Golden Memories

Yesterday marked the end of an era. My days riding the Golden Bullet are over.

To those of you unfamiliar with the legendary Golden Bullet, let me introduce you. The Golden Bullet was a long, cylindrical, gold-colored motor vehicle, tapered in front, and somewhat resembling the shape of a bullet (except on a much larger scale of course). It was the Town and Country minivan that I inherited when I moved home from college. Not exactly my first choice of a vehicle, but free equaled beauty in my eyes. The Golden Bullet had been in my family for almost ten years, and in my personal care for the last year and a half. Now, at the end of its life, I look back and reminisce over all the times we shared…

My first memorable experience with the Golden Bullet was less than a year after I got my driver’s license, when I discovered its Texas-sized blind spots, and how perfectly palm trees could fit in them. Oh Golden Bullet, you carried that dent in the back right corner to the end of your days…

After I went to college she was in my parents’ care, so I had to hear through the grapevine all their woes and remorse over buying a slightly used, American-made vehicle. Coming back from college, I gave up the sporty red Camry (with its spoiler and stick shift), to take under my wing the now-aging Bullet. My parents had moved on, and so it was left to me to coax out of her whatever love and loyalty was left. I know she tried…

I faced mockery for my “soccer mom van,” but I didn’t care. I was towed twice (praise AAA) in a month, but I forgave her because I wanted to believe she was still trying. The belt squeaked (even after being replaced twice) and the engine chunked, but I knew her heart was in the right place. When the temperature gauge climbed and smoke started oozing out of the hood, I would pull off the road and pray with her. I even enlisted one of my mechanic friends to help with a desperate surgery on her electric fans. A little duct tape, and she managed to hold it together a little longer…

Her last great service to me was to help me move all of my possessions up to Indianapolis. Her willingness to help showed me at last that all of my care and dedication, all of my hanging in there with her when everyone else told me to give up, had been worth it. She made it.

I decided to drive her back down here for Christmas, because I knew she was reaching her last days (also because my brother needed a ride and I decided that the recommended $1,200 of repairs were NOT going into a ten-year-old minivan that was in its death throws anyway). It took all of her strength to get home but she did it. We lost a wiper blade but she pushed on. The windshield washer fluid stopped spraying but she charged blindly forward. As the brakes began to show less response, I knew it was only because the Bullet couldn’t stand to be slowed. By the time we got to Florida, even the AC had stopped working, but the Golden Bullet would not be stopped.

We made it home, and yesterday we took the Bullet to the Ford dealership, where she did us one last service. She traded herself in so that I could keep driving. She still looked beautiful, and she managed by some miracle to convince the trade-in guy that she was worth twice as much as I ever expected to get for her. You done me proud, Golden Bullet.

I have a shiny new red Focus to drive now, with a stick shift and an auxiliary plug so that I can actually listen to my iPod. It’s cute and compact, clean and fuel-efficient. But the Golden Bullet will never be forgotten.

No. DEFINITELY not.

She’s been, er, unforgettable...

A Few of My Favorite Things (Indy Edition)

Since moving to Indianapolis about a month ago, I’ve faced challenges and blessings. This blog is about the blessings. One thing I love about being here is being able to spend more time with my little nephews (TECHNICALLY they are my cousins once removed, but since their mom is practically my sister ANYWAY, they shall henceforth be referred to as my nephews). A few weeks ago I babysat them for a couple days, and considering the fact that I ABHOR babysitting (as those of you who know me are certainly aware), this fact alone says volumes about how exceptional these little guys are to my heart. Please observe the following pictures and appreciate the preciousness. :)

Another fun aspect of my life since moving is the weather. Perhaps the novelty will soon wear off, but for now it is still exciting every time white lace begins to trickle down from the clouds and settle over the landscape. And thanks to my cousin/friend Sarah (technically my cousins’ cousin, although we’ve adopted each other as family), I had the euphoric experience of building my very first snowman! Okay… it wasn’t exactly euphoric, and it was actually more like a snow-lady-midget, but it was still pretty fun for a girl who grew up building sandcastles and catching lizards in the tropics. Here is our work:

Other highlights have included finding a church that myself, Sarah, and the bf all like, the discovery of dairy-free pizza, mac n cheese, and chocolate, an amazing Indian restaurant, and landing an interview with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Patron Services department (pray that one up!). Now all I need is employment, and we’ll be in good shape. :)

Bring on the holidays!

A Few Thousand Words (and a Colts Game)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so rather than yammering on for ten days about my first professional football game, here are the pics.

On Sunday, November 28, I went to my first NFL game ever! (Though I'm not a die-hard football fan, I've secretly always wanted to go to one.) In Florida, everyone has their own beloved sports teams. In Indy, the Colts ARE the team. You live there, you ARE a Colts fan. Which is kind of cool in its own way, with everyone being all gung-ho together and everything. Honestly, going to the game was so exciting that I may have to be a Colts fan now out of nostalgia...

At the beginning of the game some servicemen unrolled this gigantor flag onto the field (ah, patriotism), while Sandy Patti sang the national anthem.

Yes. Sandy Patti.

The giant bouncehouse down in the corner is the portal through which the players pass to enter the field at game time (accompanied by deafening applause).

The last player to enter is #18, Peyton Manning, who is basically the Zeus of Indianapolis.

Playing the Game

This is B.F.'s sister and one of his brothers. Five boys, one girl. Whoa. I don't know what I'd do without Jenna when I go visit.

These are B.F.'s two youngest brothers. The one on the right I'm pretty sure is the Colts' most passionate fan. He looked at me at one point during the game and shouted above the perpetual roar, "We come to a Colt's game, and Joanna is texting. Unbelievable!"

Whoops.

He also greeted me with, "That's the shiniest jersey I've ever seen!!" I think it was a compliment?

My hook-up for the tickets.

Somehow we ended up sitting near these Chargers fans (booooo...), and at several points I was tempted to throw ice at their heads.

Unfortunately the Chargers did beat the Colts, but that was really just a minor detail in an overall pretty fricken sweet experience.

So I'm still broke and jobless, but the occasional highlights (like awesome sports games) are making the waiting phase much better. :)

Fine.

Confessions of a Selfish Twenty-Something and Conviction from and Unlikely Source

A couple months ago, I decided to take on one of the greatest challenges of my life. I took on a boyfriend.

Yesterday, as my fella and I were having a fairly serious discussion (over an amazingly deep-fried lunch), he said something that I have thought to myself about a bazillion times since we started dating-- "This is so HARD!" He was trying to communicate an idea to me, and finding as I often do that an idea that seems so simple in my brain refuses to come out of my mouth in words that make sense to the other person. He also said recently, again voicing my own thoughts, "Sometimes I feel like you bring out all my worst qualities."

Not exactly romantic, but so true it's not even funny!

Just when you think you've got your flaws and personality quirks fairly well under control, God throws another person into your life equation, and suddenly x (you) no longer equals y (perfection).

I think this is especially true in romantic relationships. My theory is that this problem is compounded by the fact that the rom coms train our gullible little hearts to focus on all the things we are to receive from a significant other, and seldom bother to touch on the things we're going to have to give up for the sake of caring for that person. Or the things that we are really going to have to work hard to attain. One thing I'm realizing about myself: having to give things up or work harder than I want to in order to reach a desired end makes me impatient and frustrated. Then I start taking it out on other people. Then in addition to being annoyed with another person, I get ticked off at myself for being such a selfish brat.

Then I start P.M.S.ing and just cry like a spoiled baby over the whole situation.

Worst qualities anyone? Who knew this would be so HARD!

Thankfully, God likes to send conviction, perspective, and encouragement from the most unlikely sources, just at the exact moment we need it. The following is a note written by my cousin Jake last night, and was just what I needed to hear and be reminded of. I know it's a little long, but I truly, truly hope you will take the time to read it; I promise it will be worth your while. Enjoy.

On Love: the Heart of the Matter

by Jake Miller

What is love?

Besides being the title of a song by Haddaway, it is a whole lot of things… and there are a lot of thing it is not. I guess the reason I’m writing this note is because I’ve learned a lot about love and what it is/isn’t in the past year or so, and so I have compiled my insights for you, o lucky reader, to digest and mull over. I hope you find at least some of this useful or at least thought-provoking.

Fist off, I’ll start with the simplest definition of what I think love is: caring about someone else more than you care about yourself. Let that sink in for a moment… if that definition is true, the word itself should not be applied so flippantly, i.e., “I love chocolate.” This is just a minor annoyance to me, but it does cheapen the word.

For a more complete definition of what love is, read 1 Corinthians 13. Or, the whole Bible for that matter… it’s one big love story to each one of us. But, in that specific chapter Paul shows what love is and what love isn’t. In order to spare you the condescension of writing it out or assuming you know nothing about it, I’ll just proceed to explain my idea of it in light of that passage and other more general things in the Bible. If you haven’t read that passage recently, you may want to sneak over to your Bible or an online one before moving on in this note.

Read it yet? Ok, good (yeah right… I bet you didn’t read it recently until NOW if at all). Moving on…

The expanded definition of love that Paul outlines in 1 Corinthians follows my simple definition nicely in a similar way to how Jesus summarized the 10 commandments: love God, love people (paraphrase). If you’re loving God and loving people, you won’t be able to break the 10 commandments by the very nature of them. It’s like being told to draw a rectangle and by drawing a square, you have it all covered by the nature of what the requirement is. Bad example, but it shows that one logically follows the other. In any case, if you care more about someone else than you do about yourself, you won’t be impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, mocking, selfish, angry, spiteful/vengeful, or any other negative adjective. If you truly love someone, if you truly prioritize them, it means you’re always trying to protect, always trusting, always hoping, always pressing on for the sake of the one you love. Ultimately, Paul says love never fails… but he’s talking about the real love that we can’t get from anywhere else besides God.

The funny thing about that is that God is love. Above and beyond all of his other characteristics, I think this one defines him the most while all others fall to second place in who he is, what his being and character is comprised of. He created us, he created all of our beautiful surroundings on earth and above it for us to enjoy and point us back to him (for our own good, he calls us to himself), and when we rejected him he fought back for our sake. He thought we were too important to him to let us go and be apart from him forever, so he made a way for us to come back to him. That is the story of the Bible, the love story of humanity. God proves his love for us by sending us his own son Jesus, in essence caring more about us (as humanity and even as individuals) than he did about himself. He sacrificed himself for our sake because he knew we need it and cannot ever find real fulfillment without him. That’s how powerful he is… for us, in us, and through us.

This is demonstrated in other places in the Bible, all throughout it. The Psalms are full of love, and even the prophets are messages of love from God. If we screw up, we need a wake-up call and some discipline because God knows we need to be pointed in the right direction again (himself) and he needs to get our attention often through uncomfortable means. But, this is because God loves us in a very special way, as the husband figure to the church and the lover of our souls. The marriage relationship is described by Paul as the husband sacrificing himself for his wife, placing her needs above his own and looking after her in every way. In return, his wife is to submit* to him and respect him, caring for him too. I put the * next to “submit” because I think the term needs explanation: I believe submission is not a place of disgrace or powerlessness, but a place of trust and obedience because of the love given to her by her husband. For you see, I have another theory: trust is the reciprocal of love.

All relationships, no matter what kind or intensity, are built upon love and trust (or the lack thereof). If someone truly loves you, you trust them. Trust is you saying “I accept your love and believe wholeheartedly that you have my best interests in mind” while love is saying “I have your best interests in mind and I put you first.” In 1 John, perfect love is described as being so powerful that it drives out fear… this means that perfect love leads to perfect trust and therefore perfect submission to what God has, even if we don’t understand it. That kind of perfect love is so powerful that it overwhelms the heart, infects the soul with trust so deep that David wrote his legendary Psalm 23. Even while in the midst of a life where death was looming over him along the way, he was secure and knew he was safe. This is true power, and this is true relationship.

This love is a fierce love, a love that fights for its beloved. This kind of love stops at nothing to show itself to be true, no matter the cost to itself. This love won’t blink or hesitate if it requires deep sacrifice, even death. This is the love that moves mountains, destroys obstacles, conquers armies. This is how we are “more than conquerors” if we are truly in love with God, and if we receive (trust) God at his word then we are capable of living out our love powerfully to each other too… but do we?

Even assuming we have this true relationship with God, how many people have it with each other?

This brings me to where I can actually start saying what I want to say in this note… that I’m so saddened to see a shallow, meaningless “love” in this world. Even among Christians, it is a rare find when you meet a couple who is deeply invested and would give anything to protect each other. It seems that “everyone has a price” that is too much, that it just isn’t worth it after a point. If the muscles weaken or the beauty fades, the deal’s off. Where’s the love? I see shadows of it, fake posers who are all emotion but have no heart.

I think the ultimate problem is selfishness. We all want what’s best for us, and we’re all trying to have the best. We don’t like to put our lives in anyone else’s hands, and we don’t want to cede ourselves to anyone else. We don’t want to commit to others, and we don’t want to entrust our truest deepest hearts to anyone. Yet, this is what we must do, both with God and with each other… especially in romantic relationships.

Real love is an effort and it takes strength. Shallow, selfish love… that is the cheap, quick-and-easy way out. Nothing hard about it, because it’s all about you in the end. But here’s some free wisdom for you: nothing worth doing is easy, and nothing easy is worth doing. Anything worth doing is worth doing completely, while anything not worth doing isn’t worth doing at all. If you’re going to love, make it the real thing, people! Don’t cower out and take the easy, doomed-to-failure way. In the end, you’ll only be unsatisfied even if for a while it seems to work. Sooner or later, it’ll all break down. If love is easy, you’re doing it wrong. There’s a reason why the real thing is so hard though...

Love, if it’s the real thing, lets go of everything to gain just one thing… the other person. Nothing else matters to them, and that’s the way it should be. Instead of people trying to take from one another in relationships, only being concerned for themselves (deep down, ultimately), each of us should only be concerned with how we can give to the other. That way, it’s almost like a contest of which person can give to the other more. If both people are living like that, truly practicing their genuine love… there will be no fear, only the deep trust. There will be no wanting, no needing of anything or anyone else. The reason so many people are unsatisfied in their relationships today, the cause of so many breakups and divorces is… ta-da!

Selfishness and lack of the actual kind of love we are meant to have.

There are no fights if there is love. Have you ever gotten murderously mad at someone who is willing to ready to give their life just to protect you? I think not… or if you have, I pity you and you might just be a sociopath. Please don’t be sociopathetic… just learn how to trust (receive love). I believe you cannot truly love until you have learned how to receive love, and the only love one is actually capable of giving out is that level of love which has been received. If you can’t trust someone’s love very much, you are incapable of loving very much. If you trust all the way… you can love all the way.

Again, this kind of love is so amazing it’s hard to even imagine sometimes. We as humans literally cannot even grasp it, at least not in its truest form, from its ultimate source. I believe that those without first having a true relationship with Love (capitalized means “God”) cannot give that true love to others. I know that if we are receiving that kind of love from God, we don’t have to try to leech it from others, instead only worrying about giving from our overflowing cups. If we’re really living in the Love, we can’t give love out fast or deeply enough to others because we are constantly in a state of “so overflowing and beyond full that we’re drowning in it” kind of love from God. We need to submit ourselves to Him and receive the love he wants to give us... only then can we live a meaningful life. Here’s some free wisdom: life is only as meaningful as you make it meaningful for others.

Here’s a fun thought: “they will know we are Christians by our love.” It should be obvious and the envy of everyone who lacks it. Our lives should be noticeably different because we have a different source of life than those without this kind of love, and we should be true witnesses to what our true God truly does.

The Bible is a love story, and it is written just for us. God loves us enough to fight for us, and we need to fight for each other. The Bible is full of redemption and rescue, and so as part of our love we ought to lay down our lives for each other… not only be willing to die for someone, but be willing to live for them too. To be honest, it’s a kind of love that few can handle it seems… and I’m just trying to get there myself too.

Giving Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving, and I will celebrate it by setting out on my blog's maiden voyage. Some of you may remember my ill-fated first blog, which went down about the same time my mental stability did when I was working at my previous place of employment. Hopefully this blog (and my life "post-previous-place-of-employment") will meet with better fortune. New blog, new beginning.

A few small details have changed since my last post, so I will attempt to bring you up to speed as quickly as possible. I am now unemployed, a state I willingly entered into a few months ago but am hoping to soon move out of. I was going to go into the ministry but decided to move to Indiana instead (Don't ask questions, please; I'm tired of coming up with B.S. answers). As much as I have loved having the option to date anything male with a wallet over the past few years, I am now just dating one walletted young man, and most days I'm pretty happy with that decision. I have gained wisdom from the crazy happenings in my life over the past several months, and more than anything else have just generally learned what an idiot I can be sometimes. Guess everyone has to learn that lesson at some point.

But back to today, a day of Thanksgiving (which will segue into a further introduction to myself). As a general rule, I am a fairly optimistic person. I understand reality, but I can usually look at it in a pleasant light. Every so often, however, I have one of those days when the cynical me rises in my brain and spends the whole day arguing with the happy me, determined to beat it down and make both of us miserable. And this me battle is falling on Thanksgiving, leaving me very much lacking that warm, joyous, holiday feeling of gratitude. It's rather a pathetic situation.

I like my holidays to be perfect, picturesque and snapshot-worthy... but maybe they don't have to be, and maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe a little crankiness is okay to start things off, and maybe the thing that I really need to be thankful for today is the wonderful people who love me and are willing to be my friends/family even during the cranky and cynical battle days. Hmm... I may be on to something here...

A LOT of things are still up in the air in my life right now, and sometimes it's a challenge to give thanks while still not knowing the outcome of the circumstances. This blog is beginning at just such a point in my life, and some days (like today, she admitted guiltily) I do find it challenging to muster up that warm-fuzzy, happy, grateful feeling. But one thing I cannot deny ever-- the people in my life who love me in spite of my pessimist days are certianly worth giving thanks for.

If you are such a friend, I am thinking of you today, with warmth and gratitude...

I think the happy me just won a round!