DV's Deliberations

3 Years

It’s been 3 years and nearly 3 months since I “made the decision” for Yeshua. For many believers, this would be the marked starting point of the journey, but I can’t really trace where it began (although I have to give most credit to my family and my other family, aka camp). And it took me 17 years of what seemed to be a sheltered life mixed with seeing people around me get messed up by drugs and a friend’s near death to get me there.

One thing I have noticed about my walk with God is that initially it was very easy for me to transform myself into having an identity in Christ. This probably sounds like a great thing, and I think it was the best thing for me at the time. The Holy Spirit guided me into seeing who Jesus is and somehow made me more like Him, and I probably felt more and more like Him until about the past year or so in which I’ve faced new challenges and a lot of confusion.

Perhaps feeling far from God a lot this past year was a result of misconceptions I had before. But in retrospect I think a main reason is that I found myself too easily getting lost into being defined in others. Ironically, it started with Jesus, with me forming an identity in Christ, and of course that was life-changing and far beyond comprehension. But somehow in the past 2 years of being in a Christian environment, Jesus has become more and more like an idea, grand and aloof, and I can’t seem to get the understanding of Jesus that once worked for me a few years ago.

When I was in Europe this summer, I felt like God said to me that I need to become my own person. This is kind of weird coming from God, right? At least that’s probably what most believers would think. There’s always talk about how we should be more like Christ, but how do we become more like ourselves? Once I heard this, I almost dreaded it and ignored it. I don’t want to find out what I love, it’s too scary. I just want to be told what to do and be with people who will love me and just tag along with what they’re doing. But God won’t have that.

So now I’m on to a “new journey”, trying to find what I love and actually doing those things.

I was also reminded of a quote from a professor in a theology conference last spring, and I know I am going to horribly rephrase it (maybe a little help from anyone who actually remembers the quote?) The basic idea was that we can’t live in Christ unless Christ lives into our lives. It almost sets up red flags when you hear it, but it seems right at the same time. Or another way I’ve heard it is that we need to live as if Jesus was put in our body at this time and at the place we’re at.

Apparently you have to have your own identity for that to even happen.

 

 

A new attempt in writing fictiony-non fiction

Catered food.

There’s something about it that has taken over my weekend, or at least my thoughts about this weekend.

Maybe because this rarity showed up twice over the past two days.

Maybe because for the first time I served it, rather than consumed it, at least in the first occurrence.

Here’s the story…

The sun beat through the artistically, and inconveniently, separated canopies onto the blue silk of approximately 15 identical round tables, all aligned with the same place settings, beckoning the visitors to sit and enjoy a meal in the dreadfully dry day. We still had about 15 minutes before they would arrive.

“Ok, you know the drill. Ballet serving,” was more or less our directions for waiting on the people who would meet in the library courtyard.

After rehearsing the drill with imaginary plates in our hands, it was time for the real deal.

People came, conversed, sat down, listened to the president of the university lead a prayer, and quickly thanked us for our service.

With a dropped apron tied around my waist and two starched white napkins covering my hands, I nervously walk behind my coworkers, carrying hot plates, waiting for the nod, setting one to my left, moving to the left, setting down the second plate, smiling, and then repeating the cycle.

“Pick up the pace.”

I nod to signal an ok.

And there went two hours of circling tables, wobbling plates in my hands with muscles in my forearms that I never noticed before slightly burning.

People seemed happy.

Right after serving, we circle the tables again to fill half empty glasses and take away half empty plates. Before I knew it they were gone for the next meeting.

Forward time 29 hours and I’m sitting in the Avalon in Hollywood, with a mountain of catered food on my plate (I blame the plate for being too small).

Faux 1920s-ish music is playing in the background along with a temperature vision of a Charlie Chaplin DVD statically projected on two symmetrical silk screens.

People laugh and flashes slightly blind my eyes in the dimly lit atmosphere.

It’s kind of like a prom, or at least all the girls are dressed in prom-like dresses while my summery-spring dress that I threw on is slightly dressed up with heels.

Shortly after we finish our catered buffet meal, we are beckoned to go upstairs to wait in yet another line in an overcrowded room for desert.

After a night of waiting and eating, we manage to find some couch chairs and sit.

People seem to be having a good time, but I’m ready to go. It’s been a day of waiting in traffic and waiting in lines.

It’s been a weekend of waiting.

Except for the break I had Friday night with my college group for Shabbat dinner, with ordered pizza, a makeshift French bread “challah”, and a wave of relief that everyone had survived their week, with stories to tell of their most notable moments, their “best of the week”. A time of bible study. A time of prayer. A time of laughter. The all-too familiar hour-long cycle of good-byes. And then the new week commences.

Maybe this week will again be a week of waiting, or maybe it won’t. After all, this week will be special.

I’ll begin Passover at my Grandma’s house, where the matzo ball soup and the off-key singing of Passover songs at the end of a 3-4 hour Seder is always perfect. I’ll be missing my home congregation’s Seder, which comes with a catered meal. But somehow I’m ok with skipping out on the compact matzo balls floating in a salty soup at the Doubletree Hotel.

Maybe I’m a little moody after this week…

Don’t you love it when you realize that everything you learned in your childhood, including the trite sayings of Christianity, still stand true? I don’t.

Hate would definitely be too strong of a word to use in this instance, but there is something about having lessons you already learned confirmed which is so annoying and yet so reassuring.

For instance, when I cracked open my Bible today during a work break, I stumble upon Psalm 98:8 “O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.” I read the whole Psalm, but that verse really stuck out to me. Why? Because it so annoyingly confirmed something that I’ve learned a long time ago as a principle of my faith: love the sinner, hate the sin. Yep, definitely a good principle. But for some reason it still annoys me that what I’ve learned my whole life still stands true.

Maybe it’s because I want to rebel. Maybe it’s because I expect college to be the time when I learn that everything I’ve ever learned was all wrong. But no, the most profound lessons I get in life have lately been coming from friends who, more or less, quote what they learn from Disney movies. Actually the exposition of a Disney movie came to me only once today, but it was definitely the most provocative thing I’ve learned this week after having over 8 hours total of discussing Aquinas. Maybe it’s because I’m greedy that I have the truth. I have the truth, and I’m bored and surprised when truth reminds me what and who he is. Yep, reminds. There is definitely a lot more I need to learn, but one of those things is learning how to love what I’ve already learned.

Sometimes I forget…

that God is faithful, that he’s constantly working everywhere, and that he loves me enough to discipline me every once in awhile.

This past summer I thought I was cursed. I won’t go too much in detail about it but I was having some bad traveling luck. Like, really bad. Like, caught-in-the-middle-of-a-Las-Vegas-desert-on-a-greyhound-in-August-by-myself-for-3-hours bad. And of course, I whined to my parents and I whined to God, even though he was protecting me the whole time and even gave me a friend to talk to. This is only one of 3 very specific travel-horror stories I’ve had in the past 2 years, with 2 of them happening within the same month. Well, once again another “curse” struck me.

I was driving to LA to see some of my friends do a concert and then my car broke down on the side of the 105 freeway. Of course, I didn’t freak out this time because I’ve started to realize that sometimes things just don’t go your way, or if you own a car that is almost as old as you are and you don’t know its exact mileage it might not be perfect. Cool. Well, it actually wasn’t a bad experience at all. My friend was with me and she used her Plus AAA card to tow me, since my low class AAA only tows a pathetic 7 miles. (Both times that I’ve had a travel-horror story with a car I’ve been with a friend who has had a Plus AAA, which means I can now legitimately demand from my parents that I get the same membership since both times it saved my life, or more like $200, and now I sound so blatantly like a commercial that I feel like I should get it for free).

ANYWAYS… the funny part of the story is the part where God comes in (I know, right?) When my friend and I got into the second tow truck that we called (the first one which I called took us off the freeway, and then we decided to use her card when we found out we could), I got a text from my mom, “We r praying 4 u. dad says 2 witness 2 the driver.” Besides thinking “uhh mom. btw, it’s not cool to use abrevs,” the second simultaneous train of thought was “Crap. Now I know what I need to do and if I don’t do it it’s a sin.” I think God was sticking the whole James 4:17 in my face and I was like “Really? Man…”

Of course, I let myself sit in my pride/ self-justification for a little bit and I didn’t make much conversation with the driver. A little while later, however, I had to tell him that we were not going to Loyola, but BIOLA. Yup. BIOLA. And then I asked him if he had ever heard of it and told him that it was a Christian school.

“Christian, huh?”

From there it was pretty smooth sailin’! (No pun intended?) Apparently, he had a slightly religious mom and he had done some bad things in his life but he came to believe in God through a near death experience.

“Yeah, some people think that Jesus was just a prophet or something, but I believe he’s the messiah.”

Ok, so at this point I feel like he is witnessing to ME. After all, he was reciting a piece of a conversation prompt that I memorized this summer for an evangelism program: “Yes, Jesus was (a good man, prophet, etc.) but he was MUCH MORE than that.”

Well, I guess God just wanted to shake up my plans tonight and remind me that he is real. Also, it is ridiculously easy to bring up the fact that I go to a Christian college to any given stranger which opens up a conversation that could lead to Jesus. I should take note of this more often.

So I got into this terrible habit…

After a few weeks of sleeping in (out of my 6 week winter break), I started an inconvenient habit. I’ve been falling asleep the past week or so around 10.30- 11pm and waking up around 6:30-7am. My body has literally been shutting down by 11pm. I’ve been feeling great, but that’s not the point. This is a HORRIBLE habit for college students. The unspoken law in college is that you’re not supposed to be up when normal people are. I forced myself to stay up a little later last night to try to slowly break out of this mess. This is how I’m preparing for “real life”. I feel like an old lady. (While I’m borrowing my grandma’s sweater and a scarf. And I’m keeping the scarf.)

So much for trying to break out of this whole “old soul” thing.