Author: debbie beal

I’ve had more than one person in my life lately agonizing about dating.

‘I’m not completely sure how I feel about him yet. He sort of does these things that are annoying…’

It’s the gist of the freaking out, without all the specifics.
You might know what I’m talking about. I’ve done it a lot, too. The trepidation you face when you’re considering the possibility of dating someone new…regardless of how well you know the person. The chase is over, you know that he likes you and he knows you like him… but the next steps are still a bit unknown.

Do I really want to do this? 
You ask yourself….and your friends….and your family…and the Lord… at least 100 times. You run through everything you know about this person, regardless of how well you know them. You run through all the possible outcomes. Sometimes you’ve just met them, sometimes you’ve known them for years. No matter the length of time, you either conjure up things you think you know about them, or you suddenly turn the things you already do know about them into bigger deals then they really are. You develop strange hypotheses on ‘if’ the relationship happens then ‘this’ will inevitably happen and before you’re even dating, you’ve plotted the whole thing out based on your fears/superficiality/past experiences/future plans/hopes/others’ opinions…

All of a sudden, this person whom you’ve perhaps been crushing on for a while (that maybe even seemed unattainable) is suddenly a reality. OR… all of a sudden, this person that you never even noticed/considered before is wanting to date you. What are you going to do?

As much as I question dating, I also think that if you’re gonna date… you need to date.

Here’s what I mean by that: dating doesn’t mean marriage.
Yes, I know that oftentimes we don’t want to date unless we’re serious about marriage, but sometimes I think that restricts us from dating without these ridiculous expectations already placed on the relationship. Before we even start dating, the relationship is smothered because there’s been no chance for it to even breathe due to all of our over-analyzing and irrational assumptions of what could/might/should happen. Dating, like I told those I had these conversations with recently, is a way of determining if you could marry a person…it’s not declaring that you’re going to marry them.

Too often I think we get swept up, before we even date someone, in wanting/needing to know if we are going to marry them or not. Too often we get hung up on these little details and quirks and superficial things without allowing ourselves to really get to know the person on the other side. Too often we enter a mode of self-preservation and we don’t think our little hearts can handle it if it’s not going to work out, and so why even bother in the first place…

Calm down!
Sometimes a date is just a date and agreeing to a dinner or a walk doesn’t mean that you have to know if you’re going to marry someone or not. I’d venture to say that it’s okay for you to date someone when you’re unsure if you could marry them. If you know that you couldn’t and wouldn’t marry them, that’s when you shouldn’t be dating them. Up until you know that, though? Date.

I think it’s the unspoken agreement that we all sort of sign our names to when we decide to date. It’s the unspoken risk. It’s the…’I don’t know if this is going to work at all, but I think it’s worth the risk…I think you’re worth a shot. I can’t promise anything, but I know that I’d like to get to know you better…so let’s figure out what this connection we have is all about.’

What’s even crazier about the arrangement is that it can be fun. It’s a time of firsts, it’s a time of opening up your heart to the unknown of what could be. It doesn’t need to be over-analyzed and over-processed and over-discussed to where you’ve sucked the life out of any possible enjoyment that the relationship could have (yes, I’ve done this before). It’s a time to just… let it be what it is. Dating.

It’s risky.
It involves two people who are broken and jacked up….two people who are annoying and have hundreds of quirks and strange aspects to their personality… two people who are journeying through life trying to figure out what the heck they’re doing…two people coming together with all of that and trying to communicate well and love each other selflessly. It involves hope, but it involves heartache and misunderstandings. It’s not always going to be the gushy, mushy romantic comedies with a happy ending and barely any conflict. It involves discernment as you navigate through the things that are worth fighting about and necessary to let go of.

And, when you face those moments of trial and tribulation…you, at the end of the day, have to decide if it’s still worth it. You have to decide what matters. You have to decide if the things that bother you (because there will always be things that bother you) are too much for you to ‘put up with’. You have to decide if the relationship is worth fighting for (because it will be a fight at times). You have to decide what you can sacrifice and what you simply will not (because, yes, you’ll have to sacrifice things).

BUT… you have to decide to date someone before you even get to all that good stuff.

I say do it (I mean, if you’re attracted to them and you’ve liked them for a while or you’re really interested in getting to know them better based on the things you’ve seen in them).
Because, if you don’t, you may always wonder.
Don’t be wishy-washy or over-complicate things as you process through this decision.

You don’t have to know the outcome. You just have to be willing to give it a shot.
Take a risk.
Give ’em a shot.
Enjoy the early stages of dating as you get to know someone (and be willing to look beyond the little idiosyncrasies, especially if you can rationally recognize that they are insignificant in the grand scheme of their character/integrity/spiritual walk/etc.)

No one is perfect.
Can I get an ‘Amen’?

‘Can you tell me why you have seven pairs of Chacos in your closet?’

It was one of the first things someone said to me when I moved up here. Mostly I wanted to ask him why he had been looking in my closet, but since I was still new here, I refrained. And since he had said ‘Chacos’ and not ‘sandals’, I felt like I was in good company.

Because, when you’ve worked at a camp as long as I did, you start to form collections of random things that don’t always fit into the ‘real world’ (at least not in excess). Chacos, frisbees, nalgenes, athletic shorts, t-shirts, swimsuits, etc. I’m 28 and I don’t even know what 28-year-olds are supposed to wear, nor do I really own anything that’s suitable for this ‘new’ life. It’s kind of been this hilarious process of asking my younger roommates for fashion advice, for clothes to wear (I didn’t grow up with sisters, so this has been a very stretching situation), in addition to delaying the inevitable shopping trip to make my wardrobe match my new lifestyle.

Because, when you’ve worked at a camp, you know how to do things like belay, and facilitate group development, and lead debriefs, and help bring fuller meaner into weird experiences (like putting twenty kids on a tarp and asking them to flip it over without anyone stepping off of it). You know how to lead small group discussions and Bible studies and sit in awkward silence while you wait for people to muster up the courage to respond to a challenging question. You know how to ask open-ended questions and you know what it means when someone says the phrase, ‘challenge by choice’.

Because, when you’ve worked at a camp, you know how to work hard. You know how to scrub toilets and mop floors. You get a little excited inside when someone mentions the word ‘Hobart’ because it brings back a million memories of dish room antics and the hours you spent sorting, spraying, unloading, and putting away hundreds of dishes. You know that all the long hours and the manual labor is a part of something bigger and that makes the aching backs, the sweat, the tired feet worth it.

In my earlier years at camp when I would facilitate groups (especially the school groups), teachers used to always ask me what I was doing next. It was always as though camp could never be the end goal for me. While it wasn’t, I often remember wondering what in the world I would ever be equipped to do. My degree was a BA in Communications and I wasn’t really sure what that really meant, let alone what type of job I could get with it.

So here I am… 7 months after leaving my job full-time at camp, with a strange assortment of belongings, with a skill-set that hardly seems applicable to anything having to do with graduate school, but with a mentality that things are worth it when the end goal involves the Gospel.

In the last few weeks I’ve gotten two new jobs. One involves me working with youth who have significant emotional, behavioral or mental health needs in a one-on-one setting. Would you believe that my background and experiences while working at camp helped secure the position? Things like how I learned to work with students who have ADHD or knowing how to respond in situations when abuse is reported…

The other job involves the outdoors, college students, high ropes, group development, and camping. I’ll be a co-instructor for a college course where we will take mostly freshman through a seven week long class that ‘uses adventure learning and a supportive Christian community to promote spiritual growth, personal discovery, character formation, and an appreciation of the natural environment’. Here I will get to wear my chacos, use my nalgene, belay, pitch a tent, lead group development (complete with all the ridiculous games in my repertoire), mentor and build relationships with college students. Could anything be more perfect? 

I say all of this because I couldn’t have planned any of it more perfectly myself. I honestly feel like all of this has fallen into my lap. 

What provision… 
I’m still astounded by it. 
Because although I left something I loved for something new, I still get to be a part of things I love in a different and new capacity. I still get to step fully into things that I am passionate about and weirdly skilled in (because who would have ever thought that I would get to bust out ‘Little Sally Walker’ again?). 

Take heart. 
You may feel like the degree you’re getting, or the skills you have, or the passions you keep coming back to won’t go anywhere in life… but I think you may be wrong. I think you may just be surprised when you realize how in the craziest ways God will present you with opportunities to step into those things even further. How your past experiences will not have been in vain. He can use the most random of things (like knowing how to belay, or deal with child abuse, or lead a debrief, or understanding the need to be flexible with each individual, or wash dishes with a Hobart, or clean a toilet well…) for His glory in new, exciting ways in your life! 

Seriously.
It’s crazy. 
Crazy good. 

Be willing to step into those things, even if it looks a little different than what you’ve known or what you’ve expected. 

You may just get to wear those Chacos again to work….which means you’ll definitely be glad that you still have seven pairs of them. 

It’s no surprise that I love television. And movies. And musicals. And books. And…any other escape from reality (that comes in the form of stories) that you can think of.

But, mostly what I like about these things are the ways I get to learn about people who are, oftentimes, so very different from me. Of course there’s always the occasional character that I identify with, or the ones that I wish I could be like. I know that it’s fiction, but I also know that we write what we know. This fiction that we get so wrapped up in is most likely someone’s reality, in some capacity.

One of my favorite things that happens in stories is when we get a fuller glimpse of the antagonist. When we get to see why the bad guy is the bad guy. There’s usually always a reason, and the reason is always heartbreaking. I usually end up loving the bad guy, while simultaneously hating him. I usually hope for change, I hope for a happy ending for their story…mostly I just love redemption.

For example, I remember always holding out for Sylar in Heroes, desperately sure that he could, indeed, be good. Or how, after watching Wicked, I’ve changed the entire way that I view the Wizard of Oz and the Wicked Witch of the West (maybe she wasn’t so bad after all…she just had some sucky circumstances that were impossible to sort through). Or even Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th, who went all murder crazy on some camp counselors after her son drowns due to their negligence (okay, I never rooted for her, but there’s at least some partial understanding of how she got to where she did…). Most recently there’s been a certain fondness developing for Lemon from Hart of Dixie as we catch glimpses of her broken past and the ways it has shaped her into a controlling, mean and selfish southern belle.

It’s the same reason why I loved watching The Dark Knight, or X-Men: First Class, or The Amazing Spider-Man… there’s something really powerful to understanding the depth behind each character’s story, to understanding their backgrounds, the significant events in their lives that made them the superheroes we love today (despite how fictional they may be).

I don’t think we always get to know the past of the bad guys because sometimes it makes us feel for them in ways the writer doesn’t want. Sometimes it makes us cheer on the bad guy instead of the good guy and then the whole story, at least how they intended it, gets screwed up.

I’ve been wondering lately what it would look like if we rooted on the bad guy more often. Not necessarily the bad guy in fictional stories…but maybe the bad guy(s) in our own lives. Obviously, when we’re watching a show or movie, there’s a certain element of comfort as we are only witnessing these character’s stories unfold without having to do any real work…but isn’t it powerful when we finally see why a character is the way they are? Isn’t it, oftentimes, a little heartbreaking, too?

Maybe it’s someone at work who you have a hard time being around because of their constant pessimism. Maybe it’s the brat who thinks they should get everything they want all the time. Maybe it’s the woman who is controlling and nagging, seeking perfection out of everything and everyone. Maybe it’s someone who is actually just mean to people. Maybe it’s the crazy driver who just cut you off. Maybe it’s the waitress who was a little short with you when you were ordering. Maybe it’s the cashier who didn’t even look you in the eye as they checked you out.

They aren’t so much ‘bad’ guys, but they’re people that we often shut out, disregard, get annoyed with, get angry with, tip less, talk bad about, distance ourselves from. They become people that we tolerate because we have to, but very rarely are they people who matter to us. Very rarely do we regard them as people who have stories, who have souls. And very rarely do we ever take the time to get a picture of their realities, of what’s going on beneath the surface…to collect scenes of their pasts that have contributed in making them who they are today.

But what if we did?
What if, like we are forced to sometimes in these fictional stories, we took the time to figure out why people are the way they are? Would our hearts break as we encounter stories of brokenness and pain? Would we hurt for those who have lost, for those who are desperate, who are poor, who are lonely, who have been abandoned, rejected, forgotten, betrayed? Would we maybe even identify with them…?

And what if we offered them hope instead?

Maybe it’s an idealistic world I live in…but I’d like to think that if we were willing to dig below the surface or if we were willing to respond to others’ rudeness, thoughtlessness, sharpness, bitterness, anger with grace, and kindness, and compassion… that maybe lives could be changed.

It’s not the first time you’ve heard it, I know.
But, I think it’s always a good reminder.
People are people.

They matter.
Even the bad guys.
Because, at the end of the day, we’re not so different than them. The same grace and love that saves us is for them, too. The same blood that was shed for us, was also shed for them.

What if we lived like we believed that?

I don’t pray unceasingly.
I don’t read my Bible every day.
I don’t typically raise my hands during worship, sometimes I don’t even close my eyes when I pray (especially if I’m driving).
I don’t respond joyfully in all circumstances.
I don’t always think of ways to serve others well…and even when I do, I don’t always do it (I’m usually more concerned with myself, if we’re being honest).
I don’t always use the purest language or refrain from crude jokes.
I don’t always trust God.
I don’t always believe fully.
I don’t often love well.
I don’t always make God my number one priority.

These are my confessions.
There are more. Lots more. Lots more personal and specific ones, too. But, I think you get the idea.

Oftentimes I think that every other Christian out there is doing all of these things a whole heck of a lot more than I am…or at least they’re doing them better than me. I’ve kind of been wondering if we all feel the same way about each other, though. That on the outside, it looks like everyone else has it all together or has figured out this whole ‘picking up their cross’ thing and we’re the only ones still floundering around trying to get it straightened out. But maybe that’s just my attempt at making myself feel better as I recognize how far I am from getting anything right.

When I look at that list up there, at all the things I don’t do, I begin to wonder what I do do (yes, it’s perfectly appropriate to snicker here)…and I wonder how much of what I do actually matters.

There’s this balance that seems necessary in recognizing God’s grace and how without Christ we are hopeless to achieve any of these things…but then to counter that with recognizing that in Him we are made whole, we are new creations capable of much through the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.

I guess I just want to admit to you that I don’t have it figured out yet. And, I’m not sure that I will. I don’t have a 12 step solution to maintaining all the spiritual disciplines, or the secret to upholding any sort of consistent emotional connection with the Lord.

What I do know? It’s hard. It’s inconsistent…because I’m inconsistent.
And that too often I get caught up in the doing versus the being. I’m not ever going to get it all ‘right’. I’m don’t even think that’s the point.

The point is that He loves us…that He made a way for us, when we couldn’t do it ourselves.
So while we’re struggling and wrestling with the guilt that so often accompanies our inability to do any of this Christian stuff perfectly (or as good as we think the person next to us is…), I hope we fall to our knees in humility that we don’t have to.

Live your life in such a way that the Gospel penetrates every aspect of it, not just to follow some moral code and be a ‘good’ Christian.

There’s more.
And in the fullness of striving and failing…and striving and failing again, may we be constantly reminded of how necessary Jesus is. May we praise Him all the more for being sufficient.

I am thankful.

Tonight is one of those nights where words won’t do. 

Today I checked out nine books on singleness from the library. Nine. 

I think we torture ourselves sometimes.

I remember curling up in the back of my parent’s Expedition on our way home from a summer family vacation, listening to sappy country love songs and letting the tears roll down my cheeks. We were leaving behind the man I thought I was going to marry. Granted, he was actually a boy and I was a middle school girl whose emotions were fleeting (okay, okay…not a lot has changed)… but, at the time, I was sure that he was the one for me.

For months after that trip, for several years in a row, I found myself in mourning. I’d plaster up pictures of him from the trip, write him a letter or two (this was before email had really taken off), and cry alone in my room over my ‘soulmate’ who was always too far away. It was never meant to be. This is one of the first times I recall truly torturing myself over a boy.

As I got older, my torturing methods got a little more intense…especially as relationships actually happened. Post break-ups, my time was often spent analyzing old emails, looking at pictures of the two of us, listening to ‘our’ songs (no, not Taylor Swift…). Sometimes it included catching the gossip train from friends of friends, finding out what he was now doing or who he was now dating/interested in. Sometimes it meant sitting for hours on AOL Instant Messenger hoping to see his screenname pop up so I could then debate for many rigorous minutes if I should message him and what I could say, while desperately hoping that he would talk to me first. It was torture.

It didn’t always pertain to guys I had been in relationships with, either. I found ways of torturing myself with any guy I was remotely interested in…whether that meant waiting for phone calls that would never come, attempting to plan ‘unplanned’ encounters, finding reasons to email them or chat online with them, trying to get any and all information I could about their current relationship status. It was absurd. And unfortunately, as technology has advanced, I think that our ability to self-inflict wounds has gotten increasingly easier.

Think about it…
You have access to a lot of information about people that you didn’t used to have which makes stalking quite a lot easier….which, essentially, makes the torture (and the creepiness factor) much easier to inflict upon yourself.

While I can knock social networking sites and advanced technology all day long, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re the ones choosing to engage in behavior that is oftentimes harmful to ourselves. We’re the ones checking his Facebook page multiple times a day, we’re the ones finding reasons to casually text him, we’re the ones reading through all the old emails, notes, journal entries and listening to all the songs that make us think of the ‘one that got away’. We’re the ones looking for any possible reason to be jealous or worried about him moving on before us (as if we could somehow prevent it…). We’re the ones posting statuses and pictures and hoping that he’ll be jealous or interested in our lives again based off our wit and all the happenings in our lives.

You’ve done it.
You may even be doing it right now. As soon as you finish reading this blog, you’re going to check out his Facebook page one more time to stay current on who is posting on his wall (it better not be another girl…) and if his status will give you any indication of what he’s up to (maybe you can ‘accidentally’ run into him at Starbucks….).

It’s torture.
And while we’ve found ways to torture ourselves long before the Internet existed, it certainly hasn’t helped our cause. Your mind is constantly racing, you’re losing sleep, you’re anxious and worried and it seems like all you can think about is this guy…whether he’s a one from the past or future possibility. And the more you think about it, the less control you seem to have over your actions and the more you can justify doing ridiculous, crazy things.

It’s never beneficial.
The more you dwell on these things, the more you decide to do things which only prolongs the pain… the more you suffer. Each time you revisit his page, you’re inviting the wound to say open longer, to get more infected, to take longer to heal. You keep trying to fix things, to make them better, to make them ‘right’, to make him understand.

Ladies… stop.
We have to stop. The moment we become these obsessed girls in a frenzy is the moment that we lose a lot of our ability to think rationally about things. It’s the moment that we start making decisions we regret. It’s the moment we start to feel (and act) Out Of Control.

It’s another one of those times where you have to take it to the Lord… and it’s definitely one of those times where you need to implement self-control. Establish boundaries for yourself. Do other things with your life so you aren’t just waiting around, going mad that he hasn’t returned your phone call or texted you back yet (or, even better…don’t give yourself any room to call him or text him so you aren’t waiting for his response). You have to start making healthy decisions for yourself, decisions that allow you to be a real person not driven solely by fears and carnal desires….decisions that are also honoring of the other person (even if that means allowing them to move on and develop relationships with other people).

But you love them, you say?
Sometimes letting go is the best way you can love them. Sometimes letting them make their own decisions without you influencing their every step is the best way you can truly care about them. Sometimes relinquishing control is just necessary–for both people. And sometimes letting go is the best way you can give them a little space to figure out how they actually feel about you.

I think you’ll find that the less time you invest in them, the less you’ll be thinking about them. If you can set up boundaries to help dictate the number of times you get on Facebook each day, or maybe banish yourself completely from ‘stalking’ them via social networking sites, or make sure you’re not the one initiating contact with them…I think you’ll begin to recognize how in the blatant attempts to not torture yourself, the better you’ll feel. Find a friend to help keep you accountable in these boundaries.

You don’t need to make the pain worse by choosing to continually invite it back in again…and again… and again.

Do yourself a favor. Move on. Live your life.
Let it be out of your control and see what happens.
Remember that there’s much more than this.
And stop torturing yourself.

The comment:

My problem is this; I feel the need to be very honest with [someone]. [This person’s] belief (or lack thereof) and his status….are causing him to make a fool of himself. In a word, a hypocrite. I struggle with fear of saying such strong words to him, with saying something even more damaging than what he is doing to himself. I’ve never considered having to tell someone something so…raw. I don’t know what his response to me would be, and I don’t know what he would do if he agreed with me….I need some outside perspective.

There’s obviously a whole lot more to this comment than the paragraph above, but I chose to leave a lot of it out for a few reasons. Essentially this person is asking how to handle a situation where another believer is doing something/living in a certain way that doesn’t line up theologically with their beliefs. It begs the question: do you say something? And, if so, how?

It’s a good question…but it’s a hard question. Every situation is going to be really different and this one is particularly tricky given the circumstances. Honestly, I go back and forth on whether it’s our place to ever call someone out on hypocrisy.

Why?
Because we’re all hypocrites, to some degree. It immediately takes me to the verse of needing to take the log out of our own eye before attempting to remove the speck from someone else’s eye. And if this person is a Bible scholar of sorts, I’m not sure that anything that you say to him is going to be enlightening in any sort of way. I fear it might only distance you from him, causing a chasm to form that doesn’t need to be there. What would be the benefit of saying something? What results are you hoping to accomplish? Do you really think that confronting them in this manner is going to achieve those results?

So I know I haven’t been in seminary for very long, but just in my three weeks of classes I’ve been overwhelmed by how much I don’t know. I don’t know enough about Scripture. I don’t know anything about Greek and Hebrew and historical context and while, yes, you can read the Bible without a clear understanding of all of that and fully accept the Gospel, and glean a lot of truth… I’m way more hesitant to take firm stances on things that I think the Bible says without doing research on it first. I say all that because I think we need to be really cautious when we decide to ‘call people out’ on things we believe to be right or wrong–especially things that we don’t necessarily have a clear understanding of.

Proceeding carefully when calling out ‘sin’ in others is vital (unless it’s causing someone else harm- and even then, we should proceed carefully, but quickly). It isn’t always our place. And, it isn’t always up to us to determine what is sin and what isn’t. There are things in my life that I feel like that I know are sin for me, but it doesn’t mean that it’s sin for everyone. I can’t possibly expect everyone to adhere to my own guidelines, my own convictions, my own interpretations of what I believe scripture is saying about things. I think the moment we start living like is when we unknowingly invite self-righteousness and judgment to be our friends and suddenly we start thinking we’re better than everyone else and that we have all the answers. I say this because this is what I’ve known a lot of my life…this is who I’ve been a lot of my life. As much as we desire absolutes, I fear that there will always be situations where things are trickier than how they appear, where our moral codes are challenged and what we think we’ve always known and accepted as right and wrong will be called into question.

Having a conversation with a friend about their life and things that they are processing through and wrestling with can be a really good thing…but to have a confrontation with a friend in a way that makes them feel like they are judged, that you think you have all the right answers, in a way that highlights their hypocrisy while you ignore your own….? I just think it’s sketchy. I think there a better ways to handle it. I think that oftentimes we need to let God be the righteous judge, I think we need to pray that the Holy Spirit would be the One who convicts when we are unsure about things… and we need to trust Him to handle the areas of sin in each other’s lives.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely think confrontation is necessary at times, but not in a way where we say, ‘Hey, you hypocrite… get your life together, don’t you know that you’re being a moron and making terrible decisions?’ And not that you’d ever be that harsh, but there’s a lot going on beyond the surface that we sometimes forget about when all we see are the actions of someone. Our limited view doesn’t enable us to know their hearts (no matter how close to them we are), to know what the real issue is, to know what the wounds truly are. If it’s not a situation where someone has personally sinned against you, I’d really encourage you to approach this person as your friend… as someone you really love and care about, in a way that makes them know that you care infinitely more about who they are and how they are than you do about their actions.

In the end, you’ll probably do what you feel like you need to do…but I’d urge you to back up every choice you make with Scripture. Dig deep into what it says. And remember that you’re only spotless because of the blood of Christ. Remember that each day you sin…you screw up…and sometimes you probably do it knowing full well what you are doing, but, for whatever reason you decide not to care in that moment.

My point is that when we think it’s our responsibility and duty to tell someone how much they are screwing up…sometimes we need to be willing to remember how much we are screwing up, and how much we need Jesus (as much as the other hypocrites). It’s not always our responsibility to speak up, it’s not always our place. We are all sinners, saved by grace.

Pray for discernment and wisdom…but sometimes I think that it’s better to be quick to listen and slow to speak, especially in the instances when we feel the anxious need to speak.

Be a friend.
Not another to cast condemnation and judgment in someone’s life.
Not another to throw a stone…