Tag Archives: Dirty’s Report

Of Baby Sea Turtles

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Dirty's Reports

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

I’ve currently got this very strange and nonsensical picture in my head about the Holy Spirit. 

The other night at bible study there was discussion about how humans have a tendency to subconsciously live as though we are being transformed from the outside in.  We do good works and behave certain ways because we want to be able to peel away the layers of self that are making it hard for the Spirit to change our hearts.  We attempt to break down the walls that are keeping us from experiencing the real love of God.  But that’s not biblical.

 “Hold fast & follow the pattern of wholesome, sound teaching which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.  Guard & keep [with the greatest care] the precious & excellently adapted Truth which has been entrusted to you, by the help of the Holy Spirit Who makes His home in us.”  – 2 Timothy 1:13&14

 We already have this good deposit.  We already have been seen stripped bare, regardless of our walls and layers and ignorance.  We already have been changed in our hearts, made into a new creation and justified through our faith in Christ Jesus (Romans 4&5).  But it is so difficult to allow the Holy Spirit to take the place of our own spirits.  It is hard to remember that we don’t have to do something to acquire it when we feel so unholy. 

For some reason I see this internal struggle of mine very much in this way: the H. Sizzle is a baby sea turtle.

While in an egg, buried under about 2 feet of sand, I feel like I am the sand.  I am what this little creature needs to burrow through so that it can breathe and continue on its journey to maturity.  I feel heavy and dense; I feel that I am the hardest element this little tiny sea turtle will ever have to get past in order to grow up.  But I’m wrong.  Baby sea turtles break out of their eggs, using a small temporary tooth located on their snout called a caruncle. They then remain in the nest for a number of days, absorbing their yolk, which provides them with the energy it will take to get from nest to offshore waters.  God has provided them with the right equipment to burrow out of their nest; the sand is an obstacle that is more easily overcome than the next one.

By the time the baby sea turtle has gotten past the sand I feel much like I did when I was a child watching the discovery channel: anxious.  I want to be able to help the baby sea turtle, to keep it safe, to guard it against predators, to guide it to the ocean.  But if this baby sea turtle is symbolizing the Spirit of God in me, I am not only the sand but also the predators and the environmental hazards, ready to do anything I can to kill the birth of something precious. 

Once near the surface, they will often remain there until the temperature of the sand cools, usually indicating nighttime, when they are less likely to be eaten by predators or overheat. Once the baby turtles emerge from the nest, they use cues to find the water including the slope of the beach, the white crests of the waves, and the natural light of the ocean horizon.  (source) 

Again, God has given the baby sea turtle it’s own set of instincts and the ability to survive without help from me.  I am powerless to help it.  But God is powerful to sustain it.  And in order to grow to be strong and mature the little guy has to do these things.

“…We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, & endurance produces character, & character produces hope, & hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  – Romans 5:3-5 

Because of His guidance and protection I can rejoice when the tiny creature reaches the waves and swims like crazy to the deeper waters.  Because of His incredible grace I can experience this every day, this journey and struggle in which I attempt to see the Holy Spirit gaining the upper hand in me. 

I’m not sure if all of this can be well understood, it’s not an incredibly accurate metaphor.  But I hope that someone will be able to understand it the way that I do and get out of it what I have: an understanding that I can do nothing but accept that I already have the Spirit, comfort from that understanding and renewed hope that every moment can be different because of it.

A Work of Boredom

22 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Dirty's Reports

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

So how about that list, eh?  Pretty successfully executed, in my opinion.  Thank you to anyone who read it and please remember to comment or like a post if you have a chance, since I have no idea who reads this aside from my mother.  (Hi mom!)

Today’s topic is one that I feel is very important, one that is very close to my heart and a struggle that I’ve been dealing with for a long, long time.  For some people it’s a daily problem, and for some it’s nothing at all.  It has a tendency to bring other issues into your life as well, and I’ll explain what I mean about that. I’ve found that it comes at me in waves, seasons perhaps, and that I have to start actively combating it and speaking the Truth into my own life in order to deal with it.  I am talking about, of course, boredom.

Boredom is defined as the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest, which I like to translate into my own definition as being weary and restless through lack of interest in the fulfillment offered through Christ.  That is how I define this problem, and that is the problem that I have recently come to understand really intimately, probably inside out. 

It nearly ruined my birthday.  I went to the beach with a small group from the church I’ve been going to recently, and it included the absolute perfect mixture of people and everyone was super kind and deep inside I felt like God gave me a chance to have a really good birthday just because He loves me.  So I went for a walk on the beach by myself and the entire time I was praying about the coming year and what it would bring, and praying harder than I’ve prayed for myself in a long time that God would give me the ability to tap into the H. Sizzle’s stores of patience because I feel completely dissatisfied with my life.  I’m let down by the dreams I’ve had to kill at the altar, I’m in the process of perusing a career that I love but it exhausts and isolates me because of my beliefs.  I’m tired of the pattern my life has taken, which has been including drinking far more often than is acceptable and representing a sorry version of Christ to non-believers.  All of these things are hitting me while I’m at the beach, on my 25th birthday, getting showered with sun rays and love, and all I wanted to do was drown myself in the big blue or cry. 

I spent the rest of that weekend attempting unsuccessfully to battle the thoughts I was having, which were all about death.  Even during that time I was finding it to be a very silly dialogue I was having with myself, because I would never do a thing to myself.  I really am far too lazy and as much as I can occasionally be a beast that can take scrapes and such, I don’t like pain.  I also think of everyone else a little too hard to do something stupid like OD on drugs.  (Who will find the body?  My roommate?  I would never do that to her!  And who would pay for the hospital bills if I got my stomach pumped?  My parents?  We’re all broke!  And what would I say for myself?  Would I get institutionalized?  Would I have to tell my school?  How strange would it be at the house after my poor roommate was put through this?   Would she kick me out?)  Not an option, not really.  But I still was finding myself drawn into these fantasies, these silly daydreams of finally getting to put myself into a deep, dark eternal sleep that would make a statement to those I left behind.  And I thought to myself, “Never going to happen.  But it’s nice to think that it could.”

Then I thought about that for a moment and said to myself, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I define a stronghold as a place that you find safety and security, reassurance and peace.  It is at times a physical place, and at times it’s where your mind flees during times of trial.  I had built myself a stronghold out of the idea of death.  I had started to come to this realization on Sunday night after drinking myself into a proper state, and when I went to bed I told God that something was wrong with me and I finally was beginning to understand how off my perspective was, and I would really need a change on my insides tomorrow. 

Monday morning I felt free.  I felt as though I had been through the ringer the past weekend, but that person who had been suffering so badly wasn’t me.  That had to be someone else. 

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

This boredom had driven me to find excitement, satisfaction, and stimulation through things that were not of God.  It was showing me a mirror of my life and a picture of someone else’s and asking me why I wasn’t trying harder to make my life interesting.  It was reassuring me that I wouldn’t be able to handle the buzz of quiet in my head after a long day unless there was a drink to drown it out.  It was attempting to seduce me down a road that led to darkness, and it almost worked.  I can honestly say that it was only the power of Christ that changed my heart in such a way as to feel free of this after a good night’s sleep, because the sleep wasn’t what fixed anything.  I’m still physically tired from my life, still lacking excitement in my day-to-day, still mourning my lost dreams and struggling to find the willpower to deal with the lessons I’ve been getting on humility (apparently it doesn’t come until after one is forced to deal with humiliation).  But I can see why I went through this, and how Christ has given me a way to repurpose my boredom.  There is so much emphasis in this life put on making every moment exciting and different that it becomes expected to have exciting and different moments all the time.  But the bible doesn’t say that we will get exciting and different moments every moment of our lives!  It says that when we offer our lives as to Christ in order to relay the message of reconciliation to others we receive the eternal reward of being reconciled with God.  It also says that all things are from God, which means that this boredom that I have to combat with a heart of thanksgiving and humility is in my life because God has put it there in order to bring me closer to Him. 

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.  So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…(2 Corinthians 4:15-17)

The rest of my days will not be spent being bored, I can assure you of that.  At some point I will not be able to handle all of the excitement and I’ll get to explain all of that somehow.  But right now, I will not let my boredom-suffering-season throw me completely off the path towards Christ.  Every moment may not be filled with excitement and unique differences from every other moment in my life, but they will be filled with the love of a God that is never-ending, a hope that is steadfast and secure, and joy for a life that belongs to Christ. 

Today Is About Trust

28 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Dirty's Reports

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine percent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one percent guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian character; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life—to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night ‘forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says. – C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

I’ve been thinking about how things happen in life that we can’t figure out, about how people hurt us and we can’t understand why, and about how we are supposed to respond to this. I may have mentioned multiple times that I’m a fan of looking at things from the devil’s perspective so I can figure out why bad things are happening and our correct way to handle them from the side of a believer, and I’ve been doing it recently regarding a situation that I believe is designed to plant disbelief in the hearts of those involved.

It’s easy to let disbelief in when someone has hurt you, because it comes not necessarily in the form of not forgiving them but in the form of walls. Our tendency to build walls up around our hearts in order to protect ourselves is a way of telling God we don’t believe he will be able to protect us as well as we can. It’s a way of telling him that he can’t heal whatever hurts, or fix whatever breaks. And that can lead to a growth of unbelief that we don’t even realize we’re cultivating.

I’ve done it. I still do it. But I’m struggling against it because I know that Christ, when he was walking this earth, didn’t bother to put up walls. He was so vulnerable that his best friends abandoned him and his enemies led him to the slaughter, and he still chose to love and save them, us. Every painful thing in life is designed by the devil to pull us away from God, and every plan the devil has made for evil the Lord has already established to bring about good, and to give him glory.

“Christian worship is the response of God’s redeemed people to his self-revelation that exalts God’s glory in Christ in our minds, affections, and wills, in the power of the Holy Spirit.” – D.A. Carson

Ps I got the wonderful quotes from a few entries at Thoughts from Fabs, which I adore and recommend.

My Do Nothing to Do Anything Productive Ratio is Sad.

02 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Dirty's Reports, Human Interest

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

I’ve been putting off posting since Monday because dearest Tink got engaged but made those who knew promise not to tell until she announced it officially (via Facebook, of course).  I’m so happy for her, and not surprised, and really glad to be a part of all the joy.

Another reason I couldn’t write or post this week is because I let myself be absolutely miserable the entire day on Tuesday and it took a few days to kick back into gear.  I just mourned the parts of my life that are going away, and the absences they accentuate.  Not only is one of my dearest friends getting married but I won’t be able to spend as much time with her to help plan, and I just moved and I had a great weekend with my BFF and now we’re separated again and school is starting on Monday and I’ll have to wake up soooooooo early and I’m single.  I was so pathetic.  I didn’t think of killing myself, but I did consider my funeral and what it’d be like if I died soon.  Dramatic, I know.  It’s really difficult to think clearly when in a haze of strong and deadly emotions.  Being lonely is the worst!

I realized that I’ve reached a new low.  It’s not just because I walked around boston in the cold rain so much that I may have pulled my hip muscle, and it’s not because I have been comparing and relating my life to the lives of lead characters from romantic comedies.  It’s not even the fact that I was deciding if my life was 27 Dresses or The Wedding Planner… It’s that The Wedding Planner won.

Both movies are soft core porn for women’s hearts, with similar stories and outcomes.  But the little things, the details of the women’s lives… that’s where I would say I’m more JLO than Heigl.  For instance, Heigl has a snarky BFF she works with who is always a little hung over and going for every guy in the room.  JLO has her dad’s friends that she grew up playing scrabble with who are all over the age of 60 and a work friend that she only sees at work (played, incidentally, by the same girl who is Heigl’s snarky BFF).

I firmly believe, were I in her position, I would be the 30-something who goes home to an empty house to watch Antiques Road Show, especially if my ex-fiancé had left me for his high school girlfriend who had thrown me a bridal shower.  That is way too much of a betrayal to trust other women over.

JLO says in The Wedding Planner “You know those who can’t do, teach?  Those who can’t wed…plan.”  I like that this is self-depreciating yet still says that she knows her shit, and well enough to make a good living from it.  Heigl?  She just loves weddings.  She wants to be a part of all the moments, and I think it’s selfish of her to do that, especially since she doesn’t seem to have friendships with women outside of the period of time in which they are engaged.  At least JLO is smart enough to let the people who have real relationships get their moments without her butting in with her epic curves.  She just creates the prettiness and takes home a paycheck, knowing she helped their day be unforgettable in the best way.  I consider myself a little more like a behind-the-scenes helper as well, not a bridesmaid who hogs the spotlight by always helping.

Another thing I like about JLO’s character is that she is willing to do the right thing even when it’s obviously the wrong thing for her.  She was willing to marry the guy her dad tried to set her up with because she was unwilling to be a home wrecker, no matter what could have happened without his girlfriend knowing.  She doesn’t get the guy in trouble, because she knows that he’s right when he calls her out on being bitter.  Heigl refuses to listen to everyone who calls her wedding obsession a little bonkers, and consequently puts herself into stressful situations where she ends up doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, like busting up her little sister’s engagement because she has feelings for the guy.  Some would call these character flaws relatable, but I call them an excuse for women to try doing mean and catty things while still ending up with a fairy tale ending.

But one of the biggest issues I have with myself getting so carried away into this comparison, not that it stopped me from writing it up, is that I’m not ever going to be these women.  And that’s because I have God.  I don’t need to idolize a moment of happiness, turn it into a career.  I can be free to live in the moments of joy through the closeness and love I have with Christ.

I continually go back to Psalm 131 these days to remind myself that I don’t want to think about things too big for me, like who I’ll spend the rest of my life with.  I can quiet my soul and dwell on the hope I have in the Lord.  I like how the amplified text says “Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me [ceased from fretting].” I think that my tendencies to worry about these things are absolutely a sign of immaturity, and my clinging to romantic stories is like a child clinging to its mother.

I’d like to see the Christian romantic comedy, where’s THAT one?  You know, the one where the guy is the girl’s friend’s ex-boyfriend so she won’t give him a chance.  The one where being in a physical relationship can be understood as playing with fire, but told in a relatable and funny way, because it is funny sometimes!  The story where the boy meets the girl at a mission’s retreat and instead of asking her out they fast and pray together to seek God’s will for their relationship.  Or I’d love to see the story that shows how a promising relationship doesn’t work out, but the girl has a knight in shining armor protecting her heart the entire time because she trusts that Christ has a good plan for her.  One where the Bible is presented as the ultimate romance novel, and the girl sees from a perspective that saves her from wallowing in self pity (most of the time) because she honestly loves God more than her own idea of a husband.

I think Focus Features will call me about this one.  They did the new Pride and Prejudice.  Or Summit Entertainment.  They did Twilight, I know they love this kind of thing.

Why I Like Travelling, or How To Make A Positive Out Of A Stressful Situation

24 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Dirty's Reports

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before in multiple places on my blog (that no one reads or else they’d all comment, obviously), but I love travelling and I love travelling alone.  I find few others who enjoy it the same way that I do, most people enjoy travelling with others and a some enjoy travelling alone but I can never figure out why they do because it’s usually a convoluted, modern, flakey-gypsy girl reason.  “I enjoy getting to visit places I’ve never been to and see what the earth is made of in a new perspective” or “I get to watch people and pretend that I’m someone else, it feels so glamorous” usually end up in the explanations as to why travelling alone is so much fun.  I, on the other hand, have entirely different reasons that seem to be particularly true only to me.

  1. I take public transportation a lot, and in order to do so successfully I must be at certain places on time in order to get on certain things, like the bus or the train.  And that journey in and of itself is an adventure!  No matter how early I am to get on the vehicle I am always convinced that I am late, therefore adding a strong dose of anxiety to my stride and a strange reaction to anything and everyone I cross paths with.  Strangers must think I’m crazy because my reactions to anyone within 3 feet of me is a strange surprise and twitch.  Inevitably I am on time, although the times I’ve been late have usually been the days that I feel overly confident that I will be on time and have to run to the station, thereby reinstating the fact that I’m out of shape.  Every time I curse myself for not always having a liter of water on hand.
  2. I like trains and airplanes for two reasons: I can’t react strongly to the traffic around me like in a car while freaking out about how fast we’re going or if we’re  going to be late.  Also, I am able to read.  I get carsick reading in the car or on the bus, but on the train or the plane I finish entire book series!  It’s excellent.
  3.  The reason I’m able to read, aside from not dealing with nausea, is because for some reason trains and planes put me into a super subdued version of stress.  For some reason it’s incredibly relaxing to me.  I pick a seat or get a seat assigned, I sit in it, and that is where I will stay for the rest of my life.  I will crumble into a corpse in this spot and so I will make the best of the spot that it is.  I will curl up or stretch out, I will kink my neck inevitably from reading hunched over, I will designate spots for my drinks and keep my phone on vibrate under one thigh.  And I will never, ever nap.  Because I can’t nap.  But that’s another story.
  4. I talk to strangers like it’s my job EXCEPT when I’m travelling.  And I like it like that.  I might have a 20 minute conversation with one person while travelling all day.  This is Me Time, honestly.  It’s when I get to read because I finally have no excuse not to.  It’s when I get to think about what I want to write, people in my life, God, things that are sad, things that are happy, things that I will experience and things I have experienced, prices of things in different states, and the like.  I also get to pray, and sometimes write, and of course I usually write poetry when travelling because anything else would be pretentious.
  5. I like to wear and pack my favorite clothes for trips.  I will choose the style I want to be perceived as having, make sure all those clothes are clean days in advance, and then become that person for however long the trip is.  I don’t expect people to think I’m cooler, for people to look at me and think “What a cool little bohemian-gypsy-girl with hips that won’t quit!”  I literally only do it for me, because when I feel like I’m a cool little bohemian-gypsy- girl with hips that won’t quit I feel confident and secure.  Even if I look like a lunatic with my henley-layered, sweater-topped, dirty hair and smokey-eyed ensemble at 9:30 am I still FEEL like a weathered, jaded traveler who is so used to this that she just wants to enjoy a novel during the ride.
  6. I also like the food situations that I find myself in.  When I’m able to prepare a snack or lunch before hand, I find that it’s a great way to save money and be bored to death while looking like a genius for not paying $7 for a fast food sandwich.  But usually I end up forgetting and getting really thirsty and a little hungry, so I stop and get a snack.  This usually makes me feel like a 5-year-old because I want things I like, and also like an adult because I make myself get something healthy and pay for it myself.  For instance, I will make sure I get a protein bar because it’s “good for me” and a bottle of water, but I will make sure to grab junior mints or m&m’s too because I want to snack on something while I read.  I even go through the emotions of both ages, simultaneously wanting a treat so bad but not being able to decide which one and forcing myself to grab something with sustenance while being disgusted at the pricing of everything I just purchased.
  7. I think the only unfortunate part is that I do end up feeling exhausted by the time I get to the place I’m going, but I’m consistently amazed at finding out how long a day can go when I spend “sooooo much time” getting from point A to point B and still having the entire rest of the afternoon/evening to do things like fight with my parents, call the doctor, and make dinner.  And don’t get me started on going into different time zones, which I like to refer to as Travelling Through Time.  Not time travelling, that’s just a science fiction concept.  I’m definitely the asshole who tries to call other people when I’m two hours ahead of them and tell them the future.  Because in the future, I’m having dinner in a few hours but you’re going to have to wait like all day.