The Value In Truth

You remember the feeling: there you are, six years old, standing guiltily in front of the teacher as your peer with a bloody nose is wailing behind you. The teacher looks irked, to say the least,

“[insert your name here], did you punch Johnny in the nose?”

You look at your slightly bloody fist, and then over at the crying kid, and then back to the teacher. Your palms sweat and your heart picks up. Should you lie? Or should you tell the truth?

As our six-year-old selves discovered, sometimes there isn’t too much time to weigh the pros and cons of both truth and lie before we have to choose which one to go with. I’ll be honest: I’m plenty old and I’ve told plenty of lies in my life, I’m sorry to say. But I’m far from perfect. Who isn’t? Granted, I believe there are certain times when lying may perhaps be the better choice in some circumstances (some may disagree, that’s ok) but for now we’ll just talk about why telling the truth can be so great.

It seems obvious, doesn’t it? “Always tell the truth” is practically the first lesson our parents teach us as soon as we can chew (and throw) solid foods. But such a simple thing as a lie can escalate so easily. Take the movie The Debt, for example. (For those of you who haven’t seen it, see the synopsis here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Debt_(2011_film) There are definitely spoilers, by the way.) In the movie, Rachel has to live with a lie for most of her adult life, until she finally decides to tell the truth. In the film, the lie she tells poses potentially catastrophic results if uncovered, and that’s the trouble with lies.

Just last week, I was faced with a choice–just like the six-year-old in the story above–of either telling the truth or lying, and I had to choose quickly. I will admit, it was somewhat difficult to tell the truth; if I had lied there was a chance that the events that had occurred would have been instantly resolved. Heck, there might not have even been a problem in the first place. But something inside me told me I needed to be honest. Even though the outcome of being truthful looked bleak, (I assure you, it looked pretty bleak) I would have felt even worse if I hadn’t. Please, God, help me with this. I’m going to just tell the truth, plain and simple, and I don’t know what the outcome will be. But whatever it will be, let it be what you want it to be. It was hard for me to pray this prayer, but I did because I realized that the circumstances were suddenly going to be beyond my control as soon as the decision was made.

Fortunately everything turned out okay in the end and the issue was resolved. But what if things hadn’t turned out so rosy? I’ve asked myself this for a couple of days now, and I think only God would know the answer to that. What matters the most is the decision I made in the moment, and luckily, it happened to be the right one.

The One-Sided Conversation

I have never been a big conversationalist. I’m not saying that I suffer from some kind of sudden breakdown of my temporal lobe every time I enter a room full of people, but I definitely have the tendency to clam up in those situations unless I feel that I have something profound to add to the conversation (which is rare.)

From what I can remember, it has always been this way. Take the time that my pastor back home decided to have a youth meeting at a coffee shop with the various college-attendees of my church a few summers ago. I decided to go, thinking there would be coffee and quiet chattering with a few people I knew; after all, not everyone has time to go to these things, do they?

Ah, how wrong I was. As I sat in the large semi-circle amid the up-and-coming leaders-of-tomorrow, I listened, I crossed my legs and switched them every now and again to avoid getting future varicose veins, I thought of things to say and then forgot them, I tried to remember people’s names, I studied the wood flooring, I played with my jacket buttons, I wondered what time it was, and I wished I had gotten a cup of special decaf latte blend they had downstairs. At the end of two hours (what seemed like an eternity), I had said absolutely nothing, and in the end, when I finally decided to offer up my two cents, I was met with a roomful of stares that were so quiet and so intense, you’d have thought I’d suggested handing out Playboys to a convent.

As you might have guessed by now, I consider myself more of a one-on-one kind of person when it comes to conversation. In fact, I do so well in that sort of setting that if you saw me engaged in dialogue with a single individual, you would probably assume me to be a regular Chatty Cathy in a group situation. That being said, I am also very attached to my one-on-one meetings with my friends. I have always considered conversation with another person to be very valuable and it’s always kind of upsetting to me if that friend has had a bit of an “off” day or doesn’t really feel like talking. I feel as if I’m missing out.

So, you can imagine my constant struggle with prayer. What kind of conversation can feel more one-sided when it comes to talking with God? Now, I understand that this is not the case for many people. For some, prayer is like hooking up a heavenly IV to their veins, feeling totally immersed and engaged in what God says to them. But I’m not quite like that. God did make me an artist, and by doing that, He made me a very visual and tactile person as well. This means that there are lots of days when I feel like all I’m doing is talking to the dark ceiling of my room at night. Obviously, this isn’t true, and I don’t feel this way all of the time, but no matter how much of the Bible I read, or how many holy thoughts may pass through my head, there is still a barrier of time and space between God and I that cannot be breached physically. How I wish God were there, sitting on my bed, in skin and bones and blood just like me, answering all of my questions and telling me about His day just as I am telling Him about mine. How I wish, how I wish…

But, you know what? I can’t. So what do I do? I keep on going. I keep praying into that ceiling at night, sending up my words and thoughts to the Lord, sometimes feeling a connection, sometimes not. But hopefully, the more I do it, the more I can grow stronger in my faith inch by inch and know just by knowing that my prayers are reaching Him, and that what I might feel is a one-sided conversation might just not be as one-sided after all.

The “Gimme Gal” – Spiritual Hoarding

A few months ago when the weather was still pretty warm here in Savannah (okay, so it’s about 70 right now, but it’s February and it gets a heck of a lot warmer than that) I decided to go to the farmer’s market they have every Saturday morning in Forsyth Park. I never intended to go directly to the market; I was out early to take pictures of people and their dogs for my Techniques class and was inspired by the plein air to buy some fresh goodies. While browsing the market, I noticed a stand with bunches of flower bouquets amid the vegetables…prettiest flowers I’d ever seen. I think I’ll go back and buy a bouquet after making the rounds, I thought to myself as I waltzed up to the bread booth and talked to the teenage guy with bad teeth about buying a poppy seed loaf. But on my way back down the lane, I noticed to my horror a woman disappear into the crowd, struggling to carry what looked like all of the bouquets from the flower stand! I rushed back to where the flowers had been and there, sadly standing in the vase like an abandoned puppy, was one last bouquet.

“Did that lady over there just buy all of those bouquets except this one?” I asked the clerk.

“Yep,” She said.

“I’ll take it!” I slammed a few bucks down on the table as I gathered my precious bouquet in the nick of time.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed my little bouquet for a good many weeks and really do not hold any kind of grudge for the flower-napper, I still remember the incident so many months later because it begs the question, how much of something do you really need?

I see it all of the time. Take December, for example: my hometown being so close to the mountains, I always see countless Christmas trees flying down I-40 strapped to the top of a minivan all month long, and it is frightening how often I count 6 to 8 trees per car. How many do you really need?

Most of us don’t consider ourselves to be hoarders. In fact, Compulsive Hoarding is actually a serious mental disorder that is relatively uncommon. The person afflicted usually hoards things because they feel they “just need it” or have an almost unnaturally strong attachment to objects. Of course, it can be hard for all of us to let go of that piece of jewelry our grandmother had or that baptismal onesie that your now-30-year-old daughter once wore. But no matter how special these items may mean to us, the question ultimately remains. Why do we keep all of this? How much is too much? And, when is the line crossed between treasured item and object of worship or covetous gain?  I believe that inside, we all have the tendency to become hoarders very easily. Our secular culture teaches us that having one thing is never enough, that we must continually make it bigger and better in order to become fulfilled inside. But honestly, what are you going to do with that onesie? Try to fit your daughter back into it? Hold it? Pet it? Frame it? Now you have a frame that you’re stuck with.

As a typical 20-something year old gal, I too, suffer from this problem. I definitely love my shopping sprees. How I wish I could just buy everything that tickles my fancy in my favorite store! But I have learned over the years that with shopping (or anything else, for that matter) one is enough, and the less I get, the more satisfied I am with what I get. I don’t need 10 shirts of the same make in all different colors. I don’t need 8 Christmas trees, I don’t need 20 flower bouquets. I have God, and I must remember that He is all I need.

Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. This I declare about the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; He is my God and I trust Him. For he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease. He will cover you with His feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, nor the arrow that flies in the day. Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at middy. Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, these evils will not touch you. ~Psalm 91

Small Miracles

I am probably the most accident-prone person there every lived.

Not big accidents, (thank goodness) but lots of small, frustrating, get-in-the-way-of-daily-life kinds of accidents. In the course of a day I almost always manage to do at least one or more of the following: stub my toe, bang my elbow, hit my head, spill something, drop something, burn myself, hit my knee, and hit something else badly enough to cause a big bruise for a week. How does she do it, you ask? How can a mere mortal perform so many acts of random, unintentional, yet self-inflicted pain per day? She must have super-human powers! Although I wish the latter was true (except if I did indeed possess super-human powers, I would definitely do tradesies with Spiderman on the nature of the super-human power) it turns out that I am just your average, every-day gal who eats, sleeps, does art, and clumsily stumbles through the day. Usually, I tend to ignore or not even notice these incidents–after all, who wants to remember a stubbed toe–but sometimes God has this funny way of using these accidents to remind me of the work He does in my life.

Take yesterday, for example: I was reaching into the dishwasher, which had just been run through, to grab a clean fork for my dinner. Aiming a bit too high, I whacked my finger on the upper portion of the washer. Boy, did that hurt! But just as I started to think, “wow, typical me. Can I get any more clumsy? Huh? Huh?” I noticed that if I had indeed aimed correctly, if my reach had gone just a hair lower, I would have impaled my hand on a very sharp cheese-knife that was standing blade-side up in front of the fork I was going for, tilted so that the blade was basically invisible. Suddenly, I decided to shoot up a quick prayer of thanks for the bop on the finger…that will heal considerably faster than a heavens-knows-how-bad cut to my dominant hand would have.

Sometimes (and I am definitely guilty of this, times ten!) we spend so much time being upset about the things that didn’t quite go our way–like hitting fingers on dishwashers–that we fail to see the bigger picture. If I hadn’t experienced that momentary pain to the hand, I would have suffered the other option, which could have been disastrous. I wonder how many bigger catastrophes I have avoided in life with a little bump from God?

God In The Dark

There are plenty of times when I could swear that I felt God’s presence: getting lost in the music at church, getting accidentally wrapped up in a prayer-a-thon before my dinner, reading the Bible and having certain phrases jump out at me, and basically when everything is hunky dory. But unfortunately–for me at least–there are  also times when I cannot seem to find God anywhere; I am groping blindly in the darkness.

Even in tears, crying out to God for help, sometimes I have been met with silence. Sometimes things that I’m sure I had been led to do or that I felt God told me to do turn out to be me just kidding myself. Why does this happen? I don’t know. As hard as it is to get up from a karate-chop-like punch to the stomach, so can it also be difficult to recover from those moments when it seems like God is just slipping through your fingertips. Why didn’t I get that dream job, God? Why couldn’t I have tried harder on that paper, God? Why did you take away my health, God? Why did my kids get into drugs, God? Why…why…why…

The questions that seemed at first to be merely a trickle from a cracked pipe suddenly turn into a broken fire hydrant, and then the darkness comes closing in and envelopes you like a 24 hour night. But God does not allow things to happen in our lives for no reason, oh no. He’s more complicated than that. In fact, that’s why I believe we sometimes feel this way when things don’t go quite as planned because His plan is never our plan. While it’s true that God is involved in our lives, I have started to learn that He also chooses how involved He will be. It’s not that He ignores us, but maybe, just maybe, when we are in those throes of sadness or guilt or regret or what-have-you, He prescribes quiet, not more information, as a medicine. As to why that is, only God knows.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Psalm 23:4

 

A Common Ground

I attended a University where all majors of  artistic nature had to go through a one year foundations course in the fine arts. It didn’t matter who you were or what you set out to be, we all had to take them: Drawing I, Drawing II, 2D Design I, 2D Design II, 3D Design I, and 3D Design II, plus some art history courses. We were all in the same boat, and, for the most part, we all got along. Why? Because we had a collective taste of each other’s disciplines in some form or another (whether we liked it or not.) Two years into my degree, however, the department decided to change this “universal baptism” into the arts they had so successfully established. The fine arts department and the communication arts department (illustration and design) were completely divorced from each other, and the program was hastily re-built to mimic “other arts schools.”

As with any divorce, despite the Dean’s efforts to make the now-split departments shake hands and make up, there was naturally a lot of bad blood and hard feelings. After all, between a couple there is only one house, and between art departments at a relatively small school, there is only one building.

Turns out, we lost the building.

As crummy as it was to be stuck doing art in a residence hall basement that had leaky pipelines and chipped linoleum, what we really lost when the departments split wasn’t really the building. We lost the understanding of one another, and we lost our camaraderie.

After this artistic schism, a subtle hostility developed between students of different fields that I don’t remember previously existing. Snide comments about “those fine arts kids” or “those graphic design kids” began peppering the air my Junior year, and I kept wondering why. Are people getting meaner? Are they getting crankier? Are they getting less sleep? Are they not eating breakfast? It wasn’t until recently that I finally figured out why this was happening: it was because the Freshmen coming into the new (and supposedly improved) program never dabbled in one another’s art, never experienced each other’s joys and trials in these classes, and therefore never had a common ground.

What we don’t know we tend to avoid, and sometimes we even hate. The way we deal with insecurity is by insulting or belittling what makes us insecure, and I have often found that is the case with Christianity as well. If you haven’t yet been made fun of because of your faith in Christ, I can assure you, it will happen. I can’t say that I have experienced anything as major as many people have in terms of persecution, but I have definitely faced a few snide comments and jokes along the way, and they are never fun.

But, like my University’s art department, I believe that most of this persecution comes from ignorance. Most of the people who have joked about the faith have never been to church, never experienced the joy of God’s love, or, even worse, don’t feel as if they are “good enough” to give God a try. That kind of attitude comes from a lot of inner hurt, folks.

With God as a common ground, our differences suddenly disappear. There is definitely something powerful about people from all different backgrounds and pasts being able to come together as one (and at least tolerate each other) for an hour on Sunday, thanking the God who loves and gives. Hopefully, the joy of God will continue to spread so we no longer have to be separated by art department, income, personality, or sin.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. -Psalm 18.2

The Black Sheep

 

I am a black sheep. I am a square circle, a short-necked giraffe, and a three dollar bill. As my high school US history teacher so euphemistically put it, I’m a “different duck.”

Even when I was a little kid, I had a heck of a time fitting in with my peers; I was raised on classical music and opera, didn’t know who Brittany Spears was, spent my time drawing and writing in my journal, and didn’t get some kind of weird high by shaving my spindly eight-year-old legs and wearing a training bra like everyone else did. I didn’t kiss boys, I didn’t go to Carowinds, I didn’t go to Myrtle Beach. Needless to say, I got pretty used to (and quite fond of) solitude from day one.

Now that I’m all old and wrinkly, (yes, there are actually the seeds of parenthesis wrinkles beginning to germinate on the corners of my mouth. Help!) I have, of course, expanded my horizons since my younger years–I listen to anything from Lady Gaga to Don Giovanni, and I thoroughly enjoy my mixed drinks–yet it is still often that I find myself in those old, awkward “I-can’t-believe-you-don’t-like/do-that” situations among my peers.

You know how it goes.

The room gets kind of quiet and suddenly everyone has Graves Disease as their stares burn holes straight through the walls like in Portal.

“What? How come you don’t like __________?”

“Because I’ve tried it like, five times and I don’t like it.”

“But, this _________isn’t like that__________.”

“I’m sorry, I just prefer to do other things.”

“Wow, I’m sorry, you must really have no life.”

“Thanks.”

The hardest thing for me to remember (and that I must remember!) is that it’s okay to not always enjoy doing what everyone else does, and it certainly helps to know that I am not alone; I mean, look at Jesus! He was one of the world’s biggest outcasts, and He often stood alone on His opinions. He of all people demonstrated that (fortunately or unfortunately) the best way is often the most difficult. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter it. (Matthew 7:13)

I am definitely the black sheep amongst my peers, and I must admit, it can hurt. But armed with God and His Words of sound advice, I can stand to live a little…sheepishly.

Christmas Candles

An excerpt from my book-in-progress, “Church With Little Red Doors” – many thanks to Catherine F. for beating this out of me during the Christmas Break

There were two occasions on which our church pulled out all of the stops: Christmas and Easter.

While Easter had its fair share of entertainment for me as a wide-eyed little sprout, (when else in church did you get to go outside in the freezing cold dawn and scream some fancy words while wildly shaking week-old palm fronds in the air?) it still didn’t quite possess the same charisma as the Christmas Eve service did with its impressive holly bedecked pews and 12-foot Fraser fur-trimmed in silver doves and gold crosses.

Although there were many things about Christmas Eve at our church that were certainly memorable, (I mean, who can forget singing The Friendly Beasts dressed up in an angel costume in the Christmas pageant?) perhaps what I recall most vividly about those services were the lights–candles, to be exact.

We only had a scanty few open-flames in our church; there were the two candles on either side of the altar that were impossible to reach and to light, the two candles beside the pulpit that were lit for Bible legibility, and the one lonely candle that I nicknamed the Fancy Candle that was lit because it was…well, fancy. But on Christmas Eve, boy, we had so many candles floating around that there was probably enough wax and fire to cast a bronze copy of Michelangelo’s David.

Although this sea of candles were a beautiful sight to behold and certainly added to the overall yuletide atmosphere, I always had, shall we say, rather substandard experiences with the church’s Christmas candles.

The earliest of these memories involved the closing ceremony of the service, when the lights went out and everyone stood around and sang Silent Night, holding little individual candles that either wouldn’t light or decided to have a kind of seizure in the middle of the second verse, shooting firecracker-like sparks at all of your surrounding neighbors.

These little candles were the bane of my childhood Christmas experiences. Ever since I got seared like a branded cow after my candle decided to drip hot wax all over my hand when I was about five, I was always very wary of the Silent Night Candles. It was thus that I came up with the 5 Rules of Thumb for Silent Night Candle-Holding that, when followed properly, ensured a safe and happy Silent Night caroling experience:

1. Choose Wisely, Think Quickly

If you begged your parents enough, you could choose your own candle at the beginning of the service as soon as you walked in the door. It was all about the choice of candle you made, and you had to make those decisions quick enough to make it look like you were just choosing any old candle with the cheer and graciousness of a good Christmas-spirited individual.

2.Never Pick The New Ones

As tempting as it always was to choose one of the fresh, new candles in the candle basket, I quickly discovered that it was wise to NEVER do so. First of all, it took about a million years to melt the mummified wax off of the wick enough to start the flame (and consequently, all of your pew-peers would be ticked at you because they had to sing the first verse without a lit candle.) Secondly, once you finally got it lit, you might as well have been holding a blow-torch with the button permanently stuck to “on.” The flame would remain a steady six-inches high and smoke like a chimney for the entire duration of the song.

3. Don’t Pick The Stubby Old Ones, Either

They didn’t even get you though “all is calm…”

4. Hold It At The Very Bottom

Those cheap little paper things they always put on the candles to try to keep the wax from dripping on to you never worked. The best solution was to hold it as far down towards the base as possible. That way, if the wax did drip and made it past the paper wax guard, it would have some time to cool down a little before making a touchdown on your unsuspecting forefinger.

5. Never, Ever Tilt The Candle

As they say, the best way to avoid conflict is to avoid the problem. This principle worked just as well with Silent Night Candles. As long as you didn’t tilt the candle, the wax wouldn’t drip and you wouldn’t get burned…

Temporary Break

Today there will not be a blog post, on account of the author/artist being as sick as a dog. Sorry, folks. I’m gonna go unscrew my head and drain it now…

Good Things In Humble Packages

I think we can all recall a time when we’ve judged a present by its wrapping paper.

You remember those Christmases past. You woke your folks up at the crack of dawn, thundered downstairs, scarfed down your breakfast, and raced to the tree to tear open the gift with the prettiest packaging you can find, only to discover it contained oversized, garrishly-hued socks from your Great Aunt Olga.

Few things are a bigger let-down than discovering something undesirable inside of something beautiful. It’s like finally getting to tour the house of your dreams only to discover the mound of structural issues the house has, or like buying that speciality candy you’ve always wanted and finding that it tastes terrible. When scenarios akin to these happen, a little bit of us tends to die inside. Just a little piece. But although the piece may be small, it is enough to chip away at our morale until we feel very bitter and very disillusioned with what life has had to offer us.

But that’s why Jesus came.

If we put all of our hopes in worldly things, we will be sorely disappointed. I know it seems that we’ve all heard this before and we also know it’s true in some way or other–after all, there’s the old saying you can’t take it with you–but I can’t stress how many times I’ve seen this false hope in objects do more harm than good. Having nice things or earning lots of money certainly has its appeals and advantages, but we have also been warned in Matthew 6:24 that No one can serve two masters. For you will love one and hate the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. That’s a pretty explicit statement, and rightly so; I’ve gone down the “gimme” path more than I would like to admit, and in the end what have I gained? A new item. And heaven forbid if that item turns out to be a wolf in flashy sheep’s clothing.

Jesus is the only One we can truly invest in and put our faith into. Interestingly enough, He came down to earth in the lowliest of forms (we humans aren’t exactly much to scream for), in the lowliest of places (a stable!) and died in the lowliest of ways (a cross was reserved for the most horrible of criminals), yet look at His Gift: the Gift of life eternal!

Sometimes the best things really do come in the humblest, plainest packages.