say that Jesus approves. We're told what love is, not what it isn't. A good flowerbed isn't one that has generated a barrel full of impressive weeds. It's one that has flowers and is clean, one that has nice crisp edges.)

When it storms during work, we all congregate in the garage and watch the lightning and laugh together.

We drive down the road and sidewalks to get to work sites, wind in our hair, feet holding us in the cart.

And there is sunshine.

And slowly, with many setbacks, we are working against the curse that the land will bear thistles and weeds, working as God did at creation to divide things as they ought to be divided.

And it is good.

And the class of 2011 graduates...

They have been here as long as I have been here, and so I do not know what to say.

I can't yet imagine it without them.

I've had friends in other classes who graduated, but the class graduating tomorrow morning -- the class one year ahead of mine -- is the class full of people who mentored me. The ones who were just out of the awkwardness of everything being new when I came in and everything was new for me. I was a mess of eager confidence energy and a lot more cluelessness than I realized, and they were gracious enough to not let onto it for the most part.

So tomorrow I am going back and I will watch them graduate. And I am proud of them, because I know the work they have put in. I've spent three years watching these people, and learning from them how to do things, and I am delighted to get to see the beginning of the next piece of their lives, this stepping over the threshold. But also sad.

I will miss them.

I will miss the laughter and the familiarity, the having someone older to run across the hall to when something goes wrong, when I am lonely or tired or confused and want an older sibling. I will miss students who can tell me about the classes that they took before me, and who can tell me the stories of what happened before I came, and who remember what things were like when I first came.

Oddly enough, I cried myself silly over it... not this year, but last year, and closer to the beginning than the end of the year. Even at the time, I felt that it was ridiculous, since I was less than halfway through my time with them.

I think something always hurts about leaving, always hurts about knowing that there will be a time of leaving.

And we all fumble for words, not wanting to say goodbye, not wanting to say have a nice life, not wanting to admit that we won't see each other at dinner that night, or even next fall, may not see each other again ever in this life. Knowing that even if we do, so many things that we cannot foresee will be different, and that holds its own kind of sorrow.

I do not know enough ways to say to them Thank you, you do not even know what you did for me, but you changed everything.

How do you say thank you for advice about professors and meal plans and routes to take and places to avoid and the politics of romance and homework assignments and...

for making me eat and sleep and relax, for making me focus and giving me ideas and checking on me when I was sick and talking when I asked for company and listening when I needed to talk...

for tears and hugs and hitting each other with swords and teaching rules and for all the time spent swapping stories...

for all the stupid things we've said and done...

for all the things taught and learned, for all the beauty offered with no expectation of anything in return...

for the nights spent awake talking, because days are busy with classes and other commitments, for teaching me that it is okay to ask when there is something that I need...

for giving me friends who were often more like siblings than friends...

for being the hands and feet of Christ and graciously pulling me into service, for being a mirror showing me where I needed to grow and telling me over and over that it is alright to be broken, that all things will be made right, that all shall be most well?

And so my tears are all mixed up with laughter. Because there is a document on my computer that is 44 pages long, and a lot of the quotes on it are a tiny piece of situations that never would have happened without this graduating class.

So here is random wisdom from the class of 2011.

"The more you try to cheat God's sovereignty, the worse it's going to get." ~in a game involving dice.

Sometimes you should tell people to think about what they just said.

Other times, you should tell them to just move on.

It's not "banging your head against the wall".

It's leaning against the wall. Rapidly. Headfirst.

Missing papers can only be in a finite number of places.

Unfortunately, you generally only have a finite amount of time to search them.

Guess which finitude is smaller.

"Drink some more caffeine and go to bed!"

Even if you can take files in almost any format, non-existent probably will not work.

"2010 is now history... that point in the space-time continuum is no longer accessible to most beings."

"Chocolate is ALWAYS a better idea!" [when it is good dark chocolate]

Tangles in the Weaving

It's hard to wrap my head around, to know how to feel.

January 24th, Monday, and I was checking my email before going to Dag, and found the breath knocked out of me as I read words on my screen. No, this doesn't happen. Not to people I know. Not to students in the class I TAed. Not here. How do you lose a person? Where could he be? What was going on in his head? Was he okay? The questions seemed to stretch endless.

And the time between then and now seemed endless in some ways too. At first it cuts through everything. We lost someone. There is the oddness of waking up thinking about it, of walking down the sidewalk and wondering when you'll see him next, of seeing that no one is sitting at that particular table in the library. A lot of searches on google.

And then, eventually, there is nothing, and there continued to be nothing. The prayers continue, but so does the rest of life. Searches continue, and classes do too. Winter gradually gives way to spring, and the campus is filled with students whose wrists are marked with red rubber bracelets. We pack in anticipation of going home; I sort through old paperwork and find his name written at the top of a quiz.

Today was the last day of the semester. I finished my junior year; he should have been finishing his freshman year. I got back from my last final and checked my email as I finished packing. And a body was found in the river. This wasn't the first time that has happened, and so we waited for more answers.

Sometimes it is hard even to know what to hope for. An answer? Or more uncertainty and a feeble grasping for a solution that seems impossible? I am tangled in threads that seem to run every way, saying that God can do anything and also that life generally does not work in miraculous ways, that I want to be able to keep hoping and that we need some kind of closure.

So packing finished and I went home for these two nights before I go back to campus to start my summer job. One of my roommates was online and I shot her a message, asking how the project she was working on was going. We exchanged a few lines about that and then she said, I think they found his body.

Those were words I did not want to hear, although I agreed, and it was only a few minutes later that there was confirmation of what she said.

And I still don't know how to feel. All mixed up, especially as it comes with the end of a school year, which is always bittersweet anyway. There are a lot of questions that we won't get answers to, and my mind flips back and forth between songs. Elle G, which I had been afraid would be an answer near the beginning.

Silence all, nobody breathe

How in the world could you just leave?

You promised you would

Silence that evil with good...

Maybe this world is a barren place

For a soul prone to get lost

But heaven still hounds from the smallest sounds

To the cries of the storm-tossed...

Every old demon

Playing back a crime

If they'd needed blood, I'd've gladly given mine...

And Center Aisle.

It was my first time
Won't be my last time
And the questions rise
Expectations fall
In light of it all...

It's not fair
It's not fair...
What crimes have you committed
Demanding such a penance
That couldn't wait for five more minutes
And a cry for help
'Cause this room is so peaceful
And this room is so quiet
And I hate the silence
And I can't walk the center aisle

And a line from Rabbit-Proof Fence, at the very end, when Molly and Daisy are finally home, and Molly cries, "I lost one... I lost one."

That seems to sum it up.

And I leaf through Lament for a Son, because Wolterstorff's words seem to sum up the ache in my heart as well as I could write it myself.

We found lists of things he was planning to do: plans, intentions, proposed undertakings, breathing hope... Now it's all gone. All the rich future he held -- gone in those tumbling seconds. His death is things to do not done -- never to be done.

I had loved reading his plans as I graded his papers over the fall semester.

There's a hole in the world now. In the place where he was, there's now just nothing... There's nobody now who saw just what he saw, knows what he knew, remembers what he remembered, loves what he loved. A person, an irreplaceable person, is gone. Never again will anyone apprehend the world quite the way he did... Questions I have can never now get answers.

But back at the beginning, I wrote, and we sang, It is well with my soul.

And God knows that I hate this answer. But I still pray that it will be well with our souls, that there will be a filling of the hole.

I cannot imagine yet what it looks like, only trust that the God who became man, the King with the hands of a healer, will yet weave even these frayed pieces into a whole.

Plans

I'm going to China, I keep saying.

It's funny to me how these things happen, words becoming truth, from the first time last year when I picked up a brochure, thinking that it would be interesting to study in China.

And I am excited, very very much so, and also a little nervous.

Everyone wants to know, Do you know anyone else going?

I say, No; I've learned to make it a half-joke. It'll be like being a freshman again. But I know that it won't be like being a freshman, because I know a lot more about a lot of things than I did then -- about the people around me, about the world, about the things I've studied, and probably most of all, about myself, about who I am. About how I am ever and always caught in the hand of God.

So that is a plan.

And at the same time, I think about what classes I will need to take the semester after, to finish all of my requirements and graduate. Between hearing her memories of Rome and whatever else we feel like talking about, my friend Abi and I discussed what we'll be taking next year... next year when we're seniors.

That is another plan.

And in a little bit over a week, this semester will be over and I will be starting a new job, living in a new house. I'm excited to be staying around where I go to school all summer when I don't have to be taking classes too (and maybe will have time to read books from our school library just for fun? will have time to hang out with a smaller group of people who are also staying around?).

That is a plan too.

But the other day I felt the beginning hints of summer and realized, I will not be at camp this summer. I'm okay with that, but it was sad to realize, because last summer was a good summer, and I love the camp where I worked, the people I worked with, the woods and trails and cabins and smells, the tire shavings that stick to everything in the climbing room. I know that I was ready to leave by the end of last summer, though, and it was right to find something else to do this summer.

And today I ran into Jase, former president as Dag and still the one I tend to default to and go to advice for in Dag-related matters. We were discussing some different problems; there are never a shortage of those, not in a club with such high turn over and so much interaction between people who are bound to get on each other's nerves... and then I remembered something that made me feel like laughing. Remember last year? How we figured that there wouldn't even BE a club anymore by this point?

We don't know the future.

And I am sobered as I think of the students who were just in a car crash and their little brother's funeral was this afternoon; no one knew, no one could have known.

And in Daniel class we discussed eschatology, something I was not at all enjoying last night when I didn't finish the reading till around 2, but today it is exciting. God is good, but we don't really know yet what that looks like.

But I know today, when the sun shines and the sky is blue and I am going to a friend's house for dinner.

And I know that my Redeemer lives.

What other plans do I need?

I am all at once courageous
I am all at once afraid
It came over me like nightfall
Like a freight train
I can't seem to hold it in
But I can't seem to run away

[Springtime Indiana ~ Sandra McCracken]