As a child during the awaited Easter season, the hunt for colorful eggs left by some esoteric rabbit was always an exciting plot twist in the Resurrection of Jesus. Yet, unlike most children, I always preyed on the real eggs vs the fake ones packed full of sugar-coated candies.
I remember rummaging for as many of those hard-boiled canvases as I could find while my siblings and cousins bolted for the shiny plastic ones. Maybe it was the creation process, turning them from eggs into art, or maybe it was the treasure in finding colors that plastic-makers couldn't touch. Whatever it was, I always found myself on the slate-grey steps of my grandmother's porch trading my plastic eggs for the hard-boiled ones of my competitors. Later, I would take my precious cargo into the living room and sit atop a very enveloping black bean bag, peeling one after another and devouring as many as my belly would let me. Art never tasted so good.
So what was it about the real eggs vs the tantilizing sugar I could have participated in had I taken a fancy to those fake eggs?
I didn't know it then but now I truly understand the value and the goodness of the real things in life versus the seemingly real things in life versus the not-so-real things. It sounds simple and agreeable, yet there's so much biding for our attention, so much that enters into the rooms of our hearts and begins rearranging the furniture in there-sometimes even motivating us to toss the good pieces out. We find ourselves so quickly and so effortlessly distracted by the sugar-coated plot twists in life which usually leave us empty and sick and craving more.
I don't know about you but I know about me and I want the real things. I want real love- the kind where I love someone more than I love myself and the other way around- where love grows beyond that "in-love" feeling into a forest of commitment and security, that even and especially on the days when I don't feel like loving this person, I still choose to by my actions and with my words, and that I make the choice to eternally do so every single day.
I want real friendships where we truly see one another and hear one another. Where sharing the deepest, realest pockets of ourselves pulls others in and we build not just a forest but a city, a country, a world of vulnerabilty, of real.
I want work that I really love, that I believe in, that's true and that propels good into the world. I want to make real art and not attempt cheap tricks to get people to like me or to win some lacking approval.
And I want a real God. One that entered my humanity, Who has endured my suffering and can empathize in my pain. One who has experienced insurmountable joy and Who shares it freely with me. One Whose patience astounds me and Whose grace overwhelms me. A God that would do anything for me and has proved that through the immeasurable sacrifice of a cross, through love. A God Who I don't have to work to obtain love or approval from but Who unleashes it and lavishes me with it every day. A God who chooses me every single day whether I choose Him or not.
"It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It
takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who
break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved
off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very
shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real
you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
Getting a sugar rush from a fleeting moment in time leaves you longing for more but sitting in the waiting room for the birth of something ever-lasting is fulfilling and makes us whole. It makes us real. Don't settle; wait and fight for and pursue what is real.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Monday, April 7, 2014
On the Verge
I've been having a conversation with myself for some time now along with my many friends who are either on the verge of ending their twenties or who have already packed their boxes and moved out. This marks my very last year renting space here.
I've also been reading articles and hearing from thirty-somethings who say they've never been happier than this third decade of life. [See below]
"I’m happier in my thirties. I feel clearer about who I am and less apologetic about it, and more accepting of my limitations and also more aware of the ways in which I’m capable. I was always looking forward to this time because people talk about it in very romantic terms. And I think it’s true. Gravity hasn’t had too profound of an effect, and you’re a little less emotionally gangly. The twenties are a deceptively challenging-slash-painful time. I’m just glad to be out of that phase." -Claire Danes
Unlike most twenty-somethings, I have absolutely no fear of entering my thirties. Without wishing my life away, I'm actually kind of aching to turn thirty. I've endured my twenties (endured being the operative word) and I've felt it to be less like the these-are-the-best-years-of-your-life-live-em-up idea I heard upon entering them, but rather like a second, more painful and more obvious puberty.
In your twenties you're more aware of yourself than you were in middle and high school when you went through that first phase of discovering your embarrassment of your parents and your oily skin. You don't have the distraction of a class schedule or hanging out in the hallway with your friends as you eye your crush leaning up against his locker or the math test that will end your world if you fail it. You are deceitfully free in your twenties; held hostage by not knowing how to make friends as they stop being given to you when you graduate, the quarter-life crisis of not knowing if you really do want to pursue a career in the major you so confidently (and recently) conquered, and when exactly you might be lucky enough to stumble upon that love and marriage thing everyone else around you seems to be doing. (I won't even get started on the baby thing that follows.)
Yet, it's supposed to be this epic epoch where parental and institutional authority no longer apply and you're allowed to be selfish and foolish, even encouraged to be. So what of the old soul that would rather share life with someone selflessly and learn the art of compromise now? That would rather sit beneath wisdom's tree and eat of her fruit? The tug of war between new and lived-in, free and more free, blind boldness vs. courageous confidence?
You wait it out.
While incredibly challenging and undeniably uncomfortable, you absorb each awkward moment. You relearn the kindergarten skill of making new friends while practicing the girl scout skill of keeping the old. You risk revealing interest in the guy with the great smile at church holding onto a hard hope he'll finally ask you to dinner, without writing him off if he doesn't but most importantly without writing yourself off if he doesn't. You give yourself grace for not knowing exactly what you want to do anymore because your childhood dream turned out to be less of the dream you fell asleep to every night and more of a cement freeway you don't move for hours on. You take those weird jobs you'd never imagine doing while you explore more endless interests and opportunities to do some of that other stuff you loved doing before you were pressured to pick a major.
And you stop apologizing for who you are.
That twelve year old who dreamt of winning an Oscar, who chased after romance like a child with a net after a butterfly, and who participated in water balloon fights on the sidewalk of a small town is the same twenty-something year old staring back at you. He/she wants to dream again, to play again, to make friends worthy enough of friendship bracelets, to romanticize among the wildflowers and to take adventures to unknown places on bikes befriending bravery. So let them.
Don't let your twenties stifle you- rise up to the challenge of liberating yourself within them so that moving into your thirties is less like getting a lung transplant and more like a breath of fresh air.
Your twelve year old self will thank you tremendously.
I've also been reading articles and hearing from thirty-somethings who say they've never been happier than this third decade of life. [See below]
"I’m happier in my thirties. I feel clearer about who I am and less apologetic about it, and more accepting of my limitations and also more aware of the ways in which I’m capable. I was always looking forward to this time because people talk about it in very romantic terms. And I think it’s true. Gravity hasn’t had too profound of an effect, and you’re a little less emotionally gangly. The twenties are a deceptively challenging-slash-painful time. I’m just glad to be out of that phase." -Claire Danes
Unlike most twenty-somethings, I have absolutely no fear of entering my thirties. Without wishing my life away, I'm actually kind of aching to turn thirty. I've endured my twenties (endured being the operative word) and I've felt it to be less like the these-are-the-best-years-of-your-life-live-em-up idea I heard upon entering them, but rather like a second, more painful and more obvious puberty.
In your twenties you're more aware of yourself than you were in middle and high school when you went through that first phase of discovering your embarrassment of your parents and your oily skin. You don't have the distraction of a class schedule or hanging out in the hallway with your friends as you eye your crush leaning up against his locker or the math test that will end your world if you fail it. You are deceitfully free in your twenties; held hostage by not knowing how to make friends as they stop being given to you when you graduate, the quarter-life crisis of not knowing if you really do want to pursue a career in the major you so confidently (and recently) conquered, and when exactly you might be lucky enough to stumble upon that love and marriage thing everyone else around you seems to be doing. (I won't even get started on the baby thing that follows.)
Yet, it's supposed to be this epic epoch where parental and institutional authority no longer apply and you're allowed to be selfish and foolish, even encouraged to be. So what of the old soul that would rather share life with someone selflessly and learn the art of compromise now? That would rather sit beneath wisdom's tree and eat of her fruit? The tug of war between new and lived-in, free and more free, blind boldness vs. courageous confidence?
You wait it out.
While incredibly challenging and undeniably uncomfortable, you absorb each awkward moment. You relearn the kindergarten skill of making new friends while practicing the girl scout skill of keeping the old. You risk revealing interest in the guy with the great smile at church holding onto a hard hope he'll finally ask you to dinner, without writing him off if he doesn't but most importantly without writing yourself off if he doesn't. You give yourself grace for not knowing exactly what you want to do anymore because your childhood dream turned out to be less of the dream you fell asleep to every night and more of a cement freeway you don't move for hours on. You take those weird jobs you'd never imagine doing while you explore more endless interests and opportunities to do some of that other stuff you loved doing before you were pressured to pick a major.
And you stop apologizing for who you are.
That twelve year old who dreamt of winning an Oscar, who chased after romance like a child with a net after a butterfly, and who participated in water balloon fights on the sidewalk of a small town is the same twenty-something year old staring back at you. He/she wants to dream again, to play again, to make friends worthy enough of friendship bracelets, to romanticize among the wildflowers and to take adventures to unknown places on bikes befriending bravery. So let them.
Don't let your twenties stifle you- rise up to the challenge of liberating yourself within them so that moving into your thirties is less like getting a lung transplant and more like a breath of fresh air.
Your twelve year old self will thank you tremendously.
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