Meredith Inspired Me....

Between the Salvation Army and Urban Outfitters, I could probably fulfill all of my fashion desires. Well....ALMOST. I really like Banana Republic clothes too because I am a petite and they fit me really well.

Whenever I think about moving, I become suddenly possessed of the desire to throw all of my clothes into a giant heap and burn them....I begin to feel like I should wear earth tones and old leather sandals, and eat soybeans or something.....

Anyway, the short version of the story is that I'm torn between living simply and forgetting all the hassles of modern-day living, and recognizing the fact that 90% of my shopping is done at the Salvation Army

(which is a charity unto itself), and that I am not exactly the big

gest offender in terms of wasting money on frivolous things.

This summer (perhaps as a combination of these

warring emotions), I've developed a much more laid-back gamine style. I'm liking it so far because it affords me to use the same pair of

black cigarette jeans (Ann Taylor, my favorite: perfect fit! Which....by the way.... are on final clearance for a SHOCKING $9.98 this week, but are,

unfortunately, sold out everywhere within a 150 mile radius of my home) with a pretty, swaying top to dress it up, or with a simple nautical tee to dress it down. I LOVE it.

Another thing I'm suddenly obsessed

with is the idea of a little jumper or sleep set to wear around the house (the one pictured is from Urban Outfitters). I think I just got so excited about the robin's egg blue babydoll tank and bloomers that Anna made for the Harper's Bazaar Mini Challenge on this week's episode of "The Fashion Show"

on Bravo.

Seriously. Suddenly, I'm obsessed, but I can't find a version of it anywhere! I guess I will have to wait (and save up!) until a version is available for purchase at Saks. Anyway, these are my main fashion obsessions lately. I've been finding that all of my great fashion ideas (black with navy, short hair for girls, arm warmers and the return of the leg warmer...) are becoming absorbed by the market and are no longer unique ways of expressing myself. This has made shopping rather dull, and I've had to expand "my style" to continue to avoid the mainstream, if ever I can help it. It's a trick to be off-the-beaten-path, but still look stylish instead of looking like a crazy person. I'll admit, sometimes I don't mediate those two perspectives very well!

Alas, but there will always be vintage.

No matter how old, some things will just always be classics, and will always look gorgeous no

matter what. Take for example this yellow, ruffled-front vintage dress I found on ebay. I love yellow.

Anyway, enough jabbering on about fashion. This whole blog has been utterly pointless....but fun....

Faith to Fail

I read Hebrews yesterday, slowly, to understand.

I told Dave, "It was nice. To the extent that being slapped in the face is nice..."

Hebrews is serious business.

I was considering writing about my findings in chapter 11, but wasn't finally compelled to do so until I flicked on the TV and the moral of Joan of Arcadia was identical to the moral of the proposed post. So now I'm writing.

Hebrews 11 is sometimes called the "Hall of Fame of Faith". It's all these stories about people doing awesome things by faith. Things like Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. Things like Noah building an ark. Like Abraham up-and-leaving his home to become the father of the nation of Israel. Like Rahab the prostitute hiding Israeli spies in her house. Like Moses parting the Red Sea. Like Enoch being sucked up into Heaven by God Himself without ever dying.

Things that have equal potential to inspire zeal or indignance.

It's kind of a long, sprawling chapter that makes the reader think, "yeah, yeah....I've got the idea...move along already..." until about the 35th verse of the carrying-on, which goes like this:

"Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised."

WHAT?!

Basically, I'm to understand a secondary dimension of faith.

There are all the stories of cool people making cool decisions and God comes through in a cool way, and even that's a stretch for us in our cooly modern world. Those situations are our faith-builders: when we go to the trouble of praying about something, or (heaven help us!) make a sacrifice for God, and we see Him come through for us, it assures us that our inner struggle was all worth something, and that God is real after all and we ought to carry on translating inner strife to such noble and glorifying decisions.

We come to understand growing in faith as that relieved, vaguely comatose feeling of satisfaction we get when we pray desperately for House M.D. to be showing somewhere on the TV, and, discover, to our delight that it's showing on both FOX and USA.

Hebrews 11 (at least the part that most focus on) is in the form of "_____ had faith about ____, so God came through for them in _________ way."

The second half of Hebrews 11 isn't like that.

I mean, scroll up and look for yourself.

That guy was publicly abused.

That guy was flogged.

That guy was put in prison.

Somebody else was beaten half to death by rocks.

Another guy got sawed in half.

Yet another "hero of the faith" was penniless and lived in a hole in the ground.

THE END.

Hebrews admits that all these people were striving after God and seeking the culmination of His will and plan for their lives. But they never saw it. It didn't happen. They died in horrific, awful ways, their faith in God's salvation seemingly irrelevant and fruitless.

Now, to everyon's credit, Hebrews 11 DOES finish by saying "God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect". These people were seeking after Christ's return, at which time He will sweep us away and our salvation will be made chronologically complete. They and we are in a similar time. We are waiting for the full number of the Gentiles to come into the family so that Christ can return and have His final judgment on evil and welcome the penitent, in person, into His eternal family. We, like them, are guaranteed little more than Jesus's eventual return, and we may find times in our lives when our acts and additudes of faith translate more like exercises in futility and failure.

These people, however, are listed for their faith DESPITE the appearance of complete and utter failure. They had the faith to see God and His promises clearly through what looks like failure (seriously-- being sawed in half), and remain unshaken. This kind of faith, frankly, puts me to shame. I don't have it.

I've been growing in faith this summer. But I've experienced a lot of perceived failure, and, every single time, it shakes me to the core, like I'm metaphorically sticking my neck out only to find a giant axe being swung at it. But I'm leading a Bible study group on Acts and reading about some epically awesome things that God does for His people, but also about some epically nasty things that God's people have gone through. I want to grow into a faith like theirs. Not just the faith that raises the dead, heals diseases, and speaks words of knowledge and prophesy through the power of Jesus' name, but the faith that gets knocked flat on its face and stands back up with a smile on its face to meet the next blow without ever shifting its focus from eternal things.

I don't know. It's kind of shocking.

Dave is in an airplane on his way into Shanghai today. I have been feeling very nervous and worried for him and for us, and how our relationship and lives will be for the next two months. It's a challenge to grow again in my faith and come to God open-handedly, saying that it's okay if everything I hold dear is taken away from me and I get sawed in half.....because I have hope for eternal things and I am only a small part of God's redemptive scheme for this temporal existence.

I'm not going to pretend it's easy, though.

A Few Cunning Metaphors

In 3 months, I'll be moving into my first apartment with 2 (eventually 3) wonderful girls.  I've been busying myself with worry about rent and transportation and the ins-and-outs of daily life....but most of all, I've been concerned about STUFF.

I talked with my mom about it an explained how I often just feel like a gerbil: they live their whole lives in a cage.  They dig through their sawdust to get to the bottom of things.  They get there, turn around, and realize that all their digging has created a big, unmanageable pile behind them.  That's my life.  I live in a cage full of useless, meaningless stuff, and I spend all my time just managing my possessions.  I never get to the bottom of  things without creating more problems for myself.

In any case, I have to deal with a great deal of "stuff" as I anticipate this apartment move.  On the one hand, there is so much that I feel I need.  On the other hand, I wonder if I'll have room to store it all.  My daily life is a constant oscillation between these two concerns, so it's interesting to realize the parallels between this issue, and the things going on in my spiritual as of late.

My heart is like a house.  My schoolwork is one room, my career ambitions are a room, then there's my family, my attitudes, my entertainment, sexuality, friends, hobbies......but between so many of those rooms, the doors are closed.

There is so much of God that I long to understand.  I want to keep packing in the facts and the knowledge and the experiences, but my tiny room that I've given over to God is already full of facts, but those facts have no meaning because they are not where they belong.  They're just packed in from floor to cieling.  Just like a blender has no meaning if it's not on the kitchen counter, or like a TV remote divorced from the TV set is a useless piece of plastic and wires, all the spiritual knowledge and memory verses and junk have no real meaning to me because I've kept them shut up in a dark, tiny room instead of opening the doors and letting God have the ENTIRE house.  Only when I allow God to move the blender into the kitchen and the TV remote into the living room of my heart can those spiritual facts and knowledge truly gain meaning.  

I see now that the "more" I've been begging God for isn't something I can have right now.  There's just not room.  First, I need to open up the doors and let God into my schoolwork, let God into my career, into my family, into my attitudes, entertainment, sexuality, friends, hobbies....I need to start working with Him to open doors and have experiences that will begin to put the meaningless bits of spiritual knowledge into their proper and meaningful places in the home of my heart.  When things start getting put in their proper places, maybe I'll start to have room for some of the "more" that I've been asking for.  I've been longing for a life where the sun shines through the windows, and there's a warm breeze you can feel everywhere-- a heart house where I don't feel addled, and I'm safe no matter how vulnerable.  I need to open up, and build a foundation of genuine belief rather than just a tiny room crammed with Bible verses and "right answers" that mean nothing to me.

It's a hard realization to come to, partly because I have been so excited about the "more" that God has to offer, and so disappointed to hear God say no when I ask for it.  It's been hard to trust that He really wants the best for me.  But this is a good thing.  And if this is what God is leading me towards, then it's the best thing.