Hope

Bear the pain without breaking.

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Let me return to the past post today so that you may read it in the future.

Too much?

Sorry.

Anyway, I want to write about an interesting part of the X-men movie I mentioned in my previous post.

It’s when Old Charles tells Young Charles that “It is the greatest gift we have, to bear their (humanity’s) pain without breaking.”

I got to thinking about this idea. I’ve been rereading another old favorite book of mine, Rilla of Ingleside (the final Anne of Green Gables book.) Montgomery knew how to get emotion out of her readers. This book is one exhausting trip through WWI, but worth reading.

The people in this story perhaps feel the pain of the world too much. I get that the wars were terrible and people had a lot of strain, but I find it hard to believe it was quite as constant and terrorizing as this story portrays.

Not to disrespect what they suffered, I just think humanity naturally adapts and pushes away grim realities in order not to go insane.

But anyway, this book will make you feel the terrible things of war, and the grief and endurance also.

Also it draws together all the many types of people in that world. The imaginative and the dull; the clever and the simple; the devout and the reprobate; all of them are raised to a new level of importance. And the barriers between some of them are broken down.

Shared suffering can do more to make peace between individuals than any amount of good events would. Because people are stubborn, and pain tends to be the only thing that breaks us down.

How does this tie in to X-men of all things?

I mentioned before that Magneto is selfish, whereas Charles is selfless. And I also mentioned that Magneto’s selfishness lies in his ignorance of other people’s suffering.

Somewhere along the line, Charles decided to feel other people’s pain, and Erik decided to bar himself from it.

My question is, how many of us do the same thing?

It’s not hard for me to imagine how other people feel, I can put myself in their place. What is hard is wanting to, especially when it affects me personally.

We never want to be wrong after all.

Then again, some of us would rather be constantly apologizing for no clear wrongdoing than standing up for ourselves or others.

So maybe there’s no cut and dried human way of dealing with blame. But there are pretty basic ways of dealing with pain.

There is so much suffering out there now, one really couldn’t feel all of it deeply. At least, that’s what I’ve thought.

It doesn’t do to dwell on it.

Besides I know too many people who have broken under it, or if not broken, at least bent.

Bearing pain without breaking takes more strength than I have. The only way I can handle it it to lean on God.

I know there are some who might find that a cliche, easy way out sort of answer.

Or even wimpy. Like I’m not tough enough to bear pain  like other people so I need to imagine someone out there who can help me.

My personal opinion is that nayone who thinks they can bear the wieght of the world without breaking is deluded.

To me it would be far worse to think that pain and sin are just things we have to live with, and there is no escaping it.

There had better be an escape. Otherwise, why are we living at all?

Isn’t that what Charles concludes? destruction isn’t the course humanity has to take, only the course it tends to take because of the cruel acts people do against each other.

And Magneto’s selfishness feeds those acts. While the selflessness of the X-men is what finally turns the tide.

That’s all for now,until next time–Natasha.

P. S. (my rule is no posting on Sunday’s but I’m making an exception because this was mostly written days ago and I kept getting interrupted before I published it, so here it is.)

God is good.

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God is good.

That’s a favorite debate topic for Christian films. I guess it’s also a favorite DC topic since Lex Luthor makes that infamous statement “If God is all powerful, He cannot be all good.”

Because it’s been talked aobut so much, I’m not sure I have any new wisdom to add to the subject, but I’d like to discuss it for a minute.

I just reread “The Hiding Place,” which is a really good book, and I felt like toward the end the quesiton of God’s goodness comes up.

What ‘s funny about The ways of God is that just His power is not enough to convince us He’s right.

We’ve all apologized when we weren’t sorry or admited something we didn’t want to admit becuae we were afraid of someone in power over us. For very weak minded people, power seems to equal right, even though philosophically we would scorn hat idea.

But I notice that in the Bible, way back in the Old Testament, people often only obeyed God because of His power.

Actually, up until recently in our history, that was totally acceptable logic. We like to feel we have the moral high ground, but many of our ancestors would have thought it was just common sense to obey whatever god was most powerful. It’s led to some messed up religions.

To bring  it back to the point, everything that happens to the Ten Booms in the latter half of the book seems to be terrible. Corrie and Betsie escpecially suffer in three different prisons, one of them the hellish Ravensbruck.

Corrie speaks of wondering why such cruelty could happen, of having to trust God to carry the burden of what she saw and felt watching the atrocities that happened there.

Though we cannot all have witnessed such things firsthand, we have plenty of news examples nowadays to make us ask that same question. Why did God allow it? Is he really good.

In the movie version of the Hiding Place, one embittered prisoner mockingly tells Betsie and Corrie that God is either powerless, or He is cruel, they can’t have it both ways.

Betsie replies “When you know him, you don’t need to know why.”

This is the kind of thinking that makes skeptics believe religious people are crazy. AT least, I think if I were a skeptic I would think it was crazy.

Would you trust God if you were going through death warmed up? If you lost everything? Would you believe God was good if you were mistreated be everyone around you and all you saw was cruelty?

Perhaps, after a time, all of us would begin to falter, if we were left to ourselves/

But God didn’t leave Corrie and Betsie without some signs. The little miracles that happened. Corrie not being checked in line while she has hiding the Bible, the vitamins bottle that did not run dry, the mercy of an otherwise merciless guard or medical trustee, Betsie’s visions.

What I draw from the story is that if God truly meant for us to be miserable, He would no provide these little wonders, these signs of love.

You can’t make those fit in with the idea of a distant, cold God, unless you really stretch your imagination.

Terrible things happen to us that God does not stop, but if we know personally that HE is good to us, then logically, we know these things do not mean He is doing us an evil.

John Eldredge (author and speaker) says that we have doubs about God’s goodness, we might know how He acts in front of a lot of people, signs, wonders, etc. but what is He like when you get alone with Him?

Well, here my theology meets reality. As someone who claims to have a relationship with God, what is my experience of Him?

(Actually, it surprises me how little I talk about this. I’m not ashamed of it, but even at church the subject comes up way less than you would expect.)

In many ways, knowing God personally is a private thing, more so than even knowing your spouse; but it is also meant to be shared.

My knowledge of God is that He is caring, He is loving, He does meet the needs of His children.

Personally, I have had harsh things said to me by people, people have betrayed my trust, people have misjudged me, God has never done that.

Some might say that’s because He is not real, or He is not like I think He is, so how could He do any of those things?

But for my money, none of that matters, I know what I know.

The evil man kind does to itself is bad enough, that there should be any light at all in the sea of darkness is a flat out miracle.

Like how the studios that produced Batman vs Superman also produced Wonder Woman.

Or how the same company that gave us some of the stupidest shows on TV also gave us movies like Frozen, Cinderella, Big Hero 6, and other classics.

Jesus said that the condemnation of men is that lights has come into the world, but men loved darkness.

And to my amazement, and yet also not for I have been guilty of it too, the real reason people doubt God is good is because they themselves are not good and do not want to change.

Bitterness, hate, selfishness; we don’t like giving that up.

Anyway, I hope that made sense.

Until next time–Natasha.

Stressing it.

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I am normally a healthy person, but a trip to the doctor the other day informed me that I have  higher stress level than before. Causing me tension headaches, neck-aches, and back pains all over.

It sucks because stress is a vicious cycle. You stress until you get symptoms; then you stress about getting those symptoms; so of course you do; and so on.

Since my family moved, I’ve had one difficulty after another and I guess the new job was just the icing on the cake. Maybe the straw that breaks the camel’s back would a be a better analogy, cakes are supposed to be fun.

Actually, back when I was not saved, I had stress symptoms all the time. Only I have a feeling the doctors would have sent me straight to a psychologist, who in turn probably couldn’t have done anything, because my fears were irrational, and pretty far beyond what most psychologists would be able to handle.

I don’t mean any disrespect to them, but no one without a spiritual understanding of things could have understood my fears. To them it would be all mental, but it wasn’t.

Anyway, as I’ve shared before, I would feel sick to my stomach, shaky, and cramp up. I don’t recall getting headaches then, but now that I put more weight on my neck and back it makes sense that the tension is settling there.

I am not now one to stress out on purpose. Maybe some of you can relate, you don’t feel like you’re stressed, but you feel the signs of it. Maybe we’re just disconnected from our emotions. I’ve never been the best at knowing what I felt unless it was fear.

And my fear isn’t like it used to be. When I was a kid, my fear was right up in my face. Now that I know better, fear tends to hide from me so that I’m barely aware I’m feeling it until something pushes me tot he breaking point.

The last mission trip I went on, I had no idea just how much stress and fear I was feeling until I had an upsetting exchange with another person there. Then it just set off a wave of sickness and panic. Ugh, I hate even remembering it. But I didn’t have any serious ailments while I was there.

So my question is, still, why am I stressing out?

I know why.

I’m afraid to fail.

Maybe I want to prove something to people who’ve said I couldn’t make it in the real world. Maybe if I get sick and can’t bear up under the load, they will think they were right, or I at least miss my chance.

Maybe deep down, I have doubts about how well I’ll make it out there in the real world. Even if strictly speaking, I’ve been in the real world all my life.

I’m also afraid to succeed. Most of us are. That’s because if success comes, we have to live up to it, and improve even more. If you already doubt you can handle level one, how will you be during level 2, 3, 4…?

But what all of us are really doing by thinking this way is submitting to the mindset that we grew into. Most of us didn’t have great family backgrounds growing up, even if you’re like me and had an exceptionally good family, they still weren’t perfect. Neglect happens in some areas, if only because circumstances often prevent certain needs from being met. My social life suffers now from distance and a lack of transportation. That’s no one’s fault, but it still causes a gap in my life.

Maybe for you it was higher education because your family could barely pay rent or buy food.

Maybe it was isolation because everyone was super busy and you didn’t have friends for whatever reason. (I think it’s luck more than anything else sometimes.)

You fill in the blank, we all had something.

And that something gave us a box that we call our comfort zone.

Mine involves using my mind more than my body, and relying more on my ability to figure out problems than to deal with people. I can fake being a good epople person, but beneath it all, I’m just an introvert trying to act like I enjoy doing this.

Which is not to say it’s a total act. I do sometimes like talking to people, making connections, and helping them. But it wouldn’t be my choice if I had another, you see what I’m saying?

My work exhausts me emotionally and physically. Yet I need more hours if I want to make enough money to even pay tuition for one year, or buy a car, or whatever.

This is just my own little problems. You all can think of dozens more of your own. We all have cares that we sometimes worry aobut.

Yet, hard as it is to admit, worry is a choice. And we can choose something else.

For me, it’s faith. Do I believe God will fulfill the work He has started?

If that sounds too churchy and like empty repetition, then I would just say it like this:

God hired me, so to speak. (We are his fellow workers, Ephesians says.) He is not looking to fire anyone, but to promote them. So why would He stop coaching me till I’m learned how to do what He wants me to do?

God is a better boss than any mere mortal, because He doesn’t need you to make His company run, He just just needs you to fill one spot in it.  No pressure.

No pressure. That’s a thing I’ve been thinking about quite a bit.

Well, talking helps.

Until next time–Natasha.

On purity and brokenness.

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So today I have a difficult topic to tackle. This has been on my mind for awhile but I didn’t know if I was ready to go public with it. But I think until I do it’s going to bother me.

I know I’m not the only person to have experienced this, in fact probably all of you have more than once even, so here goes.

Some time ago I was meeting up with some friends, and in the course of a late night chat with a few of them, I learned that one of them had compromised their purity, multiple times.

This is not an usual thing, sadly enough. (By the way for those of you who don’t know, purity is the christian word for virginity and freedom from lust.)

But that wasn’t all. This person was still in that relationship and her family wasn’t too happy about it. She was also unwilling to break it off, and unwilling to separate from the guy to go to a different school for a while, as one person had recommended.

There is no one way to handle such situations, but to my horror, the other people in the room began telling her there was grace for that.

I may make quite a few people mad by sharing this, but it won’t be the first time if I do, so I’ll continue.

I was shocked, more at these other girls than at the one who had made the confession. In disbelief I began to tell her that, while I didn’t believe she was condemned, she needed to put an end to this if she really cared about the guy in question and her relationship with God. I made it pretty clear that this was not okay.

None of them really liked what I had to say. The girl herself got mad at me and ended up ending the conversation.

Now it wasn’t all so smooth at the time as it sounds in the retelling, but you get the idea.

I can’t tell you how much this incident bothered me and continues to bother me.

I witnessed first hand what damage compromising can do and I want to talk about it.

I don’t think it’s biblical to be overly harsh with those who have stumbled. It does happen. But it happens for different reasons.

Sometimes the person is rebellious.

Sometimes they are broken and do it compulsively.

Sometimes they are just filled with lust and lose their heads.

Whichever it is, each has to be handled differently. But I’m going to address the second one.

I have talked about this before on this blog. Some people, especially girls, tend to live in sexual sin because they feel somehow that they deserve it or are trapped in it and cannot escape. In can be because they were molested or raped, or abused in some other way, or because they gave in one time and felt that they already lost it all.

Most often these girls would not have fallen had they had better support form their family and friends, or if they did fall, they could have got back up again.

Actually, they still could and some have. The biggest lie in the whole business is that there is no turning back. There are women who have. Ones who aren’t even religious but just feel that the lifestyle is wrong.

But many believe they can’t ever get back what they lost.

It’s true that you can never forget that you made that choice. But there is healing from it, and there is restoration.

Sometimes women (and I’ve heard this personally more than once) believe that because they were raped or molested, their purity was stolen and they cannot get it back anyway, whether they wanted to lose it or not.

As a woman I understand it is terrible to feel helpless. And maybe they choose promiscuity because in some way they feel they have control again.

Rape is a terrible thing. There is no softening that.

But, and this will be hard to swallow, even the rapist can be a broken person themselves who does not fully realize what they are doing.

They have no excuse; but perhaps it might be easier for the woman if she could understand that the only way to heal the hurt is to stop spreading it. Whether it’s through what she does to herself or to what she does not choose to put an end to in other people.

Most people will agree that being raped does not equal losing you purity. Christians especially feel that God does not see it that way. In fact losing your virginity is not equal to losing your purity at all. Married people are still pure.

The girl I mentioned before felt that it was too late for her. That she was already on the downward slope, and she took my admonishment/rebuke as confirmation of that.

To be clear, I told her more than once that it was not too late. That she could be forgiven. And I believe that.

What she heard was not what I was saying. She heard what she was already afraid of deep down, and she probably knew that, in a way.

The problem was, she didn’t want to be free bad enough. She thought she and this guy loved each other.

Maybe they did in a way; but not enough to protect each other. Not enough to stop deceiving her family or going behind their backs. Not enough to respect her beliefs.

There are a lot of factors that would make breaking off that kind of relationship hard. Those kinds of problems tend to run in the family. But it does not excuse ignoring that problem.

Nor does it in any way justify people who are outside the situation refusing to admit it is a sin.

It’s kind of taboo to call it that anymore. As a church in general, Christians have taken a more compassionate view of teenage promiscuity. We have been willing to acknowledge it’s more than just teens trying to be wicked on purpose. In fact, that’s probably only a small percentage of the teens who participate in it. Most of them are doing it out of brokenness.

But there is no place in the Bible or in life when brokenness makes something okay.

It’s like driving around with bad brakes, if you get in an accident, it was at least partly your fault for not getting your brakes fixed. You didn’t mean to get into an accident, but you did without seeing it coming.

Or, as happened to me recently, you don’t even know the brakes are bad because you lack experience with them, and find out only after you start driving. Then it would be on the person who didn’t warn you.

But in no way does that change that bad brakes are a hazard to you and the people around you. It would be stupid to say that the brakes were okay because it’s forgivable that you didn’t know about them.

And that’s the difference. Sexual immorality is a sin. Whether it’s done intentionally or by lack of being prepared.

Telling someone that it is okay to sin is never right because it’s the same as telling them the car their driving is safe when it’s not. You could get them killed. Figuratively or literally.

But I don’t want anyone to read this and then think it’s okay to be a jerk to someone who is stuck in sin. I am all for being compassionate…but not delusional. There’s a difference.

I have a feeling this message may never be popular, but it is still important. My biggest regret is that I could not help this girl I knew. I couldn’t because I had neither her full trust, nor any back up from anyone who cared enough to tell her the truth. Except those whom she’d already refused to listen to.

I hope in the future I will have better answers. But I recognize that there is no forcing people to choose differently.

But I just want to point out, no one is forcing them to keep choosing the same thing either.

Freedom is available. All you have to do is want it bad enough.

One last thing, I don’t claim to have it all figured out or that this post was an extensive look at this issue. It’s a small peek into it, that’s all. There’s a lot more books and talks on it that would be better for anyone concerned with the subject to check out.

I’d recommend “Purity,” by Kris Valloton. (It’s less preachy then it sounds.)

“Kissed the girls and made then cry,” by Lisa Bevere.

And the “Message to teens,” sermon by James Robinson.

Until next time–Natasha.

What does the song say?

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Today I want to talk to you all about respect.

A particular kind of respect.

First, however, I have a short anecdote to explain why I feel this is important.

A while ago I was stuck with a group of millennials who were listening to some pop music. I’m not against pop, but I am against pot, which I’m pretty sure got referenced once or twice. The real problem came when some songs featuring guys talking about getting…you know…with girls, came on. More than once a song that I considered highly inappropriate played.

I promise I was not listening by choice, I was stuck. With that clarification, I’m going to be kind of vulnerable with you all.

Deep breath: Those songs, sung by both girls and boys who were right by me, made me feel embarrassed.

It was humiliating as a woman to hear young men singing about that sort of thing with me right there.

I’m aware that guys will talk about it a lot to each other, but usually guys who will talk about it openly in front of girls are perceived as rather jerk-ish, to put it mildly.

These weren’t even bad kids I was hanging around. That was the worst of it, they were totally unaware that anything they were saying might bother someone. At least to the point of embarrassment.

That’s why I’m posting this, because in the moment, I couldn’t say how I felt properly, but now I think this is worth discussing.

I wish I didn’t have to explain but here goes:

Young men (and old) whether or not a girl shows it, she is going to notice how you treat her and other girls. How you talk about them; how you think about them. And she may not care, even if she should. That’s because a lot of girls are treated like crud by the other men in their lives and there’s nothing you could do to fail her worse than that, so she may think you’re okay.

But that doesn’t make it okay.

You may be a great guy, but if you even so much as joke about certain things, it will send a certain message. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

It’s not my place to tell men or boys what to do, but they should know that any healthy girl will have standards to measure by, and no girl wants a guy to take her purity lightly.

Please don’t think I’m overreacting. I fully understand that often teens just don’t think about songs or jokes as indicating their character, but they do.

I also understand there are probably some guys out there just as uncomfortable with this as I am. Good on ya, in that case.

Young women: Guys need you to have a problem with this. I know that sounds strange. But men cannot read our minds. If we act like we’re cool with the total crud these songs are singing about, and like it’s fine to hear the guys around us spew the same things out of their mouths, then the guys are going to think we are fine with it.

Simple as that.

I don’t like to have things said in my presence that imply I’m a slut; because unless I was, why would I be okay with hearing this?

That’s not overstating the case. The fact that we don’t know this as a generation is an indictment against the kind of morals we’ve been taught, but it is not an excuse.

I’m not thanked for saying things like this to people’s faces, I doubt they would thank me for writing it either, but nonetheless, it has to be said. And by more people than me.

We need to treat each other and ourselves with respect.

By the way, my complaint was written off as just my opinion. But I assure you, there are lots of people who share it. Unfortunately, none of them were present when I objected. But they are out there. Some of them will probably read this.

I don’t really know if I can change someone’s mind about the kind of stuff they listen to, but they at least need to know how it will sound.

And it doesn’t matter whether it bugs one girl, or a million, because it’s still wrong. It’s dishonoring to any girl to make her feel that she’d being reduced to a sex object. In song, in life, or in thought.

So just…don’t do it. If you have any real respect for girls.

And girls, we need to stand up for ourselves and stop making this an okay pastime. If more of us made an issue of it, it’d be less frequent.

But I don’t want to get too preachy, so I’ll end on that note.

Thanks for reading and until next time–Natasha.

Fail me once.

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Well, to those of you who may think I’ve got my life together, today I failed the Driver’s Test for the second time. 

Oh, the humiliation, (anyone get the Mr. Peabody and Sherman reference?)

To anyone out there who has done the same, I feel your pain.

I’m not a bad driver, ladies and gents, I’m a bad test-taker.

Seriously, I don’t generally do well at tests, even though I have no problem learning things. Maybe it’s because I remember things differently than the test.

I don’t like to fail. Who does?

But at least I still have one consolation; I get one more chance.

Plus it was partly the instructor’s fault.

It’s been a couple days now, and though I was initially pretty upset, I now feel strangely un-bothered by this.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me and I don’t take criticism as seriously after the first time.

To be honest, I hate to feel like I’ve failed at something. Especially something I thought I understood okay. At least well enough to pass the test.

Fail me once, shame on me; fail me twice, shame on who? I wonder.

I’ve realized since I began house sitting that I probably have a problem taking responsibility seriously. One of the drawbacks to having a stay-at-home mom can be not having to do all that much for yourself. Which seems great when you’re a kid, but when you get older you realize how little you know.

It doesn’t help when you get people telling you how much trouble you’ll be in once you  get out into the wide world.

Is it really the best thing to tell someone on the brink of leaving the nest that they are totally ill-equipped to handle life?

And even worse, to tell their younger siblings the same thing.

It shocks me how little older folks believe in me sometimes. There’s not a lot of “You got it girl,” in my life.

And maybe I deserve it. Maybe I really am unprepared. But I have my doubts that anyone ever is truly prepared for adulthood or the world.

You may have seen the movie “Stepbrothers.” I haven’t seen it all, and I don’t recommend it, it’s a bad example. But it portrays two brothers in their forties who still haven’t moved out (or is it their late thirties?) They aren’t prepared for adulthood yet and their lives are half over, most likely.

I love movies like The devil wears Prada; The Intern; Raising Helen; and other such films in which the protagonist has to deal with high pressure situations and ends up rising above and beyond. Were they prepared gong in? No.

I feel like that’s a pretty accurate portrayal of everyone when they first start being independent. We don’t know what we’re doing, but we know we have to do it.

That’s how this whole country got started for crying out loud. The founding fathers didn’t really know what they were doing. They had knowledge of how government works, but it took them quite awhile to figure out the practical application of those principals.

So, do I understand how hard this is going to be? No.

Is it something anyone could have taught me? I doubt it. No one can teach you how to mature, they can only help you to do so.

And guess what, the naysayers are never the ones doing the most to help you out. It’s the people who give you the right to learn and step out that are the most willing to help you do so. It’s the people who spend less time worrying about your future and more time investing in your development.

I’ve had people put faith in me and though sometimes it never came to fruition, I still remember that they believed in me.

You see, the Driving Instructors, they don’t really believe you are capable. As soon as you make one mistake they lose most of their confidence in you, and if you’re like me and make major mistakes because of miscommunication (or lack of knowledge) they have nothing further to offer you except “Try again next time.”

Well they’re just doing their job, they’re supposed to keep bad drivers off the streets. (I would say this, it’s not working.)

You can’t expect people who don’t know you to really care about your success…or can you?

We all tend to be business-like wit people we don’t know, but those are also the people we don’t usually remember. And what do they remember us for? Not really as people. I’m not against business, or making impersonal decisions, but I am against looking at other people as only a means to an end. This business-like attitude ca spread to all of our interactions.

The regulation you have to got through now to do anything, it’s not only unfair, it’s ridiculous, and the regulators enforce it because they have detached themselves from the fact that these are real people who need real livelihoods.

Even if I’m not ready to drive yet, I do need to do it. People used to learn by experience.

I’ve been told “I guess you’ll just have to experience it for yourself” like it’s the worst thing that could happen to me. But until I experience something for myself, often I can’t understand it.

(Social graces were like that, I could never get outside my own head enough to comprehend them until I interacted with more people I didn’t know very well. Then it finally started to make sense.)

I get one more try at this test before I have to renew my permit, I guess. I hope I pass.

My nugget of wisdom for this post is to be one of the people who helps others mature, and not one of the ones who tells them all the ways they aren’t ready. because I have yet to meet one person who seems to be ready for the trials of life.

No one is. We all need to grow, and we all will fail, so in my book, it matters more whether you let that intimidate you and decide to stop trying.

I’m getting back behind that wheel first chance I get.

Until next time–Natasha.