Debt

So, I'm no expert on federal spending. I don't pretend to be. But my parents raised me to budget, and I know the basic principle of budgeting: don't spend money you don't have.

Now there are certain exceptions, like mortgages and cars (though on that latter one my goal is to minimize or avoid car debt, and on the house you get into it responsibly). But for the most part, I stay out of debt by not spending money I don't have. And that includes planning ahead a bit, saving up for the monthly bills.

There are times when I wish I could just go out to Olive Garden with Dan, or buy that cute blouse I saw in a store window, but I have to say no to those things. Because a meal at Olive Garden would mean we can't afford groceries for 5 or 6 days. There are times when people try to convince me I need cable and all sorts of other things. But I have to prioritize. If I have x amount of money coming in, I need to cover the essentials and then I can decide what to do with the excess. And cable is not an essential.

So I am baffled to hear about the trillions and trillions of dollars of debt our country has accumulated. It just seems so irresponsible to me. Like I said, I'm no expert on where all this money is going. But I imagine there are research projects that are great, but could wait. And inflated salaries that could be trimmed. And I know there've been bailouts that seem a bit excessive, to say the least.

I know that not everyone agrees about what's important. But congress or whoever just needs to sit down and say, "OK...this is how much we have coming in annually. This much is how much we need to set aside each year so we can pay off our $15 trillion dollar debt in a reasonable amount of time. This is how much we have leftover. These are the things we're going to put it towards. Everything else will have to wait until we've paid off our debt."

I know I'm not in the thick of it. But it seems like it would just be a much-bigger-scale version of what I do in managing a household budget. So just fix it, people!

This Broken World

Today's the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. So I was thinking about that day, ten years ago. I remember distinctly being in journalism class, around 10 am. Senior year of high school. We had no TV, no radio, no way of knowing what had already happened. Our assignment was to look at newspaper articles from that day's paper. I forget what we had to do with them.

But I'd had a similar assignment in elementary school and I remember thinking then how hard it was to find good news at the time. And on this day in 2001, I had a hard time finding an article that was bad news. I was really impressed. Completely oblivious to the tragedy our country was facing, I was thinking, "Wow! There's a lot of good news today! Maybe our world is getting a little better."

Then it was lunch time. And word was spreading about the attacks. My friend Mindy was the one who told me about the news. She just had little pieces of information - news was limited in the confines of our high school. I didn't even get what a big deal it was until my next class, where I got more info from my teacher (who'd listened to the radio over lunch).

But looking back I realize how foolish I was to put hope in this broken world. It was busted within an hour, as well it should've been. Our world is full of tragedy, most not as personal as 9/11 was for our country. But every day this world is facing tragedies. There's no hope in what this world has to offer, because it's full of sinful people, some hateful enough to kill mass numbers of people.

No, the only thing worth hoping in is Jesus. He is the one who will never let you down.

Comfort

I always felt bad for Job, not just because he loses all of his stuff, but because his friends won't shut up about how he must've done something terrible to deserve this tragedy. Some friends!

But then I think, although we don't tend to offer quite the same message to our grieving friends today, we do have a tendency to try to fill the silence with cliches. "Just trust God." "God has a plan for you." "Just pray about it."

It's not that any of those phrases are incorrect. It's just that sometimes, things suck so bad that you just don't have it in you to trust God or hope in his plan. Sometimes, you can't even muster the strength to pray. And cliches and Christianese aren't going to change that. Sometimes those cliches make you feel like a worse person, because you don't want to trust God at that moment. So now you're grieving and you've got a guilt trip.

I was going through a bad break-up in college and facing these kinds of comments from my well-meaning friends. It was certainly better than Job's friends, but I just wanted someone to commiserate, not try to fix it.

And then one day, I wandered into the room across the hall. To be frank, I can't even remember who lived there now. But she knew what I was going through, at the time. I sat down on her bed, crying, and she just got a box of tissues and sat down next to me. She didn't try to fill what was probably an uncomfortable silence for her. She just put her hand on my back, handed me a tissue, and let me cry.

That was the most comforting thing anyone has ever done for me. That was the thing that made me feel like I could get over this. (That and a full-sized carton of Edy's ice cream that had to be eaten in one sitting since I didn't have a freezer.) Not the cliches, not the Bible verses, but the silence of someone who would just let me express my grief without making me feel like I was a bad Christian for being sad.

Sometimes the most comforting thing you can do is nothing. Don't spout out Bible verses and Christian cliches. Just grab a box of tissues and let the griever cry it out.

Prayers

When I was in third grade, there was a raffle every day in our classroom, and the winner got to choose 7 pieces of candy. Whenever I won, I chose all Smarties.

And I often prayed before the drawing that I would win. Despite the selfishness of my prayer, it worked.  I won an inordinate amount. So one day my classmate asked me why I won so often. And I told her I prayed that I'd win. She asked me to pray for her to win that day, so I did. And she won.

Now looking back, I know those prayers were completely selfishly motivated. But God did use them to help me show a classmate the power of prayer.

Last week I was reading up on Gideon. And I noticed that unlike the judges preceding him, Gideon never seemed to be motivated by protecting the Israelites. Every time he went after the Philistines, it was always for the sake of revenge against something personal they'd done to him.

We do a lot of things for selfish, greedy reasons. But the good news is that God can take even our selfish actions and turn them into something good, whether that's protection from the enemy Philistines or spreading the truth of his power by an answered prayer for candy.

Doubt

I hate before-the-fact smack talk. I'm all for smack talk after a great shot or a big win, but when you're all assuredly like "I'm going to win this!", it annoys me.

Reading Isaiah 36-38 reminded me of that. King Hezekiah of Israel and King Sennacherib of Assyria are about to go to battle. And Sennacherib is basically like, "What up Hezekiah? You got no skills, you got a tiny army, and we're gonna crush you! And it was your God who told us to do this!" Then he gets on the wall to tell everyone in the country, "Don't listen to Hezekiah if he says God's going to help you win. He's not!" (That's all paraphrased.)

Hezekiah tears his clothes, a sign of mourning. He's disturbed by this smack talk for sure. But he sends for Isaiah, who prophecies this (I'm not paraphrasing this part): "This is what the Lord says: Do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me from the Assyrian king’s messengers. Listen! I myself will move against him, and the king will receive a message that he is needed at home. So he will return to his land, where I will have him killed with a sword.”

And Sennacherib, on the brink of another war, takes the time to send this message to Hezekiah: "If your God is telling you you're going to win, he's lying! We've beat all kinds of other gods before, loser!" (Another paraphrase.)

So now Hezekiah is left to decide who to listen to. This voice of doubt, Sennacherib, who has all the military advantages, or a little prophet with a word from God. He goes to the Temple, praises God, and acknowledges his power. He asks for God's help.

And then at night, while everyone is sleeping, an angel of the Lord goes to Assyria and kills 185,000 people. BOOM. Take THAT Sennacherib! (Sennacherib, as predicted, returns home, and his sons kill him with swords.)

I was reading this and thinking about the voices of doubt in my own head. How I often hear one voice saying, "No way, you can't do that!" and another voice saying, "God will help you! Go for it!" And unlike Hezekiah, I often fail to recognize the true power of God to help me. And I listen to that voice of doubt.

But if God can defeat 185,000 men without any human army even having to fight, he can surely conquer anything I'm doubting in my life.

Perseverance

"And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith." - Hebrews 12:1-2

As I mentioned in my blog "Rhythm", I've been running daily lately. But when I say running, I really mean alternating between running and walking. Before my new rhythm, I used to run here and there, pretty sporadically, so I kinda reached a running-to-walking ratio that I got stuck at. Probably about 70% running, 30% walking. I had my designated spots to switch from one to the other.

Now, I'm only going 1.5 miles. So to some of my avid running friends, that might seem like an easy run. But I've always been more of a 30-yard-dash kind of person, without the stamina to run long distances. And 1.5 miles is long to me.

So now that I've been running/walking that same route daily for over a week, I decided to try gradually stepping it up. I've added a cool-down walk around my block (increasing the mileage from 1.25 to 1.5), but I'm working towards running straight through the rest of it. No walking breaks. (Peanut will be thrilled. She hates when I stop to walk.)

I've gotten to probably about 90% running, 10% walking (not counting that final cool down). Two walking breaks, each less than a block. But man, I've been struggling to keep running on those long paths in between breaks.

Yesterday as I pushed myself to keep going, the verse above came into my head. Along with Philippians 3:14, "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

And I thought about whether or not I put the same effort into pressing on toward Christ and running the race with my eyes fixed on him. (And as luck would have it, thinking about these things totally distracted me from the difficulty of the run.) I prayed that God would give me the same determination to fix my eyes on him and press on toward his goal that I have to run 1.25 miles without any walking breaks.

Steady

I recently posted about my experience with See You at the Pole in high school. And before I posted that, I was talking with someone at work about the persecution we went through in those days. She was particularly struck by the fact that people stoned us.

"How did you stand firm in your faith in that kind of environment?" she asked.

"Well, I'm kind of a go-against-the-crowd kind of person," I replied. "I found it a lot easier to stand firm in my faith there than I did at Wheaton, where everyone was a Christian. In high school there was no wishy-washy faith. You were either all in, or all out."

Ever since I graduated, I've spent most of my time in all-Christian environments. Christian college. Working at a church. Working for a Christian company. And it's definitely put my faith to the test. Some people wonder if they're strong enough to hold their ground in faith when they face opposition. I've had to see if I'm strong enough to hold my ground in faith when there's not opposition. When I don't need to stand out and shine Jesus' love, because everyone around me is at least presumed to be a Christian. (And within a few months of being in that infamous Wheaton bubble, I found it really hard to even talk to someone who wasn't a Christian.)

They say the church is thriving in countries where Christianity is taboo. And the church is dying in this "freedom of religion" country. I think it's because being a Christian in a persecuted environment makes you really think about what you're doing, and whether it's worth it. You can't just say you're a Christian or go through the motions and not really be one—because that's definitely not worth the risk, whether it's being stoned at a school flagpole or being put to death.

Questions

I'll admit it: I'm a fan of Desperate Housewives. And there's an episode in Season 4 that has stuck with me for a long time.

In it, Lynette has just overcome cancer and nearly lost her family in a tornado (but they were fine). And she has questions about God's goodness. And about why she survived these things when so many others don't. So she decides to turn to church.

She'd never been to church, not even as a kid, but she went with Bree. And when the preacher was finishing his sermon, she raised her hand and asked her question. And started dialoguing with the preacher.

Well, Bree was mortified and told Lynette that church isn't about asking questions, it's about listening for the answers. Lynette wasn't satisfied and sought another church.

But I think Lynette was on to something. She was making church into an active, participatory experience.

Because if faith isn't meant to be passive, why is it that the crux of communal faith (church) is so passive? And what does that do to our natural tendency to live a passive faith in day-to-day life? To sit in our metaphorical pews and watch someone else live out faith? How does our church model discourage thinking for oneself about faith, and instead teach us to blindly accept the words of the "experts"? (What could we have to offer when we've got a seminary grad on stage?)

And what if I had the courage to raise my hand and ask questions in church like Lynette did? Ah, but I wouldn't. Because I've been going to church long enough to know that's not how it works. Unlike Lynette, I know that church culture is to sit obediently and listen, maybe throwing out the occasional "amen" if your denomination is OK with that or you're really brave.

I went to church yesterday. The sermon was about godly words. One of the points was that godly words are few, and I found it ironic that someone could talk uninterrupted for over half an hour and part of the talk could be about having few words.

He also said something about "attending church" as a mark of Christianity. And I thought about that phrase, "attend church." We use it so often, so casually, we don't think about it. But what if the verb that goes with church wasn't "attending" like you do with a play or a class, but experiencing? What if we could truthfully say we "experience church" every Sunday?

I've talked to numerous people at Group about my frustrations with this passive thing we call church. Many of them share my frustrations. Thom Schultz, our founder and CEO, blogs about it often. (I had a link to his blog, but it looks like it might've been hacked today.) I think it's because we know there's a better way to learn. To discover. To explore. And we're frustrated that no one is doing it in "big church."

Lies Churches Believe about Small Groups

I've really been wanting to find a small group that is interactive, in-depth, and fellowship-based. I've looked at a number of church websites and I find the same disturbing trends to be true. And they are all based on lies or old cultural expectations. Here are some lies churches seem to believe.

1) Small groups do not need to be interactive; therefore a DVD and a short discussion period will suffice.
2) No women have jobs outside the home. Not a single one. So a good time to have all your women's small groups is during the work day, so they have evenings and weekends free to serve their hard-working husbands. (OK...I may be exaggerating on that last part.)
3) All women enjoy crafting, so be sure women's events revolve around that. (After all, what good is a wife to her husband if she can't knit him a sweater?)
4) Women's identity is wrapped up in being a mother, whereas men have an identity apart from being a father.
5) All people in their 20s are single.
6) All married people have or will have children.
7) It is best to make groups very specific based on the above beliefs, rather than making all-inclusive groups that vary in gender, age-range, and stage of life. We don't need to worry about excluding anyone with our uber-specific groups, since all of our stereotypes are obviously true for everyone.*

* The good news is, we found a church that offers mixed-age groups that are on various biblical topics and are NOT DVD led. So I'm gonna try that out. Sadly for Dan, they all met during his work hours.

My Life and Lesser Catastrophes

I just finished reading a memoir...I think the first memoir I've actually completed. I've never been much for memoirs.

I picked up this one because it was by one of the authors I've worked with, Christina Schofield, so she sent me a free copy. But once I started reading I found it hard to stop.

Since the writing I've had Christina do has been curriculum instructions, I hadn't gotten a glimpse of the elegance with which she tells a story. But man, is it amazing. She tells of her tragedy in such an authentic, captivating way. With light-hearted moments of laughter sprinkled in.

And even though I've never experienced anything like the tragedy she has (her husband becoming a quadriplegic after a motorcycle accident), I found so much of what she said strangely relateable. Because that's just how she wrote it. I think that's always been my hang-up with memoirs. I never feel like I can relate to what the author is saying, so I give up after a couple of chapters. I don't think anyone will find that a problem with this book.

Even though I know Christina (at least, through email) and had gotten updates as I prayed for her through this, I realized as I read that I had no idea the grand scope of what she was experiencing. I found myself wanting to skip to the end, but stopping myself because I so wanted to experience the real journey alongside of her.

What struck me most about My Life and Lesser Catastrophes is how even in her doubting moments, even in acknowledging her weaknesses, you could see this unwavering faith shining through her. I've wavered in my faith for much less tragic circumstances.

Her journey has so much to offer readers in encouragement and inspiration. Plus it's eligible for free super saver shipping on Amazon...so you should definitely check it out.