Faith

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

Faith is stubborn. Faith is an insistence upon hope in the absence of any circumstantial reason for it. Faith confesses hope and trust that in the end it will all work out the way it is supposed to, and that the way it is supposed to work out will be good. Faith confesses this hope with words and thoughts and actions even in the face of feeling hopeless.

Feeling hopeless or despairing or trapped pull to inaction and to confessing a belief that it is not worth the trouble to try. Faith answers that it is worth the trouble. Perhaps one would like to wait for a hopeful feeling before trying, but faith insists upon acting on the substance of a hope not felt, yet still believed in.

I believe in good things. I believe in hoping. I believe in trying. I believe in breathing and trusting and finding peace in the conviction of things not seen.

I believe in God. I believe that God is good. I believe that He is and will be working good things in my life whether I see them or not.

Mistakes

Dear me,

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone sometimes speaks without thinking, gets their facts mixed up, writes with typos, eats candy instead of salad, and forgets to read the directions.

You are not special. You are not perfect. You are just like anybody else. Not meaning those statements in a general way necessarily--each of us is special and unique--but meaning that there is no particular reason that you cannot also make mistakes. If you didn't read the recipe and spent three times as long trying to cook something the wrong way, if you routinely fall short of your goals in how to spend your time during the day, if you have been selfish, that is not an earth-shattering piece of news. Yes, you have done some dumb things. But you mustn't let thinking that you are somehow not allowed to make mistakes keep you from admitting your mistakes and trying to fix them. And you certainly mustn't let self-imposed pressure to Do Something to Perfection keep you from doing it at all.

You are not required to be perfect. You are not required to succeed at everything immediately anymore than anyone else is. You are, however, required to try.

So go--chop up some vegetables and cook some noodles. And then practice however long and however well you can manage today, keeping in mind both physical and psychological limitations. And finish that art project that needs to go in the mail tomorrow. And remember that you have a late Christmas present to send someone, so write a letter to go with it. It doesn't need to be ten pages long and terribly witty. It just needs to be a letter, from you, to the recipient.

And if you mess up some of that? Then laugh about it and try again.

Yours,
the sensible side of my brain

Yet Another Poetic Interlude

 My heart I try to share through art and sound;

I seek to strengthen skills in hands and brain

So that I may express both joy and pain

Yet still I feel I can't get off the ground--

Some inhibition in me has me bound.

The hours that for this I strive and strain

Are often on my heart and flesh a drain

But after all: expressiveness--not found.

Until, one day the heavens open up

And golden wine is poured into my cup;

An odd analogy, but never mind

The point is that sometimes I truly find

That for which I've struggled years and years

In spite of all the worries and the fears.

Lucky

After reading that some people pray for God to give them a word for each new year--which usually does turn out to have some special meaning(s) for them in that year--I barely even asked Him really, wasn't expecting to get a word, but threw a small thought towards Him wondering what His word for me might be. Almost immediately, the word "lucky" popped into my head. Huh? I thought. "Lucky" isn't exactly a Biblical word. I don't believe in luck as such. God, that wasn't seriously You, was it? What word would You like to send me really? And into my head popped "Lucky. Fortunate. Blessed."

Honestly, I hesitate to post this, because I'm not sure whether God really gave me that word for this year, or it is just a game of my brain. If it is God, He seems to be having a sense of humor, sending me a word that I would have trouble taking seriously, and then responding with synonyms to my linguistic, synonym-loving mind.

Either way, I hope. I hope that perhaps God does have in store for me in this coming year something better than I've been expecting. I'm really nervous about some things about where my life could be heading at the moment, and maybe sending me "lucky" really is His way of reassuring me . . . of telling me that just because my discouraged imagination is dreading that everything will go wrong in no way means that any of those things will come to pass.

Because Murphy's Law is not in the Bible.

ps The other side of the coin is, even if my word for 2013 is "lucky," that does not necessarily mean any of the particular things that I might like it to mean. Yet I hope that a meaning may become clear to me as the year progresses, and in the meantime I will take it as permission to hope--or even a prohibition upon despairing.

Beauty and the Beast and Romance

Watching Beauty and the Beast (Disney) for the first time, probably a month or more ago now, was quite interesting. The main observation I have to make is that it wins hands-down over Cinderella and Snow White in the romance category. As in, the handsome prince was actually a person instead of just a pretty face and voice that represents the idea of romance. There was a real story in how the two people fell in love with each other. The love that they had was also proven to not be a selfish love, because the Beast let Belle go for the sake of her happiness even though he expected it to be the ruin of his, and Belle tried bravely to defend the Beast from the fate that others planned for him, speaking up for his character.

Also, Belle was brave and very loving in what she was willing to sacrifice for her father, even before she fell in love with the Beast. She was a reader, a day-dreamer, a little bit different, and she also had some serious backbone, both with the Beast and with Gaston (who was hilarious).

On an unrelated note to my observations about the stories: Pretty dresses that make me want them! This counts for all three movies so far, but perhaps especially this one. (Interestingly, in Cinderella, I liked the dress her little friends made her better than the fairy godmother one. I suppose that's a matter of opinion.)

On Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Oh my! This movie was a big surprise to me. First, in the opening credits it said that it was based on the Grimms' version of the fairy tale, unlike Cinderella which said it was based on Perrault's. This is an important difference in how the fairy tales are told; had Cinderella been based on the Grimms' version, her stepsisters would have been cutting off parts of their feet in order to fit them in the glass slippers (no, really; if you didn't know that, I apologize for the gross detail). So, I was surprised by that. And then as I was watching it, it was so creepy!! The magic mirror? The forest? The order to cut out the princess's heart and bring it to the queen in a box? The apple..."her breath will still, her blood congeal" in "the Sleeping Death" made in a laboratory where there are skulls and stuff? Honestly, I would have found it terrifying when I was little.

Also, I had heard "Someday my Prince will come" criticized as an attitude, but in the actual context, which I was unclear on before, it didn't seem like such a bad thing. As long as we all just accept that falling in love at first duet is a standard issue fairy-tale suspension-of-disbelief thing that need not resemble real life, that is. Other than that, well, she was singing about an actual specific prince that she had met, who had declared his love to her in a serious way, who was actually riding around seeking to be reunited with her. And, she was not idle, even as she was singing the song, but was actively making life brighter for those who were actually around her and were helping her.

I enjoyed the dwarves and how sweet and funny they were, especially Grumpy. Animated proof, if you will, that one must sometimes look beyond the obvious to see what people are really like. He was grumpy, he seemed mean and unfriendly, but he was a big softy underneath all that.

And Snow White said her prayers before she went to bed.

Godly Sorrow

^"For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death."

The difference between a godly sorrow and a worldly sorrow is important. I have heard it described as the difference between being sorry you did something wrong and being sorry about getting caught or receiving consequences, but in my experience there is more to the story than that.

When I do something wrong, or, more often, when I omit doing something that I should do, or I live in a way that is less than full and complete, when I fail to try my best, I often feel genuinely sorrowful or regretful or guilty about it, but in a completely unhelpful way. When I feel down on myself or useless or discouraged in a way that only leads me to go further down the same path, it's not a godly sorrow. If I feel bad about being unproductive and it makes me procrastinate even more, it really is the action (or lack of action) that I feel bad about, not the consequences, but instead of motivating me those feelings are de-motivating me, making me retreat further and further from the real world and the things that I should be doing and facing and thinking about and deciding and pursuing.

So when I think about the difference between a godly sorrow and a worldly sorrow I think of what direction it propels someone in--towards salvation without regret, or towards death?

A godly sorrow about a situation, an action, an inaction, an attitude, or a habit leads to genuine attempts to remedy what is wrong, genuine turning away from the wrong or harmful things, and to genuine prayer for divine assistance towards looking at one's life in the right way.

If I have a prayer right now, it is that God give me a godly sorrow about my fears and inactions, so that I may be empowered to fight them instead of allowing them to increase their hold on me.