survival

Posted on by
8

I made it through last week!  PRAISE THE LORD!!!

There are all sorts of changes going on at my workplace, but I’m through the worst of it for now (I think/hope!).  I felt as if God were taking my hand every morning and walking me through each day without letting go.  So lovely.

No one wishes for hard times to come, but I find that when they do …

* I am driven into my Bible
* I cling to God more savagely
* I am forced to reevaluate my life and choices

… and it usually ends up working out for my best.

I am so grateful for a God who stays and sustains me, for the wisdom of Scripture, family, and friends, and for incredible new opportunities!  It’s not a perfect analogy, but this week, I kept thinking of the story of Joseph– how his own brothers sold him into slavery, how he was wrongly accused of rape and sent to prison, and yet rose to power in Egypt.  I love when later he says to his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

Amen and amen, yes?

the future has arrived

Posted on by
1

Shhh, don’t tell … I am actually writing this blog on Sunday, May 20th, and scheduling it to post on Saturday, May 26th.  I usually write all my posts for the week over the weekend, since I rarely have time to blog during the work week.  It’s interesting how sometimes I will write a post nearly a week ahead of time, but something will happen in real-time to line up with what I blogged about days ahead of time that was only posted on that day.  Weird.

So, here’s the deal: I am anticipating that this upcoming week of work is going to be terribly difficult for me.  But who knows what will happen?  By the time you all read this post, the work week I am so nervous about will actually be OVER.  It will be fun to read this post on the day it is posted and see if my predictions for the week were true.

I am reading The Time Traveler’s Wife right now, by Audrey Niffenegger, so this whole wonky idea of predictions and foreknowledge and skipping over a large chunk of time actually doesn’t seem so strange to me.  It’s the world I’ve been living in.

That said, here is my message to my future self, my self who is six days older than the self this is writing this post:

Hello Jackie. You made it. You survived the week, and now you can enjoy your long holiday weekend. You probably don’t have any more answers to your problems than you did at the time of writing this– but then again, maybe you do! I can’t guess what will happen in the next six days, except that I do believe that you will make it to next weekend, that God will hold you in the palm of His hand this upcoming/past week, and that He will work all things out for the good of you who loves Him. Love from yourself from last weekend.

 

a fixer

Posted on by
3

I am a fixer.  If someone comes to me with a problem, my first inclination is to FIX IT.  I have to force myself to sit back and just LISTEN because my head is already ahead to solutions.

I hate leaving things un-fixed.  I want to solve all issues NOW, to dive headfirst into creating a solution until that solution is in place.  I hate to have things hanging over me.  (Some of this is very strongly connected with the obsessive-compulsive part of me.)

But not everything can be fixed immediately.  Sometimes there are issues that we need to sit with before solving.  We grow simply from the patience we have to exert as we WAIT for all the ducks to line up in a row.  And sometimes there are so many ducks, and they all seem to be on crack, and to get them to line up is a long, tedious process.

I want to be able to do steps 1-26 in one hour.  But sometimes the person you need to connect with for step 1 is out of the office till Tuesday, and steps 2-4 can’t be done till after that, which pushes back steps 5-10 because they can only be done on weekends, and you can’t do the final step until you have a haircut and your stylist is booked a month out, etc.  I HATE THAT.

That’s all I’m going to say about this, except for that this fixer is struggling with and learning patience this week.

Are you a fixer?

Meet Ashley

Posted on by
3

What would I do without this girl?  I find myself thinking that question over and over again throughout the week.  She is one of my go-to friends, an absolute delight, so funny, so friendly, so loving, and she teaches me so much!

Ashley and I had a rocky start, back in 2001 (oh gosh, Ash, has it really been over a decade?!).  At that time, she was a spunky, sassy high school student, and I was the camp counselor who could not say anything right.  We were pretty wary of one another for about six months, but when January 2002 rolled around, the new year brought with it a new friendship that I would come to treasure as one of my favorites.

After six months of non-friendly aquaintanceship, Ashley and I were forced to spend some time together at a church retreat.  Although neither of us wanted to do so on the front end, by the end of the weekend, we were okay enough to exchange email addresses.

Remember, this is 2002.  Exchanged email addresses can only mean one thing: MSN Messenger!

We ended up chatting quite a bit– especially about boys– and forging this strange online friendship that we kind of marveled at, considering our rough beginnings.  By that next summer, we were fast friends, but our friendship was entirelyonline … until we met up again at camp.

I remember I was nervous about how it would go.  Would we clash in person again?  Would it turn out that we would just butt heads when we found ourselves in a real room together?

But we got along great this time around … and ever since!  Over the years, I have been blessed to watch Ashley graduate from high school, go to Bible college, fall in love with my friend Tim, graduate from college, marry Tim, buy a house, and move to the Twin Cities.  Now we see each other almost weekly, just the way I like it.

Eleven years is such a long span of time … Ashley went from being this sassy-mouthed punk teenager I was afraid of to being one of my very best friends, one of my favorite people!  She is everything I want in a friend: kind, unselfish, honest, brave, COMMITTED, hilarious, loving, a good listener, and godly.

I love you, Ashley … see you in an hour for taquitos at Eir’s!

Proverbs

Posted on by
3

I have been reading the book of Proverbs in my search for wisdom/guidance, and here are some of the things that are standing out to me, over and over again:

1) Foolish people hate feedback; it’s the wise people who like to be corrected– then they learn from it.

2) It’s better to be poor and happy than rich and unhappy.

3) God hates lies and deception and loves righteousness.

Now to put all these things into practice … to truly embrace constructive criticism, to rejoice in happiness, to rid myself of my deceitful ways.  I want to be a better, wiser woman.

some more Billy

Posted on by
Reply

The First Dream
by Billy Collins, my favorite

The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention of consonants.

He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.

Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.

Photo credit: Jane Pak Oh

which view?

Posted on by
10

The last couple days have not been easy for me.  I have some big decisions ahead of me that are causing me HUGE stress, and I’d appreciate your prayers.  I am looking for wisdom– actually BEGGING God for wisdom, for direction.

When you look at this picture, what do you see?  Some people see an old woman, wrinkles around her eyes, wart on her nose, looking kind but maybe a little sad.  Some people see a young lady with a strong jawline and a necklace, looking into the distance.

I am trying to remember during this time of great upheaval in my life (I hope to share more details soon) that this scary, scary time might actually be a huge blessing, a time of positive change.  I am hoping that even though today my life looks like an old lady, soon I will look back on these days and realize they were young, vibrant, fresh, and beautiful.  It’s all perspective.

Still, I’d appreciate your prayers.  I feel heartsick and sad and lonely and distracted.  Very shaken and hurt and disappointed in myself and upset and humiliated.

Please, God, use this time to accomplish Your plans for me.

a room of one’s own

Posted on by
1

Have you read the book?  Virginia Woolf wrote a whole book (compiled, I think, from some lectures she gave) based on the premise that in order for a woman to write, she needed two things: 1) an incandescent mind (freedom from worrying about life) and 2) money (in other words, a room of one’s own).

My freshman year of college I wrote a research paper that violently argued against this idea– a very convincing and well-written paper, if I do say so myself.

Years later, I began to doubt myself and agree with old Virgie.  Man oh man, if only I had enough money so that I wouldn’t have to worry about how to support myself (how to pay rent, how to buy groceries, which career option is best, etc.), I think I would write SO WELL.

Anyway, this is my public apology to Virginia Woolf.  Although I still think she was wrong to attack Charlotte Bronte.

my creative process

Posted on by
3

This is what mine looks like:

1) Freewriting.  With or without prompts, I just write like a maniac and try not to censor myself at all (which often results in some of my best ideas).  While freewriting, I am shocked to meet characters whom I never intended to write about, whom I am meeting for the very first time as I type.  I am surprised by what my characters say and do and the events that occur while I am writing without censorship.  Granted, this draft usually makes little or no sense, can stop in the middle of a sentence, and will include scenes that will never make it past this stage.  Themajority of this draft will disappear by the end.

2) Organizing.  I look back through the junk I’ve generated and try to make some sort of sense out of it.

3) Editing.  Now back through it again to make it look and sound better.  Cut excess words, add better imagery.  I am terrible at description and don’t include it very naturally, so at this stage, I’ll try to graft some into the paragraphs so that others can see what I’m seeing.

4) Feedback.  A MUST.  At this stage, my writing group and some select other friends will need to look it over, or I can’t go any further with the piece.  I NEED constructive criticism and outside eyes to tell me what works and what doesn’t.  I need people to tell me “I don’t think Joey would say such-and-such” or “if Stacy finds out about that secret that early, you won’t have any tension in your story.”

5) Repeat steps 1-4.  For a long time, maybe years.  And I pray about what I’m writing too.  I ask God to move me in the right direction with my stories.

What does your creative process look like?

motivation

Posted on by
2

“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”
Luke 9:51

Christ knows what lies ahead for him: Gethsemane, betrayal, a cat o’ nine tails raking him over, and the crucifixion (from which comes the word excruciating), not to mention the weight of the world’s sin on his shoulders as he becomes a curse and his father looks away.

And yet he set his face to go to Jerusalem.  He steeled himself for what was ahead.  He determined to move in the direction of these horrors.

It inspires me.