Ordinary Visionary

Coming Soon: The First Me

On the day of the Great Milkshake Mishap, I remember standing in my kitchen looking down at my hand and thinking, "It's numb… I'm guessing that's not a good thing." I hadn't experienced that kind of natural defense mechanism before, probably because I had never committed so foolish an act of knife wielding in my life. But there I was, unable to move my middle finger and feeling like something must be wrong because it sure looked like it hurt but I couldn't feel it.

Our bodies are miraculous works of engineering. Our skin and hair regenerates, our hearts beat, our lungs expand and contract, our toenails grow, and our food inches its way through 30 feet of digestive tract without a thought being wasted on any of it. And when our bodies experience trauma, they literally shut down in part or entirely so that they can begin to heal. The shut-down is never a good sign.

We were designed to feel. And when we lose that feeling, it quickly becomes evident that there is something in need of repair. This is true for more than our physical bodies; it also very much applies to the emotional realm. Given that we are designed to feel, when we refuse to let emotions come to fruition, it's a good indication that there is something broken about us. As unnatural as it might seem (especially to men, at least in my experience) humans are emotional creatures.

But on most days, you wouldn't take me for one.

There's a song by Gomez that I heard recently during an episode of What About Brian, and the first few lyrics are silly, but totally jive with what I'm getting at here:

I wish
I could cry on demand
Boo hoo
Boo hoo

There's something broken when we can't allow ourselves to cry, to love, to mourn, to unabashedly proclaim what's on our hearts. We are denying the warmth that gives us life, allowing ourselves to be seen as cold stones (and not the ice cream kind) for fear of being seen as an emotional basket case. Whether it's pride or fear, there is something that keeps me from allowing others to see me as vulnerable.

But when the fears and standards of this world trickle down into the heart, we have become a response to negative stimuli, rather than our authentic, true selves.

Here's a thought: Our numbness is itself our weakness. We're just hoping nobody will call us out on it.

I am afraid of what the world will think of who I really am. Will they trample me at the first sign of weakness? Will they label me "just another girl?" Will I be taken seriously?

I'm fearful of the pain that could come with knowing the answers. Like my hand in the kitchen on the night of the Great Milkshake Mishap, I go numb as a defense mechanism.

I refuse to love wholly; I put on a hard exterior; I tell what should be emotional stories as if they were straight from one of my Computer Science texts, cold and lifeless. And I rob the world of my true self.

My fear of authenticity is nothing new. In fact it looks suspiciously like a lot of other people's hardened exteriors. I think Rob Bell said it best in Velvet Elvis, "We don't need a second anybody. We need the first you."

I want to give you the first me.

Headstrong, passionate, independent. Lonely, awkward, insecure. Me.

And I'll throw this out there, too. I'd like to meet the first you.

Portland

In the two years I've been flying Southwest, they've taken me to Philadelphia, Nashville, and Birmingham (twice). And because of my dedication to cheap airfare and singing flight crews, I've earned a free roundtrip ticket. Anywhere.

So why Portland?

If you've read Blue Like Jazz or Through Painted Deserts, you might know where this is going already. The purpose of this journey is not to sight-see (although I'm sure I will do a bit of that) or to spend time with friends (I don't know anyone in Portland and I'm going alone). The purpose is to pull away from my life in Orlando, read, write, pray, drink coffee, and be delightfully cold for a week after graduation.

I'm a native Floridian; I fly from Disney World to Portland in part because snow and freezing temperatures are attractions. I want to feel the cold of winter bite my cheeks, witness the beauty of snow-capped mountains passing under the belly of my red and blue jet, and write with the freedom and luxury afforded by an agenda-free week.

I want to huddle in a warm diner with the locals, people watch, take photographs of everything and nothing, ride a street car, and take a day to visit Mount Hood and the Oregon wine country.

So what's in Portland? Mostly me, alone, with a 12 inch PowerBook and a cup of locally roasted coffee.

I can't wait.

Quotable: Passion & Purity

I just finished reading Passion & Purity, and the truth is I could quote ten pages of text from this book that has been shaking me awake these past few days. But instead I'll quote for you the one segment I not only underlined but starred a dozen times. This was so necessary, yet so hard to hear, for me this week.

The growth of all living green things wonderfully represents the process of receiving and relinquishing, gaining and losing, living and dying. The seed falls into the ground, dies as the new shoot springs up…

There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul.

It is easy to make a mistake here. "If God gave it to me," we say, "it's mine. I can do what I want with it." No. The truth is that it's ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of — if we want to find our true selves, if we want real Life, if our hearts are set on glory.

Amen.

It's Old School Time!

Me and Nick, originally uploaded by olanky1.

I'm cleaning off my 17" PowerBook and found a few old pics I posted to my flickr. This is one of them! Check out the rest of the pics by clicking on this one and browsing the latest in my photo stream. Peace.

A quickie

Check out the new books on my "What I'm Reading" list (scroll down — it's the one with all the pretty pictures in the sidebar to the right). Irresistible Revolution is wrecking my world. If you haven't read it and have a heart (or want to) for missions, you should. I'm also reading Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, but there was no image in the database for that so I didn't add it to the list (purely aesthetic reasons, I assure you — it's also wrecking my world). And just to clarify, when a book "wrecks my world" it's a good thing. A very good thing.

There's a new janitor in town.

I know I'm not alone in saying that I can be a very 'messy' person. My house (for the most part) is clean, my desk at work is always immaculate, and I try to take the trash out before the flies arrive. But that's not the kind of mess I'm talking about.

You know what I'm talking about. Hatred. Insensitivity. Harsh words. Homelessness. Preventable disease. Debt. Divorce. Messes.

I think messes — the ones that matter anyway — are primarily made when we are out of touch with God's will. And let's face it, most of us (myself very much included) are. It's part of what defines our (post-Fall) humanity — the fact that we are not God and therefore don't have the capacity to be omniscient and think His thoughts with Him. But by that same token I think we have the ability to live a life in alignment with His will, and in tune to his specific desires for our lives. I liken it to radio waves, countless numbers of them flying by our heads that we can't tune into without some degree of effort. We have to actually get to a radio, turn it on, tune it to the right station, and finally listen.

The messes of my life have always been at times when I didn't know how, and later refused, to listen to God. I had the radio, but I didn't know enough about how it worked to power it up. And I always hated tuning knobs (I can never quite get them to the right spot) and the markings to distinguish one frequency from another seemed to be written in a language I didn't understand and then when I finally got to the right station it was something I never wanted to hear in the first place. So I chose to put the radio away, get out my old guitar¹ with the broken string and play a song of my own, terribly out of tune.

And it was far worse than what that radio frequency had to offer.

The word of God is seldom easy to listen to. This is one of the most frustrating misconceptions people have about the Christian faith: that God will fix everything and you'll live happily ever after as long as you pray a prayer and get dunked in a tub of ice cold water². But that's far from the truth (at least for most of us). God will more likely wreck your world if you should decide to tune into His frequency.

He will convict you of things that are out of line with who you have been all this time; He will ask you to do things that require you to step out of your comfort zone; He will give you words you don't always want to hear; He will love you, but even in loving you will not prevent you from ever knowing hardship.

Relatively speaking, I've known very little hardship in my life. For starters, my personal heartaches have nothing on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Yet God takes the time to carry a mop and clean up after my messes when I need Him most. My needs are so small next to the needs of the world, yet God still does the work of a janitor³ when I can't do it myself.

I got back from Birmingham in the Spring of this year with a great deal of pain I had to work through. Three exams were postponed, along with a project. Two of what would have been the most hectic weeks of the semester, cleared in a matter of hours. He took care of the logistics and gave me time to heal.

I needed to stop believing some lies about myself just this past weekend and people who I talk to all the time as well as a couple I haven't spoken with in months came full force into my life, immediately showering affirmation on me. While I still struggle to believe even half of it, it was so good for my soul.

Drip drip. Swish, swish.⁴

What the perfect God, the creator of the universe, is doing with a mop and bucket for my sake I don't know. But that seems to be (at least in part) the message of the cross. We've created a mighty mess for ourselves, and He mops it up with his blood. We don't deserve a bit of it, but He does it anyway.

There is a passage in 2 Corinthians (4:16-18 NLT) that I take comfort in when I'm going through a rough patch, and I think I'll close with that for the sake of much needed sleep.

For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

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¹Actually my dad's guitar is the one with the broken string. My next door neighbor broke it when he was hanging out with me after school one day eight years ago or so. I don't own a guitar. I bought one for a guy I was dating in high school so technically I owned one for the brief time between getting it from Mars Music and dropping it off with a giant red bow at his parents' house. But no, I don't have a guitar. I do have a dulcimer though.

²Okay, so baptism isn't usually done in a tub of ice cold water. I'm just speaking from experience. I was baptized on Christmas day when the heater was broken in the baptistry so all 80 pounds of me were shivering like a leaf in a tornado. It was greatness.

³It occurred to me that many people wouldn't appreciate God being likened to a blue collar worker with a dirty mop. But I'm confident that He has a sense of humor and is willing to entertain the analogy.

⁴It's the best mop impression I could come up with. Cut me some slack. ;-)

Words from God

"You are nobody's consolation prize."

"There is no victory without a battle."

A Challenge to Women :: Desiring God

Ladies, here's some fuel to challenge your minds and hearts… Sorry I haven't had much of my own to offer lately. The time to write doesn't seem to exist. So instead I'll post things I have the opportunity to read and listen to as a more powerful substitute than what I have to offer at present. Hope you enjoy.

Link: A Challenge to Women :: Desiring God.

Who is Jesus, really?

This is an impassioned message from Mark Driscool at the Desiring God conference on the humanity and incarnation versus the exaltation and divinity of Jesus. His words on missional theology and repentance in light of Jesus will probably rock your world.

Link: Desiring God: Mark Driscoll.

North Carolina Retreat

Incredible, originally uploaded by olanky1.

The photos from the North Carolina retreat are on flickr. If you haven't checked them out yet, the album is here.

reflections :: small things

Written while waiting for an oil change at Tires Plus.

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I'm dazzled by bananas. The engineering that went into these delicious, snack-sized treats is incredible. Think for a moment about the ergonomic qualities of the banana: the smooth yet solid packaging, the "tab" at the top that can be easily pulled to open the package, the perforation that allows the parts of the packaging to be easily pulled back without scissors, the way it curves toward the mouth when held in the hand, the incredible vitamin and potassium content packed inside, the built-in freshness indicator that works like a battery level indicator but without having to squeeze two tiny buttons most fingers are too big to control.

Whoever designed the banana should really get one of those product design awards. It's sheer genius.

I fear we've stopped being dazzled by the small stuff. I delight in the banana today only because I read an eloquent opening to a chapter of God Doesn't Believe in Atheists that contained the same illustration. I'm not conditioned to think about bananas, about the design of things that are freely given to us. I'm not conditioned to look at a mountain range and see God's artistry, much less a small piece of fruit that sells for 49¢ per pound at Publix.

I'm conditioned to look at man's accomplishments in awe and wonder. To look at buildings and cars and sleek Apple laptops and diamond rings and shiny things as if I was staring into the face of God Himself. I rarely look at the things freely given with such admiration as I do the things bought and manufactured by men.

When was the last time you looked at a pea pod and wondered at the Architect who designed it? Or climbed a mountain and realized you were in the midst of something no human could ever dream of creating?

I am visiting North Carolina this weekend and am sure that there will be times when I will be resigned to sit in awe at the Creation that surrounds me. I can't wait to look at the waterfall as the uncanny work of physics that it is, and listen to the chorus of the forest realizing that it's God's symphony being played.

Praise God for frogs and bananas and small things.