C'est La Vie
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What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy. And I use these words pretty loosely. There's so much more to life than words..
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Friday, June 21, 2002
"She can't be an adult! She'd be MARRIED!"
You know, there's something about seven-year-old-boys that just makes everything so cut and dried. Apparently, 18 doesn't make you an adult, and whatever age it is (I guess 20?) that does launch you into adulthood also comes with a spouse and a ring and a house and such attached. Ah, for the possible simplicity of a child's world. Not that I'm upset that I'm not married yet. Just that I think about my friends in their mid and late 30s, and plenty that I know older (even generations older) that've never been married. Are they still not adults? According to Cameron, apparently not. I'm having a great time babysitting so far. Cody's been good company in his nearly-silent way, Cassie's been all snuggly as I love with the kids I babysit, Cameron's only made a few silley comments like that. Last night, we were in the middle of a game of monopoly when something happened (I forget precisely what) that upset Cameron a great deal. "Holy #^@$!!!", he screamed. I looked up at him. "What did you say?" "Nothing." "Cody, what are the punishments in your family for using profanity?" "I dunno. I guess no TV." "Ok, Cameron, no TV for the rest of the night." "But I didn't know what it meant!!" "Well, you shouldn't use words if you don't know what they mean, anyway. And you DID know that that was a very bad word when you said it." Cameron cried himself to sleep last night. The great thing is, though, that he didn't even try turning his TV on at all. He knew (from past experiences of me babysitting these kids) that his punishment was going to be stuck to. I think his parents are a lot more consistant than mine ever were, too, which certainly helps me with discipline when I'm here. But these kids have become so used to their TV's going that they get terrified if the cartoons aren't on to lull them to sleep. Now, when I was a kid, and sometimes to this very day .. I always enjoyed having music playing as I was falling asleep. It calmed and focused any thoughts in my head so that I wouldn't start thinking wildly. It provided a bit of noise to cover over the creepier noises of the house settling and such. But when, for any reason at all, the radio had to be off (which was usually either because I was away from the house or because there was a hurricane warning and all power was off that could be .. and once the good radio station in town had the antennae blown and my tape player had broken and it was before I'd gotten my own CD player) I still slept soundly in the very same manner. I wonder how these kids will do when they spend the night at other houses or when they go off to camp and such. Cody does just fine in almost any situation, which is pretty common of the nearly-silent types. One of my other jr. highers and I had another interesting conversation. We'll just assume it was a guy and call him Bill. I was talking to Bill online last night and asked what he'd done over the weekend. "You'll be disappointed," he told me. "Oh yah?" "I went on a date." Oh, the horror of it all. Bill is in 6th grade, and happened to be present during a few conversations I had in the vehicles during camp with the girls about the dating world, especially about not needing boyfriends 'till they're out of college and most especially (and much more seriously) about not french kissing guys when they're stinkin' sixth graders. So I replied to Bill that that doesn't disappoint me. First off, even if it did, his focus should be on the Audience of One, which is God. His focus should not be on whether or not I, as a human being, am disappointed. It should only matter what God would say about that. See, the point being that if he focuses on what I'd say, than there might come a time when I'd say the wrong thing (imagine that!) and then his focus would mislead him. Like when my roommates and I came up to odds about why I was leaving my job before I started school. They were all quite upset with me for it (as were most people I talked to about it) and one even yelled a number of very harsh words at me in the middle of work one day. But the point was that I knew every moment that as I stood before my God, He would tell me, "Well done, thou good and faithful servent." I cannot say that about even half the things I do, at this point in my life.. mostly He'd just say "Well, you didn't mess it up, but you sure are a slacker!" .. but in this case, I knew that I was standing before Him in all His glory, and I was not ashamed of my actions in the least. That's because I was focusing on the Audience of One, on only what God would think about the situation, and not on what kind opinions my roommates were expressing. Secondly, even if it did disappoint me at all, it wouldn't be him as a person. It would be actions. This is what I tried to get across to the girl that was involved in the truth or dare game that led to the kissing.. and to the other girls riding with me. And to Bill. But apparently, as I found out in my conversation with Bill, what came across (perhaps because I somehow didn't express this clearly or perhaps because that's all they normally hear from people these days) was that I was saying don't let anyone pressure you and don't do anything 'till you feel ready. Well, those are true statements.. but more important is that I love them nomatter what, and it is actions and not people that disappoint me, and that it isn't about if they feel ready (feelings can be so very, very, very deceptive) but rather if they could stand before God and know they're ready for whatever they're doing. The biggest point (and reason for any disappointment I do find in their actions) is simply that I do not want these kids to have regrets, such as I do. I do not want them to sit back in their twenties going "you know, life could have been so much better.." I do not want them to look back on these years and wish they hadn't done this or they had done this. I want them to have life, and have it abundantly. That doesn't include anything at all that they'll regret, and my disappointment is simply in knowing that they'll look back and wish. Thirdly, my chatter about not needing to date 'till you're out of college is half-serious. I was in jr. high myself once, and I remember what it's like to want to date. Boy do I. All my major regrets from physical "affection" stem back to sixth grade, in fact. So while it's hard for me to take seriously a sixth grader saying he went on a date (since it generally requires the help of some adult giving them a ride, etc) I also know that there are plenty of ways to do things you'll regret under these circumstances. I know from experience. And the truth is, they're not little children. They're much older than they're often taken for in society today. They need pure love, and they need to realize that the kind of love they're encouraged to get in our world is not worth the pain it results in. They need to be shown how to interact with eachother and adults and everyone else in a way that is glorifying to God and gracious to humans. We can't keep looking at a sixth grader that says she has a boyfriend or he has a girlfriend and think "Oh, that's so cute" as if they're in kindergarten. It may not mean the same thing that it'll mean when they're adults, but it does certainly mean something. The fact that a jr. higher can tell me "I went on a date, but we didn't do anything" is so frightening in some ways, so pride-worthy (that is, I'm proud of that jr. higher) in others, and so very REAL overall, that I don't know how we can possibly ignore the fact that there was ever a possability they might have. Lest we forget, folks. Lest we forget.
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Hippie: (after hearing Max wants to avoid the draft)You still have options man. "So how do i do normal "It's been known for a train to jump its track. It's ok, so you'll know, most times they come back. It's ok to lose your life, when you finally see your birth. It's ok to say, "I love you," and figure sometimes it's gonna hurt. "As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes, all exciting at first, but then by the end you're sick of 'em!" "Hey, this is weird! I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?" "I love it!" "You're kidding! What a crazy random happenstance!" "Only one more trip," said a gallant seaman, "It was Flannery O'Connor who said that 'grace must wound before it heals.' Her words help me to separate what is most true about life from the things we want to be true. We want life to be painless. True grace is a hard sell because in order for the human heart to understand forgiveness and love, it must first experience darkness and isolation. A life lived under the rule of grace is a life of need which allows us to receive an appreciate the gift of the giver of grace. This is why we will always have the poor with us; this is why God will not allow us to ignore injustice; this is why we are called to a life we cannot handle alone, which can and will break us in the effort to live it -- because grace must wound before it heals." Regarding 2007: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I thought Christmas Day would never come. But it's here at last, so Mom and Dad, the waiting's finally done. And you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas morning. O little town of Bethlehem, Walk humbly, son Strings of lights above the bed "In a little while I'll feel better "Please tell me once again that You love me. That You love me. Please tell me once again that I matter to You and You really care. Please tell me once again that You're with me, forever. It's not that I could ever doubt you, I just love the way it sounds. I just love the way it sounds." "Every once in a while, a bannerzen posts." "7:30. What kind of people have to be at work at 7:30?" have you seen my love Traveling is significant because it takes so much effort. Either you're going to some place you love, or you're leaving some place you love. Usually it's both. I think I have Bond's ability to get into trouble but not his ability to get out of it. Someday I'll be in some foreign country with 5 thugs with automatic rifles pointed at me, and I'll just.... fart "You had no alternative .. We must work in the world. The world is thus." --- "No .. Thus have we made the world." The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." Looking out the bedroom at this snowy TV.. ever since commencement, no one's asking 'bout me. But I bet before the night falls, I could catch the late bus.. take small provisions and this Beethoven bust. I could find work in the outskirts of the city, eat some fish on the way.. befriend an old dog for a roadside pal, find a nice couch to stay -- a pull-out sofa, if you please!" Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying "The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird." "Life is a phantasmagoria .. It is a pell-mell of confused and tumultuous scenes. We try in vain to find a purpose - to bring an order, a unity to life. I suppose that is the appeal of art. Art is the blending of the real and the unreal, the conquering of nature. It is real enough for it to reflect life, but has the unity that life lacks." "in time memories fade. I've always had this feeling about Patty that she's complex and intriguing...I like Patty alot. She's got a good heart and tells terrible squirrel jokes. "Try to remember that world-weariness isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the book of Mark, I think its Mark, Jesus looks at a blind man and sighs. Jesus sighed before even telling the man he would be healed. He sighed, and I'm not sure that there's a much more human expression of frustration than this. Faced with the horrid picture of a cursed earth and looking into the white eyes of a man blind from the day he was born, He sighed. The Creator of the universe in human form was sad "of the evils of this world," the world He created. Your Creator sighed for you in the same way before He healed you and made you His." After the last secret's told After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone After the last child starves And the last girl walks the boulevard After the last year that's just too hard There is love -- Andrew Peterson, After the Last Tear Falls "when you most need people, you don't need perfection - just to know someone gives a damn" "A CALL TO ACTION: "My brother's always [telling me], 'You should be more mysterious--boys like that.' But I'm not good at that. It would just make me more uncomfortable." "Loners want to kill you, but not for any particular reason, and they'd probably like you if they weren't being guided by the violent voices in their head." "No one wants to oil a snake these days!"
-- Her mom: "We're all safe." -- Jamie Bevill and her mother during Christmas-Decorating dinner, December 20, 2002 i'd throw out all my shoes i'd set up cans for friends to dump their shoes senseless shoes a pioneer of callouses lordy-be and bless my soul i'd be a barefoot spaceman the first you'd ever know" "The best way to have God's will for your life is to have no will of your own!" "Generations circle and each one atones. The sins of the father are seperate from my own. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's forgiveness that makes whole, and as time levels and consoles, I place the daisies in your bowl." "For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls." "It's on the internet.. so, then, it must be true." "Be at least as interested in what people can become as you are in what they have been." Blessed be the rock stars!" Get up for the shower.. wash and scrub and scour every part as if a cleaner man could better bear the shame.. "She was eating gnarly amounts of calcium." Homeless man to girl trying to give him money: "No, thanks, ma'am. I never work on Sundays." "Wow! I never thought I'd need a radar-guided spatula!" "Isn't it great that I articulate? Isn't it grand that you can understand? ... I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!" I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know... I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." CCM: You've spoken a lot more about crying than I ever thought you would. "Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccuptaions, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul." ""Don't go matchmaking for me, Ilse," said Emily wit a faint smile... "I feel in my bones that I shall achieve old-maidenhood, which is an entirely different thing from having old-maidenhood thrust upon you." "I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art" "Tomorrow seems like a long ways away. But it will come, just like any other day... Deep inside, where the wounded creatures hide, I am afraid. Maybe I got lost somewhere along the way somehow. Please rescue me... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me... Though I fear, though I am afraid, You are with me. Though I'm angry, tired, broken down and confused, You are with me. Though I sin like I've never sinned before, lose myself right out an open door, You are with me." "The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"" -- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader "When People object... that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, "Oh but you had an unfair advantage." It is because of His advantage that He can help." "But, you know, as a Christian, one of the big questions you always ask yourself is, "So we believe in Jesus, we believe in the teachings of the church, but what does that look like when it's lived out?" Because surely, one of the things that Jesus said that I think we often overlook is, "The person who hears my words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." He didn't say "the person who hears my words and thinks about 'em" or "whoever hears my words and agrees with it." But he said, "Whoever hears it and does it." "find that which gives you breath and grants you more to give "I have packed all my belongings. I don't belong here anymore. This pair of sandles, one pack to carry, this old guitar and this tattered old Bible. And I know I won't be afraid. 'cause I know, I know Home is where You are." "Open up your weepy eyes, everyone is dancing. Angels peer through sweet disguise, through a fire of cleansing. "Long hair, no hair; Everybody, everywhere:
Breathe Deep, breathe deep the Breath of God!" "You may be bruised and torn and broken, but
you're Mine!" "I don't deserve to speak, and they don't deserve
to hear it. It's makin' me believe that it's not
about me." "Kickin' against these goads sure did cut up my
feet. Didn't your hands get bloody as you washed
them clean?" "They say God blessed us with plenty. I say
you?re blessed with poverty. ?Cause you never
stop to wonder whether earth is just a little
better than the Land of the Free" "Computers will know everything in the 21st
century. They'll be like me in the 20th
century." |
