Deserve and Worth are different words
My campus has been quiet today.
Not in the horrified, desperate, confused and grief-stricken way we were in November, when details of the Sandusky scandal first came to our attention. That was absolutely awful.
Today, we are just sad. Our football coach, Joe Paterno, passed away, and we are mourning a man who helped to shape our university (not just the football program) into what it is today, a man who was small in stature but larger-than-life, and who somehow touched many of our lives.
We are praying, for his family and our community and each other. We are still confused about the scandal, but fighting also to remind the world of the good that he has done in his sixty-plus years here.
It’s perhaps hard to understand, from the outside. As Dana wrote so beautifully, we cannot ask others to quite understand how we have fallen in love with a place, and how much JoePa was a part of that place.
Whatever else people may say, they can’t deny that he has had an impact on millions of people. From our perspective, his life was important and significant. He didn’t waste it. In many ways, he made our little world a better place.
Maybe I’m the only one, but this has also reminded me how desperately I want my life to count.
Perhaps the deepest desire of my heart is to matter.
Somehow. To someone.
To know that what I do, who I am makes a difference.
But I’m having a hard time believing it. I know the Bible verses – and I’m quite good at believing it for others. I know that they matter, and their life makes a difference, and they are in this world for a purpose that only they can fulfill.
But me?
I know me better. I’m not good enough for that.
Maybe I can fool others into thinking I am. (Hello, perfectionism.) But somewhere, deep down, I know that what really matters is what God says about me. And I’m desperately afraid that He won’t think I matter – or that He won’t think of me at all.
On paper, in black and white, it looks silly. Sacrilegious, even. I mean, I know better.
But I’m telling you a secret: sometimes, I really struggle with this one.
I love the way Angie Smith writes about this fear in her book What Women Fear:
“At the heart of the issue is the feeling that we could never be significant enough to benefit from the thorns that cut into His skin and the suffering He experienced as the sky grew dark on a hill in Calvary. Why? Because I have never done anything to deserve a love like that.
And do you know what He says in response? You have never been so right in your life, child.
My view of significance relies on performance reports and my children’s behavior. It is dependant on where I fall on the totem pole of achievement and financial success. It is bound to convince me that I’m not worth it.
And do you know what He says to that? Now that is where I draw the line.”
I’m beginning to wrap my head around that.
The nagging feeling in my soul that I don’t and can’t deserve this (and am therefore helpless about it) is exactly, terrifyingly right.
I don’t. I can’t. Ever. A sinner does not deserve significance, but death. She does not deserve to be noticed and ransomed and loved by a holy God. And nothing she ever does can change that fact.
And therefore, I am not worth it. I’m worthless, except to the extent that I can fool other people into noticing me, thinking I’m significant and worth something.
Sounds extreme – but those are the lies that have been swirling in my head. And last night, I realized how brilliantly untrue that logic is.
Deserve is not the same thing as worth. The one doesn’t follow the other.
No, I don’t deserve this love. I don’t deserve the promise in Ephesians, that God knows me intimately and loves me and has already created good deeds for me to do.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not worth it.
Because Christ considered me (and you) so worth it that he died to redeem us. We are new creations – and we live in His righteousness.
God says I’m worth it.
And mercifully, His word is more important and true than mine could ever be.
And the best part? (And the part that this perfectionist struggles with?) If I didn’t do anything to deserve it, than I can’t continue to do anything to keep that love.
It’s not about me doing anything.
He has simply called me His. And declared me worthwhile. And nothing I do, or don’t do, can change that. Nothing anyone says can change that.
It’s called grace.
I will likely never impact a community or a world. I will probably never feel that I’ve done something truly great and significant and lasting.
But that doesn’t matter anymore. Because God has already said that I matter.
Remind me of that the next time I forget, will you?
more on remembering
“Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s…” (Psalm 103)
In Remembrance
“Take the time to remember all that He’s done for you,” my pastor said today, before we took communion.
It’s so easy to let the words and the story just wash over me. And on the night that He was betrayed…He took the bread and broke it and handed it to his disciples and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
It’s so easy to speed through life, to forget to slow down and remember and quiet our souls.
But it is never to late to start, to set aside a few quiet moments for memory and gratitude.
Remember that night in the garden, certainly. Remember the cup of suffering that He drank for you, and all that He rescued you from, and the glory that He’s bringing you to.
But remember the other things he’s done for you.
The people He’s brought into your life.
The gift of being able to look back through a hard place and realize that He was there all along, and He got you through it.
The rainbow yesterday that had a special significance for you.
The blessings. “Every good and perfect thing” is from Him. Every smile, person, and circumstance is something He has given you, something He has done for you.
What will you remember today?
Confessions of a Perfectionist
I learned something over break.
I’m a perfectionist.
I’ve never really noticed that before. Let’s face it: my darling older sister has always been a bit more classically (neurotically) perfectionistic. And it’s true that I don’t tend to go overkill on school or projects: I know how to do them well while still staying alive and sane. I don’t require things to be perfect.
Just, um, really really really good.
But mostly, I just require myself to be really really really good. Or perfect.
The process of me coming to terms with my fallen, human, distinctly in-perfect self has been rather ugly, and is definitely still continuing. And it’s been going on for way longer than I’ve known I had a perfection issue.
You see, I have standards and ideals for myself, characters that I desperately want to embody. Good Christian Girl. Good Student. Good Friend, Daughter, Sister, Girlfriend, Intern, Bible Study Leader, Dancer, Writer, Blogger, Roommate.
You name it, and I’ve got a list of the exact qualities, specifications and measurements I expect myself to attain.
Problem is that I don’t meet any of them. I skim my Google Reader over lunch, and Good Blogger Girl stands in the shadows and quietly shames me for not commenting, not posting on my own blog, not putting lots of effort into it lately. It is fun, it will build community, it will be good for your career, it’s not that hard, look at all these people who do it well, she whispers. And then, since I’ve clearly been doing such a terrible job lately, she suggests that I have nothing to contribute and I should just give up and hide. Or something like that.
Come to think of it, she’s really rather mean.
All the other Good Girls are like that, too. Good Friend tells me that I would keep up with my emailing and letter-writing, I’d see friends at school more, be very involved with everyone, and never apologize for simply dropping the ball on important people. For a whole semester. Or she would be smart enough to know that she can’t be everything to everyone, and she would find some way to network and connect lots of friends to each other, and still let everyone know how important and special they are to her life.
The Good Intern/Writer would know exactly the details and follow-up questions to ask in an interview, and wouldn’t have to email the person a month (or three) later, asking the questions that she should have been smart enough to ask for clarification and details on from the start.
The Good, um, Normal Person wouldn’t get lost driving in her own hometown. Oh yeah, and she would exercise regularly and probably even like it.
The Good Christian Girl would be able to actually make time with God the priority in real life that it is in her heart. She would do all the disciplines, easily, but wouldn’t be legalistic. She would remember the references of verses, not just the general thought and “It’s somewhere in the last twenty chapters of Isaiah” (or worse, “Somewhere in the New Testament!”).
The Good Roommate would not get ticked at roomies who leave dirty dishes in the sink. She wouldn’t leave her own in the sink, either.
The Good Student would not be struggling to balance school with work, friends, and taking care of herself. Mostly, she’d do everything brilliantly, and in plenty of time (not in the nick of time) and still manage to sleep, eat, and drink water, all in the same day. She would use awkward blocks of time between classes perfectly. Maybe she wouldn’t even have those days where she didn’t have that much to get done…but manage to fail to do any of it, anyway.
You get the idea. This list ran for over six pages in my journal.
Quite frankly, the above list are just the things that I’m currently feeling guilty about.
Can I just say something?
Being a perfectionist is exhausting. And it’s no fun. And I’m sick and tired of not measuring up.
I know in my head that it’s stupid. Because God is the one with the perfect law, and with the serious consequences for not keeping it. And He sent Jesus to keep it for me. And in Christ, He is already pleased with me.
But I’m holding myself to….Megan’s Law.
Sigh.
“I want you to describe in detail this perfect girl,” Dana said, when I tearfully (and much less coherently) dumped some of the above discovery on her. “Every single painful detail. What does she look like, do, say?” Then, after I came up with some fumbling thoughts – “I want you to take her outside and shoot her.”
Ha! But truthfully….she needs to die. Jesus is not holding me to this kind of standard. He asks me if I love Him.
I don’t want to hold myself to it, either. It really only breeds lots of guilt, shame, and exhaustion.
I’m not really sure how to stop. How to live in grace, being able to show it to myself.
Maybe a good start is being able to see how incapable I really am – and to see these unrealistic, ridiculous expectations for what they are. To realize how much I need saving, how little I can even change this in myself.
That is where I am right now. More often asking God to help me, to do something…because as much as I hate to admit it, I can’t do it myself.
Mercifully, He knows. He’s not surprised or mad. And in Christ, He’s already pleased with me!
I’m praying that He teaches me how to live in this truth and grace.
2011…
Going through my year on New Year’s Eve is a blog tradition, of sorts. Though I can’t remember how often I actually posted this and how often I simply clicked “save draft” and kept it for my own private amusement. But in light of my goals to actually feed my blog and keep it healthy (read: write more), I’m sharing my 2011 with you.
{meme copied from Dana}
Did you keep your New Year’s resolution and will you make one for this year?
My darling roommate got engaged! Does that count? (Hurrah for Kelly and Derek!) And my cousin, as a matter of fact. And Emily. And several other friends…
I don’t know. Probably the same: mostly happy, but really mostly quite grateful.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Dinner Games
at the table…
Julia: “Let’s play What I Want to Be When I Grow Up! I want to wander around the Please Touch Museum.”
Me: “You mean you want to work there?”
Jules: “No! That wouldn’t be any fun. I want to wander all around there. And I guess I want to be a sculptor when I grow up. What do you want to be?”
Me: “Um. A wedding dress model. And a singer.”
Jules: “Well, I want to take care of pandas in China.”
We don’t like being realistic.
loving the little things
I have an insane amount of work to do over the next two days and two weeks. I’m really wondering if it’s humanly possible. (The answer is yes, it is, but quality of work and sleep will likely suffer.)
But I’m refusing to be stressed about it.
A lot changes with the end of each semester – and while I’m looking forward to Christmas break, I don’t want to wish these last few days away, either. I want to really live these next few weeks.
I want to slow down the time with gratitude; by being fully present and remembering how incredibly blessed I am.
I want to love the little things: a cup of hot tea, my soft pillow, a hug.
I want to soak in the golden moments: spending a day with my roommate, studying and talking and helping her try on wedding dresses, savoring the days that we still live together. I want to appreciate beautiful music and the twinkling lights of our Charlie Brown tree.
I want to experience this season of Advent with my whole heart. Several friends have asked me to explain it to them, have not grasped why this wondrous season is my favorite. The songs in church are in minor key, they say. And why is it so special to read aloud prophesies? Shouldn’t we focus more on the joy of Christmas?
Ah, but Christmas cannot be fully joyful or fully experienced without going through the pregnancy of Advent. It’s a joyful expectation and yearning and a full acknowledgement of all that is wrong with the world and all that needs to be redeemed. It’s looking back at the waiting for Christ’s birth, His first arrival, and it’s living today, in this waiting period, and it’s looking with joyful expectancy to His second coming. It’s knowing that because He came once, He can be trusted to come again, and He will finally set things right. It’s a beautiful jumble of beauty and pain and joy and waiting and neediness.
And it’s a time to slow down, to quietly and humbly be still and know that I am God.
I’m not very good at that yet. But I’ve been filled with peace these past few days, and I think I have been able to soak in the goldenness, be grateful for the gift that is this moment of today.
And see? I’m even taking the time to write this. And the time and space to write, for fun, is a lovely thing indeed.
words, words, words…
“…I’m so sick of words! I get words all day through, first from him now from you – is that all you blighters can do?”
– irrelevant quote from “Show Me” in My Fair Lady. Because I couldn’t resist.
——————————————————————
“So this is where the magic happens?”
He knows I’m a writer, and this was his response to the word document filling my computer screen. It was filling my screen, all right, enough for me to be glaring intensely at all the words that weren’t behaving.
No magic. Just unruly words that don’t look right, don’t sound right, don’t communicate.
I’m in a frustrated relationship with words right now.
Maybe this explains why this little blog has been sadly neglected – well, in addition to the fact that I’m constantly writing for my internship and my classes and I don’t have time to sleep or eat dinner before 11 pm, let alone blog.
But I’ve also felt at once wordless and crammed full of words that are unnecessary because they’ve already been said. Believing that you don’t have anything new to say does not contribute to a healthy blog.
And, stupidly, I tend to bottle up just when I need to untangle myself through writing the most.
What has been tangled up in this semester so far?
So much newness. New experiences, classes, jobs, relationships, lifestyles. It’s been crazy, wonderful, hard, stressful, exhausting and exhilarating. Sometimes I feel like I’m flying; other times like I’m drowning.
For the record, I never feel like I’m just walking. I tend to do everything in some kind of passionate extreme.
And then we can add in the last two weeks, which have been a mess of confusion, brokenness, anger, and grief for my campus. In case you’ve been living under a rock, news of an alleged sex abuse scandal involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky has taken the world – and the Penn State campus – by storm. It’s a horrible, sordid story that likely involves at least eight young boys. It’s also resulted in the firing of our beloved head coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier.
There’s been lots of confusion, arguing and crying, especially two weeks ago when all of this surfaced. Lots of tears and prayers, especially, for my friends who seemed to be re-watching their own story, blown to epic proportions. Raw grief and memories.
I feel honored to have been there with them. But this whole thing has been very hard. And wordless, because I feel like it’s all been said, argued, written. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it before.
I’m still proud of my school. Proud, especially, of the students, who are outraged at this abuse and are trying to do everything in our collective power to help. We’re raising money and awareness for child abuse, we organized a candlelight vigil with over 10,000 people. (And the media still only talks about the fact that we rioted Wednesday night when news of the firings broke. There was only a fraction of those people downtown rioting, and it dispersed pretty quickly too.)
I’ve also been really, really mad at the media. Which is weird, because I am a communications/media/journalism student. I understand their jobs. Sometimes I consider myself to be on of them. But I’ve been mad. And I get to look at this crisis from a PR point of view, too – and say quite frankly that we did an awful job.
It’s been a weird, exhausting bit.
I’m finally at home where I can process it a bit more objectively, a bit less sensitively. But I’m just tired of talking about it by now.
So there you go: words that don’t feel like words. Words that try to explain my semester and my absence from writing and may or may not work.
I’m not on the best terms with words right now. Especially because I’m (supposed to be) working on five feature stories and one fiction story at once.
yes, i have a midterm for ballroom
Most people laugh when they hear I have a ballroom midterm.
They look at me strangely when they find that I’m taking it way too seriously.
The midterm is simply performing – you have a group that you rotate dances with (two-step, rumba, and cha-cha), and then a partner of choice for which you’ll dance all four dances with (adding in the quickstep). Not that hard.
And I know all the steps. (They aren’t that hard either.) I’m a decent follower. But my problem with this class lies in the fact that I consider myself a dancer. Therefore, I’m extremely frustrated that I can’t do many of the moves as well as I would like (especially in the Latin dances, because the way of moving/dancing is not quite like ballet. ha!)
It probably also doesn’t help that my standard for myself is the teacher or the Advanced II students, and I’m in the intro class.
Sometimes I need to learn to take pressure off myself. I love learning new things. I just hate being bad at them first!
It’s a fact of life, I suppose. And a bit too much pride.
But the fun part is that this is a good excuse for me to be taking extra dance classes and practicing more, which I do love!
End rant. back to work.
figuring out my life
is so overrated.
Yes, I’m supposed to be starting to think about my thesis and summer internships and, oh yeah, that last class I’m supposed to add for next semester.
I could also do my laundry, write a belated birthday note, or do a host of other things (including the epic amounts of work due tomorrow.)
But I’m not home to do some of them, and right now I just want to glory in this perfect fall day. Yesterday and today – bright, bright blue skies, the kind of heavenly purple-blue that only happens in the fall. Bright, warm, and yellow sunshine and a crisp breeze that likes to run around and run into you and remind you that it’s October.
Some of the trees are brilliantly red and orange {I love fall leaves}. Others haven’t gotten the memo that it’s fall yet.
And while I have been running hither thither and yon this afternoon, packing in work and preparing for my ballroom midterm and accidentally losing my laptop power cord (thank God it was still in the building lobby when I ran back two hours later), yesterday was one of those golden days where everything is perfect and time stands still.
For starters, I got to wear a fall-red shirt with a fall-neutral-green-corderoy skirt to church, and maybe decided that I really love that outfit. I also went out to lunch afterwards with three friends (two new ones!) and that was yummy and great fun. And then two of us wandered around outside for awhile, wandered into the candy store (yes, we have a real candy store, and I’m the person who stands there and drools over the colors and fun of it all, not the actual candy), and then walked back to my apartment. But it was so pretty out. And I remembered that there is apparently a playground right behind my house that I hadn’t discovered yet. So we detoured and found the playground and I swung on the swings for a delightfully long time and my heart was happy.
Turns out that swings are also good places for good conversations.
And then it was back to my place for some more conversation and apples and generally letting life slow down.
Golden.
Like running on the beach in white dresses with Jessina, singing under the stars with Jess – it was just another of those perfect moments that you hold in your heart, and look at and remember every so often and especially when life is crazy and stressful (like now). Precious.
