your blog is boring and so is mine.
Header image

Eternal Love

November 20th, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in jesus | large talk - (1 Comments)

So … we watched Twilight last night. Yes, yes, I know. The shame. THE SHAME! But the only place we normally get movies from is Netflix and it sometimes takes weeks to get them in the mail. So when we went to the library to see what was available to check out, well, the pickings were a bit slim and I admitted to Michael that I had always secretly wanted to see it.

I knew the basic plot because it’s been such a cultural phenomenon. Still, for something that they spent so much money on and that had actors that have been reasonably good in other things, it was, seriously, pretty laughably bad. It kept switching back and forth between, like, so bad it’s good (you know, like, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 bad) and just bad enough to be horrible.

Some highlights (and there were MANY) of the badness were:

That the main character / vampire drove around this Volvo. I don’t know why that struck me as so funny but seriously, a Vampire Volvo? I mean, I love Volvos. To me, a Volvo says: “We have money but don’t want to be tacky about it.” Not :”I’m a sexy high school vampire.”

ALL of the vampires had on a level of makeup that was so ridiculous that it was laughable. And the lipstick! Like visible lipstick on the male characters. Oh dear. When you’re wearing more clown paint white makeup than I do, male vampires, maybe you should tone it down just a little. I won’t even go into the vampire hair. There are no words.

 

The dialogue. OMGOSH. Seriously, SO bad. At one point Edward is showing Bella how fast he was (apparently vampires are very, very fast?) and he was using his speed / strength to climb trees while holding her in the most absurd way, seriously I think the Claymation from Jason and the Argonauts had better special effects, and he said to her something like, “Hold on tight, my little spider monkey.” Spider monkey? I have now decided to call everything I love “my little spider monkey”. Especially the new orange skirt I got from H&M recently.

 


And everyone was just SO dramatic. The entire movie was just one big long “Who Farted?” look by all of the actors. Everyone was just so brooding and ridiculous. I mean, maybe vampire  legends make reference to the undead brooding more than John Black from Days of Our Lives. But it seemed like after just the briefest meeting, both of the main characters were willing to pledge eternal love forever and ever, amen. Part of the movie had Edward after one glance at Bella skipping biology class for several days because his passion for her was just too much for him. Skipping biology class. Oh the humanity!

The plot holes, too. Was the book like this? But seriously, if you touch someone’s hand and realize that they are “ice cold” how does that make them physically irresistible to you? Unless they are Andre 3000, of course.

Also, everything was just so AWKWARD. I think one of the major plot points in the book was that Bella is a normal / average-ish looking / awkward teenager and yet Edward fell in love with her. (Actually, EVERYONE in the town appeared to be in love — from the guy who is so old that he used to hold her in his lap as Santa Claus when she was four, which HELLO CREEPY, to the, ahem, metrosexual Asian guy with hair so flat ironed that I’m not sure it will ever forgive him, which seemed absurd even if you’re Marilyn Monroe, much less supposedly plain, but whatever). And she was just so … halting about everything she said. Kristen Stewart is quite personally appealing on many levels, and has that quiet kind of beauty that Hollywood always chooses for putting in a movie where you need someone who is actually incredibly beautiful and luminous but who the audience is supposed to believe is actually really plain. Still, when Edward says to her something like, “I can read everyone’s mind. But not yours” as a reason for why he has for the first time in his thus far 125 year long immortal life fallen in love with someone.  I was like, “… I cannot read your mind because you are an awkward high school student.”  Well, he loved her for that and that she smelled so good to him that he could barely restrain himself from drinking her blood and killing her. Because that’s super romantic.

So I was going over the ridiculousness of the entire thing with my sister last night, and she mentioned that she had heard a new advertisement for the newest installment in the movie series. (There are three now, maybe? Or four? Or is it one hundred and seventeen? Watch out Harry Potter. ) And that one line she had heard was: “No measure of time with you would be long enough, so let’s start with forever.” She said that it struck her as kind of creepy. And that’s how I felt, too, especially since, fuh reals, them spending that long together would mean turning the awkward high school student into a BLOOD DRINKING VAMPIRE.

So I was wondering, what is it about this movie / book series that has so captured the hearts and imaginations of so many women? Both 13 year olds and 43 year olds? A Facebook friend had actually posted an article about the movie about how it was “emotional porn”. Her post went up right before we pushed play, and I thought the article was fairly insightful. I hadn’t even seen the movie yet, but I found myself nodding  smugly in agreement as I read this:

You have, on the one hand, Edward who is not so much a vampire as he is the embodiment of a chick flick archetype. We’ll call him “The Cultured Prince.” Edward is charming, polite, sensitive and “impossibly beautiful”—well-bred yet with an air of danger. He is, in short, everything any girl would ever want. (See also: Lon inThe Notebook, Patrick Dempsey’s character in Sweet Home Alabama and every Tom Hanks chick flick role ever.)

On the other hand, you’ve got Jacob who is not really a werewolf but rather the embodiment of another chick flick archetype: “The Barbarian Prince.” Jacob is wild, passionate, fun-loving and adventurous—uncivilized yet alluring. He is, in short, everything any girl would ever want. (See also: Noah inThe Notebook, Josh Lucas’ character in Sweet Home Alabama and every Matthew McConaughey chick flick role ever.)

And in the middle we have Bella, our everywoman. Actually, that’s not true. If Stephenie Meyer intended Bella to be the embodiment of femininity, she has done a poor job of presenting her as such, because just about every woman I know has more going for her than Bella does. Miss Swan is homely, insecure, stubborn, clumsy, shy, prone to obsessive behavior and completely lacking in self-awareness. In short, she is not an especially desirable heroine, and yet she is being furiously pursued by not one but two Prince Charmings. http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/film/features/27364-you-cant-marry-a-hot-vampire

The thing is, I kept dreaming about the movie all night last night. I woke up several times in the night and the movie threaded through my dreams somehow. I was trying to figure out why because I’m not exactly a Twihard and while I enjoyed watching the movie because of its badness, mainly, I didn’t exactly expect it to haunt my dreams.

I couldn’t figure it out. But then I realized this morning as I was praying that the truth is, everyone wants someone who is that passionate about them. Someone who could truthfully say to them that forever isn’t long enough to love you. And that while most people go looking for that in romantic relationships, especially women, of course, and then are mostly horrified with how the dailiness of relationships tends to erode the passionate, dramatic, *eternal* feelings that you get when you first fall in love, maybe we shouldn’t fault them for that. Because it’s not wrong in wanting someone who will love you like that; we’re wired like that. If anything, wanting love like that shows that something is *right*. The problem is simply that we’re looking for it from the wrong source.

Because the truth is, we already have someone who loves us like that. I mean, isn’t that exactly the gospel? He, who is more than we could idealize, loves us though we are “homely, insecure, stubborn, clumsy, shy, prone to obsessive behavior and completely lacking in self-awareness” … and far, far worse. It isn’t our beauty that draws him; His love is what makes us beautiful.

We already have someone who is so passionate about us that He will do anything He must to have us as His own. As I heard in last week’s sermon, it cost God nothing to create the universe. That was easy for Him. But it cost Him *everything He has* — His LIFE — to redeem us. Someone who loves us like that can genuinely look at us and say, without irony, imagine it: “No measure of time with you would be long enough, so let’s start with forever.”

, , ,

Does Heaven seem boring to you?

September 30th, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in jesus - (5 Comments)

A friend recently commented that the idea of Heaven and eternal life being desirable things seems to fallen out of American popular culture. She noticed that many people say things like, “What do I want with eternal life?” As I’ve noticed the same thing, I wanted to ruminate a bit on why I think that question gets asked by people who don’t believe in Heaven and even perhaps in the secret heart of those who do.

I think perhaps the heart of the issue is that Heaven seems boring to many people. I think it’s very difficult for many people to imagine that a person could recognize something as good without having a bad to compare it to. I get where this is coming from; I mean, the best liquid I ever put in my mouth was  an icy cold  Mexican Coke on an incredibly hot day. (Not to diss any kind of Mexican Coke on any day, because that stuff is goooood.) But I’ve even see Christians say this in relation the vicissitudes of life and even to the Lord, as though He needs Satan as a foil to show His goodness or that we wouldn’t be able to enjoy Him unless we had misery to compare to His goodness. I must say, this is a not so subtle heresy that makes my stomach turn. Scripture says that the Lord doesn’t need anything. He is totally complete within Himself. He didn’t create us because He needs joy from us. He created us to give us His joy.

But I don’t think that’s the only thing that the fall has given us distorted eyesight about when it comes to our being able to understand the joys of Heaven. I think that we also have almost no ability to conceptualize what it’s like to experience something beautiful without diminishing returns. (Well, except for M&Ms. If you struggle with this, my friends, eat some M&Ms, truly the only natural thing in the universe that aren’t subject to diminishing returns.) We assume that because even the best symphony, the best ice cream, the most beautiful day is something that we can easily grow used to and even get sick of, Heavenly beauties will be the same for us.

Another really common misconception, though, again, a totally understandable one, is that I don’t think that most people, even Christians, understand that in Heaven we will both learn and work. Learning seems strange in a perfect environment, doesn’t it? But I really do believe we will never stop plumbing the depths of the Lord’s character, creation and what He did for us on the cross. It was a foreign concept to me, I’m afraid, that work is something we’ll be doing in Heaven. That sounds so … burdensome … doesn’t it? But I think it’s so crucial to remember that work is not a result of the fall. The sweat of work is the result of the fall. If we can imagine the delights of learning without the constraints of our memory, intelligence and learning disabilities and if we can imagine work that brings us fulfillment and pleasure without it being sweaty toil, we can get a glimpse perhaps into some of the pleasures of Heaven.

I think that for many, eternal worship seems boring. I mean, we’d never say that, right? But who hasn’t been at a service where we’ve thought, “Okay. An hour (or two, or three) of this is enough for now. I’m done here.” ? There are definitely some of us who have tasted the Lord’s delights for whom this is less true, but I don’t think that any of us can imagine how eternal worship won’t get to be a drag after a few, say, million years of it. One of the reasons I think this is hard for us is because we can’t understand that the Lord is so vast and so multi-faceted that we’ll never get to the end of Him. There will always be something new to delight us in Him.

Then, lastly, I think that many of us who, like me, find the pleasures of this world to be quite pleasurable indeed, have a secret fear that while, sure, we’ll be at the wedding feast of the Lamb, won’t it kind of taste like air or something? I mean … it’s Heaven. How could we enjoy ourselves while sitting on clouds, playing harps for eternity if there’s no, you know, pizza. So I want to put a bird in your ear: many Christian scholars believe that we just be living on the New Earth during the millennium (if you’re premillennially inclined) but that we’ll be living there with the Lord eternally. This has brought comfort to many, though I must confess it never did to me before I moved to Germany. I’m pretty rabidly indoorsy, adhering both to the idea that camping is a horror and that I don’t want to do anything I can’t do in heels. Yes, that does include walking into the delivery room to give birth to my daughter. But now that I’ve seen physical beauty that regularly sparks my heart — I regularly gasp and even cry over it — I’m thrilled with either concept — being with Him here, or being with Him there.

Obviously, this is a serious post. And I feel sort of bad that I’ve attempted to condense what will take us an eternity to explore the pleasures of in a few paragraphs punctuated with self-deprecating humor. But I want to say one more thing about Heaven. I say this partly to address the accusation that some are too eschatalogically minded (which did kind of make me mad after I figured out what that word meant!) and partly because I hope that this is something that burrows deep into your heart and bears fruit if you haven’t really pondered it before. I once heard John Piper talking about how his little grandchild responded to the death of his own father. When the child asked where his great grandfather had gone, he was told Heaven. When asked where Heaven was, the child said, “Heaven is where Jesus is.” Piper commented on how this must be at THE heart of how we view Heaven. Even if Heaven is eternally 67 degrees and has that delicious “first day of Spring” taste, even if it’s all Corvette Stingrays and chocolate milkshakes, even if it’s reuniting with your loved ones in perfect fellowship and unity, even if it’s freedom from sickness and death, even if it’s exponentially more beautiful than Germany, even if it’s all Flaming Lips concerts, HECK, even if it’s swimming in a pool of fuchsia lipsticks and french fries, it isn’t Heaven unless it’s where Jesus is. He is what makes it Heaven. Unless our delight is so in Him that we understand at least in part that one day with Him is better than a thousand in the next best place in creation, we’re kind of missing the point.

So I pray that with this post you’ll ponder even if just a little the unutterable delight that is HIM. And that even if you don’t understand how Heaven could be as wonderful as the scriptures say, and I don’t  think any of us can, that what you’ll want more than anything else in the universe is to be where Jesus is.

So tell me, readers! Have you ever struggled with the thought that Heaven is boring?

, , ,

What has the Lord been doing in your life lately?

September 14th, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in jesus | large talk - (5 Comments)

Sorry for my absence. It’s not you, it’s me. I’ve been in a rather melancholy spot for the last several months. First there were numerous rejections, large and small. Over the last few of years the Lord has been showing me how deep that rabbit hole goes and how much I need healing there, so much so that even my reaction to rejection tends to drag me down.

But maybe things started get really heavy when I watched the movie Dear Zachary, which IMDB summarizes like this: “A filmmaker decides to memorialize a murdered friend when his friend’s ex-girlfriend announces she is expecting his son.” Which, yes. But that doesn’t begin to touch on the absolute tragedy that this documentary chronicles. A friend commented: “This movie murdered my soul.” I doubt you want your soul murdered but I still recommend the film.

Next, I read a book of interviews about those who lived in and responded to Chernobyl which was excellent but also made Nick Drake’s inimitable Pink Moon look like Polyanna.

Then, a wonderful friend who positively glows with holiness gave birth to her beautiful, full term, stillborn daughter. The Mister and I both cried when we found out. But when my friend posted pictures of her lovely girl, I felt absolutely gutted. I had a morning where I just walked around, numb and weepy and crying out, “How long, O Lord? How long?”

Lastly, I listened to a book — John Bevere’s The Fear of the Lord — that I think the Church needs to hear and I include myself, of course, but it kind of sat me down and shut my mouth. Have you ever experienced something that was just so heavy  that everything you do and are kind of seems to fly into orbit and you’re not sure how much of your life and work are dust and how to reorient yourself?

It’s been strange to have everything tinted blue when the world outside my window so often makes me mute with wonder and worship. We’ve had a long, cool summer and almost every time I leave the house I’m in tears at some point over the sheer beauty of the natural world around me.

So, through this, there’s been the strange sweetness of beauty and pain mixed.

My prayer life has been strangely vibrant and I find my prayers of petition carrying a lot of weight. I’ve been reading a book on learning how to wait on the Lord and I have felt renewed in my focus on Him.

This morning I did what I often do during Baby’s first nap. I lay down to pray and perhaps to nap myself. It’s usually some mix of the two with that wonderful squishy space in the middle. I spent a few minutes in praise and petition and then I attempted to be still before the Lord. Not easy as my mind is often as fast as my metabolism.

“Speak, Lord. Speak,” I prayed, and I waited.

“It’s okay to hurt,” He said.

So this is what He brought me today. A little sparkling thing, both sad and sweet.

What has He been doing in your life lately?

, ,

Are you a good dancer?

August 27th, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in jesus | large talk - (6 Comments)

My dad is a legendary dancer. If dance cards still existed, his would be full at every party. Women wait in line to dance with him By the end of any party where there’s dancing he is soaked with sweat from all the stomping and clapping he’s been doing.

When we were children, we were regularly told of how he had won a dance competition in school which only served to reinforce what we could already see every time we went to a party or wedding — that he was a magnetic presence on the dance floor. I pictured this as some huge competition where dozens of talented 18 year olds danced to the death. It wasn’t til a few years ago that I found out he won it in the 7th grade in Covington, Tennessee.

When I was a very little girl, my mother put my sister and me into tap and ballet lessons. You know, as you do. Unfortunately at some point early in, I think my mother was told something like, “This one. Not so much.”

When I was 16, I was in a play in school, in the chorus as always. There was one dance move we had to do — even calling it a dance move is exagerating a bit, I can tell you that it was something like “walk five steps in one direction, turn around and walk back”. Unfortunately that proved pretty difficult for me and I had to be taken aside and shown privately the step. The girl teaching it to me let me know that it was hard to believe that such an easy step was hard for me.

And so it happened that I realized that not only am I not the world’s best dancer — and that I may be the world’s slowest dance student — but that I became embarrassed to even try to learn to dance. Sure, I went to 80s nights at local clubs in college, where you froze outside in line due to lack of clothes and then cursed the very same clothes while you burned inside as you danced, but actually learning steps of any sort was a no go.

The thing is, I recently read a book that made mention of what our bodies will be able to do once they’re no longer marred by sin and death. The author mentioned that if you wanted to dance, you’d be able to dance. My heart ached with desire and anticipation and something akin to loss; I’m not sure I’d realized until just that moment how keenly I long  for my body obey my brain when it comes to dance.

I’ve had many people tell me over the years how deeply they wished they could sing or have musical talent. I think I just thought they were making conversation. Until I read that passage in the book, I’m not sure I understood what they meant.

That we may someday all dance beautifully — without any fear or embarrassment, more gracefully than we can even now imagine — is a fantasy so delightful it seems almost indulgent to even think about it.

So I wonder, are you a good dancer? If not, is it something you long for? Is there something else you’ve always secretly longed for body or mind to do, maybe even so secretly you don’t even quite admit it to yourself? What is it?

,

Are you ever embarrassed by things that shouldn’t embarrass you?

August 24th, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in large talk - (4 Comments)

The Mister is obsessed with frequent flyer miles. It makes sense — we’re in Europe, our friends and family are in the States plus we want to travel as much in Europe as we possibly can. He’s very good at it from what I can tell. It’s a bit of a game to him. All’s I’m saying is maybe don’t ask him about it at dinner parties.

Still, anyone who collects frequent flyer miles knows what that means. Credit cards. Lots and lots of credit cards. My husband is a bit of a genius when it comes to money.  The 2nd year we were married he made fifteen thousand dollars (not including our housing, which was paid for), saved 10% of that, tithed, gave me the money to furnish our entire house and then took me on a cruise. Still, I was so bad with money before we married that I’m afraid of credit cards even though I know we pay them off every month and we only have them for the miles. I’m not saying that my tendency to avoidance has ever caused me to go to jail because of expired car tags or keep library books from, say, my 11th grade term paper, but it might have. And since I know that that’s how I’d be with money if I were in charge, credit cards make me sweaty and nervous.

 

Yesterday I went to the grocery and pulled out one of our cards to pay. The deeper we get into frequent flyer miles land, the more confused I am about what card to use, and I accidentally pulled out a card that had been closed. I handed the card as I shame facedly said, “Oh, my husband is obsessed with frequent flyer miles.” I was already embarrassed that I was even using a credit card, like the cashier at the commissary was going to judge me. Then the card got declined, which I’m sure made my former protestations look even more suspicious.

So of course I tipped the bagger an extra dollar to prove how incredibly rich we are.

My point — and I do have one! — is that I’m inclined to feel embarrassed about things that shouldn’t actually embarrass me. And probably am not embarrassed enough by things that should embarrass me, like how judgy I am if you have a French pedicure. Or name your child something that is in reality a disease.

I wonder, do you have anything in your life like that, where you’re embarrassed over the wrong thing? What is it? Why do you think it embarrasses you like it does?

, ,

Do you ask for a lot of advice?

August 21st, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in large talk - (6 Comments)

Military life tends to make married couples really tight. You move so much that it’s hard to put down roots and sometimes you end up participating in activities you otherwise wouldn’t. At least, if you’re The Mister that is. He’s been my shopping buddy for YEARS. It was only this year that I found out that he secretly hates shopping. He also confessed that he can’t tell any of my jeans apart. This, again, after years of asking him how my butt looks in whatever new pair of jeans I clearly need.

Recently I bought some new foundation — it promised to make me look young! — and asked him how it looked. Because a man who can deadlift 400 pounds is usually the best judge of such things. His response: “What’s foundation? The white stuff or the red stuff?”

The thing is, The Mister isn’t the only person I ask advice from; it seems to be a running theme in my life. Do I need another pair of black peep toes? What coffee table I should buy? Was I mean to so and so?

I noticed when my friend Sarah visited me recently that I would ask her what to do with Baby … should I put her down for a nap? Should I put her to bed? What do you think she’s upset about? Sarah is a genius with children but I make these decisions myself every day with Baby. When there’s someone whose advice I can ask, I do. This has made me realize how little I trust my own voice and how easily I can be talked down from almost anything, except for my stance on french pedicures and The Beatles being the best band of all time.

I’ve always taken comfort in Proverbs 11:14:  Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. Lately, though, I’ve started to see that maybe I don’t need to make a Facebook post just to get advice on what kind of yogurt to buy.

I’ve never bought into the theme of every single Disney movie ever made — Believe in yourself! — but I don’t think that’s where the trouble comes from. I think you can learn to hear the truth in your own voice without deciding you’re the final authority on all things.

I’ve started to see the root of this issue but I’m not so sure of the cure. How do we learn to discern between the truth and error in our own voices? How do we learn to trust our instincts without casting God in our own images? How do we stay humble and teachable while holding on to what we know to be truth? How do we learn when it’s appropriate to seek counsel?

What do you think? Do you ask for a lot of advice? Should I part my hair on this side or that? How ironic is that I’m asking this on a blog set up to hear your answers to my questions? Do these jeans make my butt look big?

, ,

What are your hobbies?

August 15th, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in small talk - (8 Comments)

When I was in my twenties, you know, last century, I had a boyfriend who was the perfect bachelor on paper. He was in his mid-30s and never married. He was a journalist. He ran with his dog all the time. He had been a chef and so he was a great cook. He lived in a renovated Victorian in the kind of neighborhood everyone claimed to believe in but nobody actually wanted to live in. He was tall. He was good looking. He had wavy hair. There was only one problem: he didn’t actually like me all that much.

His parents were supposed to come visit when we’d been dating about 6 months. His dad was a professor at an elite university and I don’t remember what his mom did, but I do remember that it made me feel similarly bad about myself.

He said to me, “You know, I’m just not sure about your meeting my parents. What will you tell them your hobbies are?”

I was stumped for a few seconds, and finally I said hopefully, “Um, drinking and smoking?”

He didn’t appear to think this was as funny as I did. I never met his parents.

The thing is, I no longer drink or smoke but I’m not sure I have a better answer even today. I mean, sure I spent a year obsessively collecting insect documentaries. I mean, what single woman doesn’t do that when she’s 27? E.O. Wilson kind of rules.

And YES, I did get 6 books on Inuits one year for Christmas. It’s true that I can bargain shop like it’s my job and would keep doing it for fun if I won the Powerball. And I may or may not have visiting every H&M in Europe as a life goal.  Perhaps I did read all 10 years of articles on Sciencedaily.com about pregnancy and breastfeeding during my third trimester. But besides reading and cat petting…well? I do read the Bible and Bible related books a lot. And I do kind of a disturbing amount of planks.

I once tried to learn to knit, but what came out was a misshapen Christmas colored potholder that made my other potholders feel anxious and depressed. I could name a few other things from my life that remind me of the Elliott Smith lyric: “I’m a junkyard full of false starts”.

The truth is, the only things that have ever really stuck so far are buying used books and then telling people about them in a detail that makes their eyes roll back and all things Jesus. And you have probably already guessed by now, He’s not so much a hobby with me.

So what about you? Do you have any real hobbies? What are they and what about them has made you stick with them?

, ,

What’s your favorite shirt?

July 30th, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in small talk - (6 Comments)

When I was in college and getting my first apartment, I had this fantasy that I was going to spend the time I had between studying and otherwise bettering myself making homemade meals and dancing around my kitchen, listening to records on my turntable. What actually happened was that I took up smoking, watched a disturbing amount of MTV and at one point lived for 8 days off a bag of baking potatoes.

Naturally, thinking about that brings to mind favorite shirts. You know you have one. It’s the comfiest, or the best looking, or ideally it’s both.

Here’s mine:

The blue is a little deeper in real life, the peacock is yellow, and I love everything about it. It’s tissue thin, it’s incredibly soft, it isn’t tight and it lays perfectly, I love the message of it, I love the peacock, it’s the Cary Grant of shirts. Amazingly it’s held up to 9 1/2 months of being pulled at by me and Baby because of breastfeeding and two cats with full sets of claws — which if you have cats, you know how short is the half-life of knit wear. I don’t really know what the word half-life means despite having looked it up a million times, it’s sort of like the word existential is to me. But I like how it sounds there so HMPH.

When I quit smoking in my early 30s, it seemed to trigger a lot of changes in my life. I had this feeling of, “Well, if I could do THAT, then I can do this and this and this” about life and quitting seemed to trigger a bunch of good changes in my life — working out, eating better, and a wardrobe overhaul. We had been poor or at least poor-ish, for most of our marriage. We did eat out once a week, but it was Taco Bell level eating out. But I asked The Mister if I could use the money I had been spending on cigarettes for new clothes. He agreed.

Before The Great Wardrobe Overhaul of 2007, as it has now come to be known in literary circles, I had noticed a weird phenomena. I would go shopping and I’d buy pretty things, but what I would wear out to go shopping would always be basically the same thing, a uniform of utterly plain t-shirt and a pair of jeans I didn’t even particularly like. Like, I’d be out finding and buying fabulous clothes, but I WORE them really rarely. It was like they were too special to be worn much, I was worried I’d wear them out. But in being concerned for their longevity many of them rarely or even never got worn at all. And I think I had this feeling of the beautiful things I owned not really being for the me that existed in real life. They were, like, for a fantasy me, if that makes sense. The me that takes cooking classes and finishes the couch to 5k running plan. The me that makes her own baby food from the organic vegetables she grows in her garden. The me that reads and understands Augustine’s The City of God.

Among the other things it did, quitting smoking made me want to start actually WEARING the things I owned that I loved.  But I still fight the tendency, for some reason, to buy beautiful things and then wear them rarely — when I was looking for a photo to post of my shirt, I had to take one on the floor because I couldn’t find any of me actually wearing it. I even have an Ebay saved search, hoping it will come up again so that I can buy it again and admire it from afar.

Last year I bought white jeans. Probably not the best move for anyone who is under 5’10″ or is over 14. But I bought them and I told my sister, “I just bought white jeans. In my fantasy I am wearing them with a French sailor’s shirt. Also in my fantasy I don’t have old lady thighs.”

I still haven’t worn my white jeans. They’re just hanging there, waiting for the fantasy me —  the one who doesn’t wake up and just put on a clean pair of yoga pants, because it matters that they’re not the ones I slept in last night — to come and take them off the hanger. Maybe I’ll wear them next time we go yachting.

I have to wonder how much else in my life — or yours — is something that you have or have access to that you think is too precious to use up, so it never gets used at all.

So I wonder, what’s YOUR favorite shirt like? Why is it your favorite? Does the fact that you love it so much make you want to wear it more? Or wear it less?

,

Have you ever made a deal with the Lord?

July 29th, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in jesus | small talk - (9 Comments)

When I was a child I got a lot of bad scores in conduct because I talked too much. I know, I know, you are shocked. SHOCKED. Grades weren’t as big a deal in grammar school around my house, or at least that’s how it seemed to me, but my score in conduct was the source of much hand wringing and woe. I remember regularly praying that I would be good forever and ever if the Lord would just let me get an S for satisfactory in conduct rather than an S-. And so, of course, I haven’t done anything bad since I was 9.

That’s not the last time I tried to make a deal with the Lord, though. When I married at age 30, I hadn’t decided if I wanted children or not, and even as the dreaded Advanced Maternal Age approached, I *still* hadn’t decided.

I remember praying once that if the Lord wanted me to have a baby, He was going to have to find a way to make my hips smaller after the baby. Don’t judge me. My shoulders are the size of a baby’s fist.  I told a friend this and she told me it was basically impossible for your hips to get smaller after having a baby.

Fast forward a couple of years. The Mister used one Christmas to pink me. No, that’s not a euphemism. Rather, he bought me all things pink that year for my birthday and Christmas. Pink Ipod, pink headphones, pink earmuffs, pink long underwear. He also got me the Bible for my pink Ipod. In cahoots with my dad, he also had a stereo put into my car so that I could listen to my Ipod in the car. We all thought it was the best idea ever, except that it’s just not that easy to find the track you want using this method. Still, I was pretty okay with it until my Ipod played Malachi 2:15 every time I got in the car for about a week. In case you don’t know it, which shocks me because who among you hasn’t been spending all their quiet time plumbing the depths of Malachi, I’ll tell you that it says that the Lord’s desire for marriage is godly offspring. Don’t worry, it was only about the 37th time that it played that I finally looked up and said, “Oh, You think You’re SO funny, don’t You?” — because THAT’s how you should respond to the Lord having to hit you over the head with something thirty-seven times for you to get it.  I went home and told The Mister that I was on board with the whole baby having thing.

(Note: I also heard a sermon around this time in which the preacher said that being a married Christian and not wanting to have children was like being united to Christ but not wanting to bear the fruit of the Spirit. Sadly this was a new concept to me, so it was all ouch and duh at the same time.)

I hated being pregnant.

I mean, I loved that it gave me big hair because the bigger the hair, the closer to God, right? But pretty much everything else about it I wondered daily, “How has the world’s population gone on? Why does anyone do this twice?” My pregnancy was totally uncomplicated but miserable.  It didn’t help that the air conditioner worked so little in our apartment that it rarely got below 85 during the hottest summer on record in the world. Don’t worry, I just sat on my couch and cried the whole time.

At some point and I don’t even know how, I came to find out about something called the HipSlimmer which promised to use the hormone your body produces to make your joints loose enough to have a baby (Relaxin. Really scientists? Relaxin? ) to make your hips go back to their pre-pregnancy size after you give birth. I bought it and started wearing it a week or so after Baby was born. It does take two people to work it, but only one of them needs to be able to dead lift 400 lbs. It is also about as comfortable as spending your third trimester pregnant in the San Angelo summer. But I wore it a few hours a day for a couple of months and it actually worked. In fact, I measured recently and my hips are actually smaller than they were before I gave birth, even though I weigh more now than I did before I got pregnant.

Now I don’t know when the inventors of the magical hip corset came up with their idea, but I do know that it hit the market *during* my pregnancy. And I’m not saying I deserve royalties for praying that prayer, makers of the HipSlimmer, but yeah, I do prefer Paypal.

It’s both funny and awesome that the Lord chose to answer my immature, petulant prayer, but He did. I don’t really know what it means, to be honest and would welcome your insight.

So I guess I want to know, have you ever tried to make a deal with the Lord about anything? What was it? What happened?

, ,

How has the Lord used your pain to show you His heart?

July 23rd, 2011 | Posted by kristenlouise in jesus - (14 Comments)

I may or may not have once unknowingly worked for a drug trafficker and money launderer. Who had mob ties. And the DEA may or may not have tapped my phone and made me testify before a grand jury in Vermont. Where I was the only person who wore or has ever worn heels or owned lip gloss.

I knew something was up with my phone, I would hear this mysterious clicking sound all the time when I was talking. But it didn’t quite occur to me, though I’m sure it would have to you, that the DEA was tapping my phones.

What’s funny about this, and I mean really, what isn’t funny about it, is that that was the year I had my heart broken so badly that I think all I used my phone for all year was sobbing. I’m sure they reeeeeally had a good time listen to hours of me talk about how sad I was, how could he do this to me, why didn’t he pick me? Even Mr. Toughie, long suffering chap that he is, got sick of it at some point. I think his fur may still be tear stained and he still turns around and faces the wall whenever he has to hear Beck’s Sea Change one more time.

What happened was one of those once in a lifetime heart breaks that just never seems to end. It was a friendship of many years that ended with one of us spitting out the words, “I TOLD you I don’t love you.” And the person who said that wasn’t so much me. You know, the type where the months and even years seem to make it more bitter, not less. And the dreams. Oh, the dreams. Where the scenario is always a bit different, but the question is always the same: Why?

Rejection always poses that question to us: Why was I not enough? What was wrong with me?  Why didn’t you love me? My whys regularly took the form of thinking about all the things I told myself I would have done if he had picked me. Why her? Why not me? I would have baked cookies for you every day. I would have never said a cross word to you. I would have scrubbed the grout with a toothbrush.

But I remember the day when I was combing over everything I had ever done or said over the years of our knowing each other for the millionth time while standing outside smoking a cigarette, again with the grout scrubbing scenario in my mind because, again, that is how all men choose their wives. I had that intense feeling so well known to anyone who has ever had a broken heart — like there’s just one person in the world made for you and that if it would have made any difference you would have torn the world apart to be with them.  It was then that the Lord said to me, “That’s how I feel about those who reject Me. That I would have and did do everything for them.”

I want to be reverent here; the Lord knows all things and certainly doesn’t fret like a teenage girl — or a woman who is pushing 30. But I had a very keen sense at that moment that the heartbreak of unrequited love is something that He knows more deeply than the most heartbroken human will ever know. This is how He is the man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

So tell me, have you had any deeply painful experiences that the Lord used to show you His heart? Tell me about them.

,