Well, against the odds, I got hired. Finally. In aviation. 20 months of wandering in the wilderness and now...who knows. I was supposed to start this week. But car problems. But I got something similar to mono and thought I was dying. My brain still is not fully recovered. Hence the inordinate use of fragments without the justification of poetry. This is how I talk to myself, to my husband, and on the phone right now. Fragmentary.

I got a crock pot this week. I'm scared of it. Because I value food and I hate learning curves and the possibility of ruining a perfectly good meal if I wasn't so damn lazy (or busy) so as to need a crock pot. I'm scared of it because of the cult-like following it has engendered in so many. Go ahead, mention a slow cooker in a a group of 6ish people. There is an 80% that someone will profess their total dependence, undying love, or eternal gratitude to the machine.

Of course, I haven't made anything in said slow cooker yet. I've been busy trying to put more fluids in my body than my body can expel. A competition for which I am ill prepared.

Where were we? Slow cooker. No. Wait. Job. Job! It's not real until my toolbox moves out of the bedroom. I've had too many jobs fall through at this exact point. I don't expect this one to fall through, but I have never expected any of the others either. I have no idea what I expect. I finally let myself look at all of Tyler's student loans, at our prospective budget, and our wishlist of things (a trip to Austria? a newer car?). Turns out, we are probably going to make it. Of course we won't get everything we want. But we at least have the tools to make a life.

"Is it really that hard to explain to potential jobs that you were fired due to sexism? Because that makes me mad."

A friend of mine asked me this. Now, I don't think I was fired because of sexism. I was fired for 1,000 reasons and most of them don't have names. But this is what I want to say to her and about sexism today.

Sexism doesn't exist in aviation. It's like the most embarrassing version of the tooth fairy. Sure, some people believe in sexism. We call them the "F" word (because you don't use the word "feminist" in aviation anymore than sexism) and then we put them in the fanatical camp. In that camp, people also believe in the Illumnati, that WWII never happened, and that the lunar landing was a hoax. They probably hunt Big Foot on the weekend. In fact, if you are tempted in an interview for aviation to use the "S" word or the "F" word, you should probably just tell them that you hunt Big Foot on the weekend. At least then, you stand the chance of laughing after the awkward pause.

All metaphor aside. If you talk about sexism, people become afraid of you like you have a disease. Like feminists cause sexism. And in aviation, women are the most protected minority. Everyone else has to suck it up and try to be a white male. Except that they can't. Because skin and biology. So everyone else has to laugh when people make fun of them. (There are precious few women who are not white.)  They will make Mexican jokes, Armenian jokes, Russian jokes, nothing is off limits. If it hurts, then you are not a man. And that has crossed cultures somehow so everyone pretends to agree.  There are no public women jokes. And you are supposed to say "thank you" for that "luxury". They will find every other way of saying "woman" though. You will find words like "emotional", "logical", "innocent", "sensitive", "independent", "angry", "strong", "ambitious", "focused" and a host of others drip out of their mouths like graffiti tags. They are trying to talk of feminine and masculine characteristics. You can tell which are which because the masculine ones all are synonyms for "capable of doing this job" while the feminine ones all somehow rhyme with "almost" or "not a bad second choice".

Most men in aviation do not see their privilege and they don't even think about it. When someone comes in and drops the "S Bomb", they feel self-conscious because they feel an awful lot like they have a ton in common with that other guy who is apparently sexist. Then they get defensive. Sexism cannot exist because they do not feel active hate for women. They do not realize that defining a successful employee by descriptions only men have is sexist (and detrimental to men who don't fit those descriptions while still being valuable employees). They do not count themselves as antagonistic toward women, in fact, they themselves take more flack than any woman does! Therefore, sexism does not exist.

I simply cannot go into an interview and say, "I was fired because of sexism." All at once I would have committed every faux pax. I will have admitted a weakness, I will have drawn attention to how un-male I am, I will have shown that I believe in the tooth fairy, and I will have accused my prospective employer of siding with my enemy causing them to defend him without even knowing the man or the situation. And definitely without knowing me and if I am trustworthy...or if I am just an overemotional...person...who is over-reacting rather than analyzing the situation.

Thoughts on searching for a job in honor of my one year anniversary.

It gets easier to be rejected (most days).

You take a deep breath, you make the call.

You smile because they say you can hear a smile on the other end of the phone.  Now this is a game. How many seconds can pass before they finally say no?

Before you call, it is placed firmly in their mind. Before they answer the phone, they think it. They take a deep breath before they answer. They don’t want to make this difficult. They don’t want to think of it in terms of “rejection”. But you make them.

You smile so big, your arms do not have room to hold their rejection. You offer your armful of happiness to them. Suddenly, they realize that their two letters are heavier than they first thought. So they try to add a few more to disperse the weight, for your sake, of course. “We really liked you but…” And you hear about how qualified someone else is, about how little work they have, about the experience that you don’t quite have, about every good intention that they just found.

This is the point at which, if you are truly playing the game, you smile bigger, deeper, broader.

You say you understand. Smile again.

You smother any sort of insincerity right out of them with your magnanimity. You thank them generously and exit quickly to leave them believing, if possible, that they really did want to hire you.

Then you let out the breath that you took before you made the call, just as surely as they are also letting their breath loose. You let all of the hope and smile fall through your fingers and throw their rejection on the heap with the others in the corner of your mind. How long before they say “no”? And each time, you hope, you learn to hold your breath a little longer. Until one day, you learn to hold it longer than them.

I don't know what is happening with my life. If anyone still reads this, they already know this. I have not said much of anything else for...at least two years. I keep saying it because I keep discovering it. Like a clock you forget does not tell time anymore.

I stopped taking naps after I go fired. I did not really notice at first. I did not know why. As I began to notice, the reasons came falteringly forward starting with "they just aren't restful" and becoming "I cannot get my brain to turn off". What I mean to say is, either as I fall asleep or as I wake up I find myself entranced, back in time, back at HAI. Somehow my psyche has staked off this time as THE TIME to take the stand that I already missed. And I am defending myself again and again and again. I am saying all of the things that I thought of too late, that I was not brave enough to say, that I thought were too emotional.

Sometimes I think God has left me here to wrestle down my will. Sometimes I think he is waiting until I summon my will. But I have done both. Often in the same day, the same hour with so much zeal and fervor that I venture on fanaticism. I am tired and cynical now. I do not tell God what he is doing anymore. I do not guess. I do not discern. And I do not wait for the prophets anymore. They do not know anymore than I do, it turns out. God is not talking to others about me behind my back. That is somehow both a relief and a defeat. Defeated is a good word for today. Also for this week and these last two years.

And the defeated do not nap. Napping is too much a gateway to unreality and in this unreality I keep trying not to lose. Sometimes I get close. I think that maybe I have found the one path that would have converted or convinced my enemies. When the gateway closes and only reality remains, I find that I have lost all over again. I defeat myself. And I am tired of defeating myself, as if there are not enemies willing enough to do that for me. I am so tired, in fact, that I cannot rest.

 

I am a thousand good intentions and hundreds of posts and photos behind on this blog. All my introspection has been unplugged. Except tonight. Tonight, I need to analyze an old thing that I do not yet know the name of inside of me. Like finding out that the name you call your friend is only their nickname and suddenly you find yourself needing to know the true name of an old friend.

It is Sunday night. I have been home from my wedding and honeymoon for 4 days, I think. I am sitting in bed with the computer. But I am not really sitting here. In my mind, I am standing next to a giant book the size and weight of the life I have yet to live. I am trying to turn the page. But I don't really want to. I do not trust the book to tell the story right. I do not want to be on the next page officially. I want time to crawl between the pages, to prepare the future plot, to brief myself on a few of the important cues that I am more than likely to miss.

You see, before I got fired, I was on better terms with the unknown. Before I got fired, it was a lot easier to just let the story be. Before I got fired, I had some amount of optimism left.

Now? Now, I am filled with this strange sort of PTSD. Every time I go in for a job interview, I get really psyched up. I think about all the good things about the company. The things they value, their neat quirks, the fact that they allow dogs at work, the benefits. About how much healthier this or that job will be compared to the sweatshop and HAI. And every time I find myself in the parking lot outside wondering if it is even worth it to go in. I haven't even had the interview but I have convinced myself that whatever job is inside is probably the worst decision I could make and definitely comparable to indentured servitude. Despite all of my work to convince myself of the opposite, I find that at bottom I am tormented by the idea that every job will always be just as terrible. And I do not want to be that person again. I do not want to be trapped like that again--unable to explain to anyone who doesn't work there what is happening, unable to explain to anyone who does work there that it doesn't have to be that way.

Tomorrow I am supposed to make the phone calls and try to get myself hired at a number of places which are genuinely likely to hire me. Ok. Two phone calls. A place I interviewed with in June. And  a business I worked at through a temporary staffing agency. Both have offered half-promises of employment. Both are reasonable places to work. At least, I thought so until this morning when I woke up with my third eye burning with a warning from the future that as soon as I commit to either company, they are going to bleed me dry, guilt me into never leaving, work me dozens of hours overtime, and sap any energy I have so that I am unable to go to flight school, cook dinner or make any semblance of beautiful art--I will mostly be grateful if I get to my laundry.

(Oh flight school! What an absurd thought that seems like most days now.)

That message is still burning in the empty space in my skull. That space barely has a high enough success rate for me to continue listening to these panicked premonitions. It's not so articulate as I make it. It just screams worry and paranoia until it is a white noise in the background of my...everything. I feel paralyzed. I feel vaguely nauseous when I think about calling tomorrow. Moreover, I know that as soon as I commit to either job (assuming either even want me!), my dream job will elusively prance in the background but I will hardly notice as I will have already bent my nose to the grindstone.

I'm afraid of being left in exile.

And I'm afraid that leaving exile is not all that it is cracked up to be.

I feel like the pathway out of exile has historically been made of war and chaos, of a certain amount of death and renovation. I am afraid of being carried away by the currents of time and change to a place of suffering. Pain without purpose or control. Every time I try to make this not about control I sight myself using a metaphor built 60% out of the sensory experience of having lost control. Most of the time, I put the metaphor back in the tool box and look the other way. I did not want control so badly until it hurt and it did not make sense.

But HAI broke me into fragments that I do not recognize as pieces of myself. It is so hard to trust because I am so afraid of dematerializing again.

I am badly off. I need rehabilitating in a sorry way. I need physical therapy for trusting that jobs won't always ruin your life by competing for all of your time, health, and energy. I am uncertain about most things these days, but I have a fairly stable hunch that no one ever has or ever will make rehab for job trauma. In fact, if it wasn't for the mirror that is my husband, I wouldn't even believe the trauma to be real. But every time it comes time to interview, I sit there in the parking lot trying to remember that not every job will change you into someone you don't like being. I try to climb back into my old skin to build a life I used to believe was possible. I still want that life. But the skin doesn't fit anymore. I have lost some limbs and gained others. I am not the creature I used to be, but not at all in the beautiful butterfly sense.

I think that I will miss this time in my life. This staying up until 1 or 2 am reading a book and listening to the train pull in. This house with its magical ability to grow plants if I only ask it. This melting pot neighborhood turned calico side-walk. It has been such a safe place to untangle myself. I cannot imagine coming to terms with Hillsboro any other way.

I left that place with my arms full of insecurities that I had never taken seriously before then. I was suddenly worried about what people thought about me because they can make your life so hard when they do not value you. These insecurities have been my constant companions as I look for jobs, plan a wedding, and try to get to know Tyler’s family as my own. I have not made the best of it. Rather, I have wandered from hurt to wound and back again. I have been guarded, desperate, despairing, angry, and altogether ill at ease with myself.

I have never not known who I wanted to be…until this last year. And I have tried my best not to make all of this a problem between God and I. Still, some part of me has often asks in the in between moments if this really is the best way, if God didn’t hurt me a bit unnecessarily, and so on. I have marveled at the fact that something so damaging to myself could possibly have been his plan. I have thought seriously about whether or not I want to entrust next year to his care. And I have told him this, challenged him, and asked him to prove himself good. In the past, he has responded swiftly to such challenges. Not this year.

And yet, I am reminded of my time learning about the Old Testament prophets and the kings of the time. God would raise up, tear down, and make new as he pleased. One king set out for plunder, another for political gain, and another for vengeance; but all of them were moved by the Spirit of God to achieve his purposes. It did not matter if they thought God their enemy or their friend. God still directed their steps even in their rebellion. It was all so that they would know him and so that Israel would be both chastened and protected in turns.

This is what I am reminded of when I think of my time at Hillsboro. I left there so damaged, feeling betrayed and hopeless and…mute. I did not understand what had happened or why. I did not know how to praise God for his justice or his love. And so I said nothing. I have observed and observed this past year and more. I have struggled to be content with this desert he has given me. I have made small forages into understanding and I do not know if I will gain much more than I have now.

For now, it is enough to remember that God answered me when I told him I did not know what to do at Hillsboro. I asked for help, for guidance, and for clarity. Within 24 hours, I was fired. It is hard not to feel like I failed. It is hard not to feel like I required God to jerry-rig the first plan B he has ever made. But today, I remember. I called to him and he answered. I called to him and he moved the hearts of the people around me to be what they were. I called to him and he acted. I expected him to make my work environment better, for him to soften things, or for my enemies to repent and be nicer. Instead, he hardened the heart of pharaoh. 

This apartment is so full of my longing to be in the future already. I want to see this resolved. I want to know that I successfully hold a job for multiple years. I want the reassurance that I did not somehow thwart God’s plan by getting fired or by hating my job. And I want to be free of the insecurities that I packed into my poor fibers as I left there. This apartment has held all of that discontentment and more. For 15 months, I have wrestled with myself and made myself a nuisance to God within these walls. It has been home to my binge cooking, my not eating quite well enough because I hate eating alone, my late night books, my early mornings spent watering my flowers, my quest to find myself …somewhere in the future in one piece again with a direction and a usefulness that I have not been permitted in a long, long time. 

I will miss this place when I am gone. I will miss how safe it has been to know absolutely nothing at all about tomorrow and especially Monday. I hate Mondays. I hate the overwhelming sense of having a whole blank week to fill with my not knowing. A whole new week to hold vigil hoping the phone will ring with news of a job. And I will miss it. ...At the same time, I have never looked forward to missing something so much as I do now.  I am perhaps too eager to meet that grief and to mourn the loss of my freedom and my time. Still, this is my constant prayer.

I woke up this morning...to a call from a Romanian woman who meant business. She is the wife of the officiant for our wedding, a lovely and fierce woman. There was no way I was going to let her know that her unexpected call woke me up on Saturday sometime after 8am but before 9am. When we were finished talking, I was hit with one of those tidal waves of "this is really happening" that has happened in both positives and negatives as excitement fades into nausea and back again. I found myself on the crest of a collosal wave of nausea feeling totally unprepared to do this.

Not the commitment part. I have long since made my mind up about that. I feel totally unprepared to execute a wedding. I easily forget why I should spend that much money or care. People tell me it's a day all about me and my head spins. If it was a day all about me, we could spend the money on flight school or a car or a place to live. I look at where all the money goes and it is all for these people who have been spread out across the time and space of my life. It is food and decorations and atmosphere. It is plane tickets and thank you gifts. My wedding dress was $150. I won't bore you with the cost of everything else, but pretty much everything including the silverware costs more. ...I digress.

Somedays I get angsty because I feel like it is all pretense and competition...as if my wedding is a performance that I must choreograph and costume and then maybe my marriage will get a standing ovation. Other days, it feels like a test. If I can put together a beautiful enough wedding without being mean or stressing anyone out while being considerate of everyone's input, wants, needs, and insecurities inside a certain budget, then I am adult enough. The problem is that I am neither a performer nor a test taker. And I do not want to be.

People keep telling me that the wedding is all about what I want. I hardly believe this as I wanted to elope. But the truth is, I am glad that I did not elope. Or, at least, I am beginning to suspect that I will be glad not to elope. Why? Because I want to celebrate with anyone who is willing to celebrate. I found a friend who is not going to leave me...even if I deserve it which feels like a miracle in and of itself. That miracle is only doubled upon realizing that I am also going to be his friend who does not leave. The only family that we get to choose. And I want people to be there. I want them to remind me of how excited I was on my wedding day. I want them to feel invited to remind me when I need that reminder. There is more than a small amount of hope being planted in these plans. Besides, we have so few reasons to celebrate while we pass through this world under a curse.

How is it even possible that I have purchased another cookbook? I do not know. But it is here at home with me.

Ok. Actually, I do know. It was $5 at a Goodwill and was in perfect condition. And I cannot say 'no' to a cookbook that I can afford and which will definitely be used. In the last year, I have taken to reading cookbooks cover-to-cover, literally reading every page with a scrupulousness I definitely did not apply to college. I must have scoured over 3,000 pages in the last year.

And so, they are all bookmarked with sticky-notes for recipes that I found inspiring and helpful. They all sit waiting eagerly on the shelf. The more informative ones I refer to by their author. I will be talking to Tyler and say something like, "Deborah has a salad dressing that I think you would like" or "Nigel cooks chard in a way that makes it actually look tasty."

In my long unemployment, there is a huge chunk of time that I must fill in the early mornings when prospective employers do not want to talk to the unemployed for a few more hours (if at all), friends are at work, and Tyler is in class. This is a dangerous time because it can easily lead to laziness or food depression or all manner of other evil. This is the time I spend with the likes of Deborah and Nigel. They are good teachers who love food for its own sake, for the textures, colors, flavors, aromas, and a thousand other subtleties whose discernment is born from obsession and lots of practice. I have learned a lot from them and I have benefitted from their passion.

So I have come home with another book by another author. It is the William-Sanoma book on "Entertaining". Tyler wanted it because he loves the details of hosting. I am all messy kitchen, hoping my guests don't mind that I licked the spoon, and just barely on time. Tyler is all folded napkins and garnish. (I am sure that someday we will achieve hospitality in a truly unique way.) This book is as much for him as it is for me.

And so, I feel at the same time compelled to open it and read it through...and to go back to my old friends and pick a new thing that I have meant to try but haven't gotten around to. Either way, food and cookbooks are the only constant in my day to day life these days.

I think there is a part of me that reads cookbooks by authors who do a lot of explanation and teaching with their recipes because it is this giant reminder that life is still happening. I feel so much like I have been put into this holding position until God gets around to giving me clearance to land. I sit up in the sky making circles in my airplane and trying not to watch the fuel gauge because, you know, faith and stuff.

Mondays are paralyzing. Other people wake up on Monday and think, "I have a whole week of my life that has been planned for me to get through until I can do what I want." I wake up on Monday with the weight of feeling that last week did not have any word from God or his prophets and now I have a whole blank week ahead of me in which I hope to be able to muster something that looks like confidence (which I have none of) so I can organize my time, convince somebody that I have skills worth paying money for, and try to spend as little money as possible. And all of this I feel pressure to do well enough to ward off the nagging feeling that I am doing everything wrong. Try as I might, I have swallowed just enough of that American value that says that you are master of your destiny and, if you don't like your circumstances, you have only yourself to blame.

But I remember how I got here. With much prayer and tears and hope and trust. With much trying my absolute best and hardest. All of that climaxed first in getting fired. The prayers I offered Tuesday night at small group for direction and help with my job were still on their way to heaven the Wednesday I got fired. Thursday, I woke up with so much relief. And then the sweatshop. And seeking more direction and stepping out in more faith to leave that and walk into the longest free fall. Being raised a good moderately good pentecostal, I grew up with the idea that you can't live on yesterday's word from God or yesterday's promises. But this is what I have been doing because God has offered no further word.

I am just a woman, infinitely small. Who am I to counsel God? Who am I to tell him to speak?

I know a host of people who would tell me to pray more, to read more Bible, to be better at going to church every week. It is not that I do not do any of those. Rather, those take on different appearances as I get older and find myself in stranger seasons of life. (Except for going to church more often. That has just been the terrible failing of trying to travel, spend time with family, remember when daylight daving is etc.) Food is my spiritual dischipline. Reading cookbooks is my prayer that I can someday be a skilled individual with a meaningful life. Eating and cooking is my demonstration of faith that it is worthwhile to keep myself healthy, that I will wait this out with the expecation that something will change eventually. It is a conversation with God. It is thanksgiving and petition. It is all the faith I can manage.

Today, it does not quite feel like enough.

After getting rejected from a job that I seriously thought was the one, I find that I have two choices. 1. I can get into the kitchen and binge on cooking and baking. 2. I can stop eating until morale improves. Both seem equally tempting today. I wish I had roommates to cook for. I am not taking this very well and I know that. But this was the first company to call me back. I had two interviews and I had even allowed myself to hope enough to buy work clothes arrange my schedule "just in case" I was suddenly employed. Losing this opportunity feels like HAI took this from me also. The grief is renewed today.

My mom thinks I have PTSD from HAI. I just laughed when she told me. Both because it's ridiculous and because it took her way too long to figure it out. It was an abusive job.

I'm scared of being employed again. Who would want to go back to the abuse? I'm scared of not being employed again. I want something meaningful to do with my life.

I find myself always looking for a prophet. I cling overly much to people with that spiritual gift. I keep hoping God will send down some fragment of his plan, some word of encouragement.  But their messages are never for me.

The way things are is not the way they should be.

Today, the world is too sharp. It has so many corners and it has been broken in so many places. I read the news and I am cut.

The news is on fire today (the way it likes to be). There are riots in Baltimore and everyone wants to offer their opinion, their commmentary on what is happening, their  criticicism on whether or not black man, rioter, or police man has reacted with the proper decorum. And somehow we just forget that a man died because of abuse while in police custody. I only care about his race as secondary issue. First, I care that he died a needless death. Sure, he had a history of breaking the law. But since when does dealing drugs warrant a death sentence? Does it bar you from justice? Does it make you less human? Do we get to throw stones?

When I lie, do I relinquish my right to live? When someone cheats on their wife, do they become an animal instead of human being? Do we get to kill whoever is not perfect? If we do, do we get to escape the consequences of that? Explain to me why Gray's past makes it ok for him to die. But the police's actions are not worth responding to? Sure, there may be a "right way" to respond. But I would warn you that it is more important to make sure that you respond to injustice than that you spend too much time metering out exactly how it should be done in the halls of bureaucracy. We all forget so quickly when it is not our injustice. If the protests were here in Portland, I would be there. There is not very much separating Gray from a number of my neighbors and friends.

Police brutality makes the lives of good policemen more dangerous and more difficult. This is not just about black people but about what kind of world do we want to live in. Is justice a luxury or a human right?

I have spent most of the morning stressing (more like agonizing) about what to wear. There are only a few things that could possibly cause this state of mind and only one of those things which can enforce it with the gravity that I feel and the panic that I am tempted to give into. I have a job interview today. At Columbia Helicopters. I made it through their phone interview talking for nearly 20 minutes about why I got fired, what one thing I would change if I could, what I think I could have done better etc. It was intense, but I made it. And I did it without airing all of HAI’s dirty laundry and taking jabs at their ethics, their management decisions, or the quality of the working environment (despite my interviewer baiting me in that direction). I have a good feeling about this company and this coming interview.

BUT…what do I wear!? Being a woman in an industry interview turns all the rules that I was taught about interview dress code on their head. I have worn jeans and a nice shirt and felt incredibly over-dressed simply because my shirt was “too feminine” and feminine equals fancy. And fancy equals superfluous. And superfluous means not necessary, not hard working, not “mechanic” and so on. At HAI, I strived to hide my femininity because it was always getting in the way of people believing that I could do the job. If you want to be seen as competent, it is so much easier if everyone just forgets that you’re a woman and accepts you as one of the guys. The way you dress is the easiest way to sabotage your competency before you do anything.

Eventually, sometime after I realized that they were going to fire me if I did not quit but before HAI actually pulled the trigger (that’s some 5 months of a gap), I stopped caring. I realized that I was never going to be who they wanted me to be. I was never going to be masculine enough. My body is part of my identity that I can either hack away at or accept; but it cannot be quietly changed or molded to meet arbitrary expectations. It is decidedly feminine. With or without my permission. And even though I gave up on meeting their expectations, I resented myself for not being able to do better. Not being able to change who I was felt like a failure. (I realize now that it was grace disguised and extended to my future self.) I did not take that failure gracefully. Of all of the half truths and blatant lies that I internalized while there, this one has been the hardest to get a handle on and look in the eye.

The truth is: if what I wear to my interview is professional and modest but too unmasculine, too much an indicator that I will never be one of the boys, too burgundy, too brightly colored…then I don’t want the job. I used to. I used to want the acceptance of success bad enough. But I have tried that road and it costs too much. I was one step away from not recognizing who I was when I looked in the mirror. I am done with that now. I am going to let my masculine and feminine traits fall where they may naturally and focus all of my attention on learning the trade. If that is not enough for a company then I do not agree with their definition of success and I will be ok with failing. 

Just Like Jimmy

It is amazing to me how much admitting that I am angry heals the anger. I was always taught that anger should be outside of the Christian experience. Verses like "turn the other cheek" are often taught as if you should allow yourself to be smacked and then say, "Thank you" with so much smile that you actually feel grateful for the abuse. I find comfort in the fact that the Bible has other verses like "pray for your enemies" and "in your anger do not sin." They comfort me because it means that I did not necessarily do anything wrong if I have acquired some enemies in my life. I am only asked to treat my enemies well. I do not need to pretend that they are actually friends or even nice people.

Moreover, I have found it easier to pray for people after I admit that they have wronged me. Once that self-denial and keeping of pretense is gone, I can ask that they would learn to be better wholeheartedly. Likewise, once I admit that I am angry, I can focus on figuring out what to do with my anger.

I have read a lot of stories about failure followed by triumph. So many of them include ironic thank yous to those who hurt and rejected them because they used the hurt and rejection to dig down deep inside of themselves and find the will power to keep going until they succeeded. I am not that kind of person. Decidedly.

I can with Joseph in Genesis 50:19 echo forgiveness and even acceptance that what one person meant for evil, God often uses for good. I can thank God for acting on my behalf, for choosing to use even my enemies to bless me. But that is where that ends. I will not thank my enemy. I can, like Joseph, put the past behind us and choose to bless my enemy. But I will not appreciate the evil. Maybe this is an issue of maturity. If so, it is still where I find myself and I will not pretend otherwise. For now, I think it is enough that I could shake hands with my enemy, work for his or her benefit and blessing, and sleep well. I am not yet able to say of evil things that they were anything but evil. I say that simply and without malice or regret. Yes, it is even without the fire of the old anger.

And this is the same way that I expect to be judged. That no matter how God uses my ignorance, my selfish blundering, and my evil...it is still going to be called by its proper name. Sure, I can rest in the forgiveness of Jesus, but that does not protect from the vocabulary of what happened and why. Nor does it save me from certain natural consequences pertaining to one's identity. See, now I am a woman who has enemies. If I had chosen differently, I could have also been their enemy. I could have woken up with the motivation to harm them, to make their lives difficult, to inflict suffering. And maybe, I was their enemy. When I was kind to them, it was always in the most malicious way. Romans 12:20 was my theme verse when I stepped across the threshold of those doors, , "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Proverbs 25:22 says the same thing but adds, "and the Lord will reward you."  

There were some days where I walked into work and lasted maybe an hour before I started praying that this verse would be true. You know something though? It was. My enemies were tortured when I smiled and wished them well. It was weird. But Jimmy became my mascot. It was not really "winning" so much as refusing to play the game, refusing to justify my enemies hatred, and refusing to be as miserable as they intended. It gave me freedom from their seemingly all-encompassing power. And it made me appreciate the relevancy of the Bible in a whole new way.
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Let's just be honest:
I am angry. And I am broken. And I do not trust myself.

Why? Because I got fired from a job that I hoped that I would like. It was a job that I thought might be a career. Yet, in ten months there, I can count the days that enjoyed on my fingers. I am angry that I am not over this yet. It has been just over a year. One year and 17 days. I am impatient. I want to move on. But I am still angry. I am still figuring this out. I am still so lost.

They took something from me, but I do not know what it is. How can I look for it?

People are so quick to reduce my present reality to a lack of confidence because I got fired.

I find my behavior to be much more erratic than that. I want to chop all my hair off, get a tattoo and a leather jacket, buy some makeup, wear my largest earrings, and go back to where I used to work and try again. This time, things will be different. I will refuse to be silent. I will not maintain the status quo. I will definitely rock the boat. I will be every bit the strong woman that they were afraid of but that I failed to deliver on. This time, I will be all storm and rage without any of the demure peacemaker I used to be.

I will ask all of the same questions that I did before but this time I will not back down when I sense that I am becoming "too much", that I am making certain managers feel insecure, that I am upsetting the delicate balance of power. I will not apologize until I have done something wrong. I will not apologize for being different. I will not apologize for being more comfortable with myself than they can be.
I will not apologize for what is not my fault.
I will offer no peace offering. I will not sit through my joke of a write-up meetings just so management can feel "masculine" and in "control of the situation"...especially when there is no situation, there is just me taking things at face value that I was supposed to read into. There was just me waiting for their power trip to be over so I could go back to work without looking over my shoulder.

No. I am afraid that "lack of confidence" does not cover this. "Believing in myself" is not a helpful prescription nor is "realizing that they were the problem" or any of the other suggestions people have offered to help me not be afraid. I am afraid, but I do not think that I am afraid of what they expect me to be. Sure, some part of me is afraid of failing again, afraid that I am not enough. But, I know that I can be a good mechanic. If someone asks me that directly, the answer is always yes. Unhesitatingly, yes. Can I be who they want me to be? That question I am afraid of.

I have a whole new respect for the Rosie Riveters and Phoebe Omlies. People talk about their pioneering but they do not know the inherent loneliness and immense self-acceptance that those women built their lives out of. And I do not either. This is a different time. Portland is such a different place. But I know that they must have had a lot of expectations that they may not have even wanted to meet. I do not know if they chose to meet them or chose to do things their very different way. Maybe they molded themselves to the world. If so, they are more flexible than I and I still admire them. See, I tried to be someone else on the outside while keeping my core identity safe. It didn't work. I know now, that I do not want it to work. I know now...to just walk away. I know now to not even try to be anyone but myself. That is a hard lesson to learn because adaptation is my first language and mediation is my second.

I am afraid that next time, people will still want me to be someone that I am not. I am afraid of unleashing all of this anger until I learn the art of fusion and burn like the sun. I am so afraid of trying again to not be myself even though I know better.

This Post Got Lost In My Drafts For Almost a Year

I met this artist in Arizona. He's amazing. I wish I had more money to help support him. His work is the best pen & ink that I have ever seen. Standing next to a piece that took him over 50 ball point pens, I nearly cried.

Have I ever told you that I cry when I see great work up close? I cannot help it. It is not the response I would choose. I would choose more words to the artist, to his mother, to anyone that would listen. Except that, next to great art, my more words just sounds like more noise even before I speak them so I don't and the things I would say if they could add and not subtract from the piece, the things that do not get words fill up my mouth until they overflow into my eyes.

Words are essentially water. Either condensation carried in noise breathed out or else the raindrop tears. Maybe this is why the ocean has inspired so many writers of words.

Poets

I love Sarah Kay's work.



And this, this is excellent.

And me? I am learning who I want to sound like when I grow up. I am aware that when I am done with this season, I will be someone else. I look forward to that. I feel like I should unpack that more, explain that more, provide a little more detail...but I don't really have any. At least, not today.

And if you have the fortitude to listen to a poem about surviving rape, this is as excellent as art made from pain ever gets:

Man. These guys hit it. And when I say "it", I mean that they have such well thought out ideas on race but also education, media, and the value of people. Fantastic. This is invaluable perspective.

The Waiting Room at the Base of Mount Sinai

A couple of days ago, Tyler and I were talking and we reached the conclusion that everyone over-spiritualizes something. You can over-spiritualize anything from purity and following the rules to freedom and open-mindedness. And sure, God is in those things. But God is not nearly as invested in those as most adherents are.

I have been turning that conversation with Tyler over and over in the back of my mind, carrying it with me until I knew what I was looking for. Today, I stumbled on it.

I over-spiritualize learning. It is how I define success in my personal life and success in my religion. Am I still learning? Because learning equals growing and growing equals not dying (or giving up) and not dying equals success. Am I right? That and, at bottom, God doesn't demand that we are perfect in a day so as long as we are moving towards that goal, we are "walking with him" and that is salvation and the very point of Christian existence. Right? I mean, how else do we interpret verses like "continue to work out your salvation" or James's piece about faith being evident by deeds?

Besides, I love learning. I really do. And I think God does too. But maybe he doesn't need me to always be learning the way I need me to always be learning.

Learning for me has become the biggest reassurance that I am on the right track. God is teaching me, therefore where I am is good. As if, God is not also the one who teaches me when I really blow it. As if I am not learning just as much when I am behaving my worst as when I am truly doing my best. See, in reality, learning just means that I am still paying attention to my actions, their consequences, and any other details I observe. But accomplishing observation hardly tells me about the quality of my life and my choices.

Granted, this has been a hard year for measuring success any other way. Moreover, I literally have no idea what success means anymore. Or if I care. Am I successful? feels like the most irrelevant of queries. As if you asked me if I was a bird. Who the hell cares if I am a bird/successful? What matters is that I am trying, I am changing, I am learning. Or so I thought and I mostly still believe.

Except, I have been trapped in this desert for so long now and there is only so much that the wind and the sand can teach you. I do not think I am learning anymore. I do not think God is speaking to me any new truth or even any old truth that I have forgotten.

Throughout high school and most of college, I have loved who I thought I was becoming. I knew it was a gift to be able to accept myself as I became myself. Sure, I really struggled to extend myself grace, but it was largely because I so wanted to be my future self already. All the same, I was excited for where I was going and who I thought I would be.

I am not excited anymore. Why? Because I cannot pretend, imagine, or predict what is coming. I know this may seem quite silly to you. But I am a creature whose main form of survival is adaptation. On a level very near my DNA, I think I can learn fast enough and rearrange myself quick enough to be whoever I need to be on a given day.

Sure, all of you with Bible degrees, more life experience, or just a good dose of realism see the fault in my armor, the Achilles' heal, the base I haven't covered. And I do too. But carrying that burden of learning justifies ever season of life I find myself in. It makes me just the right amount of busy to really feel successful. And, there are so few negative side affects to being passionately over-committed to learning.

That is, until you get stuck. My life literally hasn't changed in 6 months. When I said, I was a creature who adapted for survival, I meant that I adapted as most humans breathe. Not changing feels like suffocation. Sure, I have gotten engaged, had job interviews, traveled etc. etc. etc. But my view of next week always looks the same. It always looks back at me with more questions than I can ask of it. Sure, I fill my time. But I am not convinced that I am going anywhere. Like God got busy and put me on hold and now I just live in the waiting room at the base of Mount Sinai.

Of course this is all horrible theology. But this is what the best of my senses perceive. I am not learning any new big thing about the world or God or myself. I am just here. And God is here. But He only says that He loves me and then moves on to the next person. And I know that if I was a good Christian, it would be enough to be loved by the God the universe. But I want so badly to have a purpose. And that blasted Westminster Catechism just plays in the background "man's purpose is to obey God and enjoy him forever." As if that tells me what to do tomorrow, or next week, or at all.

Though it is the most hypocritical of paradoxes, I am learning how to not always be learning. I am learning not to over-spiritualize or over-emphasize learning. It is one my less graceful lessons. But I challenge you, what do you over-spiritualize? It is not an easy mirror to look into.

I woke up with the burning need to write something. This happens. It is like thirst except things tumble out of your throat and out over your tongue instead of being drawn in through your mouth toward your gut. It happens most often while I am driving. Sometimes I speak the words that I would write so that they exist at least for a moment with me in the car like condensation evaporating.

If I have ignored writing for too long, I wake up like today with half a dozen rivulets flowing in different directions but knowing that my hand will only travel the tide of one voice. The rest will likely be lost. Sometimes, I can dam up a tributary and hold it by the head like a snake. I will write down the location to the headwaters of an idea. Too often, though, when I pass back by that idea, it has dried up and no longer know what I meant, why it was important, or where it would have taken me.

Today, I woke up to find the headwaters of several disparate rivers in my mouth. Every thought came out in prose. The shower was alive with rumbling of words. I have saved up introspection just for this.

But today, like every other day, there is only so much time. Already, the tributaries are waning.

Do I write about the ants who have sent their second wave of scouts into my kitchen and penetrated my defenses much more thoroughly than I would have thought possible on a Monday morning? All weekend, there was no movement and I let my guard down. No casualties as of yet, though they would carry off the sugar jar if they were strong enough.

I have a prompt that I have been saving that starts, “When you are a White American, no one asks you where you are from or how long you have been in the United States.”

Or do I want to explore the constant companion of discontentment? I do write about that a lot in my attempts to out run dissatisfaction, create understanding, and engage a new season of life.

I am constantly mentally writing a detailed analysis of Dan Simmons’ twin works Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. What he accomplishes in regards to an alternate science fiction universe, his characters’ relationship to time, and the question of what kind of relationship between God and creatures should exist is phenomenal. He very much deserves all of the awards that his work has received.

I have a half thought out piece on how living with no regrets is bullshit. Unless you either love the people in your life perfectly or don’t really love them at all, you are going to mess up and hurt people that wish you didn’t. Trying to chase the cliché of “no regrets” just makes you unrepentant and arrogant. I understand that it appeals because it wards off a certain degree of vulnerability, but invulnerable people tend to be selfish jerks. (There’s a reason I haven’t published that gem yet. It could use some polishing.)

Or do I attempt to sort out all of the confusion I am carrying around about my health, my present, and my future?

Oh! I could write up a list of unhelpful things that people tell you when you are planning a wedding. And what I think planning a wedding is really about.

Lastly, do I finally start that food blog that I keep threatening to make?

In reality, I need to go make some food, get to an appointment, go grocery shopping, have my first visit with a Western doctor, and attend the gardening class that I (apparently) signed up for. It’ll be a good day. But the desire to write remains unsatisfied. And so, I leave this bit of angst for all of my good intentions that never do satisfy myself.

This is a poem about rape culture. I found it poignant and accurate. Some of you shouldn't watch it because it will hit too close to home. Some of you really should though. When minorities ask the majority to listen, it is things like this that they are asking to be considered because things like this can help create understanding. Poems are rarely flawless arguments, but they can share a wealth of valid experiences. Also, a word to everyone who has ever told me that rape doesn't happen that often: as I get older, the number of people (men and women) whom I can count who have not been raped, sexually assaulted, or almost raped dwindles. If you can find evidence for sexual abuse being infrequent, you are among the privileged.

I have met regret and she looks an awful lot like me.

There are things that no one told me about being engaged. To be fair, I do not think a warning would have prepared me.

As promised, I have been invited onto an emotional roller coaster and I am clearly not the one driving. 

People told me that making a guest list is the hardest part. I think they meant because you want to invite everyone but can't or because you and your parents AND your fiance and your fiance's parents all have different ideas of how big of a wedding and who is important. This has not been my experience. Rather, I am finding that in the last 6 years, I have lost people who I thought would share this day. Best friends in high school, my grandfather, and even a few college friends. 

It is a new aspect of an old grief. My friends from high school have been the hardest. We dreamed up fantastic and purposeful lives for ourselves together. As I pass mile markers in my life that used to only exist in the future, I miss them. I want them to see how things turned out, to laugh at how wrong I was about some things mostly. To marvel that somehow this or that did not cause the end of the world. And I want to know where they are at in the process of becoming themselves. But, I do not know anything. Some of them, I do not even know what city they live in much less how to contact them. 

The dreams and the nightmares are the worst part. It is ridiculous, I know. But that guest list has brought up untold guilt that I did not know how to save that friendship, did not try harder, was not wiser or stronger or more patient...that I did not love them tenaciously enough. And that I could not protect them from the trauma none of us have ever recovered from. My two best friends were assaulted in high school. And it is as much a part of this world's curse that it didn't happen to me as that it did happen to them. What I mean is this, there is no reason why I survived high school unscathed and they didn't. People try to tell me that God protected me which just about boils my insides because I cannot understand why God would protect me and not them. All I can figure is that the curse of Eden is made complete in the injustice that falls with unequal weight on us. The fact that I am made alone by surviving and that I had to watch them shrink into themselves is another injustice in and of itself. It is the same curse, but it falls uniquely on each of us and often makes us believe that we alone are cursed or that we deserved it.

I thought I had grieved those years already. I thought I had forgiven myself and moved on. But for the last few nights I have dreamt of high school. I have relived things that I could not stop even the first time and I have loved good friends that I could not save only to wake and find it all long gone. The curse remains though. For the first time in my life, I have found something I regret enough to wish that I could talk to my younger self, touch her mouth and give her better words, let her look through the lens of my memory and see if she can't find the solution that escaped me. And so I dream. About the attackers. They stab me and, oddly enough, I recover better from that then from the dreams that come next. In them, I know I am dreaming. I am hanging out with my friends doing nothing in particular, but it is excruciating because I know it is not real. I cannot wake up but I cannot accept the dream. I don’t remember what happens in the dream, only the last scene before I finally open my eyes. When I wake up, we are all strangers who used to be friends and reality seems just a little bit cruel.

I have been living in a fog these past few days as I have tried to piece together why I am dreaming these dreams. The emotional weight that I awake with is immense. I feel old and worn out. It must be the guest list. The roll call of important people that should be. That and, I miss them.

Tonight I am home alone in my tornado of a house with something akin to free time. So I pulled out a basin, filled it with soap and warm water, and moved everything out of my kitchen so I could get a good honest look at the floor. It is a little odd, I know, to enjoy washing the floor as much as I do. However, there are few household tasks that I enjoy more than mopping the kitchen floor with a rag on my hands and knees. A lady I nannied for gave me her electric mop…it just was not the same.

The kitchen is servant and slave to the rest of the house. The floor bears the bulk of this inglorious business while the household takes and takes from it. My floor in particular is speckled with tea and wine, the occasional run away pea, and grains of rice that managed to escape. I find smatterings of frosting and batter flecked from the mixer that got away from me. There are foot prints from every shoe I wore these past few weeks (more honestly, months) as I dashed in and out for this or that; they are outlined in cranberry sauce and cumin, pie crust and cilantro leaves.

I forget that I like this. I forget that I benefit from this ritual, this washing of my kitchen’s feet. It is silly that I forget because I so often tell people that a person can tell how I feel by the state of my kitchen. If it looks unused, I am not taking care of myself. If there are stacks of unwashed dishes, I am trying desperately to keep up and remember all of the pieces of my health. If you cannot see the counters and the sink, well…pray for me because there is likely little else that you can do to calm my brain and heart once such a tumult has taken center stage (unless you are one of the few who can roll up your sleeves and help take care of the mess without stepping on my toes or putting dishes away in the wrong cupboard).

Anyway, this is my way of managing to do more than live on the surface of my environment. Somehow that is really important to me. To live deeply rooted in a place without destroying it. I do not know if that makes sense.  Let us just say for now that I have taken care of my house and it has taken care of me in return.

These last few weeks have blown me in every direction. Tyler proposed and I accepted. I feel like that shouldn’t have changed anything all that much. After three years of dating, we knew we wanted to get married and we were working through all of the many things I was afraid of or unsure about, rational and irrational. Still, I was surprised and it seemed that my brain had fallen out the back of my head. Any ability to analyze, sort, or prioritize information was crippled and metaphorically bedridden for a little over a week. I am indeed delighted but, if I am honest, that was not the singular emotion riding my synapses that first week or so. Some days, it was not even the dominant emotion. I am such a timid creature until I am certain of something. I struggle against an inner compulsion to meet every expectation put in front of me and I shrink back the second I realize I was not made that way or do not wish to meet that standard or might not be totally capable. Marriage terrifies me in a deep and unsettling way.

Tyler and I have been examining this fear for awhile now. Basically, it is the same pet fear I keep around all the time but amped up with a new mask and a thousand extra expectations that I have no intention of meeting. I know I as a woman am supposed to want to be beautiful, but I do not. I mean, sure, being beautiful sure beats being ugly. But I have always felt beautiful excepting the intermittent trespasses of the unhelpful man or ignorant woman. I do not want to be more beautiful enough to fear failing. What do I want? To be capable.

Can I tell you something? 2014 hit me hard where it counted. Evicted. Fired. Four months of unemployment. Folding t-shirts. Largely unable to communicate to my coworkers because I couldn’t remember all of the Spanish I had learned, couldn’t relearn fast enough. I was in and out of depression. I couldn’t explain to friends what was wrong or why I needed them. When I went home to Montana, I spent so much of the time explaining myself and defending my beliefs it was exhausting. I was just following God around a desert that I often felt like was made out of my own ineptitude. And the gut punch? I have no idea how far away or how close flight school is. But I took most of that in stride…kind of a drunken stagger really. But, I was upright and still trying. Marriage is extra terrifying because of my fear of not being capable. A fear that, after 2014, seems a lot less irrational than it did previously.

I have heard all of the quaint things that people can say about how no one is good at marriage and so on. Odd as it may seem, those statements *are not helpful*. I am more likely to panic than to be comforted. In that panic, I have found just a few friends who are truly helpful and a partnership with Tyler that continues to encourage me that marriage does not have to end in disaster.

Tonight, as I clear the clutter from my kitchen, I feel like I am coming home to myself. I have no idea what the next few days or weeks or months have in store. Quite certainly, the Panic will find me again. But it will also leave again. Each time, it stays a little less long and I am glad for that. I know myself to be mostly capable. If I can add humility and grace to whatever skills I have, I think marriage will be good. 

Coming up... A month of drawing. I guess it could be construed as a New Year resolution but really this was bound to happen and I just happen to find myself in the first month of 2015. My biggest problem in making art (besides finishing projects) is just getting myself to sit down.

Hopefully a dedicated month of drawing will help. If not, well, we will have to see.