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As I was driving through Cambridge tonight, a car slowed down in front of me abruptly. Really? 

It’s kind of my response to a lot these days, especially while I’m driving, or people watching, or dealing with long waits.

Really…? 
Did you really have to pull out right in front of me and go the speed limit?
Did you really have to stop for the full three seconds when there was no one else at the intersection?
Did you really think it was a good idea to wear that?
Did you really think writing a check was the most considerate thing to do in the ‘express lane’?

C’mon people…

And as I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of me, all the while muttering under my breath…I noticed the old woman crossing the street laden with grocery bags. The driver in front of me had seen, while driving, this woman waiting patiently with a heavy load to cross the busy street. He had seen her and he had taken the time to stop.

Shoot.

Do you ever have these, ‘I suck.’ moments?
Because, that was certainly one of them for me. Even if I had noticed the lady, I probably wouldn’t have even thought about stopping because I was in such a hurry, and so focused on following my GPS as not to get lost in an unfamiliar city.

The other day I was running late to class and the slowest person pulled out in front of me. By slowest, I mean that they were going the speed limit and so I felt rather unjustified in my frustration. Nevertheless, I tailed them closely…hoping that they’d get the hint that no one goes the speed limit around here. I suddenly realized that I could be following a fellow student, or, worse yet, a professor and as I imagined the shame of pulling up next to them in the parking lot I began to let my foot off the gas pedal, putting some distance between our two vehicles. Eventually they veered off a different direction, but it was another ‘I suck.’ moment for me.

Even worse, not long ago I was looking at the back of a woman’s head, wondering why she would ever wear her hair like that. Was it a braid or a pony tail that she was trying to accomplish? A few minutes later I realized she was blind.

I suck.

I’ve been put in a place, over and over again, where I’m reminded that things aren’t always what they seem. I’m ever-aware of my impatience, my harsh judgments and critiques, my thoughtlessness….and, most disgusting of all, my selfishness mixed with my pride. It’s ugly.

They’re little things, on some level… but, they’re also significant. It’s a commentary on how I view the world and people around me. It’s a reminder that my flesh is so very quick to react and how, despite how I might be viewed by others, there’s still a lot of work to be done inside of me.

I sometimes think we’re unaware of our own darkness until it’s suddenly brought into the light. We’re unaware that the thoughts we think about others are harsh and ugly until we realize that maybe they can’t help what they look like, or the noises they make, or the wounds that they bear…whether physical or emotional. How often do we not think twice about our immediate assessments and judgments of others because we have no reason to?

How often do we justify our anger and frustration when people are abiding by the traffic laws? How often do we justify our impatience when people take longer to do something than we think they should? How often do we justify our pride when people seem to be doing something in an illogical, nonsensical way?

I guess I’ve been reminded lately that I don’t always know the whole story. I don’t know why the lady at the grocery store needed to write a check, but I do know that she was willing to engage in a conversation with the girl who had Down’s Syndrome who was bagging groceries when I was not.

It’s a reminder that life isn’t about me. There are other people, with other agendas, with other problems and heartaches and reasons for doing why they do what they do in the way that they do it. I might not always think it to be the best, and it might sometimes inconvenience me… but does it matter? Don’t they matter abundantly more than my time, my agendas, my pride…myself…?

I know that I’ll inevitably have more ‘I suck’ moments. It’s part of being human.
But, I’d like to have less of them. Less, because I’m seeing people, taking time for them, and serving/honoring them… even if it’s in the way I think about them or talk about them, recognizing that I don’t know their story or the method to their madness.

This is one of those times when light penetrates the darkness, and while it sucks to see what lies there… it’s necessary if you ever want to get rid of it. And then, in having them, immediately replacing the guilt and shame with moving towards better.

When I saw that the car was letting the old lady crossing the street, my own shame was replaced immediately by inspiration. It was a ‘pay it forward’ moment, almost. I wanted to be aware of the people around me enough to stop, to make time for them, to serve them. It was a small gesture, it was a small sacrifice… but it was really beautiful to me.

And here’s where my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness, because without Him I’d be left in a constant state of ‘I suck’ moments.

To Him be the glory.
Have I mentioned how thankful I am for second chances…?

What if I told you that I held the secret to getting a guy to date you…?

Just follow these five steps and it’ll guarantee that the man you’ve been crushing on will fall head over heels in love with you…he won’t even know what hit him.

Would you want that?
I mean… really want that?

If you just wore the right clothes, or did your hair a certain way, or knew the exact point in which to smile (you know, the point where your eyes meet from afar and you break into a smile that’s more than just a smile, and he simply cannot resist you). Or maybe it involves the perfect reason to ‘run’ into him or contact him or hang out with him. Maybe it’s a certain phrase that you have to say in this specific way at this exact time in your interactions with him.

Would you do whatever it takes to get him to notice you? To ask you out? To want to be with you?

‘Cause here’s what keeps happening in my head lately (ready for brutal honesty?)…

I meet a guy, am initially attracted to him, and determine that I would like to get to know him better. This whole ‘getting to know you process’ would be much easier if he would just ask me out on a date on his own, right? Unfortunately it doesn’t really ever work like that. Instead I’m stuck within the confines of random encounters that are few and far between.

Somehow, I think the burden lies on me.
My first reaction is always to jump to, ‘What can I do…?‘
What can I do to get this guy to notice me, to want to talk to me, to ask me out on a date?

And lately…?
Lately, I’m frozen right there… because I catch myself entering into controlling, manipulative mode.

Because, if you’re a lady, there may be times when you’ve gotten exactly the guy you thought you wanted through some amount of scheming and interfering and placing yourself in the right situation at the right time. Maybe you’ve played the ‘damsel in distress’ card, preying upon the male’s desire to come to a woman’s rescue and be the hero. Maybe you’ve found yourself suddenly interested in all the same things that your crush is interested in, just to have an excuse to spend more time with him (‘oh…you’re into baseball, too…? I had no idea…’).

Let’s face it… we’re sometimes pretty good at getting what we want.

But lately…?

Lately I’ve been reminded of the countless times that I got what I thought I wanted through the manipulating and the controlling….and I’ve been reminded of how wrong I was. Every time there’s been heartache, disappointment and rejection as the things I tried to make happen eventually faded into nothing, or broke into a million pieces no matter how hard I kept trying to put it back together and make it work. It’s as if the harder I tried to make everything fit into my plan, the more I felt like a toddler, cramming the rectangular shaped objects into the circular hole…frustrated that it just wouldn’t fit.

As my natural desire is to go immediately back into that place of ‘how do I get what I want’, I’ve been freezing…because I’m now so aware that I don’t know what I want/need.

I’ve been so wrong in the past, why would I ever think that I would know now?
So, as I meet new guys that I find attractive, and cool for a lot of different reasons…instead of jumping into the ‘what can I do…?’ mode, I’m trying to live in a place of letting things be what they are.

Does it mean that I don’t get excited and hopeful when I run into them? Hardly. But, it does mean that there’s a relinquishing of control that’s continually necessary. It means that there’s a constant voice in my head reminding me that I don’t always know what’s best for me and that what I think I want isn’t always what I want.

I don’t want to hold a key to the secret of how to get a guy to date me.
I want him to ask me out because he wants to, and not because anything I did or said manipulated him into doing so. I want him to spend time with me because he wants to, not because I did something to make it happen. I want him to call me or text me or email me because he’s thinking about me, not because he feels obligated to respond to me.

It just seems better that way.
More… organic.
More… mutual.
More… freeing.
More…like it’s not me making it happen and that maybe (since I’ve clearly been so wrong in the past) there’s something to letting things come my way instead of forcing it to come about in my way.

Maybe you should try it, too.
And so we keep waiting. But, in the process of waiting, we stop getting ourselves in the middle of relationships and heartaches that are often spawned from our urges to jump the gun and make relationships happen that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. We stop trying to cram the wrong objects in the wrong holes and getting frustrated in the process.

There’s no secret in getting guys to date you. And, the harder you try, I think the more often you’ll be disappointed and heartbroken. Sometimes guys just aren’t gonna like you. It’s okay. Oftentimes you’ll be thankful for it in the end.

Let it go.
Let it happen as it happens (even if that means waiting a while).
I’m pretty hopeful that it’ll be worth it in the end.

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.