Your Son is an Electrician?

I walk with Anna (the nine year old I look after) to school almost every single day, because there simply aren't many children in the area whose parents drive to school. Most of the children in the neighborhood walk with their parents, but most of the parents don't have very young children to walk with. Most of them have children at least able to toddle around, who are able to control their own temperature, and who aren't as prone to getting sick. So some mornings when it is really cold, I have to bundle up the baby I look after, and walk to school with her older sister. Now, if the school was right around the corner (where the middle school is) I wouldn't mind it so much. Or if the backpack that I carry the baby in was easier to get in and out of by myself. But the elementary school happens to sit at the top of a ginormous hill. There are several steps of steep stairs, and then a very long winding path that lead to the school, and though the school starts later than most schools around, it is still freezing by the time her older sister and I have to walk. Most mornings nothing unusual happens. As always, there are other people who are walking their children to school, the sun rise to our right as we pant our way up the steep hill, and the rustling leaves on the millions (okay, maybe hundreds) of trees that surround the path.

Not today.

Not to say that the ordinary things weren't still happening. The sun still rose, (thank the Lord), the leaves are still on the trees, and there were still other parents walking their children to class. But the difference today, was that a humongous electricians truck was parked at the entrance to the school. The path isn't very wide, so even though the truck is the width of an average car, the entire path is blocked off. Anna and I could not make it to school.

It's a good thing that we always try to get their early. Now at least Anna understands why- she always thought I was crazy about going to school so early. Sometimes things come up that you just can't control. So, what do we do? We stand their awkwardly and wait for the truck driver to move the truck. Well, the truck driver is talking on his phone, and doesn't see us right away. After about half a minute of standing there in the freezing wind, he sees us and immediately gets off the phone. He hops the fence surrounding the path, and comes up to us.

"I need to move the truck, don't I?"

Anna and I both nod, sort of too intimidated by the truck to say much. So we just watch as he walks around to the drivers side of the truck, starts the engine, and begins pulling out.

"I'm scared that the truck is going to back in to us," says Anna, as she hides behind me, "I don't want it to squish me. Picture day is tomorrow."

So I shield her from the truck, even though their are weights keeping the truck from going any further back than it already is. And slowly, the truck pulls in to the school parking lot to let all the students that walk up the hill to pass.

After I drop Anna off at her classroom door, I have to walk back down the hill. Though the truck is gone, the man is still there, and he is leaning against the railing. He is obviously waiting for school to start, so that he can work in peace, without worrying about droves of children walking to and from school. It's very cold, but he is only wearing a thin jacket and work pants. I stop to thank him on the way down- it must have been a real setback to move the truck,but he did it anyways.

"Oh, no problem," he said, "I would have had to move it anyways." He says all of this with a Mexican accent and a slight grin. He can't be older than his mid thirties. There is something so compelling about him, that I decide to stop and chat, even though the weather app on my phone tells me that it is only 3 degrees above freezing, and I have an infant in my arms.

"Hi, my name is Rebecca." I say, holding out a mittened hand.
"J.C." he replied, "nice to meet you".

As I begin talking to this man, I see that he is not so different from me. He is working a job that pays the bills, that is not what he wants to do, but what he needs to do to support his family. Although I only have myself to take care of, he has a wife and two small children. The more I talked to him, the more I realized that he was missing the positive social interaction that comes from meaningful conversations, just as much, if not more, than I was. This man seemed so lonely for conversation, that I just had to keep talking to him.

Of course the conversation turned to the baby, and he asked me if she was mine.

"No," I responded, "I'm just the nanny. I take care of her and her older sister for most of the day, and then I go back to my house and try to act like a normal college student. I mean, believe it or not, I do have goals other than taking care of children for the rest of my life. I still want to go and be a student and learn tons of things." He studies me for a minute, and then says, "So... Are you still in high school?" Like most people that I meet during my day, he still assumes that I have not finished high school, and that this baby is mine, contrary to anything that I say.

"Well, I just graduated in May, and so now I'm taking a year or so off before college."
"Oh, which high school did you go to?"
"Well," I said, taking a deep breath, "you're going to think I'm crazy. I went to high school in Colorado. I actually just moved here about a month ago."
For a second he looks at me in astonishment, and then his curiosity gets the better of him. He asks, "Well, why did you do that? What made you move here?"

Whenever anyone asks me this question, I still feel very insecure about the answer. I feel like some people are going to write me off as just another Christian. Before I answered, I remembered a picture that I had seen on Facebook earlier this week. It is a very simple picture with a nun on the front. She is smiling at the camera in a smile reminiscent of the Mona Lisa, and there are only a few words: "Holiness is not for wimps, and the cross is not negotiable, sweetheart, it's a requirement -Mother Angelica." I could go on for days about how much this picture has inspired me to bring Christ back in to every aspect of my life, but that is for another time (If you all want me too). But at this particular time it made me think that it would be okay to tell this man why I had really moved here.

"Well, I was on a mission trip in Louisiana this summer, and I was praying, and I just asked the Lord where He was calling me, and He told me Virginia. And at first I didn't believe Him, but then everything started working out, so I followed Him."

This man did not believe me. He did not believe that I was only 18 and that I had moved across the country because I felt the Lord's presence here. He couldn't believe that I hadn't moved here with any family, and he couldn't wrap his mind around the faith it sounded like I had. (I mean, did a memo go out that only middle-aged and older people can do crazy things for their faith? Did I miss that?) The conversation soon ended with us finally introducing ourselves, and then we went our separate ways. I went back down the hill to the apartment, and he went back to work on the light that needed repairs. I was thinking about the conversation all the way home, and I couldn't stop thinking about how he was so disbelieving of me.

Even though the conversation did not end with his understanding my decision or faith, it really got me thinking about how easy-and difficult- it is to be Christ to others. It's hard not being accepted for your decisions, even if that person is the overworked electrician that you meet on the way to school. It's difficult talking about your beliefs and faith to people that aren't interested. I mean, we all want to be accepted by the world right? However, the thing I have found easy is to speak and act like Christ would have.  I didn't want to speak to the man outside on a cold day, but who am I to question the Lord? I know that He takes even the smallest things we give Him and turns them into blessings larger than we can imagine. And even though this sometimes doesn't feel like enough, and even though I didn't see any change in that man while I was there, I know that the Lord is doing some pretty awesome things with him.

I mean, who knows? Maybe he'll forget his preconceived notions about people still doing radical things for their faith. Maybe he'll remember that people still pray, still go to church, still take leaps of faith. Possibly, this will even challenge him to increase his own spiritual journey. Maybe the Lord will use this conversation as a way of reminding him who he really is: a child of God.

Attention Whores

I take a lot more selfies than I care to admit...

I don't think I'll ever learn the art of enjoying myself....

Let me back up.

I see pictures of tons of my friends on Facebook, and I see a lot of pictures that look fake. They look as though the person has spent three hours trying to dance the line between interested and disinterested. As though they don't care what people think, but if you dig a little deeper than they really do. Then there are the other people in my friends list who look like they are enjoying themselves fully. These shots don't have the best filters, the best quality, the best lighting, or the most flattering angle. These photos are most often taken at the spur of the moment, (or something close to it), and are genuine candid shots. And the difference is remarkable.

The people that don't pose for their pictures- or aren't even aware that their pictures are being taken- seem so filled with joy. There seems to be so much happiness in their movements and their faces that it can't help but spill out from them. These people don't care what others think about them, and they are content with sub-par quality photos for their Instagrams because they want to share how happy they were, not how happy their picture quality was.

Then I started thinking about pictures in general. Sure, it's good to have a family photo done once in a while, and it's good to pose for special events such as weddings, births announcements, graduation pictures, and the like. But the idea of posing for an ordinary picture, a picture that has no significant value or purpose, weirds me out. What's the point of posing for a picture while not actually looking at the camera? What is the reason behind a sepia filter vs. a black and white one? Is there any significance in making it seem like I don't care if I actually do?

Because the people who put up these pictures are more often than not looking for attention. I've heard others just brush them off as "attention-whores", and then move on to gawk at the next one. The name calling is a pretty accurate description at the base level. I mean, girls on Facebook taking selfies to get likes? What other reasons are there?

There are tons.

Why do they want attention?

In my own experiences, I've learned that everyone needs attention. When I went on a mission trip to Louisiana, I had the opportunity to help run a summer camp for children in the neighborhood. I was privileged to help with the 6-9 year old age group. Now, these children are from the roughest neighborhood around. There aren't any fathers (they've all been put away for drug use), their mothers are working full time jobs to support them, and the education system in Louisiana is the worst in the country (meaning that the children don't have any motivation to learn or participate in school at all.) But in the summer all these children come to camp. And they love it.

It wouldn't seem that they even liked it, let alone love it, if you just looked in one afternoon. You would see a few older women sitting with a very large group of younger, black, girls, and you could probably see that the older, white, women, were losing their patience. There is an obvious struggle for control over everyone's emotions and reactions. These girls have never been taught manners like we have; they have never learned to say please or thank you, they don't wash their hands, and they yell and try to break things when they are angry.

To us, this does not sound like a group of girls having a good time at summer camp. This sounds like a group of girls who can't wait to go home. Rather, this sounds like a group of girls determined to get kicked out so they can leave. But this couldn't be further from the truth. Instead, these children don't know how to ask for love and attention other than doing so through these large and grandiose actions. Through their tantrums they are noticed by the people that they love and admire. Their only way of connecting with their parents is by being so loud and obnoxious that they have to be noticed. And even though this is a very negative attention, it is attention none-the-less.

Getting back to girls on Facebook, you don't suppose that these constant selfies could be a cry for attention? Not just the artificial attention that comes from people noticing how pretty you look; but searching for the real affection and love that they are craving. Maybe, just a thought here, they are all just looking for someone to love them, but don't know what love actually is? Because we are well versed in the world we think we know what love is and where to find it. The modern media tells us know that we are very successful if: our pictures have a certain number of likes, our posts have a specific number of shares, our eyes are a certain color, our hair is a certain length, or we have lost our virginity at a specific age. This picture of success leads us to think that there is never a way to be good enough, because we should be happy with what he have, but we're still looking in the wrong places. Every time we turn to something new, what we really wanted is just visible in the corner of our eyes. Imagine that everything we want is simply a few inches away, we just don't know which direction. We paw at the air in our blindness, oblivious to the fact that our search could be ended shortly by simple direction in our actions. Suppose we are all just looking in the wrong place for this much needed interaction and direction of attention. Say that we are all looking in the wrong area of our lives for something.

I know I am.

I keep looking for love everywhere except where it actually is, right in my Father's arms. I try to fill this desire with lots of friends, books, movies, and boyfriends. I look for peace through music and socialization, when I could just turn to the Lord and experience His love and joy. Instead of praying, I indulge in apps on my phone, and instead of praising Him I choose to read gossip-filled magazines. I think that being a part of the world will make me happy, that this will fill me up. I keep searching (in vain), for the meaning to life and the secret of happiness, even though the Lord has promised all His happiness to me. I keep stumbling around in the dark, even though I know that the Lord's hand is right next to me. It's so hard to accept help, isn't it? So, isn't it possible that we are all just looking for something, and don't know where to get it?

I suppose, in some ways, we're all just like those "attention-whores" that we see on Facebook. Probably exactly like them. We just don't know where to find what we are looking for.

Going back to the other pictures I see displayed in the social media, the ones that seem more genuine and life-like than the the others. There seems to be a genuine happiness and joy that emanates from my compute screen. These people are enjoying themselves.

My hypothesis is that these people are already well on their way to what they want. They aren't stumbling around, groping blindly at the void in front of us, although at times I'm sure they feel like it. They have picked themselves up as best as they can, and taken a hold of the Lord's hand. They are still blind, but in a way, they are more able to see than the rest of us. The Lord doesn't remove our obstacles or desires, He grabs a hold of us and carries us through and around them. This doesn't meant that the obstacles aren't still there. Rather, they look a hell of a lot scarier than we ever thought they could, but we aren't going alone. These people have finally found that in total surrender and acceptance, there is true love and affection.

Exactly what we were looking for.

To Bodly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before

When I was little I always had the biggest dreams for what I wanted to do when I grew up. For years I wanted to be an astronaut. Not a normal astronaut, but a ballerina astronaut. That's right. I wanted to dance on the moon with my pink tutu on the outside of my space suit. Silly things like temperature and weight of the space suit couldn't daunt my dream.

Sometimes my dreams are just to be a good older sister... 

When I realized that I was afraid of looking down on things, and thought that maybe looking at the earth from that high up might freak me out, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. Not a normal teacher, but an art teacher. I wanted to roll in to school every day on my roller skates and be called "Professor Triplett". That dream ended when I realized that both my father and my uncle were called "Professor".

Once my dad told me to wrap a bowl with plastic wrap, and I did it so well, that for a few months, all I wanted to do was to be a professional plastic-wrapper. (To his credit, my dad did not dissuade me).

When Harry Potter first came out, I wanted to be the next J.K. Rowling. I tried and tried to write about anything and everything that came to mind, but I was always only able to write a page or two before I grew bored. I still can't write anything longer than twenty pages, and if it's a creative story? Forget about it.

The new dream was to be on Broadway. Despite the fact that every actor's dream is to be on Broadway, and that there are droves of talented thespian, I love being big, outlandish, unrealistic, and energetic. So Broadway seems to be the natural choice. I mean, there aren't many careers that you can say you absolutely love, right? Might as well shoot for the moon.

What do all these dreams have in common?

They all have to do with impacting others and how they remember me. I think that even at a young age I wanted people to remember me. I wanted to be remembered by what I did for humanity. I wanted people to look me up in a history book and be remembered as the next Jane Goodall, or the better Picasso. And I still have that desire even today. I still have the insatiable desire to be important. To be needed. To be great.

Everyone else had tangible goals and dreams to achieve greatness. To be a doctor, to be a politician, to be a mother. None of the same desires for greatness seemed to penetrate the dreams my friends had. I seemed to be the only power hungry one of the bunch. Of course, if you had asked me, I would never have said I was power hungry. I would have just said I was ambitious, even though I didn't know quite where the ambition was directed.

Of course, at the time I couldn't see that I was power hungry. I thought that everyone suffered from the same desires. I thought that everyone didn't care what they did, just so long as people remembered them for it.

I sound like a terrible child.... Don't I?

I really did want to do good things, I really did want to be the person to end world hunger and to clothe the naked, and to free people from prison. I wanted to do good things for others. The very first dream I ever remember having was to run an orphanage. I wanted to provide these children with a better life, even though I was no more than I child myself. But where I was getting lost was the fact that I wanted to be remembered as a good person, rather than to actually be a good person.

My motivation was just a little skewed.

I realize now that wanting to do those things simply for the sake of recognition is no useful motivation to do them at all. What does it matter that other people think I am a great person if I did great things simply to be great? Am I truly good if I only did good things in order to be remembered as good? Or did I act out of love for my fellow man?

Sometimes I still wonder what I want to do. Do I want to pursue these things because I think that they will make me be remembered? Or do I want to follow these dreams because they are avenues that I love? Do I want to go and be a missionary because I will convert people to Christianity, or because I think that my brothers and sisters should hear about the love GOD has for them? Do I want to teach because I want to be remembered as a spectacular teacher, or because it is for the good of the CHILDREN? Do I want to do good things out of the goodness of the deed, or the goodness it will bring others?

Sometimes I don't think I've changed much. I still want to be great. I still struggle with the difference between being great for myself and being great for the Lord. For a while I thought that I couldn't have dreams of being great after I realized that I was too prideful for my own good. I thought that God wanted me to give up all the dreams I had of changing the world. And for a while I did. However, I wasn't able to give them up completely. Even when I said that I wouldn't want to be great in this way, I would begin thinking of different ways that I could achieve history.

It was only in totally giving my pride and ambition to the Lord that I realized I did have to give these up all the way. I couldn't just say that I was giving them up and then think about how I could be awesome. I had to hand them to God and see what He would do with them.

I very recently asked God to help me overcome my pride. I handed God all the delusions that I had had since childhood. Trembling, I held none of my desires back. And afterwards I have begun to feel a slight difference. I still want to be great. I still want to change the world. But I feel so much happier and better about it now. Because I realize that I can't do anything without Jesus and that He wants me to be great as well. He doesn't want me to give up my dreams of changing the world, rather He wants to use them for the advancement of His kingdom. I suppose I didn't realize this until very recently, but the Lord wants to change the world as well. And Jesus could come and change the world Himself if He felt so inclined, but He really wants us to join in as well.
The Lord doesn't want to take my dreams and chew them up and then spit them back at me. He wants to do things with me, and if what I am good at will bring about his kingdom, as well as bring me closer to what I love, then why wouldn't He use my dreams and desires? I mean, isn't He the one who gave them to me in the first place?

He doesn't want me to use my ambition for myself, because in the end that wouldn't make me feel happy or fulfilled. He wants me to change the world through simple acts of love and acceptance, and even though right now I feel like that isn't much, the Lord knows my desires better than I do. He isn't asking me to diminish my greatness, but He wants to be the center of it. He wants me to change the world through my love for Him, as well as my love for others. If I loved others as Christ loves them, and I treated everyone as I would want to be treated, who would ever remember me in any other way than what I originally wanted? And really, when you think about it, isn't that the only way worth being remembered as?

Bus Stop Pride

I can complain about it being early, or enjoy the sunrise :)

So, although I live in Springfield, my job is a whole two towns away. This wouldn't be that far if I could just drive there. Unfortunately I can't. I don't have a car. Although I would be able to afford the initial down payment, the insurance for a vehicle would put me under. I would go broke, and in a very expensive part of the country, that really isn't an option. So, what do I do? I take the bus every morning and every afternoon to get to and from work. Unfortunately there is no bus that goes straight from my house to my job. There is, however, a bus that goes from around the corner to the Pentagon. And then from the Pentagon there is a bus that will take me to the correct neighborhood. Unfortunately this requires some back tracking, but I suppose I can't be too picky with the public transit system.

My first bus leaves at 6:20 in the morning, and normally I am pretty good about making that bus. Granted, I wake up incredibly early every morning to make this connection, but I am never worried about making it. (Actually, I don't know what I would do if I missed that one. The next bus that leaves from that stop is at 6:45, meaning I would be almost an hour late for work). Catching this bus is entirely within my control. If I am late, then the bus will leave without me. But it is within my power to not be late. The connecting bus at the Pentagon leaves only a few short minutes after my first bus normally arrives. Whether I catch this one or not depends on the bus I have just taken. Was it on time? Did we make any extra stops? Was traffic bad? Were there more people to drop off before the Pentagon station?

So, what can I do? I can either run and try to catch the early bus, or I can watch it drive away and wait for the next bus that comes in twenty minutes. Normally the first bus arrives with just enough time for me to speed walk from one end of the station to the other, and I am just able to catch the bus before it pulls out. The reason that it matters if I take the early bus or not, is that my job technically starts at 7:00. The second bus doesn't leave the station until 7:02, so I will be late to work. Even though that still gives the woman I nanny for enough time to get to work, the morning is so much more rushed when I don't get there until 7:20.

Sometimes I see the bus leave right as my bus pulls in. These are the less stressful mornings in one sense (I don't have to run to catch the bus), but is much more stressful in others, (I get anxious when I am going to be late. Even if I am not early it stresses me out immeasurably). So I normally try to catch the first bus, but most often I need to wait for the later one.

Yesterday morning, as I sat at the bus stop, waiting for the later bus to arrive, a lady walked up to the seating area to wait for the bus that comes in between the two buses that I can take. She looked around for a moment and realized that she would have to stand because there were no more dry seats available. (Since Tropical Storm Karen came through, it's been pretty wet here). So, this older woman stood right next to me, and began waiting for the bus.

Now, I tried to ignore her as best I could, because what was I supposed to do? There were a few younger men sitting in the seats next to me, shouldn't they get up and offer her their seats? None of them moved. So, that left it up to me.

"Would you like to sit down? I'll move if you like."

The woman looked at me for a moment in complete shock. After a few seconds she told me that she would be alright, but thank you for offering. She told me that there aren't very many people like me around any more.

The conversation continued, and then ended a few moments later when she had to catch her bus. It was a lovely conversation about allergies and moving. She asked me why I moved to Virginia, and I told her that I just woke up one day and knew that the Lord was calling me there. This seemed to cheer her up. As a pastor at her own church, she had seen how many young people were not finding Jesus anymore. It was an enlightening and positive conversation to have early in the morning, and made me glad that I had run in to her. But that sentence about there not being many people who would offer a seat to someone else struck me, almost more so than her openness to the Lord, and I thought about it all day.

There aren't many people like ME around anymore? At first I felt pride at what I had done, and even though she had refused the seat, I felt that I had done her a great service. I felt myself to be better than the people around me, the ones who had neglected to offer her their own seats. I began thinking that I was such a great person that I had thought to offer her this common courtesy. I began thinking myself rather grand.

Before this woman had come up to me and needed a place to sit, I had been reading C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity", which I had been avidly devouring all morning. Ironically, I had just started reading the section labeled "Pride". When I was done congratulating myself on how selfless I had been, I began reading again.

"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, 'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking, 'What a fine person I must be to have done it.' The more you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming".

The Lord is not one to be subtle, is He?

I immediately saw that I had just committed the very thing that Lewis writes about. I had gone from feeling well about pleasing someone else, to stroking my ego in less than two minutes. I had jumped from pleasure in the act, to pleasure in myself almost instantaneously. The scary part is, I hadn't even noticed.

Today, pride is a difficult topic to discuss. In elementary school I was taught that to take pride in one's actions was to be prideful. To be admiring of someone else's gifts might inspire pride in them and self-degradation in yourself. To have a gift was to smother it, for fear that one would catch you in the act of pride. I feared being prideful more often than anything else, but I didn't truly know what pride is.

On the other end of the spectrum, I later learned from observing others, that building oneself up was far superior to knocking others down. So, taking pride in things you did was far better than feeling better than another person for things you did better than they did. In my mind, pride in myself for doing something good is equivocal to the pride that comes from doing a good work for the sake of the action.

I had never realized that this was incorrect.

The popular saying of today's generation is "Chivalry is dead"; but that is not strictly true. We were just never taught what chivalry was, and in our search to defy these allegations of rude behavior, we attempt to become chivalrous and kind out of spite and in defiance of the social norm. We become more prideful than we ever intended in our seeking to be selfless. Our actions reflect our goals, but not our motives. Even though the action is good, the incentive is skewed.

Is me offering a seat to an older woman still good, even though I kindled my own pride while doing so? Is that really any better than not offering her a seat at all?