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.