Week of April 5-9 April 8, 2010

I’m going out of town tomorrow (YAYAY) so the post is a day early:

I’ve been chided for being bitter, hence the reason I looooove this picture:

I am extremely “unsweet” and totally OK with that. It’s not a constant state of being, rather, it’s a slightly snarky side that I possess.

However.

A friend sent me a challenge that we are undertaking together, in which we live out Phil. 4:8.

To be straight up honest, I have sucked it up already! The concept is “simple”, you live out Philippians 4:8; thinking purely and positively, avoiding gossip, avoiding complaining and negative thoughts. This morning while reading the challenge for the day I wanted to punch the smiley face in the email, making that the 2nd failure on the 1st day of this enterprise.

While I can be fun and funny and full of orneriness, I have a side that is very realistic, steeped in concern and worry. Being a “linear thinker” I can tend to take a problem and let it consume me. I will (grudgingly) admit – I see the benefits in this 8 day challenge, and a part of me is panicking because I could possibly lose control of the parts that I think are intrinsically “me”. But then I think back to the person I was 2 years ago, and look at how much I’ve changed…and I know it’s possible.

In 8 days I could very well become a hippie-peace-and-love-flower-wearing child who insists on hugging every person I see, all the while wishing them hearts and granola, flashing them the Peace sign when we part ways.

Or, I’ll stubbornly hold onto my pessimistic “realism” and continue punching the monitor, getting madder for every day that I read the challenges and scriptures and principles and happy-talk.

Or, I’ll fall somewhere in between those two extremes. Maybe I’ll become nicer and calmer, happier and more at peace, still wanting to Christian-side-hug people but also living in the reality that every day presents.

I joked that this experience is like a colonic – it will flush my system of the waste that is taking up space, slowly poisoning me from the inside out. Who knows? It might turn into something that I pursue yearly, in an effort to purge the negativity that the year has presented me with. Maybe during those rough spells it will become something that I pursue monthly, in an effort to balance. Maybe it will become a way of life, and these principles that I’ve skipped over since childhood will stick and change me for the better.

Maybe this desire to be better, not bitter, makes up for failing twice this morning on the very FIRST day.

Guess we will wait and see!

Made in China November 6, 2009

I’ve long been teased for appearing to be of Oriental descent. I fit the (often wrong) stereotype: tiny, dark hair, and eyes that disappear into slits when I laugh.

The other day we were talking about iPods and I got to thinking about Josh’s that Pat and Jan gave me…and how it refuses to function. It keeps showing me a picture on the iPod of an iPod with a frowning face.

So, what does my iPod have to do with China? It’s the fact that a broken iPod is disposable. The only thing separating me from another one is a scant 2 or 300 dollars; NOT the fact that there are no more iPods being produced. The fact that this generation can easily run out and replace whatever is broken is a departure from the generations before us. Back then there were limited quantities. Now we are in an over-saturated market with very little concern of exhausting our resources, and we are losing our ability to place value on things.

And that idea made me think about people. Since when did we start buying into the notion that the people in our lives are disposable? The idea that we can use them, manipulate them, change the original way they came to us to fit our likes and dislikes, and can toss them aside when we’re done with them (should we lose them, break them, or just flat wear them out)? I’m afraid that the notion that everything we want in a person can be found in an Oriental Trading catalog – to fit our mood, our season, in a plethora of colors and more of them than we could ever want – has seeped in.

Do we REALLY value the people in our lives? I’m pretty sure there are no other Tina’s like me. I didn’t have a twin (even if I did, we’d have different personalities), there’s not a robot-version of me (I’m not a craaaazy Stepford wife) and I’m pretty sure if you got rid of me, there’d be a Tina-shaped hole in your life that no one, no matter how much better or worse then me they are, will fill.

This idea goes both ways. For example. I will forever have an Aaron shaped hole in my life. Even if and when I move on and find another relationship, he came into my life and changed the landscape of it – and his departure will leave a mark.

I occasionally feel non-existent or replaceable in other people’s lives, and I feel like my friendship is of so little value to some people that it and I can be tossed aside whenever I’m not performing right or being right or fitting their ideal; but what really saddens me is that I did those same things to him.

PAUSE

& HEAR ME NOW: I do not want him back. We didn’t work and that’s ok. What’s not ok is that I had this unrealistic man in mind. I was broken and even though I said I didn’t, I expected him to be the ideal. He couldn’t. I wanted to take the man and change him, beyond the line of what is normal. I wanted to tailor him to the catalog specifications. However, I couldn’t, and there’s only one of him.

Now. This too goes both ways. He replaced me in his life. When he was done with me he would move on to the next thing (and trust me, that list was lengthy).  The little plastic toy that our relationship had become, the one that was picked up and put down with ease, is also the one that will leave a memory or two; hopefully some of them fond. I was remarkably dispensable but still left a hole because he allowed me into his life for relationship with him.

And so, I look at our broken relationship in which we each bear responsibility and at the other relationships in my life. How many more people am I doing the catalog search on, in which I order them as the product and then insist on changing them, instead of valuing their normalcy, their flaws, and their brokenness? How many people will I see as replaceable, and how many will leave a hole that I won’t even realize the size of until they are gone?

What in society has caused us to think this way? Why can’t we [all just get along] all just accept the people in our lives for who they are – even when they don’t know who they are? Why play games and try to change everyone and then toss them aside when they aren’t meeting our standards?

Why not do the following: give them room for their bad moods, their stress, their hurt and pain? Why not treat them like they are the only one (because they are) and cherish that while we have it? Why not cherish each relationship at whatever stage it’s at – because some will grow, but some will disappear? Why not stop looking at everyone as use for our selfish gain, our play-thing, our person to create and mold and instead simply commit to relationships, even when they SUCK?

If we are Christians, isn’t that what we’re taught to do anyways (in kinder, gentler words and with scripture notation)?

Why not embrace the real and the limited and value it like we know we should?

Maybe no one else in society thinks this way, and I’m just engaging in the classical game of transference. But, maybe not.

**Yeah – THIS mindset drives me CRAAAZY: The Onion’s New Device, Old Device