Hey, Are You Listening To…?

I’ve loved music since I was a kid. I have fond memories of singing songs in children’s church as a youngster, or of my dad playing the Beatles or Rush on the family stereo system on Saturday mornings. When I was in elementary school, my own musical tastes began to emerge, only to be more fully developed in middle school, high school, and college. I had a collection of tapes that I would listen to in my room when I was young (early favorites were by artists like Reality Check, Ian Eskelin, and Fold Zandura). Eventually I upgraded to a CD player (the first CD I owned was Skillet’s self-titled album). I started playing percussion in the school band in 5th grade and began learning the drum set a couple years after that. Now I’m not a professional musician, of course, or even an expert, but music has still been an important part of my life.

However, I was thinking recently about how my experience of music has changed in the last decade or so. The change happened without me really noticing at the time. In short, my engagement with music has become more private.

For years, music was something that helped me build connections with other people. It was a bridge in developing friendships with others. Now of course, my friends and I didn’t all have identical tastes, but there was often some overlap. If a new album by a favorite artist was released, there were other interested people to discuss it with. If I met someone who shared a fandom for a particular artist (especially if it was a fairly obscure one), it created an instant connection. My enjoyment of music was something that took place in the context of community and relationship.

That isn’t the case these days as much. I don’t talk about music with others very often. It’s rare that I discover a new band based on the recommendation of a friend, or that I make recommendations to others. For the most part, the topic doesn’t even come up.

I wonder: Why the change? I can think of three possibilities:

1. The experience is unique to me. Maybe my musical tastes are too obscure, or at just don’t fit with people in my age and location. Maybe I’ve just forgotten how to use music to build a bridge with others. Maybe everyone else still uses music as a point of connection, but for whatever reason, I’ve stopped doing so.

2. Maybe this is just part of adulthood. It could be that music tends to be a more formative experience in youth, but by the time you hit your 30’s, it’s not really something that binds people together so much. Maybe the change I’ve noticed in myself is just something that happens at this time of life.

3. Maybe the experience is due to changes in our culture or in our technology. When I was a teenager or a college student, music was played on stereos. With speakers. It was easy to walk by someone else’s dorm room and notice that they were bumping a song that you dug too. But today, we engage with music differently. We listen through headphones plugged into our smartphones, or maybe on tinny laptop speakers. Because of that, maybe we’ve gotten used to enjoying music alone rather than in groups. Could it be that the means by which music is delivered has changed the role music plays in our relationships?

I’m not sure which of these possibilities is the true one. Maybe all three are, to a point. If you’re a music fan, have you noticed the same trend in your own life and relationships? Is music something that helps tie you to others, or has it become something more private?

And finally, what are you listening to these days? Some artists that I’ve discovered over the past couple years that I have been enjoying include: John Van Deusen, The Gray Havens, Dens, My Epic, and Reawaken Hymns. Check them out!

Maintenance

I’m pretty good at starting stuff. But I’m not always so great at continuing it.

My guess is that’s you’ve discovered the same thing about yourself, at least at times. Now that we’re a full eleven days into the new year, you may even be discovering this at this moment. You’re asking yourself, “Why did I ever make that New Year’s resolution? I never really wanted to get in shape in the first place, did I? And besides, how was I supposed to know that Wendy’s was going to start this 4 for $4 deal?”

The beginning is the easy part. The maintenance is the difficult part. And what I have found, at least about myself, is that I often focus on the beginning and don’t even think about what it’s going to take to maintain a project. It’s one thing to start, and even to accomplish a goal. It’s another thing to maintain the fruits of that goal.

It’s something you realize when you go for a jog for the first time in six months and have trouble making it past the end of your driveway.

You realize it when your plane lands in another country and you naively assume that you’ll remember everything you learned in your two years of foreign language class in high school.

You realize it when you’re car becomes stranded on the side of the road because you never took it in for a tune-up.

You realize it when you sit down to pray after having gotten out of the routine, only to find your mind wandering to everything other than thoughts about God.

You realize it when you sit down to do your July budget and notice that you didn’t write anything down for April, May, or June.

You realize it when you haven’t written many blog posts for a while and have trouble tapping out every single word.

You realize it when you notice that you haven’t done well keeping in touch with an old friend, but now it’s been so long that it would just be awkward to call.

We like to start new things–to start a new exercise regimen, a new diet, a spiritual discipline, a relationship, a habit, and so on. But if we don’t plan to maintain these undertakings, our starting of them doesn’t do much good. And that’s the key: we can’t just plan on how to get it off the ground. We also have to plan for how to keep them in the air. We have to plan for maintenance, and we have to do this planning at the outset.

If my goal is to get in better shape, I can’t just create a plan on how I’m going to lose 10 pounds and then leave it at that. I have to plan on how, once I lose those 10 pounds, I’m going to live in a way that keeps them from coming back to find my like the animals in Homeward Bound.

And if my goal is to develop greater intimacy with God, I can’t just make a plan for how I’m going to devote time to worship and prayer and Scripture-study over the next month. I have to think about how I’m going to continue to do those things when something unexpected comes up, or when my life gets really busy, or when the initial fire and excitement dies down.

If a couple is planning to get married, they have to do more than think about the details of their wedding ceremony: the music, the flowers, the food, and which song they want their friend David Heffren to sing at their reception. More importantly, they need to think about how their relationship will continue to grow and how they will continue to be devoted to each other years after their honeymoon is over.

When we make short-sighted goals, we often lose focus once we reach those goals. And when we lose focus, we lose intentionality. And when we lose intentionality, whatever gains we’ve made in that area begin to deteriorate, whether it’s physical, financial, relationship, spiritual, or whatever else. Once that happens, we end up right back where we were in the first place and are forced to start the whole project over again.

So what I am continuing to learn is that I need to prepare for the long haul from the start. And maybe the next time I go for a run, I’ll be able to make it out of my driveway and all the way to the end of the street. Lucky for me, we’re only the fourth house down.

On Demand

If Exercise and David Heffren were friends on Facebook, their relationship status would be “It’s Complicated.” We’ve broken up and gotten together again more times than Cory Matthews and Topanga Lawrence.

A couple months ago, I decided that it was time to get serious about losing some weight. I started eating well and cut down on snacks and soda. I started running a few times a week. And it was going pretty well. I lost a few pounds — maybe a little more slowly than I would have liked, but it was a start.

Then I went to a March Madness party, and there were pizza roll-ups and Cokes and nachos. I pigged out. So the next day, when it was time to eat lunch, suddenly Five Guys Burgers didn’t sound that off-limits. I mean, could it be much worse for me than the smorgasbord I had enjoyed the day before?

About the same time, the amount of running took a sharp decline because I was getting really bad shin splints. (By the way, does anyone know how to prevent those? I imagine I probably get them because my running posture is very similar to that of Napoleon Dynamite.)

Anyways, that brings us up to today. Sure, I hadn’t run in about three weeks. And sure, I’ve been stuffing my face with Coke and potato chips for a while. But it was time to get back on the horse, so I went for a run. However, I didn’t go as far as I hoped I would. I was out of practice, and I probably didn’t have enough water in my system. I felt like a wrung-out sponge by the end of it.

As I walked back to the house, I was frustrated. I was upset with myself that I couldn’t do better. I was angry that I”m as out of shape as I am. But during that walk, I also realized something about exercise and health, and not about exercise and health alone but also about most areas of life:

Most worthwhile things can’t be accomplished quickly.

We love to have things happen quickly, but the most important things in life just don’t happen like that. Losing weight is a good example. My goal is to lose about 25 pounds, and I really want that to take about a week. But I can’t. Getting healthy requires a lifestyle change: weeks of choosing water over soda, of turning down dessert, and of putting on your running shoes and hitting the pavement. It takes time and hard work and discipline and dedication. And this applies to a number of situations:

A healthy marriage isn’t something that develops quickly (I assume). It’s years of communication, sacrifice, and commitment. Many marriages fail because they want the desired result (a mature relationship) without putting in the time and effort it takes to get there. The same goes for friendships or parent-child relationships as well.

Success in an academic or professional field requires the same sort of long-term commitment. It’s late nights studying, heading in to work early, hitting the books rather than the TV. Excelling in a job or area of study just doesn’t happen overnight, and it can’t be condensed into a Rocky-esque montage that only takes two minutes. Patience and dedication over the long haul are essential.

Even Christian discipleship follows this pattern. We’d love to move from hardened sinners to mature saints in the blink of an eye. And even though our justification is complete at the time of belief and baptism, the journey towards Christlikeness takes time. It’s what Eugene Peterson calls “a long obedience in the same direction.” It’s a commitment to study and meditate on God’s Word, to align yourself with his will, to love your enemies, to endure in times of suffering or grief. It’s a moment-by-moment decision to “keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).

A phrase I hear a lot in commercials these days is “On Demand.” You can stream movies to your TV “on demand,” or catch up on missed episodes of favorite shows “on demand.” It fits the wants of our age, doesn’t it? We want to be able to check baseball scores instantly on our phones. We complain when a barista takes too long making our drinks. We want to be able to watch leaked trailers for films that don’t come out for another year.

But the most important things in life aren’t on demand. Our families, our health, our creativity, our faiths….these things usually take time, patience, and long-term commitment. To expect otherwise brings frustration, and that frustration too often leads to quitting the thing altogether.

Granted, it’s easy to say all of this now, as I’m relaxed on the couch. We’ll see how I feel about it during my run tomorrow. So if you happen to be driving the backroads of Sellersburg, Indiana and see me struggling along, be sure to give me a nod of encouragement. Or if, as will be more likely, you see me exhausted and passed out in the ditch on the side of the road, please be kind enough to return me home. You can just leave me on the front step if no one is home. I’ve only got a few more months to get that beach body back — I’d hate to deprive the world of that.

The Screen Between Me and You

Last week I wrote a blog post titled “The Screen Between Me and God,” in which I presented some information I recently learned from Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. If you haven’t checked out that post yet, I would encourage you to do so here before reading the rest of this one, since this post is building off of some of Carr’s same research and I don’t care for typing it all out again.

In the previous post, I discussed neuroplasticity and the potentially negative consequences that our modern-day obsession with digital technology may be having. Our constant engagement with the “online life” rewires the way our brains work and alters how we process information. Specifically, we are gaining increased ability in multitasking and scanning information quickly, but we may be sacrificing our skills for reflection and focusing on a single task.

In that post, I also asked what all of this might mean for how we interact with God. If our brains are changing so that it is harder for us to give sustained attention to any one thing, how does this effect my approach to God, particularly in such spiritual practices as prayer, meditation, worship, and Bible study?

But now I would like to shift gears a bit. If digital technology can change how we interact with God, could it also change the way we interact with one another? What impact does the digital age have on our interpersonal relationships?

A few years back, MIT professor Sherry Turkle wrote a book titled Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, and the second half of that book is especially helpful in investigating how technology affects our relationships. From online gaming to social networking to websites where users confess their deepest secrets, Turkle researches the social impact of the smartphones in our pockets and the laptops on our desks, and what she finds ought to give us pause before we next log into Facebook or shoot a text to a friend.

In The Shallows, Carr argues that the Internet causes us to process information in a superficial, surface-level manner. In Alone Together, Turkle takes this a step farther are points out that we may also being approaching each other in a superficial, surface-level manner. As a result, though we are so well-networked and appear to have all sorts of opportunities for intimacy with others, we are experiencing new breeds of solitude (p. 150). We may be “tethered” to each other at all times through social networks, but we are perhaps more emotionally distant from each other than ever before. We think we find belonging in an online “community,” but “it is easy to forget what that word used to mean….Communities are constituted by physical proximity, shared concerns, real consequences, and common responsibilities,” all of which are easy to discard in our various digital communications (pp. 238-239).

Digital technology allows us to create the semblance of closeness while simultaneously keeping others at a safe distance. It’s even gotten to the point that a phone call — once thought of as a great way to communicate with others, especially with those who live far away — is seen as too immediate and personal. Turkle quotes a high school sophomore: “You wouldn’t want to call because then you would have to get into a conversation, [and] that’s something that’s something where you only want to have them when you want to have them.” For this student, that is “almost never…It is almost always too prying, it takes too long, and it is impossible to say ‘good-bye'” (p. 200). Or, as Troy Barnes says in shock of another character on the TV show Community: “She was born in the 80’s! She still uses her phone as a phone!”

In a face-to-face conversation, or even an a phone conversation, you are forced to deal with another person in real time. This is, I would say, an authentic interaction. But in digital communication, whether it’s via a text message, a Facebook post, or an Instagram comment, you get to interact on your own time. “Mobile technology has made each of us ‘pauseable'” (p. 161). If you are in the middle of some other task or some other conversation, you can put that person off to the side for a while. Whenever you speak back, you can edit yourself and your own words to make sure you come off the way you want. In our online interactions, we tinker with the way we present ourselves to the rest of the “community.” Turkle quotes another high school student, who observes, “Online life is about premeditation” (p. 273).

That’s the case even with this very blog post you are reading. I try to be authentic in my writing — that is, to sound like the real me. But what you are encountering is an edited version of me. I’ve been thinking about what I would write for the past several days. Even as I’ve been typing, I’ve been deleting sentences that didn’t make sense and reworking others. If you and I were talking about these things face-to face, there would be more mumbling, more half-finished thoughts, and more awkwardness. The amount of eye-contact would be about the same, however.

Can we really label what we do online “authentic intimacy”? We trick ourselves into thinking we have relational depth because we are digitally connected with so many people around the country and even around the world. But at the same time, we only interact with these others when it is convenient for us. We filter and edit ourselves, often hiding our true thoughts or feelings or the parts of us that might be embarrassing.

Meanwhile, while we focus on remaining to tethered to others online, we so often ignore those who are right in front of us. A couple months ago I was at dinner with friends when we noticed a father and his young son at the table next to us. In decades past, this might have been a great opportunity for a father and son to spend some quality time in conversation. It’s a chance for the father to show his love for his son and to express an interest in the sons life. But instead, the father spent most of the time on his smartphone, while the boy simply looked around the restaurant. It’s was a sad scene, but unfortunately, not an uncommon one. Turkle writes, “Previously, children had to deal with parents being off with work, friends, or each other. Today, children contend with parents who are physically close, tantalizingly so, but mentally elsewhere” (p. 267).

Since I saw that father and child, I have tried to notice similar situations when I see them. And I see them all over the place. Young couples at coffee shops who are both logged onto Facebook on their laptops while sitting across the table from each other. Friends waiting for their food to arrive at restaurants while both checking updates on their phones. And while it’s been easy for me to criticize all of these others, I’ve been disappointed to find myself doing the same things. It’s embarrassing how many times I check the screen of my computer or phone, even when I am in the company of others.

Digital technology permeates our lives in so many ways, and this is perhaps more felt in our relationships. Nearly everyone you meet has a Facebook account. Everyone texts on their phones. So many of us prefer emails and texts over conversations and phone calls. And anyone who relies on “old-fashioned” forms of social interaction is viewed as a bit of a weirdo…as some sort of hopelessly nostalgic aberration.

Last year I deactivated my Facebook account for about nine months. At the time, I thought about writing a blog post outlining my reasons for what can so easily be perceived as a social disconnect, or even as “social suicide.” I decided against writing that post because, quite honestly, it would reveal more problems about me than it would problems about Facebook. But perhaps, in light of the present topic, it may be helpful to share now. So here they are: the four reasons I disconnected from Facebook.

1. It was taking up too much time. I think that most Facebook users can relate to this. The constant stream of new information demands attention. I feared that if I didn’t check my news feed often enough, I would miss some important information and would be out of the loop. Plus, I have a pretty addictive personality as it is. (When I first downloaded the game Temple Run on my iPod a couple years ago, it was seriously about the only thing I did for a week.) With the constant pressures of graduate school, work, and ministry, I realized that I needed to get rid of the time-vacuum known as social networking.

2. I feared that Facebook was actually detrimental to my relationships. This is what I have been talking about for most of this post. We give ourselves the illusion of connection without actually experiencing intimacy. The truth was that I could be on Facebook and never communicate with anyone, and yet still be up-to-date on what was going on in all of my friends’ lives. I didn’t need to ask others how their lives were going because they would fill me and the rest of the world in on it, complete with pictures and status updates. But I realized that there has to be more to relationships than that. So while some might have seen my departure from Facebook as a desire to distance myself from others, it was actually because I wanted to communicate with others on a more meaningful level. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to talk to my friends that I deleted my account. It was because I actually did want to talk with them! Besides, let’s not be naive about what Facebook is. It’s a company, and it is a company whose chief concern is selling advertisements and making money. Facebook has no real concern about the relational health of either you or me, yet as a society, we have delegated a bulk of our social interactions to its interface. Why entrust such a core part of our lives to a for-profit organization?

3. I realized that Facebook was skewing the way that I evaluated myself. I don’t know if anyone can relate to this; maybe it is just me. But what I found was that I had begun to esteem myself based on how much traction I got on social media. If I had enough friends and enough social exchange on the site, then I felt good about myself. If I didn’t, then I felt bad. If I shared a status that I thought was funny, and 50 people “liked” it, then I would be in a good mood that day. But if only five people “liked” it, I would be bummed out. Pathetic, isn’t it? Should my mood really be so affected by how many thumbs-up icons I collect? But there may actually be a science to it. Turkle writes, “Connectivity becomes a craving; when we receive a text or an e-mail, our nervous system responds by giving us a shot of dopamine. We are stimulated by connectivity itself. We learn to require it, even as it depletes us” (p. 227). Activity on a social network can work like a drug. Each notification that popped up would create a need for more. So I learned to value myself only insofar as I was validated by the online “community.” I’m no psychologist, but that didn’t seem healthy to me.

4. Social networks like Facebook invite comparison with others’ lives. And for me, that wasn’t a good thing. As we filter and edit and project our “online selves,” we all tend to share the best of ourselves. We want to look good and happy and fulfilled. But for much of the past few years, I didn’t always feel good and happy and fulfilled. So as I saw status updates from fellow ministers celebrating the growth of their churches, I would become discouraged about my ministry in a struggling congregation. As so many of my peers shared wedding pictures and exclaimed how great their spouses are, I would become increasingly upset about my ultra-singleness. Even when others put up pictures of the food their were having for dinner, I would look at my microwaved hotdogs with disdain. And as much as I was truly happy for my friends and wanted to celebrate the good things in their lives alongside them, I found that I didn’t need a constraint news stream listing ways that my life wasn’t matching up. Again, that probably says more about my own fragile ego than it does about the dangers of social media, but it was a problem that was, at least for me, magnified by the structure of online life. And maybe it has been for you as well.

I will admit that I am back on Facebook today. I could outline the reasons for rejoining, but this is already the longest post I’ve ever written, and I’m not that anyone will read this far anyway. Basically, it came down to a couple dear friends that, for scheduling reasons, it was hard to keep in touch with otherwise. Also, I found that without me sharing my blog posts on Facebook, no one would read them (it’s as though digital technology has brought us all back to a time pre-object-permanence — if we don’t see it on Facebook, it must not exist). But while I am back on the site, I am trying to protect my time, my relationships, and myself more.

Maybe it’s time for all of us to do a little disconnecting, so that we can begin to connect anew. We need to remember what a “relationship” really is. It’s a connection defined by mutual care, mutual edification, and mutual concern. It’s more than sharing information. “The ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind. But they are the ties that preoccupy” (p. 280). And I don’t know about you, but I want more than preoccupation.

What benefits does digital technology have for relationships? What are its dangers? What can we do to develop more robust relationships in the middle of the digital age?

The Winnie of It All

One of my favorite TV shows of all time is The Wonder Years. I suppose I should warn you that this post includes some major spoilers from that show, but is a “spoiler alert” really necessary for a show that has been around for over 20 years? If you don’t know what happens by now, it’s your own dang fault! But in any case, you have been alerted.

The Wonder Years tells the story of young Kevin Arnold in the 1960’s during his middle school and high school years. The story is told as a reminiscence in that it is narrated by “older Kevin” (who, in an interesting note of trivia, is voiced by one of the thieves from Home Alone. Isn’t that weird?)

While Kevin’s story weaves through a variety of topics associated with growing up (such as family, school, self-identity, personal crisis, etc.), the core of his tale involves his relationship with a girl–Winnie Cooper. In the very first episode, Kevin and Winnie share a somewhat awkward kiss while sitting side-by-side on a big rock in the woods. Through the show’s six seasons, Kevin and Winnie’s on-again, off-again relationship is like the trunk from which other story-branches emerge. In the series finale, they go through yet another relational rough-patch, only to once again get back together. Why? Because they’re Kevin and Winnie. They’re meant to be together.

The finale ends with the narrator briefly telling what eventually happened with all of the characters of the show later in life. Some go off to college, some have babies, some start new businesses, some pass away. Then the narrator nonchalantly notes that Winnie went to Europe to study art history. While she was there, she and Kevin wrote letter back and forth. When she returned to the States eight years later, Kevin was at the airport to meet here…along with his wife and firstborn son.

WHAT?!

That’s not the way the story was supposed to end, right? That’s not how TV shows work. Six seasons developing this relationship, but in the end, it doesn’t really pan out? Can that be right?

When I first watched that episode on Netflix a couple years ago, I was initially perturbed. I felt a little cheated. It was too unexpected. It’s just not how those things are supposed to go.

But as I’ve reflected on it since then, I’ve really grown to like that finale. No, it’s not what you would normally expect from a TV show–especially a comedy, in which writers like to put a tidy bow on the story so that viewers walk away from their TV sets feeling warm and at peace.

The resolution to Kevin Arnold’s story isn’t what you would expect. But it may be more true to life than what you normally see on TV.

One of the things I have learned over the years and am consistently reminded of is that life doesn’t go the way you would expect. You can do all of the planning you want, complete with five-year goals, financial planners, bucket lists, and even dream journals. But chances are that when you get there, and your future has become your present, the scenery around you is going to look differently than you thought it would. No one’s life follows a tidy, Hollywood-produced script. It’s much messier.

When I was a kid dreaming about what my adult life would be like, I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me that when I was 26, I would be living in a house with my best friend, his wife, and his infant son while I worked in retail and prepared for doctoral studies. I thought that I would be a race car driver who also played professional baseball, would own a tree that grew mac-n-cheese, and would be taller than my dad.

If you had told me that same thing when I was in college at Ozark Christian College, I still wouldn’t have believed you. I thought that by 2014, I would maybe be married, living in my own house and working as a youth minister in the Pacific Northwest.

Heck, if you had told me this just six months ago, I still wouldn’t have bought it. And yet, here I sit in a situation that I in no way anticipated.

If you think about your own life, I imagine that you also couldn’t have predicted every single detail. If your life is exactly how you envisioned it five or ten years ago….you need to go buy a lottery ticket right now and then split the winnings with me so that I can look into getting that macaroni tree.

Up to this point in the post, it may sound like I’m critical of my current state in life or that I’m mourning the fact that it’s not what I thought it would be. But that’s not my point at all. (Especially since my roommates will probably read this, and I don’t want them to kick me out on the streets because they think I’m not appreciative. I like living here! I really do!)

Instead, I think there is beauty in the unexpectedness. Sometimes, the life we get is better than the life we envisioned–at least in certain ways. We can lament that fact that Kevin doesn’t end up Winnie. But maybe Kevin’s wife is even more awesome than she ever was! And I could complain that I’m not taller than my dad or that I don’t live in Oregon. But at the same time, I get to hang out with some of my closest friends every day and use their son to try to pick up women. Who’s to say that isn’t better?

If I had been writing the story of my own life, I would have done it a bit differently. I would have erased some of the moments of incredible pain, and I would have inserted more of whatever I thought was best for me. But that’s just not how life unfolds. Yes, we have a great deal of say in the course of our own lives, but there are always bends in the road up ahead that are just too far away for us to see just yet. Our trajectories were assuredly be redirected.

That’s the Winnie of it all. Circumstances change. Relationships change. Dreams and goals change. And through the craziness and the mess, we grow and develop and mature. We ourselves change.

I suppose anything else would just be boring.

Ubuntu

Recently I read a book by Scot McKnight entitled One.Life. It was a really good book that I would highly recommend to others. One section that especially stood out to me concerned an African concept called Ubuntu. Instead of trying to describe it myself, I’ll just include McKnight’s words:

This Bantu word comes from a saying: Umuntu ngumuntu ugabantu. That is, ‘A person is a person through [other] persons.’ We need to emphasize this profound African wisdom: A person is a person through other persons.

We perhaps need to tack this saying on our mirror or on our computer or on our bedroom wall: A person is a person through other persons.

We are not alone, and we run the risk of ruining ourselves if we try to be alone. We are designed to connect to others who are also designed to connect. Ubuntu teaches us that life society works only when humans live out their connectedness, and that kind of connectedness with God and others, and with our past and our future, is what Jesus means when he says ‘kingdom.'”

I like this idea that a person is a person through other persons, and over the past several years, I have found this to be true. I just finished a nearly three-year period of life during which I was living alone in an apartment in Cincinnati. To be honest, it wasn’t the best three years of my life, and what made it especially difficult was my relative isolation. It was difficult for me to connect with others in a meaningful way, and I spent the vast majority of my time in solitude. Now don’t get me wrong–I made some really great friends in Cincinnati for whom I am very grateful, and I don’t make to treat lightly the relationships I formed in my time there. But overall, these past few years I haven’t experienced the same sort of community that I had before.

What I learned during this time was that solitude changes a person.  Our personalities, thoughts, and words are formed as we interact with one another. We really are people through other people. When you separate an individual from others, that personality begins to deteriorate. In a sense, a person separated from others loses his personhood itself.

The longer I lived alone, more bland I felt I was becoming as a person. What little wit or humor I had once possessed was replaced with even more awkwardness. My conversations were filled less with original thoughts and more with quotes from movies. Hopefulness and optimism gave way to cynicism.

Now I’m beginning a new chapter of life and am living with some of my best friends in the world. I’m looking forward to what this time brings, and I’m looking forward to “regaining my personhood,” so to speak. Our culture so values independence. We even have a Declaration all about it. But what I have discovered is that independence is greatly overrated. We are not designed to be alone. We’re made to be dependent–ultimately on God, but also on others. And as we brush shoulders with otter people, our own individual personalities are molded and refined.

What do you think? What are the good things about living alone? What are the hazards?

 

Pen and Paper

I was having trouble falling asleep one night last week. I just couldn’t get comfortable. I would get under my blanket but then would feel too hot. So I would push my blanket to the side and then feel too cold. It was aggravating, especially knowing that I would need to get up in just a few hours to get ready for work. Eventually, I decided that the tossing and turning weren’t doing much good, so I might as well do something else with my time. I found a small box in my room that had some old pictures and other things, so I decided to take a stroll down memory lane to try to lull my mind into slumber.

In that box, I found a couple letters that my grandmother had written to me. I didn’t realize I still had these letters, and they were a nice surprise to come across. My grandmother and I were pretty close, but she passed away in 2006. It brought great comfort to once again read the words she had written years ago. Neither letter was dated, but one of them must have been written in 2001 because she talked about her thoughts on the attack on the World Trade Center. The other letter seemed to have been written sometime before that.

As I read these letters, I thought about how letter-writing has become a lost art. I mean, how many hand-written letters do you get in the mail? Probably not very many. We live in the digital age —  an age in which communication is so much quicker and more convenient. We tap out text messages, email, tweets, and Facebook messages all the time. It only takes a second, and it is transmitted instantly. Surely this is a superior way to communicate, right?

Well, maybe not. I’m so glad that my grandmother sent me letters in the mail rather than shooting me an email over the internet. If she had done that, they would probably have been deleted long ago. But now I still have pieces of stationary that she had held in her hand — pieces of stationary marked up with her handwriting. And that means much more to me than pixels on a screen might. Have we lost something in getting away from writing things out by hand? I barely ever pick up a pen and paper for anything. But there are a couple reasons that writing something out by hand is a better practice that typing it out digitally.

First, writing by hand shows that what you’re communicating is important. Today we communicate with email, text messages, “likes,” and 140-character tweets. It’s fast. It’s convenient. But has it lost its significance? When you write a letter, you have to want to write it. But that’s not the case with digital communication. It’s faster, yes — but also somehow cheaper, and thus less significant. We demand speed and convenience, but true relationships are neither of those things. The letters from my grandmother are special because it meant she cared enough about communicating with me that she got out a piece of paper, sat at a desk, and took the time out of her day to write her thoughts. Letter-writing comes with the cost of time, effort, and hand-cramps, and that cost adds to its meaning. The medium communicates as much as the content.

In The Two Towers, Treebeard explains that Entish “is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.” The same could be said of writing by hand. But when something is said in Entish, or is written in a letter, you know it’s worth listening to, because the speaker or writer took the time and energy to say it at all. And that’s meaningful.

Second, writing by hand is important because it forces us to slow down and actually think about what we are writing. Have you ever sent a text or email and then immediately thought, “Oh crap! I should not have sent that!” That’s the hazard of instant communication. You can type out a few lines in ager or haste and send them through the digital network before you’ve stopped to think about it. But that doesn’t happen with letters so much. Somewhere along the line, your brain is going to catch up, and you’ll realize that it’s a huge mistake to say what you’re saying.

When writing something by hand, you’re forced to think about every single word. There are fewer flippant remarks or mistaken words. Perhaps our relationships would be stronger if we thought about what we said to one another, and perhaps that would be possible if we gave ourselves time to think in the first place.

And so I guess my simple encouragement today would be to go get a piece of paper and a pen, and sit down to write something. It could be a letter, and I would bet that when whoever you send it to receives it, it’ll mean more to them than you might at first assume. But it could be anything else. If you’re facing a major decision, it could be helpful to write about it, forcing yourself to really think about the issue. If you’re planning a lesson, presentation, or sermon, try writing it out one time. It may help you get your words in order and be clearer in your communication.

Or at least, so says the hypocrite who advocates pen-and-paper communication through the digital medium of his blog. Don’t worry, I see the irony.

Flipped Upside Down

If there’s one thing I value in life, it’s nepotism. For that reason, today’s post comes from my older sister, Jackie Williams. Jackie is an elementary school teacher and, more importantly for today’s purposes, the mother of my soon-to-be one-year-old nephew, Teddy (known on the street ball court as T-Double-Dub). Interestingly enough, a great deal of my own personal character and tastes in music, books, movies, and so on is due to Jackie’s influence in my life, so if this post sounds like me except with fewer irrelevant tangents and a more elevated vocabulary, you shouldn’t be surprised. And I suppose her being willing to contribute a guest post almost makes up for the time she gave me popsicles she made out of salt water when I was five.

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For a few months, my brother has been after me to write a piece for his blog.  I have to confess…I’ve been dawdling.  I’ve told myself that it has been because I’m so busy.  It’s true that I’m busy.  I’m a full time 2nd grade teacher and a full time mom.  My husband works full time over an hour away, and also takes classes part time…and that’s all in addition to his part time military position.  So…I’ve been too busy to write.  Often, I’ve been too busy to shower or sit down and eat.  Of course I haven’t had time to write…a perfect excuse.

Today, however, my ten-month old son and I watched the recent documentary on J.D. Salinger.  I first read “Catcher in the Rye” in 1999, my freshman year in college.  I have a cat named Pencey (after Pencey Prep School for Boys) and quoted “Franny and Zooey” in my wedding vows.  One could say that I’m a bit of a fan.  Anyway…during the course of the documentary, I was reminded of why I don’t write.  I like to think I write well.  I know all the conventions of English grammar.  I have a lifelong love affair with proper punctuation, and can turn even the worst paper into an “A” paper.  I’m well read and, on occasion, I have a wonderful idea for a book or a short story.  I could write something good.  But I am a firm believer that one should only write something if one is capable of writing something great.  I’m no J.D Salinger, Barbara Kingsolver, C.S Lewis, Philip Roth, E.M. Forster, Carol Shields, or Donald Miller.  At best, I could probably write something suitable for the clearance section of a Walmart book aisle.  So…I don’t write.

I also don’t write because I believe that a writer should have a story to tell.  A large portion of “Salinger” is devoted to describing his experiences in World War II, and how those experiences influenced his writing.  All notable writers have stories to tell.  I’m a wife, a mom, and a teacher.  My daily routine right now consists mostly of me trudging around in Kansas, sleep-deprived and with spit up or baby snot clinging to my hair.  No one would pay money to read about that.  At any given moment, a person could go into a grocery store and find 30 women exactly like me.

When David first asked me to write last spring, he suggested writing something called “How Parenting has Changed Me”.  I’ve given a lot of though to this.  Parenting most definitely has changed me.  12 years ago, I was a single 21-year old, living in a cabin and doing missionary work with Native American children.  In my mid-20’s, I had strayed and was, shamefully, a single party girl, navigating my way through some sort of a life crisis and drinking too many gin and tonics.  Then, I was married and taking fertility treatments, struggling with the ever-present knowledge that I may not be able to have children.

Now I’m Teddy’s mom.  My blue eyed, curly haired little man has flipped my world upside down.  I wake up at 5 and go to bed at 9.  I turn down party invitations in favor of watching old Sesame Street episodes on Netflix.  I rotate through the same 5 outfits so that I can spend my extra money on Melissa and Doug stacking toys, Pampers, and tiny Baby Gap hoodies.  I  know what Robeez, Boppies, Bumbos, and Wubbanubs are.  My favorite time of day is curling up with my boy at night.  We read board books and say our prayers, and I sing him all the songs I remember from Junior Church.  Sometimes, I tell him stories about his “Angel Grandma” and show him pictures of her.  I cuddle him and stroke his hair and, for awhile, I forget the stresses of my life outside of that moment.

About halfway through our documentary this afternoon, Teddy grabbed my face and said “Mama”.  He’s been babbling “mamamamamamamamamama” for several weeks now.  But today, he definitely called me by name.  Maybe I don’t have a great story to tell.  I’m not climbing mountains, or backpacking through Europe, or spreading the love of Christ to tribes of people on the other side of the world.  I haven’t fought in any literal wars, and I’ve abandoned my dream of going back to school and getting another degree.  But God has blessed me in ways I could never have imagined.  I used to think I understood Christ’s love for His children.  When I go to pick up Teddy at daycare, and he squeals and holds out his hands for me and greets me by biting my cheek, I get a tiny glimpse into the love and grace Christ has for us.  Finally, I know what it means to be so crazy about someone that you would sacrifice everything for them.

Yes, parenting has changed me.  I won’t ever have a book in the Walmart clearance section, or my name in a magazine…but I think I can be okay with that.  I have my heart’s desire.  And that’s more than enough for anyone.

Also, my brother is fantastic.  Would someone please date him already?  I’ll pay you twenty bucks…

Losing Control

Control is the enemy of relationships.

A couple night ago I watched a movie about a writer who is suffering from writer’s block. In an effort to get out of his funk, he begins to write about a girl he dreams about, so quite literally his “dream girl.” The writer is withdrawn and awkward in real life, but in his writing, he can create a girl who gels with who he is. She is his ideal.

Then one day, much to his surprise, the writer walks downstairs to find this girl cooking eggs in his kitchen. She’s there in the flesh. He wrote about her, and she came into being. As the film progresses, the writer discovers that whatever he writes about his girlfriend ex nihilo comes to be. If he writes that she’s sad, she becomes sad. If she writers that she’s happy, she’s happy. If he writes that she speaks French, she starts speaking French. He has total control over her character and actions.

But that’s the problem. The more the writer tries to control the girl, the more everything begins to fall apart. As he writes, she becomes less herself, and their relationship becomes distorted. He tries so hard to mold her into what he wants her to be, but that’s just not how relationships work.

Much like the protagonist of that movie, I can feel awkward and out of place when I’m around other people. And much like the protagonist of that movie, I like to write. I don’t write novels or anything especially artistic like he does. I write these blog posts. But in both cases, the comfort of writing is that it’s safe. I have total control. The words I’m typing are simply extensions of myself–vessels for the thoughts in my own head. I’m never threatened by anything I write. If I write words that I don’t  like, I can delete them or change them. These words exist only because I exist. I’m in control.

But that’s not the case when it comes to people. Other people are external to me. I didn’t think them into being, so they are not answerable to my edits or revisions. They have their own personalities, their own beliefs and viewpoints, their own habits and pet peeves. They have their own senses of humor, their own hopes and dreams, and their own fears. They have their own histories, their own stories, and their own baggage.

I heard an interview in which the writer of that movie said, “There are simple ideas about people. But there is no simple person.” You can have an idea of what another person should be in your own mind. But in reality, they probably don’t fit that idea. People are so much messier and thus harder to deal with.

The beginning of relational health may rest in the realization that other people are beyond your control. As much as I try, I can’t really change another person. I can’t eliminate his annoying habits or make her life-decisions for her. I can’t make her think my jokes are funny, or get him to always lend me money for a soda when I want it. I can’t even make you keep reading this post. Why? Because these aren’t characters I’m writing into a story. They are living, breathing people, and the more I try to squeeze them into my idealistic mold, the wider the relational gap between us becomes–a gap that gets filled in with anger, resentment, and disappointment.

Relationships–whether they’re with coworkers, friends, family members, spouses, or whoever else–are scary things. After all, who wants to be in a situation in which they don’t have total control? When I’m driving my car on the highway and crazy Cincinnati-drivers weave in and out ahead of me, I want to have control of my car. And when I go to the grocery store, I want control over what I’m buying (especially since I can only cook about five different dishes).

Being in any relationship, however, means letting go of that control. It means being at the mercy of someone who is beyond your ability to manipulate or change. There is danger that comes with that. You place yourself in danger of being hurt, in danger of being disappointed, or in danger of being ignored. It puts YOU in danger of being forced to change–to become a servant to another, a servant who must sacrifice his own interests for the sake of another.

You can’t control others. If you try, you’ll ruin your relationships. Or whatever relationships you have will be ones based on fear or competition, and those are never healthy. So what can you control? Only yourself. You can choose to love others, to serve others, to work for the good of others, to trust others, and to listen to others.

And maybe that’s the only control you need.

Ridin’ Solo

Single people are funny.

For a long while, I wasn’t sure if I would write this post. I don’t want to seem cruel. I mean, a lot of single people have enough of a hard time without some jerk with a computer making fun of them. But then I thought, “If any jerk with a computer has a right to poke fun at single people, isn’t that jerk me?” After all, I have spent 96% of my life single, so I know what I’m talking about. Not only that, but when I describe different types of single people below, I’m really just describing myself for much of it. What I have found in my life is that I’m usually in the best moods when I’m able to make fun of myself, and thankfully, there is no shortage of reasons to do just that. So just in the way of caution: take whatever you see here with at least a small grain of salt.

And besides, maybe you’ll find someone you know described here. Or maybe you’ll find yourself described. Maybe you’ll find yourself described, and you’ll find someone you know described. You should call that person up.  Tell them to read this post. Maybe you two can talk about it over dinner, and then catch a movie. And some day down the road, you can tell your kids how a blogger who was looking for a way to put off doing his homework brought their parents together.  You’re welcome in advance.

In any case, here it is: “Seven Types of Single People.” Enjoy.

1. The Oblivious Single. I begin with the best and purest type of single person. This is the person who seems to be completely unaware that romantic relationships are even a thing. You might know this person for years, and not once do you see him even speak to someone of the opposite gender. He is completely comfortable with himself, and doesn’t a need to impress anyone. What often happens with the oblivious single, however, is that after you lose touch for just a couple months, you hear that this person is suddenly engaged and getting married, and you’re left saying, “Wait…..what?!”

2. The Fatalist Single. The Fatalist Single is the Eeyore of the dating world. She interprets her singleness as a bottomless pit from which she will never emerge. She blames it on fate, or on God, or on that unlucky day when she accidentally ripped one in her high school geometry class. When someone gives the Fatalist Single a new saucepan as a gift, she takes it back to the store and exchanges it for a smaller one because she never plans to cook for more than one.

3. The Creepy Single. The status of the Creepy Single is certainly not due to fate. It’s because this person just freaks people out, albeit unintentionally. This is the person who always “likes” the Facebook profile pictures of girls he met once four years ago. He’s the guy who just can’t help winking at every attractive woman he sees. He’s the one who always talks about a random bank teller he saw a couple times when he was in college. Yes, the Creepy Single is an especially sad case. Pray for him.

4. The Militant Single. The Militant Single glories in her singleness. She wears it as a badge of honor for all to see. She protects her singleness above all else, even in an aggressive way. If a guy tries to flirt with her at a coffee shop, she recounts the incident as though someone tried to mug her in a back alley. When  one of her friends starts dating or gets engaged, she cries–not tears of joy, but tears of disappointment.

5. The Martyr Single. The Martyr Single is much like the Militant Single but is driven by a religious motivation. He equates dating with apostasy and has 1 Corinthians 7:32 tattooed on his arm. The problem with the Martyr Single is not necessarily his conviction, but how he wants to make sure everyone knows about his conviction. He is the one who goes off to a Christian college and tells everyone about his vow to not date until he graduates. (As anyone who had gone to a Christian college knows, however, those vows tend to transform from “I won’t date in college” to “I won’t date my freshmen year” to “I won’t date this semester” to “I won’t date during orientation week”).

6. The Not-Really-Single Single. This is where a Militant Single or Martyr Single often end up, especially when they begin to bargain on their vows of perpetual singleness. The Not-Really-Single Single is the person who proclaims adamantly that she is in fact single, but everyone knows that’s not really the case. She will say things like, “Of course I’m single. David and I are seriously just friends. I mean, sure, we spend all our time together, and we talk on the phone late into the night, and we make out a little bit sometimes, but we’re just friends. And granted, if I ever found out he was with someone else, I would take a baseball bat to that chick’s car…but I’m single.”

7. The In-Withdrawal Single. This is the person who has just come out of a long relationship, and he’s not really sure what to do now. He doesn’t know how to navigate life without a significant other. The In-Withdrawal Single reasons, “I should probably just give her a call, right? Before we broke up, I was telling her that I had a stomach ache after eating all those chili dogs at lunch, and I should let her know I’m okay now. Otherwise, she’ll be worrying about me.” The friends of the In-Withdrawal Single have an especially important role to play: They need to steal his phone, his computer, and any telegraph machines he might be hiding in order to keep him from going into remission. He can’t fight that battle alone.

What other types of single people are out there?

*Wink*