Monday, January 17, 2011

Love is my identity

Over the past year I have really been wrestling with this whole identity concept. I've heard every college student goes through it, but really I wonder if that's true sometimes. I mean I don't hear anyone else talking about not feeling like they have a place they belong to or a niche.

College is a weird place too if you think about it. We come here with all of these strangers and live with them. There are tons of clubs and teams that people are encouraged to become a part of and everyone makes their own mini life. We have jobs and homes and community and it all seems like we recreate ourselves once we're here away from our parent's home.

But what if the communities we envisioned ourselves becoming apart of don't happen the way we saw it? What if we don't make the team or find out that we're not as (whatever) as we thought we were. What if you can't find that sweet spot that everyone talks about and sees on TV?

It kind of feels like a mid-life crisis... or at least what I think it must feel like.

There's almost a pang of loss or a sense of low-grade grief because our expectations are totally flipped. We try to just pick up and go on.. find a new community or thing to invest in.. but after a while the searching is kind of exhausting. I mean, shouldn't we have found whatever everyone else is talking about by now?

This is the dialogue that's been in my head. Tiring isn't it? It has no end and, really, no hope. And I think it's a little too tragic to be reality.

I think God has been trying to tell me for a while now that my relationship with Him is the only thing that makes me me. All of the other stuff doesn't stick to me the way He does. I can have the biggest group of friends or just one and still feel lonely or unfulfilled. I can be the star in every play, starter on every team, and leader of any ministry and still feel like a stranger to myself. Whatever I'm searching for won't ever become clear to me unless I have God close to me holding the flashlight.

While this not so easy to keep in my head when I start to feel lost, the concept is so simple that I'm ashamed to say I forgot it. I can't feel like me without God! My search for identity in the communities here is meaningless unless I have every intention of growing closer to God and loving other people through it.

It's just like 1 Corinthians 13 says-- I can't do anything without love! Nothing else will last without it. Everything I'm good at will eventually end and my group of friends won't be impressive forever. If I have love the things I do will matter forever.

So this semester I want to focus on keeping my sense of home in my heart rather than in my communities. I want to feel at peace within myself so that I don't feel a need for a certain community to define me. I want to feel at home with God in my heart when everything around me starts to look unfamiliar and lonely. I want my identity to be love.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

A burden

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, but I haven't been able to fully put my finger on it. Tonight it became a lot clearer after I watched a great movie called Freedom Writers. Near the end of the movie the main character Mrs. G is experiencing the crisis of her husband leaving her while at the same time discovering a passion buried deep inside her to change the lives of the inner city kids through her english class. She is in the middle tragic loss and incredible and inspiring gain. Her dad tries to comfort her as she's crying and he says, "You have been blessed with a burden. Not many people can say that."

Right when I heard that line it all lined up for me (pun fully intended).

I feel like my whole life I have been fed up with my life. It's not that I don't like my life or that I'm not grateful. I am so thankful for everything because it has been a gift and it's all made me who I am. It's just that I feel like I've been given too much. A year or two ago I would have wrote a blog about this that said some things like, "Why is it that Americans have so much and don't care about the poor?" and "We are so selfish in this God forsaken country" and blah and blah. I would have probably used exclamation marks to mark my frustration as well. People have made a lot of money writing books that say all of those same kinds of things. It gets people fired up I think.
But you know what? After reading those kinds of books and talking in my "Christian groups" like that you know what makes me feel like?-- a cynical know it all. Sure it fires me up, but at the end of the day I feel terrible and ignorant and I probably haven't done anything to fix the problem.
Im sick of feeling bad that I have so much and then tearing myself down for it. That's not healthy and it doesn't get anything done.


What struck me about what Mrs. G's dad said was that he was pointing out how she had been all wrapped up in her students lives. She woke up everyday thinking about them and worked all day to help them become better people. She wore expensive pearls that her dad gave her everyday to class, and she still changed those kids lives dramatically. She could never relate to the kids in her class that lost their parents and friends to gang violence. She had probably never gone a day in her life without a good meal, and she had certainly never been looked down upon for the color of her skin. Plainly, she was definitely more blessed with material things than her students and that did not hold her back.

I have spent so much time and energy worrying that the stuff I've been given is going to hinder my dreams of helping people. I want my life to so wrapped up in a purpose my wealth is forgotten unless God tells me He needs it in the plan. If God can use the poorest of poor then certainly He can use me.
I just have to be confident that I can do it.

I probably have way more to learn about this before I can nail all of it down, but looking forward to seeing what comes out of this new perspective and I'm going to be keeping my heart open for a burden.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

blogging is absurd

I'm starting to hate this blogging thing. I mean really now... why did I think that what I wrote would be seen by millions of adoring viewers who commented regularly and always with praise? AND thinking this, how did I muster up the courage to put my mind in digital characters for all of those potential readers to read? Who does this?

I hope that because I have no regular readers that I can actually do this thing without being paranoid that's it's not entertaining enough. I'm pretty sure I like to write. I wouldn't be taking random journalism classes if I didn't right? And I think I must be decent at it to get A's. It would seem that I would enjoy blogging with or without lots of readers...

hm.

Well I guess I don't have a new years resolution yet and this seems kind of doable. I'm going to do this thing. I am going to blog and do it well. I'm going to pretend there are no people out there and pretend this is my paper journal. I'm going to try to keep in mind that this is for me.. to make me a better writer and thinker.. not fame or whatever.

here goes something..