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Welcome to my blog. Click around and explore. And I would love to hear from you!
Welcome to my blog. Click around and explore. And I would love to hear from you!
I'm really good at waiting. No, let me rephrase that. I'm really good at doing nothing. I live my life like I eat breakfast– leisurely and with the least amount of stress possible.
And I've always seen my ability to wait patiently as a virtue. For all my faults and failures, people are always telling me "You're so patient" and "I wish I had your patience!" Like being able to listen attentively to a six year old's rambling story about pigeons is a prerequisite for sainthood.
But in the past few months, I've been seeing this endless patience in a new light.
I could be a much better person than I am. I could be kinder. More honest. More thoughtful. Bolder. Just all around better.
By either my nature or something else, I am not overflowing with confidence. So to build myself up when I feel doubtful about my qualifications or think that people might not like me, I used to do what probably a health teacher at some point in my life to me to do- start mentally listing things I like about myself.
1. Keep inviting us to do things with you. The downside to the freedom of being unattached is that sometimes not having a guaranteed person to make plans with creates an intense feeling of being on your own. Being on your own can feel empowering or crushingly lonely depending on your frame of mind at the time. Single or coupled, we all want to feel included. So even if we keep saying no or being too busy, keep inviting us into your life.
Like the wordsmithy magic I learned to pull in AP World History to make a random collection of facts tie back into a single idea, your calling is what pulls together strands of your life that seem at the time to be scattered and meaningless.
My journey since college has been anything but linear. When people ask me about the past few years, I either give a majorly abridged version or a laundry list of short term jobs that add up to me looking like an absolute commitment-phobe.
the funny thing about having your dreams come true is that there is always something that gets lost in the process of bringing a dream down out of the clouds and walking into it. It gets a little less shiny, a little grittier and grimier.
"You're just too nice," she said it like a revelation, but it was a phrase I've been hearing since the first grade. Usually right before or after, "Speak up. I can't hear you."
I wonder when "nice" because a derogatory term. When it got grouped in with words like pushover and passive and spineless. When did we start treating any sign of softness as a fault needing to be cured?
I've made words one of the primary focuses of my life. Writing them, reading them, speaking them, trying to teach little people to love them and use them. But these days it feels like my trusty words have gotten slippery and hard to hold in place long enough to see if they are what I've been looking for or if they're all wrong.
It feels right to be a cynic. It feels like we're rational and smart and funny and above it all. Especially in times like ours, being negative sometimes feels like the only rational response. To be positive can come across as an uneducated trait. A shutting of your eyes to the reality we live with. And at times it can be the cowardly choice to lean on a false positivity because the news is too troubling or "it doesn't really affect me." We have to face the world as it is.
But I'm convinced that more often than not we go too far in the opposite direction.
I am not someone who gets pumped up about beginnings. And I hate endings. What I really appreciate is the comfortable, worn-in, feels-like-home middle.
And then here I find myself, again and again, starting over. Putting on a smile and stepping into a new place saying, "Hey, I'm Beth, please like me. But not too much because I won't be here long."
The other day, a friend asked me if I set goals for my blog. And my answer was something along the lines of no, maybe later. Maybe when I'm done with grad school and have time to think about it. Maybe in the summer or next year or when I unexpectedly come into a large amount of money and endless free time. So thanks, but I'm pretty happy to writing only on those extremely rare occasions when I feel inspired.
A Christianity of fear is a Christianity devoid of Christ. And a Christianity that promises a life of safety is a lie.
The first Christians shook the world, not by gaining power but by freely giving it away. Money, possessions, influence, even relationships were counted as nothing compared to the great hope that they had in Christ Jesus. They lifted each other up, not out of pity or because it gave them a warm feeling, but because there was no divide between your need and my resources.
Now is not the time to insulate ourselves more tightly into our comfortable circles and echo chambers. It’s a time to be uncomfortable. To lean into the discomfort because that is the only way that we will learn to truly empathize.
