I have a quick question for you.
Technically two.
And it will take you five seconds to answer.
Ten seconds, tops…if you’re a slow typist. :)
Are you male or female?
And what’s your age?
(For disclosure – I’m a female, just in case the ultra feminine “FlowerDust” didn’t give it away…and I’m about (gasp) to (gasp) be (gasp) thirty years old next month.)
(*On a quick note, I changed hosts for my blog recently and if you encounter any problems, like this post not appearing after you click over from RSS or email, or a comment doesn’t show up right away, I’m so sorry. These issues should be resolved today. Thanks for your patience!)
At the end of 2009, I purchased a small journal from Target. This little notebook serves the purpose of collecting random ideas that hit me at random times. It fits neatly in my purse so it goes with me everywhere. Assuming I actually have a pen in my purse (and not only eyeliner or lipstick to write with, which has happened on more than one occasion), it’s a nifty little tool to have.
I was waiting for an appointment last week, and began thinking of topics to blog about and I kept writing the word “envy.”
Envy is an odd duck.
Since having a book (and now almost two books) release, I have had a few people mention they were envious of my life. And by “my life,” they confessed they were envious of what they perceived about “my life” because of my blog, or my books. A few days ago, a wonderful author named Rachel vulnerably shared about how she resented me (it’s a very lovely and honest post).
When these conversations pop up, even as seldom as they do, they confuse me.
Why? Because my life is well – just life. It’s nothing to be jealous of and find it interesting while people are wishing they may “be me” in some ways…
…I’m wishing I was someone else.
Don’t get me wrong: I feel incredibly lucky that during this season I can write books for a modest living and travel a bit to share a little hope here and there. I have also eaten enough humble pie to know this has little to do with me, if anything at all. As much as writing and speaking is not a “normal job” it’s still work. It’s still frustrating. There are things I hate about my work sometimes. It’s easy to get lonely and lazy. Questions of “am I good enough?” or “am I as good as…” or even “am I better than…” cycle in my mind day in and day out.
And truth be told, envy plays a large part in that cycle.
I see other bloggers and authors and speakers who seem to float from one puffy white cloud of God’s blessed goodness to another, whose marriages are picture perfect and friendships are solid and complete. They never seem to fight loneliness, or writers block, or carbs, or bad hair days. They don’t say “um” forty-seven times in a thirty minute talk and their words flow seamlessly from one noun to one verb. They are never “too passionate” and write thoughtfully instead of from a place of raw, immature emotion. They’re wise. Stable. And go to great parties or dinners and tweet about it and it seems like everyone else is there but, well, me. They’ll get credit for something and I won’t. They’ll get more money than I’ll get. Someone will review or endorse their book that won’t return my emails.
And I get envious. (Obviously. And very whiny, too).
It’s scary to admit that perhaps I’ve even allowed myself to become so envious that my heart is becoming bitter. I’ve forgotten to celebrate the good things others do and to mourn (and not silently rejoice) their falls.
(Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this little mental happy dance when someone perfect makes a mistake…)
Envy eats away at my heart, slowly, and quietly, and daily.
And is it tragically ironic that I hate it when people perceive me in certain ways, and yet I do the exact same thing and place those exact same perceptions on others?
Comparison. Perception. Assumption. Envy.
This life thing can be messy and ugly sometimes.
I’m so glad there’s grace. Aren’t you?
The poverty of Haiti is not new to me.
I’ve blogged about it before and even given up money I was going to spend on a tattoo to help some friends adopt from there. I gave up Starbucks for a year to help deworm children.
Even though I’ve never been, it’s a place that’s always been on my heart.
I can’t imagine what a 7.0 earthquake feels like. I was in a tiny earthquake in California a few years ago, but it only shook my hangers and rattled the walls a bit. Before I even knew what it was, it was over.
Today, I’ve been getting emails and tweets and text messages from people I know that are in Haiti, or that have a friend in Haiti. I’ve been hearing assessments on damage and body counts in the tens of thousands from various sources (none official). It’s on the news and the radio and the internet.
One would think that someone who just wrote a pretty bold post on Christians and poverty merely two days ago would be running around selling all her possessions, booking a trip into Port-Au-Prince and donating every last penny out of our bank accounts to help.
But I’m not.
I’ve been in a state of overwhelming numbness.
The numbness is something I talk about when I speak about poverty…that when something seems hopeless we simply shut down because we don’t have the capacity to process what tens of thousands of people dead look like. We can’t process what it would be to pass by a family crushed to death on the side of the road. We can’t process an entire city’s infrastructure is demolished. The safest places, like hospitals and orphanages are collapsed on those who had nothing left to hold on to.
It’s left me so broken I’m just awfully numb.
I even bought Starbucks on my way to Whole Foods to pick up dinner. That makes me feel weird. Kind of.
A few minutes ago, I opened my inbox for the first time in several hours and I was surprised by the amount of people who wanted to know where to give money, or how they could help.
What? I thought everybody knew.
But that’s not the case.
Something that is obvious is that Haiti needs our financial resources right now. Because I believe in the work of Compassion International, you can donate to their disaster relief fund here and give to very specific needs.
I have no words to give you. No words of hope right now, or even “God has a plan for this.” I just don’t. I’m not mad at God. I’m not…anything.
And I have a feeling I’m not the only one who is confused, and hurt, and upset, and broken, and…lost…beyond words.
(*On a quick note, I changed hosts for my blog over the weekend and if you encounter any problems, I’m so sorry. They are being worked on!)
I just finished reading a survey and as I write this, am literally boiling with a combination of red-hot anger and red-hot despair.
The Bliss Institute recently commissioned a study on what “Conservative Religious Activists” deem important and what “Progressive Activists” deem important. You can download the entire study here, but for definition’s sake:
“Conservative and progressive religious activists have distinct profiles in terms of affiliation, practice, and belief”
“Conservative religious activists are almost exclusively Christian.”
“Progressive activists are markedly more diverse in terms of religious affiliation. No single faith tradition makes up a majority of progressive religious activists.”
I’ll let the chart do it’s work, but let’s just say that only 23% of us “Christians” (the survey defined it even further as a majority of Christians being mainline protestant, um, people like you and me) think that poverty is an issue we should stand behind and fight.
The red in the survey represents a majority of “Christian” folk.
The blue is just your average, ordinary Joe.
Jesus himself said something about how people will know we are followers of Christ. (John 13:35)
According to this survey people will know we follow Christ by how much we fight gay marriage and not poverty and disease.
We care so much about abortion, about children before they are born. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
However, I’m wondering if the phrase “Sanctity of Life” in our political language should be changed to “Sanctity of the American Unborn” because according to these statistics, there are quite a few people who don’t care what happens to the child (or the parents or the siblings) once that baby is actually born.
If they these people really did care, well, actions speak louder than words…
…What about the 30,000 children who starve to death every day because of hunger?
Or the millions who die from malaria each year?
Or the millions who die from diarrhea because they have no clean water.
This is horrific.
This must change.
We must begin to engage this “Christian” world view that poverty is not an issue and help them see that caring for the poor is at the very heart of Christ.
I don’t know what that looks like yet, but we’ve got to start somewhere.
Several months ago, Leadership Network and Catalyst did an online event called “The Nines” where they asked 70+ leaders to make a quick video focusing on one message they had for other leaders.
I felt the pressure to perform and planned up a fancy talk that would wow and amaze the thousands watching.
However, something happened when I woke up to tape my talk. It was this gut feeling that I should just roll out of bed and talk about something I’m wrestling with: finding my identity in the way I want to be perceived, my platform, knowledge, etc., and not who I am in Christ.
(You can watch that video here if you’d like).
The point of this is, how I am perceived is still a huge problem for me. I hire people to take professional pictures of me. I want my hair to look good. I want how I look to be memorable because in a deep, dark part of my heart, there’s a part of me that wants to be affirmed and famous.
I hate that part of my heart, but it’s there. I hate it. I fight it. I hate it.
Because of the response the Nines video received, I decided to do a spin off of it and made a video of me going from made up to to made down. Pulled the hair back, took all the make up off.
My face is bare.
Red, and blotchy.
No fun eyeshadow.
The circles under my eyes are begging to be stared at.
For men, I understand it may be different. One guy wrote in saying he shaved his beard after watching the first video because he was using that as a mask. For women, we do put a lot of time and energy into our appearance, and please hear me — that’s not a bad thing!
It’s when it becomes our focus, when we use that as a mask to pretend to be somebody we’re not or because we want to be perceived as something else, that’s when it becomes an issue.
I hope that in some way, you’ll also be inspired to lose the mask. Whether it’s with how you look, how you act, or how you want to be perceived. A 30 second video isn’t the magic pill that fixes my heart, but it’s a step to letting down my guard and exposing my heart — the good and the bad — to at least this tiny part of the Internets.
Have a great weekend.
The other day, I was having a conversation with a very wise woman. She is both wise in her faith and wise in her years – a mother, a grandparent, and a spiritual shepherd of many women.
We were talking about church attendance, and people new to the faith, and people familiar and strong in the faith, and sheep and shepherds.
I started thinking about the words I have heard so many say, “I’m not being fed,” and the defensive, reactionary responses the other many shoot back…
“Feed yourself.”
While yes, if we look at the metaphors, babies need milk and adults need meat.
But the bottom line of our conversation was this:
We all need to eat.
And to say, “feed yourself,” well, I found myself asking if that is a statement diametrically opposed to Biblical relationships and what Galatians says about carrying each others’ burdens?
Shouldn’t we be feeding each other?
To keep with the metaphor, shouldn’t we be looking around us, finding the weaker sheep and taking them to a spot with more grass? More life? The stronger of us can maybe go a day or two longer or leaner but the point of it is to be aware of each other and what we need?
Because we all need…shouldn’t we help each other find nourishment instead of getting judgmental about it?
I realize some pastors get defensive and say that “not getting fed” means someone is just lazy…that they aren’t picking up their Bible at home or aren’t engaged in relationships.
While there are people that certainly fit that description, there are others that are quite the opposite…the more they dig into daily spiritual discipline, the more they realize what used to feed doesn’t nourish anymore…
When you’re hungry, sure, any kind of food will keep you alive for a while…but you can’t always eat one thing. Your diet has to be balanced and healthy.
All sheep need grass.
And all shepherds should care for their sheep.
And shouldn’t all fields provide a level of sustainable nourishment?
Just.
Be.
Yourself.
Yes, there are strategies. There are things like telling good stories, and being practical. A nice blog layout never hurt anyone.
But without being yourself, your blog will never be the best it can be.
Some define excellence as near-perfection.
I like to define excellent as doing the best you can with what you have.
So, make it honest.
Be engaging.
Make it thoughtful.
Be kind, and truthful.
And above everything else, show love.
It’s been a while since I did a post where you guys ask me any question, and I’ll do my best to answer. The questions can be about writing, speaking, life, spirituality, or why possums die under my house.
A few ground rules:
I’ll be checking these throughout the upcoming days to respond to as many as I can, and maybe pull out some interesting conversations for a future blog post.
You ask – I’ll answer! Go!
My “theme” for 2009 was “Listen More, Talk Less.”
For this year, it’s “We Are Not Alone.”
Sometimes, I fail at living up to my theme’s implications, but it’s something I try and keep in the forefront of my mind when I make decisions about my career in writing and with my relationships.
Since this is the first post of 2010, I’d like to combine the themes and ask you two quick questions. If you feel the need to leave an anonymous comment, please take that liberty.
What kinds of topics do you want us to discuss on FlowerDust.net this year?
In what areas of life do you feel most alone?
I’ll go first in the comments and share what’s on my heart. Hope to see you there.