Driving by the party.

Well I'm back in bloggerland. I've been writing, writing, writing, but not here. I've been moving words around a page for hours on end, creating catalog copy for an office supply store, and marketing materials for a fleet management company. "Ugh", you say? Yes, "ugh" is right. I'd much rather write in my blog, but unfortunately, Blogger doesn't pay me. Plus, I've been in one of my funks, feeling like God likes everyone better than me. My depression and tantrum that goes with isn't condusive to interesting and creative thoughts to put on this page. Trust me, you'd rather not hear what's going on in my head these days.But I'll give you a glimpse, maybe editing out a few of the nastier ponderings.

1. God likes everyone else better than me. He proves it by giving them everything I want. Like a child. And a house. And a fun job. A published book. And skinny thighs.

Oh, I know I have a lot. I have a wonderful husband, I own a condo, I have family and friends that like me (I think). I don't have cancer or a sick child. So what am I whining about, right?

The thing is my mind has this never-ending tape that makes me feel like I'm watching life from the sidelines. I can't make it stop. Maybe it's because I'm a youngest (or second to youngest child) who watched my older sisters get to do everything first (you know -- go on dates, shave their legs, wear panty-hose). Or maybe it's my fundamentalist background. In high school we weren't allowed to go to dances, movies, or most parties (for fear there would be drinking and dancing!). When I was a sophomore, and my sister was a senior in high school, she was student body president (just so you know, I was never student body president, or on the homecoming court, like my sister). As student body president she had to help plan the Prom. But since we couldn't attend dances, this created a dilemma: the student body president couldn't go to the prom. Instead, the night of the dance, my sister suggested we "drive by" the high school gym to make sure things were running smoothly. I sat in the back seat while my dad drove us to the school gym. It was dark, the gym's double doors were open, and I caught a glimpse of the party inside -- the balloons, the sparkly lights, the mirror ball, the teenagers in their tuxes and long dresses laughing and having fun. We stopped for a momement, ducked down in our seats to make sure no one recognized us, and then drove home. Pretty much, in a nutshell, that's my life right now.

2. God doesn't like me because I made bad choices, or am not good enough. Oh, I know, in my head, that this isn't true. "Jesus loves me this I know" I sang as a child. But knowing doesn't always translate into feeling or experiencing that love. So yes, I'm a bit angry at God, but more than that, I'm blaming myself....

3. Maybe God does love me but I've gotten in the way. Could it be that I've sabatoged God's plans for me because of my stubborness, or because I'm a control freak and cling to my agenda? All the more reason to blame myself.

I really, really, want to stop the casset tape, get out of the car and go to the party. To dance, and to celebrate like the other kids. What's stopping me? Is it because I'm not invited? Or that I'm too shy to get out of the car? Or that I feel like I don't belong there?

Or maybe the party looks different than I expected, and I really am at the party and don't realize it or appreciate it. I know my life story doesn't have to look like everyone else's. It's not about things, really (like a house, although it would be nice), but feeling like I have a purpose and am living that out. Making a difference. Being the person God created me to be. To experience the joy of knowing God is working in my life, even though my life might look a whole lot different than everyone else's. I don't feel that right now. I'm just driving by the party, and looking inside at the lights and streamers from back seat of the dark car.

Highway 41 Revisited

There's a scene in the "notes, corrections, clarifications, apologies, addenda" section of Dave Eggers' book "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" where he's driving up Highway 41 to the northern suburbs in Chicago on his way home from college to help his parents, who are dying of cancer. He writes:

"When my parents were sick, I began, during my senior year in college, to drive back and forth from school to home, usually from Thursday (I had only one, completely skippable, class on Friday) to Sunday night, when I'd head back down state. The drive between Champaign and Chicago is impossibly uneventful, completely tedious, and I was doing it, for the most part, in a 1981 Rabbit without a radio or windshield wipers. But I did it with a certian smugness, with a sense of mission, because I was leaving the frivolity of college and my many housemates and their endless games of 9-ball....I was leaving that environment for a place where, I felt, I was needed urgently, where I could lift sandbags, put my finger in the dike, whatever. We all know that there are very few times when we feel like we are proving we are using this flesh-life-thing, and those times are a) during sex; b) adventure; c) adventure in the service of duty. And coming with that certain smugness was of course a certain guilt about smugness drawn from duty. We feel glad that we have a very tangible reason to exist, that we are driving on a terrible flat highway for three hours Thursday night because at home our sister will say Finally! and our small brother will jump and monkey-hug and say Hey stupid! and our parents will greet us with their exhaustion and frail arms."

This is my favorite scene in the book. Something tragic happens, and it is so tragic, and we hate that someone hurts and we want it to go away. Yet the adrenaline starts pumping and there's something to do and maybe we can make a difference. It seems I've been driving up Highway 41 a lot during the past year as two friends died of breast cancer, another friend's father died. Now a baby lying in a hospital PICU with a severe heart defect.

I want to HELP. Help with a capital "H". It makes me feel alive and like I have purpose, a mission. But I'm wondering, too, when it becomes selfish. Do I want to help because it makes ME feel good? Or do I want to help because my friends need the help?

Or maybe we feel more alive because, as C.S. Lewis writes, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." We hear him more clearly when we suddenly see how delicate life is, how fragile and temporary. When we're reminded, once again, there must be something more -- something beyond our mundane days. During these times our differences and imagined slights and arguments against one another fall away and we just love one another. We drive up Highway 41 and bring meals and leave phone messages and post comments on their blog and sit beside them and listen and love them and hopefully our intentions are pure. We're never quite sure. But we get a little taste of loving someone like Christ loves us, and it's our salvation.

Getting in touch with my inner Swede

I'm now officially a member of the Chicago Nordic Choir --a group of about 20 gorgeous, model-like Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes. I'm part Swedish, part Danish and can carry a tune, but not-so-model like. I guess they want me anyway since they're short on second sopranos. Not that I speak a lick of Swedish or Norwegian. Last night I pretty much mumbled my way through rehearsal. I guess I have a lot of learning to do for our first gig of the year-- Waffle Day at the Swedish-American Museum in Andersonville! It's at 5211 N Clark St. on March 25 at 3p. Come if you're in the area. Hopefully I'll know a little Swedish by then... or just come for the waffles.

Thoughts on friendship and more on Jesus Camp

I met Sheri one Sunday morning at Airport Baptist Church in Des Moines (yes, the church was across the street from the airport). My family had recently started attending Airport Baptist after leaving another church, Adelphi Calvary Baptist, which was just a mile from our house. We left Adelphi after a church spat that ended with two deacons fist fighting on the front lawn. The fight happened after a business meeting and if I remember it right, had something to do with the color of carpet in the sanctuary.

My parents had had enough and thought it best to take us kids elsewhere...even though my ancestors had founded the Adelphi church. So we started driving into Des Moines to attend Airport Baptist, a bigger and, at the time, "hipper", Baptist church where my older sisters had friends in the youth group. Sheri and I were in the 6th grade at the time, and she led me to the 6th grade girls Sunday school classroom. She seemed sure of herself, confident, leading this shy new girl to class. She introduced me to Lori, and the three of us became friends as we sat in the pink shag-carpeted sunday school room. We had sleep overs, went to camp together, and wrote notes during the Sunday morning service.

A few years later, when Sheri's family moved to Arizona, I was devastated. We vowed to keep in touch...and amazingly enough, we did. We wrote letters every week or two all through high school. We mailed each other gifts -- sticks of gum, cheap necklaces, and once, after Sheri's family vacationed in Mexico, she sent me a sombrero. We told each other about our latest boy crushes, our new hair styles. We'd send each other school pictures with "Friends forever, xxooxx" written on the back.I kept all of her letters for years in plastic bags in my closet. I finally threw them out once when I was moving. I regret that. I wish I could go back and read them again.

Sheri and I went to the same college our freshman year and were roommates. She eventually moved back to Arizona to finish school, but I visited her every few years. Like any friendship, we've had our ups and downs, but I'm thankful to have a friend, a kindred spirit, who has known me since I was 12.

After reading my "Jesus Camp" post, Sheri wrote her memories of camp:

"Your blog entry on "Family Camp" sure brought back a lot of memories. I only went through Junior Girls camp and the family camps in the summer my elementary years and remember them so fondly from a young child's perspective. I remember some speaker talking about how evil pierced ears were, comparing the practice to demonic native habits in the jungle! My mom remembers that after some lady sang a solo, little Andrea (3-4 years old) spoke out (loud enough for everyone to hear), "I like her voice but I hate her body!" (My mom admitted she had a weird figure.) So there's my stream of consciousness on family camp. I'm so glad we're still close and that I can enjoy and relate to your eloquent expressions of some of these things. I have told others, 'Karen and I had the same childhood in a lot of ways.'"

It's not often you find a kindred spirit...a lifelong friend that just seems to "stick." It's been 30 years since that Sunday morning at Airport Baptist Church. The church building was recently razed to make room for a new airport runway. Our friendship remains.

On Missing Jim Lehrer and What Not to Wear

I'm going through withdrawal. David and I decided to give up TV for Lent...and maybe forever. So yesterday we unplugged the huge black TV I inherited from a friend and wheeled it into the closet. Now the wall in the living room is bare and empty. I feel lost and disoriented. What are we supposed to do now while we're eating dinner? Sit down at the table and talk?

We've been considering getting rid of the TV for a long time--as long as we've been married. But we couldn't wean ourselves off the The News Hour with Jim Lehrer or Antiques Roadshow (okay, we're geeks). Too often, we'd find ourselves on the couch long after The News Hour was over, surfing the channels trying to find anything intelligent to watch, with no success. So we'd end up watching "What Not to Wear" (Why do Stacy and Clinton make everyone look THE SAME)? or "Flip This House" (Will they get it done on time and within budget???!! The suspense!) Our addiction was sucking our souls dry. So we did it. We went cold turkey and put the thing in the closet.

I think mainly I'm afraid. Afraid that the house will be too quiet. That David and I won't have enough to talk about. Afraid that I'll become bored. That maybe I'll have to listen to God more and I won't like what he has to say. Afraid that I'll have to face some things I've been avoiding. Because when you're addicted to something, it's usually because you're avoiding something else.

I'm hoping to read more, write more, workout more. Maybe in a year I'll morph into a svelt novelist who's read the complete works of Derrida. Who knows. In any case it has to be better than a glassy-eyed couch potato who's seen every episode of What Not to Wear.

Ramona updates

For the latest on Baby Ramona, go to this website.

Thanks for praying...

Are you 100% Christian?

I love this quote from C.S. Lewis:

"The world does not consist of 100% Christians and 100% non-Christians. There are people who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name…There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are strongly attracted by him that they are his in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it."