Wanting

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Romans 7:15

Recently there have so many things I want to do, but haven't had the courage to. I thought graduating college and living 'on my own' would give me the strength to grow up and embrace responsibility, but I do what I don't want, I think what I don't want to think, and there's a constant tug of what needs to be done. But still I avoid it even when I know it will bring me peace. More work, yes, but simultaneous peace. People. People scare me I think. Their expectations, their lack of expectations, disappointing by doing, disappointing by not doing. It's hard, and I'm learning. Or maybe I'm a scaredy cat by nature. The couple I'm renting from has a cat named Nana and while I don't like her, I can't help but relate. Occasionally she'll let me pet her, even bump my leg, but this past week she has been hissing at me every time she sees me, snarling her fangs, her back arched high. Maybe she hates me, or maybe she's just scared. A scared cat. harhar. 

I have also been thinking about joy and how I am both so easily satisfied while being insatiated at the same time. I was in line at ShopRite at a busy hour, and there was a woman standing in line with her son and all they had to buy was a ShopRite toy truck that the store was selling for $20 (or excuse me, $19.99 haha). That's it. Did they really come just for that? I thought dumbfoundedly but with some admiration. To bypass a whole grocery store of items for that truck. That boy knew what he wanted, and nothing else. I want that to be true for my faith. Give me Jesus and nothing else, and let that be enough.

Second Chances

I'm out of shape and I know it. For the past few months if I do 'run', its been spent half walking half running, which is really discouraging. Back in high school I saw walking when tired as a sign of weakness, and told myself I'd never do it. Run slower, sure, but walk? Never. But alas I broke my own rule and walk sometimes now. As a sort of punishment, I'll walk back to the place I started walking (or even further) and start jogging from there. A do over you could say. Today when I found myself going backwards to run forwards, I thought about how many times you can can have a redo moment. It always seems that when a mistake is made, people want to go back in time to fix it. Movies like Groundhog Day and the closing episode of Felicity encourage people to think that if only I could go back and do it again, things would be different. Things would be fixed. A second chance, a clean start. Sounds good right?

I'm so thankful that I don't have to go back in time to undo my mistakes. I don't want to. I wouldn't be able to take the pressure of thinking that rectifying the wrong rested on my every decision. Because a second chance is still just that: chance. There's no guarantee in that word. God's grace doesn't work that way either. We're not given second chances, we're given a guarantee. He doesn't say hmm that last time wasn't good enough. Why don't you try again and maybe this time you'll prove yourself (Yes, I'm pretending to talk for God haha. For demonstration sake only!) I know that I'll screw that second chance up. And the third. and fourth. Any unscrewing up is by the grace of God. The guarantee is this: No matter how much I screw things up, I can't screw up God's love for me. It has already been given to me through Christ's death, and there's nothing I can do to earn it.

So do I still punish myself when I start walking? Yes. But then each time I walk back to run forward, I'm reminded of how God's grace doesn't function like that. Hahaha. Okay, yes it's kind of a backwards way of thinking, but God gives us funny reminders of the Gospel sometimes.

twenty-five minutes with lee

As the screen door closes behind me and the smell of dust and cigarette smoke greets me on the other side, my first thought is this is not going to work. Lee's little white dog is growling at me with its paws out. His fur is cropped peculiarly short and close to his body, but looks as if given the chance to grow, might be long or curly. The result is slightly unsettling, and I wonder if he feels deprived of his locks. Ironically his name is Fluffy. "Oh he's a friendly dog, just try to pet him," Lee says, and against my better judgement, I pet him mid growl. The growling stops as he begins to lick my hand happily and I forgive his initial less-than-warm reception.

Over the phone I imagined Lee to be a slightly overweight woman in her mid-50s, but when I pull up and see her peering out the screen door, she appears closer to 70, a slender grandma. When I called to confirm our appointment and told her my name, she said gruffly, "Tiffany, that's a pretty name." The compliment sounded strange said so matter-of-factly in such low tones, almost as if she were talking to herself.

She shows me the upstairs room. We climb the wooden stairs and I go into the small brown room. The curtains are drawn and it's dark inside, making it seem sadder and more tired than it is. It feels like it hasn't been touched or seen for years. I can feel the loneliness pulsating from the stillness of the old TV sitting in the corner, the worn red carpet. Lee tells me she has been living in this same house since she was married at twenty-three in 1963, and I imagine that this room has seen better days. A day when it was new and pretty and lived in by a child or teenager. She takes me through the rest of the house and it's compact and practical. In the kitchen she tells me she loves to cook and would do all the cooking.

"You can eat whatever I've cooked that's stored in the fridge," she says, said in that same matter-of-fact way, no question about it. The smoke bothers me and is a deal breaker, although I don't tell her that at first. "I'll think about it and get back to you," I say politely, but she asks me to tell her if it's a no as soon as I can. I hesitate and tell her I'm looking for a non-smoking environment. "Yeah, I figured," she sighs, a little disappointed but as if expecting it. "I've been smoking since I was ten," she says, and I believe her.

Her husband died a couple of years ago and there is a photo of him sitting on the television, which is turned on to a channel showing some movie made in the 80s on par with movies like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. The teenagers in the movie are talking about if they're ready to have sex. Lee points to the smiling photo of her and her husband and tells me she took care of him through his cancer, and now that he's gone it's lonely. "I put up with a lot from him," she says, but it's not said begrudgingly, merely stating the truth, and I can tell she loves him and misses him. She tells me that she needs a tenant to help pay taxes on the house, but she could also use the company because it can get lonely. She has girlfriends but they don't come over too often. "Stay for a bit" she says, and I find that I want to.

Lee pours me a cup of coffee in one of those paper cups you'd find at church or daycare, and lets me scoop sugar and pour skim milk in. I find out she drinks her coffee black because there was a time she was living at someone's house and there was no milk or sugar in the house, so she got used to it. Her brother lives around the block on Avenue A, and she shows me two handsome zucchinis from his garden. She was born in California but grew up in Long Island and moved to Jersey when she was fifteen. Her honeymoon was near Beverley Hills. "That's not in California," she wonders aloud. It's not a question, but I answer and tell her that it is. I learn about the dreaded tenant who lived downstairs for a while, smoked pot, and left burns on the stove top downstairs. She used to be overweight but managed to lose it after her husband passed. She tells me that she took care of her mother in law who had dementia, and one time came downstairs at 3 AM to find her stark naked and exclaiming that there was a Halloween party going on. She played along and opened all the doors and cupboards (all of the towels inside fell on top of her) to usher the guests out. She tells me another story about her friend's daughter who was trying but couldn't get pregnant, and one day Lee saw her and told her she was definitely pregnant. "How could you tell?" I ask. "Her butt was getting big," Lee says.

After twenty-five minutes I have to go to view another appointment, and as I pet Fluffy he jumps up so that his front paws are on the arm rest for me to pet his head. "You like her huh," Lee says to her dog, stated as more a thought than a question "I hope they're all as nice as you," she says, referring to other people that may come look at the room. I give her a hug before I leave, wishing her the best in finding a tenant. I only spent a short time with her but I feel like I know her. She asks why I parked so far from the house and when I tell her I accidentally drove too far and parked further down the road, she shakes her head at my senselessness. I just smile because it seems like she's looking out for me. My last glimpse is the first one I saw of her, peering out the screen door.

I wonder what her voice would sound like if she hadn't smoked for all those years. Somehow the low voice fits with the way she tells her stories, not to entertain but just to be told. I wonder how she spends her days, what she thinks of, what memories of her husband she replays in her head, whether she goes upstairs at all any more. I let myself imagine for a moment what it would be like to live there. To come home after work to zucchini soup left out for me and talk to Lee about the past. It sounds comfortable and nice and a little sad. But the smoke. So I walk down the street to my too far parked car and drive to the next house. She doesn't strike me as the church goer type, but I wonder what she would say if I invited her to church with me.

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I haven't written on here for a while. Maybe because I feel like I don't have anything meaningful to say, haha. But there is nothing new under the sun, and I'm not (and shouldn't) write on here to gain some sort of sense self importance (alliteration ftw). I like writing, but sometimes it's a sporadic urge rather than a consistent need. I realize though, that it's not necessarily about things happening in life that are worth noting, but the meanings you create through thinking about those things. The things God convicts you of through mundane activities which then make them not-so-mundane.

In other news I found out that "420 friendly" means marijuana friendly. I was all ready to respond to an email saying yes, I'd love to look at the place and consider housing with you! when I turned to Ed and asked what 420 was. OH. hahaha.

Trying out tumblr for a bit. I know it's more of a reposting thing, but I'd blog and post/repost random things as well. If it doesn't work out I may come back here, or wordpress.

http://hsiehthanksyou.tumblr.com/

Saving Face

Someone I respect told me recently that his motto is to not learn from his mistakes, but rather to avoid making the mistake altogether by observing other people so that he doesn't make the same. I'm not like that. I see other people make the mistake then make the mistake of thinking it won't happen to me. Call it being naive, or call it stupidity, but the only way I can really seem to learn is if it actually happens to me. I somehow managed to get all of my important documents stolen while I was in Paris while staring at the gold gilded ceilings at the Palace of Versailles, taking photos with two different cameras. Easy target population one. Alright maybe I'll give myself some slack. Population three or four. Something needs to change though, and I'm trying to be more attentive and careful with my things.

This week I put up some photos in the student gallery entitled with the verse, "For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light," which comes from Psalm. I didn't think much about why I chose it until someone asked me (yeah I know, bad). The photos are kind of a diary of "light," interpreted in memories and shown through vast spaces within the compositions. Some are unusual scenes, like a photo of two horse butts, and one of me crying on my grandmother's lap. That's my favorite memory of her--me crying on her lap as she shooed my grandpa away when he tried to take a photo of my blotchy face. It's interesting how something so scarring on my 5 year old self can be so funny now. There were also two photos taken from an old family album: one of my grandparents in the early 50s standing next to a horse, and one of my mom and her siblings as little kids standing in height order. I guess I chose the Psalm for this piece because it's by God's grace that I can see beauty, that I can laugh, that I can find pleasure in small, unextraordinary moments. By choosing to give me life, by giving me sight, by giving me grace. It's a scary thing to put a photo of your crying self on a gallery wall. I feel somehow that I'm plastering a private memory under glaring lights for strangers to judge and see and judge. And Grandma, frowning so loyally for my sake, with the lampshade behind her head making strange shapes with her permed curls.

It has always been my struggle to fear man over fearing God. I'm a people pleaser, but under a more critical self-evaluation, I realize there's a selfishness in it as well. A friend was discouraged today and I wanted to encourage him, but realized I didn't really know how. It made me upset that I couldn't help, and it dawned on me that being encouraging only provides instant gratification when that person is encouraged by it. If I encourage and there's no response or lack of appreciation or no recognition, there's a lot less incentive to encourage. See? Totally selfish. The hardest is encouraging without expecting anything in return, whether it be gratitude or anything else. I guess it comes down to love. Loving someone with complete selflessness and with a passionate pursuit and perseverance that sustains through any circumstance. I think that's what Christ's love looks like, even if I can't always see it or feel it. I think that's what a great marriage looks like too.

To really be genuine and honest, with others and with yourself, is a hard thing. I'm so tired of saying trite things, repeating and regurgitating words like a parrot, leaving an empty feeling on my tongue where the words just came out. At the risk of this being a long post (I think it already is, perhaps to make up for my lack of blogging), I wanted to repost something I read from someone else's blog. Someone I don't know but know of, and loves Jesus, and has such a way with words to echo those stirrings and frustrations that elude words. Except he uses his words, and somehow it works.

"This I’m learn­ing: laugh­ter is my cover and cloak. Hav­ing the right answers is my defense.

I tried to describe to Jeff this morn­ing how it felt, and I was sur­prised I couldn’t fig­ure it out. Well, it was a sorta lonely feel­ing. I’ll start from there. I real­ized in the shower the other morn­ing that I hated wait­ing. Recently I’ve been try­ing to dis­tract myself. I know it’s not help­ful, but I’d much rather be with the noise, the shiny stuff, the city din, the glitterati.

Henri Nouwen talks about allow­ing lone­li­ness to drive you to the seat of your true desire: being close to the Father. Father, I won­der some­times what the hell I am doing with my life. I want to know I want to know I want to know. When I was younger I used to pray: Jesus, be my only sat­is­fac­tion with total abandonment. It sounds com­pletely ridicu­lous, but I hon­estly didn’t expect to be here being asked of that now. I want human hands, I want tan­gi­ble touch, I want a gen­uine expe­ri­ence, and soul-connection and laugh­ter and tears.

It’s self­ish, Jesus, but on the other hand it’s not. I just want to believe it is from you, and I can expe­ri­ence it, and I can wait and say you met me on the other side. Can I ask that? Dare I ask that? I don’t want trite answers. I want to sit in the seat of the val­leys and remain there and say I waited patiently and he came, he really did.

Jonathan men­tioned that at our home group the other week. What do you want, I asked him. I want to hear him say he’s proud of me, he answered, and I thought it the most gen­uine thing I’ve heard in a while."