Like An Adolescent Unyielding

I have talked before about being both a child and an adult—about how I want my life to be tender with wonder and strong with experience. But there is, as always, even more to what I want to be.

I want to be bold. I want to be brave. I want to march to victory without thinking of what would happen should my cause be lost. I want to know what I want and I want to shout it aloud.

I want to be like Frodo, taking the Ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way.

I want to be like Buttercup, working towards improvement against the return of my Beloved.

I want to be like the countless young men and women throughout the centuries, loving my God and my family and living and dying that they might live and die.

I want determination, and emotion, and fervent fire building and burning in my veins. I want to walk through the angry mob unharmed, solid and covered with a certain admirable Grace, and standing on a Rock that no earthquake can move.

And this is yet another of my Odd Resolutions—to be an adolescent unyielding, holding firm in my faith and refusing to belong to another. 

On Writing Epics and Dropping Stones

The skipping stone leaves ripples, but ripples fade. The stone sinks, but it continues to shift and sink into the earth.

Well, it's time to write.

I am conspicuously armed with my essentials: My favorite mug full of some cheap berry tea and my writing hoodie (acquired at an Army-Navy store in Tennessee) engulfing my mussed form. My favorite playlist is playing on Spotify, and Pinterest is up in another tab just in case I need some quick inspiration. I'm ready for this.

The problem is, I have no idea what I'm doing.

I've been writing for five or six years. In that time I have produced the beginnings of four novels, one completed short story and fourteen unfinished ones, twenty-odd poems that I would shudder to show anyone, and a lot of bad fanfiction. Like an artist trying to paint a masterpiece, I've been trying to write my epics and pretty much failing.

So I took a break for a while.

I didn't write for five months, except for blogging. I focused more on things like school and free reading and wandering around outside. I actually didn't miss it as much as I thought I would.

The truth is, I love writing. I'm working on a book that, with the grace of God, might actually work out. I love the romance of words and the ache my heart feels when I read a fairytale. But I'm not meant for an epic. I'm not meant to be a classic author, a second Tolkien or Chesterton or Kafka.

I used to think that meant I wouldn't make it as a writer at all. I mean, what was the point if I didn't touch someone's life or failed to create a character someone could relate with?

But the real point is this: The masters weren't the only ones who found joy in putting pen to paper. Writing is not about the people reading. It effects them, but it is a secondhand effect. The person who is different because of writing is the writer.

So this is my odd resolution for now: To no longer want to be a master, a writer of epics. I want to be a simple teller of fairy-stories. I want to paint watercolors on notebook paper, and leave the ceiling frescoes to some modern Michelangelo. 

Like a Child in Love

Remember the wide-eyed wonder and simple exclamations? The wows and the pleeeeeaaases and the mouth opened wide and round? Remember when you--a teenager or college student or single mother or creaky grandfather--were a child shopping with your mother, begging her to buy a soda or look at the train a little bit longer?

How long has it been since you gaped in awe at a butterfly fluttering near you or laughed like the bubbly schoolkid you were at some extremely dumb and cliche joke? It's been a long time for me. 

It's strange, really. I see these things, and I love them. I think butterflies are beautiful, and I love puns, even when they get cheesy. But I don't feel them the same way I used to. I want to be struck dumb when I see the wonders instead of taking a picture and exclaiming over the perfection. 

I want to watch, and remember, and tell about it in a hushed, reverent voice that still can't believe the beauty. I want to live this world like a child in love, a child that holds in cupped hands something it is afraid of shattering. I want to be awkwardly awe-ful, and blessedly full of cheeky smiles at such simple, common pleasures as ice cream and leaves blowing down in a shower. 

I want to be like a child wandering through her life, finding beauty in earthworms and the great expanse of sky and city and empty space that surrounds us.

(And this is my odd resolution for now. To be a child, more of a child than I already am.) 

On Crunched Grass and Puddle-Jumping

When I was younger, my mother told me (as all mothers do) that the older I got, the faster time would fly. I, of course, in seven-year-old ignorance, disregarded it with the assumption that ten minutes would always be ten minutes and an hour would always be an hour.

And now, in my fifteen-year-old ignorance, I ask nobody in particular where all my time went. Why don't I have time to just lie on the couch and listen to music anymore? Since when did I become so inundated with school and work and random things that I don't need to do but do anyway?

This summer passed before I really realized it was here. I barely noticed the heat-crunched grass, because I was too busy reading to walk barefoot in the field. I missed the yearly swallow-nesting on the porch, all because I'd rather spend my free moments typing up an essay than watch the sunrise from the steps. I went outside yesterday and the field-grass was wet and soft beneath my feet, something that wasn't supposed to come for another couple of months, or so I thought.

So in a sudden realization that this wouldn't last forever, I danced in the rain.

I was jumping, leaping, laughing, singing and slipping through the mini-lakes and puddles, with blackberry briars sticking in my feet and shivers running down my soaked spine. I rejoiced in the beautiful, cold, sharp rain that made my hair go curly as I shook out the drops.

I found joy yesterday. Pure, unadulterated, un-adulted joy. I could honestly bless my Creator with dance and song as I sloshed through mud and fogged my glasses with heavy breath.

Yes, I missed the summer, to my great regret. But today I'm resolving to live in the autumn, and rejoice in it as God calls me to do.

(There also you and your households shall eat before the LORD your God, and rejoice in all your undertakings in which the LORD your God has blessed you.) Deuteronomy 12:7

On Screwtape, Giving Trees, and Pouring Out

This week, I spent a whole day reading C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. The book is a set of letters coming from the senior demon, Screwtape, to his just-out-of-college nephew, Wormwood. Screwtape has persuaded many to join the ranks of the Devil, whom they refer to as Our Father Below. The letters consist of his advice and admonitions towards Wormwood, who has just received his first 'patient' and is eager to please. 

   
I was very convicted by these letters, and some of the advice old Screwtape gave his nephew chilled me with its accuracy.

Screwtape is a master at pinning down the problem and telling exactly what's to be done about it. Yet he grows angered and wild as he writes about it, because there is one thing he can't pin down: the Enemy Himself. 

He doesn't understand this love that the so-called 'Enemy' professes for the humans. He insists that there must be some other reason to fight for them, some hidden plot that makes them important somehow. Yet he cannot come up with a plausible excuse. This frustrates him to no end. 

Another book I read lately is The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. It's a children's book, but I found it haunting and poignant all the same. In it, a tree is loved by a little boy, and it loves the little boy back with all its heart. It gives him fruit and leaves and a firm base to climb on. 

But the little boy grows up. He begins to search for what he calls happiness; money and jobs and a fine house with a wife. He leaves the tree to find these things, coming back only once in a while. Whenever he does come back, the tree gives him something to help him in his quest for happiness--apples to sell, branches for a house, and her trunk for a boat. She never thinks twice about the cost her giving will bring upon herself, she only thinks of the boy she loves. 

I think that God wants to be a sort of Giving Tree to us. He pours out love and blessings on us, and the cost is canceled out by the enormous love he gives as well. 

So while I'm often a Screwtape, jabbing at God with accusations and questions, I also realize that He calls me to follow His example and be a Giving Tree in His image, handing out myself and my gifts to His people as He does. 

As Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:6, "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come." 

I, for one, am going to pour myself out before Him, that He may make me new.

Suicide and God's Love

I've been through a lot in the past year. Struggles with depression, loneliness, resentment, spiritual indifference and even suicidal feelings have dragged me down and put me through a lot of emotional and mental battles.

I think most teenagers go through a stage like this. Maybe it's not as bad as my experience--maybe it's worse. But I know that everyone at one time or another feels unaccepted, inadequate, and invisible. As humans we need interaction, we need love, and we need it to be tangible.

During the deepest, darkest point of my struggle thus far, I toyed with the idea of suicide. I knew I would never actually go all the way--I wasn't that miserable--but I almost tried it. The allure of choice paired with the mystifying idea of an enveloping non-aliveness thrilled me. I had the idea somewhere in the back of my mind that it was wrong, but it was too enticing not to think about.

I've always had a deep sense of empathy. If you describe something to me, I can feel it to the point of actually confusing it with something I've actually experienced. That's why I never did it. I had no need to actually commit suicide--I'd already committed it over and over in my mind. I had felt knives slicing across my wrists and I have collided with a sidewalk in the city more times than I could feel comfortable telling you.

The point of all this is that I am not the choicest of people to talk about what I'm about to talk about. I'm going to talk about it anyway.

People often say that it is tragically beautiful, that it's your choice, that if you know you won't ever have another happy day in your life, it's okay to end it. That if you're not enough, you can choose to be nothing at all.

I've had people I love die. I didn't get to say goodbye to them. It is too painful to explain. None of them committed suicide, but I lost them. 

Now let me tell you something else.

I knew a guy. He's an atheist and he's suicidal. I only ever saw him at a certain scholarship program for teenagers. He was the most pessimistic person I've ever met, but he had an amazing sense of humor and he could make anyone laugh. Everyone he met instantly felt a connection with him--he was brutally honest about his situation and we could relate. The odd thing was that for someone so bitter, pessimistic, and even rude, he was the one who brightened everyone's day with his sardonic comments and teasing.

Everyone loved him. Now, he's graduated and no longer comes to the program. Everyone misses him, and several people have even left because without him, it doesn't really seem worthwhile. I haven't seen him since, but I spend my time praying that he hasn't given in to his suicidal thoughts. Because if he killed himself, not only would God's kingdom have lost a beloved child, but the world in general would be bereft of an amazing person.

He is enough. He is worth more than death. One of my biggest regrets is never telling him that.

My point is, no matter what you've done, or who has rejected you, you are worth something to someone. Someone is watching you and thinking about how much better you've made their life. And if no human looks at you and sees a beautiful life, God certainly does.

God created you. And He doesn't do things lightly. Don't you think He would have made someone worth the making?

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. 

(Song of Solomon 8:6) 

Please, if you've ever felt like I have; if you've ever wanted to jump off of a ledge or wrap a rope around your neck or take a pocketknife to your veins, please, please remember the moments someone you barely know has smiled at you; the times they've said something like what would I do without you or you made my day. 

Please remember that you are a work of art and the Artist can't stop gazing at you. Please know that I'm praying for you, even if I don't know you exist. I want you to know that I know how it feels. I know how tempting it is, how beautiful it looks. You are more beautiful that death, and Christ's love for you is stronger than it.

I love you and am praying for you.

Erin