Procrastination, Purposeful Insomnia, and so much Fear

It is nearly 3am and I should be doing one of two things: reading homework or sleeping. Because I have no desire to read and thus am not giving myself permission to sleep, I figured maybe I'd try to clear my head by writing.

My life just can't seem to slow down right now. I have class and work and small group and DCRCC and homework and church and (hopefully) friends and...the list goes on. It's six weeks into the semester and I'm already procrastinating on my homework and papers till the very last minute. I can't seem to force myself to focus, and I'm not sure why.

On an entirely unrelated note: we talked in small group today about God's radical call on our lives, the power that that gives us, and our duty to live that out. For the past several months, God has been pounding 2 Timothy 1:9 into my head: "For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind." I know that God is telling me to stop being fearful/timid/intimidated about/by what others might think of me, and instead to truly live a radical, changed life for Him. But stepping out like that brings so many questions. I don't want to be one of those people. You know who I'm talking about. One of those people who constantly talks about "God," and "faith," and a "relationship with Jesus" and so many other things with such courage and yet such utter irrelevance that even I, a devout Christian, shrink away from. So for fear of seeming like a crazy, irrelevant Bible thumper, I hide my faith from my friends outside of Chi Alpha and only really mention it in contrast with those "crazy" Christians in an effort to try and prove that we're not all like "them."

But I'm afraid that, in my efforts to stay "relevant," I have simply become silent. I am a huge proponent of evangelism through example, of living the type of life that inevitably calls for inquiries and naturally leads to genuine conversations about faith. But I often doubt that I'm living that kind of life. My life, to the outside observer, seems fairly average. I don't talk about my convictions which may make me seem "different" for fear of seeming "strange." And now that this has gone on for so long, I'm afraid that, if I did start talking about my faith regularly, my testimony would be weakened by the months of non-sharing.

I'm sarcastic and I swear and I'm not always nice and I get tired and cranky and sullen and depressed and I slip on my convictions and I have secrets and I don't have it all together. And I'm human. And somewhere in the back of my mind I still have this notion that, in order to have an effective testimony, I have to be one of two things: a) perfect from the moment I was born or b) have a horribly wretched background, an amazing conversion tale, and am now perfect. Needless to say, I am neither.

I don't know what it looks like to live a transparently imperfect life as a testimony to others. I don't know how to be vulnerable and to freely admit that I'm not perfect but I'm trying to live a life that's different from the rest of this world.

I don't fit the mold of what it looks like to be a devout Christian in today's world. For starters, I'm a crazy liberal feminist. For the most part, I can't stand the Republican Party, and I believe that they, in their claims to God and faith, give Christianity a horrible name. I struggle with and often find ways to rationalize away or outright dismiss the traditional gender roles which the Bible seems to purport. I'm obsessed with and addicted to tattoos and I don't always watch my tongue as closely as maybe I should.

At the same time, I have an incredible calling on my life to fight for the least in this world, to bring justice to broken situations, and to see God's image in every human being. I am not shy about my love for people, especially broken and hurting people. I don't just see the least in those whom it is easy to love: the babies half way around the world dying of AIDS, the rape victims, the sick and needy who have done nothing to deserve their hardship. No, I also see the least in the outcast and the downtrodden, in the homosexuals, in the imprisoned, in the homeless, in the gang members, in the welfare dependent, in the mentally ill, in the convicted robbers and murderers, in the pedophiles, in those that society forgot about years ago. These people too, are the least in this world. They, too, deserve justice and equality. They, too, are recipients of God's love. I feel God's heart inside of me for these and so many others.

I know that this is the type of radical life that Christ called me to, but does simply following this calling on my life to help the least in the world make me a good evangelist? Or do I need to do more than that? Street corner evangelism never has been, and I'm positive never will be my thing. But what does it look like to boldly live out and talk about my faith? Do I need to be worried about compromising my testimony or turning people away or perpetuating the pain of an already so hurtful church? Why am I still struggling with so much fear and so much timidity? I try to continually claim God's power, I know that I have His love, and I don't think that my soundness of mind is in question. So why do I still have this spirit of fear that Paul warns Timothy about? When will this verse get through my thick head, into my heart, and back out through my life? Maybe once I figure out how it'd look cool tattooed on me...

Worries, Conundrums, and New Adventures.

So I'm two weeks in to my training to be a volunteer counselor/advocate at the DC Rape Crisis Centre. We did our first hotline call role-play tonight and it was both one of the most terrifying and exhilarating experiences of my life.

I've been waiting to do this for a long time now: find a way to tangibly help those affected by sexual assault and rape. I am devoting my life to this cause, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm actually making a difference.

I'm worried though. The reason why I chose to go down the route of prosecutor and not counselor is because I'm the type of person who needs to get into the fight. I'm also a firm believer in the criminal justice system and in bringing the perpetrators to justice. Yet my role as a hotline counselor and hospital advocate is not to push the survivor in any given direction but instead just to be there, to listen, and to provide resources and information. It's not my job to give advice or to tell the survivor what I think that they should do. I found that trusting my instincts is really helpful on hotline calls, but how do I make sure that I suppress my instinct to push the survivor in the direction that I think they should go?

I have this incredible call on my life and passion in my heart to help the least in this world. I can't shut it off. It doesn't go away after the time and tears and years and fears. And yet despite this passion inside, the actual physical actions which I take on behalf of my fellow man so far have been minuscule. I've been on a couple missions trips. I support a couple kids. I rally for a few causes. But the majority of my life right now is lived in the waiting, in the preparation, in the academic. It's the nature of being a student: preparing for the life you truly want to live (or at least for the career you think you want). As many of my professors have said, this is the one time in my life where I will have the freedom to ask the questions, the time to philosophize and wonder, the encouragement just to think and to learn. And it is undeniably and unquestionably one of the favourite parts of life.

So my life right now is a continuous conundrum: frustration at living in a state of perpetual suspended animation, waiting to be able to pursue my true passion, all the while absolutely adoring living within the hollowed halls of academia and not having to actually step out into the real world of hard work and true responsibility.

I'm also wondering if there can be such a thing as true altruism. Can a person truly do something for another person(s) out of entirely selfless motivations? Or am I only volunteering at DCRCC to gain a new set of skills, to enhance my resume, and to get a good feeling inside? I'm contemplating going on a missions trip to Greece this coming summer, but I don't want to go if my only motivations are selfish. Obviously, when it comes to any trip to an amazing place like Greece, there's going to be some selfish desire to see the country, but I honestly do care about the cause, and I want to make a difference. Is it selfish to want to get first hand experience dealing with an issue which I am passionate about? Can one person on one missions trip through one church really make any difference? Or can the only purpose behind short term missions be egocentric? Do we do it to feel better about ourselves, to feel less guilty about our wealth and our comfortable, easy lives?

I wrote this poem several years ago about the idea of giving away money to a worthy cause (fighting AIDS in Zambia) just to assuage our own guilt, and it keeps popping into my head:

I’m not writing this to ride you down with guilt
Until you crawl home and drop a bill
Into a little orange box
With pictures of smiling faces you’ll never know.
Just so that you can once again forget
That there is life beyond
Your megamalls, iTunes, and facebook blogs.

You’re continually spoon fed messages
That if you just
DO SOMETHING
You’re better than everyone else
In this wretched, immoral world
But does it really make you better?
When you know what’s really going on
Yet feel that your job is done
Once those coins hit that box?

Yes, it’s true that every penny helps,
But when we spend 5 dollars every day
On coffee alone,
I have to ask, are pennies really enough?

The average person in this blissfully ignorant country
Spends more money on coffee every day
Than millions of people live on in a week
And it just doesn’t seem right.

Yet every day I hear another one boast:
“We’re the best country in the world!”
And I have to ask,
How can you be so ignorant?

Even though God demands our first 10%,
As a supposedly Christian nation,
You can’t even muster 1%
To save the lives of their dying children!

But, wait, I forgot:
You’re spending that money
Finding new ways to kill your children.

You spend your millions
On the perfect body, car, and clothes
While another one dies
Because you can’t spare enough to save her.

Or maybe you do save one,
And you think it’s enough
So you return to the comfort
Of your American Dream
And you press on in the hopes that one day –

But what if you tried something different?
What if you thought about that woman?
Who loves her kid so much
That she would knowingly subject herself
To death by AIDS
Just so her little girl can eat for one more day

She makes the same amount of money
Selling her body on the streets
That you carelessly throw into that box
At the end of every day.

What if, for once, you loved this woman?
Who has more love in her
Than you could ever hope to have
Even though she has nothing in this world.

We always claim that, by giving a dollar
We’re being Jesus to these people,
But, truly, who’s more like Christ?
The one who drops their pocket change into a little box
Just to feel better about themselves
Or the one who lays down her life for her daughter?

Truly, whatever you do for this woman,
You do for Christ.

So I’m not going to tell you what you need to do
You already know
And it doesn’t involve going home
And emptying your pockets
Into a little orange box

Stop talking, and start acting.
And never stop.

Because even though life goes on for you,
If you don’t make a difference,
Who will make sure her life does to?

So never stop.

I don't want to become the very person that I'm frustrated with in this poem. I don't want to be a person who just gives a few dollars and maybe a few hours just so that I can move on with my life without feeling guilty.

I want to be the type of person that truly can act altruistically. But does volunteering at DCRCC qualify? My guess would be probably, but what about this missions trip to fight human trafficking in Greece? It reminds me a little of the missions trip that my high school youth group went on to the Bahamas several years ago. I didn't go with and one of the reasons was because...well...the Bahamas? For a missions trip? Really?? And I think part of my has that same reaction to the idea of Greece as a destination for a supposedly altruistic venture. But the fact of the matter is that Europe is becoming a stronghold for human trafficking and the A21 Campaign is doing phenomenal work there. So I guess I just need to check my motives. And find out more info about what NCC will actually be doing there.

But maybe I'm over-thinking all of this. Jesus said, "Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me." I believe that every individual on the face of this earth is made in the image of God and thus deserves equality and deserves justice. So if I can bring some little bit of justice and/or equality to the lives of those who have been sold and trafficked as sex slaves half way across the world, then count me in. Jesus doesn't say "Whatever you do for the least of these as long as your motives are entirely altruistic, you do for me." I think I just need to keep getting out there. And keep doing something. And never stop.

The Ethics of Living

My life is getting busier, and I am finding taking the time to actually sit down, and just think, process, and write to be nearly impossible. Beyond my own busyness, the free moments that I do have are filled with pointless exercises in mindlessness and numbness. I add more and more TV shows and online activities to my schedule, possibly in an attempt to avoid the very thing that I long to find the time to do. I mourn my loss of creativity and my ever lessening attention span. For at least a decade of my life, I spent hours upon hours on end just reading and absorbing as much written information as I could. Now, the very notion of reading a book for fun seems exhausting. I also used to find such clarity and fulfillment putting pen to paper (or cursor to screen, as the case may be) and muddling through the convolution that is my brain. Beyond the clarity that came from my writing, I also used to have such creativity, such beauty, such poetry. I long to rediscover that part of my voice. As I have spent the past fifteen years developing and perfecting my academic voice, my creative voice has become stifled and halting due to lack of use.

There are so many questions swarming around my head. So many life decisions to ponder, so much philosophy to work through. Many of my classes right now focus on major issues like the meaning of life or the theories of punishment or the idea of deviance. Nearly every time I leave these classes I tell myself that I should take the time to really meditate on these questions, to truly figure out my own thoughts. So maybe this is my beginning attempt at that. Maybe this is just me rambling (which is probably more accurate).

My thoughts are rarely coherent or well developed. I process my thoughts as they come to me, not before, so I will make no apologies for this stream-of-conscious production. I make no promises about my insight or poetry or genius. My thoughts are what they are. They are scarred and broken and tainted and faltering. But they are mine and they are important.

One of the biggest questions that has been disturbing me recently is the attempts in my philosophy class at defining the value of life. As an opening premise, my professor dismissed the idea of afterlife based upon religious faith as a reason for living, as that can never be universally proven or accepted and is thus irrelevant to an intelligent academic conversation. While I can accept this notion in theory, when it really comes down to defining life’s importance, I cannot shake my belief system for the sake of academic discussion.

When discussed in this purely academic setting, the conclusion which everyone seemed to settle upon is that human life is valued as the ability to autonomously act and contribute to one’s own life. A “good life" is defined by the individual and dependent upon whether or not that individual feels that their life has value and significance.

As these thoughts and ideas where swirling around the room, I instinctively and repetitively scrawled the words that define the reason why I am still alive: “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” Having been to a place where I did not feel that my life had significance on its own , the only thing that pulled me back, that stopped that knife, that threw away those pills was the knowledge that my purpose on this earth is not my own ability to feel value and significance in this mystery called living. Instead, I remain on this earth because of one basic fact: “To live is Christ.” This is a conundrum that I still don’t fully understand. The second half of Philippians 1:21 comes easily to me. The concept of death as gain resonates inside. The latter portion of Paul's maxim calls to me in the uncertainty, in the questions, in the darkness. It is a continuous fight to accept the former.

Now, I am nowhere near the depressive suicide risk that I was three years ago. But I honestly don’t believe that I will ever be in a place where, without Christ, I would believe that life is gain. This world is harsh and broken and contains so many unanswered questions and so very much suffering. This life is not gain. But, oh, how much gain is to be had in living and dying for my lover, my Saviour.

Every day I must deny my own selfish desires to end my life in order to achieve the immeasurably great gain of everlasting life. I stave off this desire for no other reason than the commission of my Lord. I choose to remain alive solely because my God calls me to this life. I do not live because of some gain that I can find for myself, in myself. Even if I lose all my capacities, my family, my friends, my functioning mind, my very body, I will still choose to go on living because of this one basic truth: “To live is Christ.”