One thing that is interesting (read: annoying) to me about my life is that, sometimes, when things aren't ok, I'm the last one to admit it. It's been a few days now, and I am trying to remind myself again and again that, like everyone else on the planet, sometimes I am just that human. My spirit will become low, my health will fail me, my mind will become scattered and cloudy.
That. I am feeling that. And I hear the arrogance behind it.
Moi? Sick? (Sure, sometimes.)
Scattered? In need of sleep? In need of a good cry? (Probably.)
Needing a break? (Yes, definitely.)
This confronts the other things that usually always take precedence first. My love of seeing things fully, of not wanting to miss out, of needing to save face...that pride, that arrogance, that necessary bravery. I do not like when people go on and on about poor circumstance in life, unless it's pretty dire. There is so much to be grateful for....that's the upbringing, so simultaneously helpful and binding. I tend to fear that I am living in a generation with no real pulse for hardship when I hear jokes about First World Problems. (And they feel true.)
But hello, broken world. Two seconds later, I realize I believe that is absolutely not true. It's stress of a different kind, a global one, that Millennials feel. Our world is changing, rapidly, and we must change with it. I hear the things my students even say, 15 years now behind me in their ideologies, and I see it. Sometimes I tell my grandma about these struggles.
And she says to me that she never wondered about things so often calling me to a certain kind of bravery. Ever. Millennials, and their problems, are not the same as those from the Silent Generation or anyone in between. (Obviously.) Stating this gives me no feeling of justification or superiority. Instead it makes me decide that we need different kinds of breaks.
But back to people who are often 'not ok'. (And shockingly comfortable living there.)
Maybe these seemingly hysterical people are way more honest with themselves at all the best times. Maybe they do not feel as 'irrevocably screwed up' as I do on a gray day like this because they can face things, better and sooner. They'd say otherwise, I am sure, but anyway, we are sometimes a little envious of the thing we are not. We hear the messages that make us feel we are drawing a blank on everything, when instead we should just show up with life in us. It becomes a question of balance and declaring, despite a feeling, who you really are.
I read 'irrevocably screwed up' somewhere once upon a time, and I liked it. Not because of its happy implications, but because sometimes it feels true. However, despite the feeling, I believe that even when you are most hard-pressed for anything good, you are ok. Or going to be ok.
God is absolutely enough.
That's not just some Sunday School answer. It has carried me, lived out, through many of life's complexities with a beauty I'll never be able to describe. I have been in the dust, touched the robe of Jesus, and my head has been lifted up. But you know what? Today, the pervasive, difficult thing is that you know it, believe it, and such a humanness is still kind of rough. I confess it because people like me get away too much with moving the world around to fit our stories. And I want to fit into the one written by God.
It is decidedly stepping out of the grace I so need to think I'm not so human. That I am just 'other' enough to be out of reach of ugly things, of inadequacies, of the need for grace. This is what I confess. It's my best leering work, and such a necessary reckoning to deal with in light of the Gospel.
In fact, come to think of it, this talk of grace and confronting this natural lack of it in ourselves came up at Hiawatha last week. Praise God, it usually does. And it directly confronts that 'best leering work'....saving face, manipulation, turning tables in order to reorder it all, of forging on to recklessness when I can tell that I'm instead supposed to be, imagine it....head bowed, humbled, and silent. Tell me you have not been there too!
Sevens especially. Sevens on the Enneagram are the best at saving face. Which can be the worst. God's provision in my life has often been this.....A collection of friends, artfully placed throughout my life, who look me in the eye and say, 'You're good, but sometimes when you're not, I know that too.' I breathe easier, just a little, but I'm also astonished by their fortitude. They have a steely-eyed gaze too, and they know me. They're watching me wrestle, and they're telling me that. And this is the way that God has been dealing with me too. Wrestling, like Jacob, and reworking the life in my spirit. Writing it here is a necessary thing.
WHAT DIDN'T HELP
You know what didn't help this? Reading about the Cold War from a textbook I have at my house. Yes, I read textbooks for fun. I read them on my own time, when I'm longing for something not linked to my teaching schedule. I do not tend to label myself as overly intellectual, but this might be the moment people are talking about.
I decided to brush up on foreign policy after WWII. But it was too heavy. Too heavy! Too much suffering, too many millions, too much stress and anxiety and wondering about things. Also too many maps. I wondered about a man like Harry Truman, and people who opposed him in Congress. NATO versus the Warsaw Pact, Hiroshima, the Holocaust, and the Nuremberg trials.
Ugh.
And what was Japan really doing in 1947 anyway? Or southeastern France? The textbooks never say. Who really cleared up all of that rubble? I closed the book when I remembered that this very empathetic side of me (Strengthsfinder has declared this so much) is no discriminator of time. Everything feels like it's happening now. But these stories are from long ago, and people in that kind of suffering and glory are long gone. Instead there is now.
Sometimes people tell me that they'd love to hear me teach because I make so many connections to everything. Everything would be interesting. 'Such a lovely thought! Thank you!' But there is a burden to carry and quell when you wonder so much, and it's not so brilliant at all. The volume is turned up so high about things now AND goings on in other years. (Like 1948.) It is about this time, when the empathy becomes about all years, that I have learned to close the book.
Note to self: Read about the Cold War only about once a year. It is not your passion.
WHAT DID HELP
One thing that did help, and made me feel aged 14 1/2, was listening to 'Human' by Christina Perri. (How much more obvious can you get?) It made me think about how, a few weeks ago at school, it was on while I started class, and kids who sit near my desk could hear it through my headphones.
When the class got silent enough to hear it, they could all identify it, and who knows why, but this was the one thing all year that caused me to blush in front of my students. They thought it was hilarious because usually I'm not shaken. I turned it down and yes, blushed brightly and made cavalier statements and moved on. Why that anyway? Probably because I meant it too much for the common work of 4th hour.
And probably because back when I was 14 1/2 like them, and singing lyrics from Celine Dion's hit songs, Molly was the only one who knew I actually meant all of the words I was singing. Molly always knew. Sometimes, many times, she sang the songs with me.
One such song comes to mind. 'To Love You More', so alive to my 8th grade self it was sickening. Especially when my 8th grade crush chose to date someone who actually didn't like him that much. (How could this be?) I knew she wanted the status, but I was loyal. (And actually his friend.) Well, that's life sometimes, especially in Grade 8. I see this in the halls at school all of the time. Loyalty is amazing, and it sucks. It sucks when you're in 8th grade, and you mean it.
It is a hilarious memory now.
Fast forward to my life amongst 8th graders now.
Once in Washington, D.C., after a particularly tension-filled day in 14 year old girl world, a few girls asked me for advice. There had been a fight, and it was being processed (so many times over) during lights out, which is, as you could imagine, when I have to make sure things are getting closed down.
I, ever a generalist, and desiring always to remain a legitimate confidante about their most awkward moments, will only say here that the question was about next steps in friendship.
I told them if they really cared about her, really, they'd....blah blah blah. Advice. And they stopped, a little stunned that I could see what they had thought was their own, and very far away. 'Oh Miss Christians, how did you know?' (So much feeling! So much Celine Dion lyric potential in their voices! They didn't even know it. They were singing Adele.) I kept it vague because it is better in this moment to say less and have it mean more. But I implied a story that pointed to my 14 year old life and would still stand as normal in the light of day, as conversationally as it did during 'lights out'. (Middle school teacher, beware.)
The message was received. Their conversation was cut short. What was not so amazing to me, was somehow revolutionary to them. And I left their hotel room realizing again that some things aren't meant for one generation. Some things, like being 14, are timeless. Ringing as true as they ever were in 2013 as they could be in 1999. (And I'm sure, for the record, 1948.)
Writing and confessing tonight has brought me back. Again, after passing through stormy seas, I find instead gratitude. Tonight it is for three things.
Ever the grace. That Celine Dion lyrics do not tell me anymore about my life. And that Molly is still such a rockin' best friend.
When the class got silent enough to hear it, they could all identify it, and who knows why, but this was the one thing all year that caused me to blush in front of my students. They thought it was hilarious because usually I'm not shaken. I turned it down and yes, blushed brightly and made cavalier statements and moved on. Why that anyway? Probably because I meant it too much for the common work of 4th hour.
And probably because back when I was 14 1/2 like them, and singing lyrics from Celine Dion's hit songs, Molly was the only one who knew I actually meant all of the words I was singing. Molly always knew. Sometimes, many times, she sang the songs with me.
One such song comes to mind. 'To Love You More', so alive to my 8th grade self it was sickening. Especially when my 8th grade crush chose to date someone who actually didn't like him that much. (How could this be?) I knew she wanted the status, but I was loyal. (And actually his friend.) Well, that's life sometimes, especially in Grade 8. I see this in the halls at school all of the time. Loyalty is amazing, and it sucks. It sucks when you're in 8th grade, and you mean it.
It is a hilarious memory now.
Fast forward to my life amongst 8th graders now.
Once in Washington, D.C., after a particularly tension-filled day in 14 year old girl world, a few girls asked me for advice. There had been a fight, and it was being processed (so many times over) during lights out, which is, as you could imagine, when I have to make sure things are getting closed down.
I, ever a generalist, and desiring always to remain a legitimate confidante about their most awkward moments, will only say here that the question was about next steps in friendship.
I told them if they really cared about her, really, they'd....blah blah blah. Advice. And they stopped, a little stunned that I could see what they had thought was their own, and very far away. 'Oh Miss Christians, how did you know?' (So much feeling! So much Celine Dion lyric potential in their voices! They didn't even know it. They were singing Adele.) I kept it vague because it is better in this moment to say less and have it mean more. But I implied a story that pointed to my 14 year old life and would still stand as normal in the light of day, as conversationally as it did during 'lights out'. (Middle school teacher, beware.)
The message was received. Their conversation was cut short. What was not so amazing to me, was somehow revolutionary to them. And I left their hotel room realizing again that some things aren't meant for one generation. Some things, like being 14, are timeless. Ringing as true as they ever were in 2013 as they could be in 1999. (And I'm sure, for the record, 1948.)
Writing and confessing tonight has brought me back. Again, after passing through stormy seas, I find instead gratitude. Tonight it is for three things.
Ever the grace. That Celine Dion lyrics do not tell me anymore about my life. And that Molly is still such a rockin' best friend.
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