On This Day

Latvia celebrates their Independence from Russia today.  Morocco commemorates their break from Spain's rule today.  

Olympian Allyson Felix, racing great Denny Hamlin, and actor Delroy Lindo all came into our world on this day.  Mickey and Minnie Mouse first strutted their stuff in animated form on this day.  George Jetson went on his maiden putter across the airwaves on this date.  

William Tell shot an apple off of his poor son's head on this day in 1307.  The basilicas of both Peter and Paul were dedicated on this day in history.  (Did they rob one to pay the other?)

In 1978, cult leader Jim Jones directed more than 900 people to commit mass suicide on this day.  In 1999, the Texas A&M Bonfire tragedy claimed 12 lives on the campus of my alma mater.  

On this day in 1974, I was born.  

In the past few years, my birthday has brought mixed feelings.  It's a combination of getting older, thinking through my opportunity costs, and thinking about what I have in my life that brings me joy.  

I used to get hung up on the losses - I haven't married or had kids.  I'm getting to the age that both of those things might never happen to me.  I used to get my feelings hurt about that.  

Today, I'm making a different choice.  Today, I'm looking at what good I've accomplished in my life.  I earned my Ph.D. this past year.  I have a wonderful job that stresses me out, and I love that about it!  I have a new car.  I have a safe, somewhat cozy place to call home. I've got a little money in the bank. 

I'm the favorite aunt of all of my nieces and nephews.  My parents love me and support me no matter what crazy schemes I come up with.  I can bake you up whatever suits your fancy, and it'll be the best you've ever had.  

Which reminds me that I have not made myself a birthday cake yet...hmmm...I better get right on that!

Sure, terrible things happen on days that should be about celebrating the good in life. But for me, today, and hopefully all future days - I choose to start from a place of positive.  I choose to see life as a series of gifts, not a series of should'ves or too bad I didn'ts.  

My Dad has this thing he says when he wants to avoid seeming covetous:  "I wish I had that one and that guy had a better one!"  Today, I'm that guy - I choose to see myself as the one with the good stuff.  

On This Day, I choose to see myself as 38 years of happy success.  No one will build a basilica in my name, shoot an apple off my head (a resolution I just recently made), or put me on any list of famous people in history that were born on this day.  

On This Day, what I have today makes me happy.   

Public Displays of...What?

We settled in after a rousing round of "How Great Thou Art" for a Missions presentation from a father-daughter team who had just returned from a short-term project along the Texas-Mexico border. They spoke compellingly about the needs of the people and how they worked tirelessly for five days to address those needs.  Cute pictures of laughing children and women frying up delectable dinners over open flames outside shanty houses followed.  

Seeing these presentations in church typically makes us Baptist folks feel like we're making a difference in the world, even though we neither gave to that mission nor went on that mission ourselves.  

Just as I thought it was over and "Amazing Grace" would close the service, the lights dimmed further, and a video came on.  I was intrigued, and then...

The pastor of that small shanty community was shouting in Spanish so that all of the people standing around could hear.  He translated about every third sentence into English for the Texan folks to understand.  He was essentially outlining this man's sins for everyone to hear. It was like a third party confessional - as if someone had hacked his Facebook account and was broadcasting all of the dirt from his personal profile for all bystanders to raise their eyebrows to. He described in detail how badly he had treated his family and what kind of a lazy employee he was.  After a few minutes of this, I was glad the pastor's spoken Spanish was faster than my ability to understand his Spanish.

After quite a lengthy littany, the pastor baptized the man in "el nombre del Padre, el Hijo y el Espiritu Santo."  And promptly burst into applause and song along with the rest of the crowd.  

Sins forgiven.  Facebook profile full of sins washed away.  A fresh new start...?

I did not know this man.  The returning short term missionaries had not met that man during their week away.  But the pastor sure knew this man, and now so does everyone within earshot of that baptism.  

I get it that a faith commitment is public.  I get that cultures are different in how they express faith.  I get it that pastors are different in how they perform the rites of the Christian faith.  

But WOW - to go from an anonymous nobody to "everyone knows every sin I've ever committed" is a big leap - not just of faith.  It's like some perverse Scarlet Letter.  Everyone knows that big A is supposed to be there, but the Baptism somehow magically cancelled all that out.  Too bad baptism can't cancel out the memories of all those folks standing there and watching the video in that church.  

I think of all of the fallen businessmen, child stars and other famous folks in the news who have fallen from grace in a very public way.  I really have no need to know about who is sleeping with whom.  I don't care whether they live in LA, NY or if they're my next door neighbor.  I have no need to have a businessman's wrongs outlined week after week on NBC Nightly News.  I just want to know that justice or karma has kicked them in the backside.  

 

The concept of private self dissolves when a wrong becomes public.  A private wrong echoes through media as well as tight knit communities, and it never goes away.  

I've made some mistakes in my day.  I've spoken publicly about many of them.  I've kept a great deal more to myself.  I'm glad I made my mistakes in the pre-Facebook era.  I'm glad that they only populate my bucket of regret and not a Google search of my name.  

Private events should really stay in the private realm.  Baptisms should not be an opportunity for a public reading of your private sins. Churches thousands of miles away from small Mexican shanty towns should not be subjected to a litany of someone else's sins.  Let's fight against the trend of "no knowledge is private knowledge" and have some boundaries in our lives.  And while we're at it, let's also define some boundaries about what we know and show about the private selves of others. 

Keeping Egosystems in Balance

I both love and hate watching shows like "Four Weddings" and "Say Yes to the Dress."  I love them because you see people at one of the happiest moments of their lives.  My favorite one to love/cringe at is "Say Yes to the Dress: Bridesmaids."  

Say Yes to the Dress: Bridesmaids

I have been a bridesmaid enough times to know that it's a much tougher job than you initially think it will be. At first, you have all these warm feelings about supporting your friend, becoming the best sister-in-law of all time, and getting to dress up.  Over time, it begins to get taxing.  Then there comes the breaking point.  

That's where Say Yes to the Dress: Bridesmaids gets interesting.  During the show, the bride and bridesmaids and entourage pick the bridesmaids' dresses.  More often than not, the Maid of Honor throws an ego-driven fit grown out of jealousy (or grief that she's losing her best friend) and has to be reminded that weddings are about the Bride, not the whiny Maid of Honor.  

I hate conflict of all kinds, especially when Made For TV conflict gets a little too real.  I mean, TV drums up a lot of viewership when "regular" folks duke it out on TV.  I just heard on the radio that Jersey Shore was cancelled and that Honey Boo Boo beat out the Republican National Convention for viewership last night.  Not that J-Woww, Pauly-D, and the Situation are normal by any stretch, or that Honey Boo Boo and her family are either.  As a former Jersey Shore watcher, I have to confess I quit my GTL addiction because they treated each other so horribly.  I'm relieved that the show won't be seen again until the "Where are they Now" flashback episode on VH1 in 10 years. 

These shows all make their ratings from ego flare ups that in turn flare up the egos of others on the show.  Maids of Honor get offended that the Bride won't support their choice, so they get dramatic with things.  The Situation gets his feelings hurt because someone took his girl, so he gets dramatic.  And therein lies the show.  Ego versus ego.  Stay tuned: Whose ego will reign supreme this time?  

This is the first Friday at my new job.  It's been very interesting to see how folks operate here.  I've been careful to try to respect everyone's egos.  I am fascinated by the way everyone is telling me their stories - what they marginalize, what they emphasize, how they frame things.  The best part, though, is how they talk about each other.  

There is genuine respect among folks on my team.  They have worked together for years and years.  They have functioned for a year and a half without a team leader.  I have been careful this week to try to keep the Egosystem in balance - you know, how the egos function when they flare up next to someone else's.  Reality TV thrives on this, happy office relationships don't.  

Naturally, anyone new brings imbalance to the Egosystem no matter how large the organization.  The trick is to map this out and navigate the Egosystem with care and respect.  In turn, if your own ego gets a little trigger-happy, stop and recognize that it's not about you, and you are not the Bride here.  Plus, your office is not a TLC show, nor is it Big Brother.  You don't get to vote out the sour-est ego of the week.   

So today, I celebrate my first week in a happy new Egosystem.  I hope I can still say that down the road!

Assumptions Make a You-Know-What out of You-Know-Who

"THAT'S why women need to have their own income, a job, and their own security." 

A puzzled look creased my brow. I narrowed my eyes at the woman across the table from me.  She jerked her chin, directing my attention to the table to my right.  

I turned to see a trim, well dressed man eating a chicken wrap.  The woman across the table from him wore a soft cast propping up her swollen hand.  Her eye was purple and green and was swollen down onto her cheek.  She was using her good hand to fork the big salad in front of her.   They spoke animatedly. They even laughed a little at some unheard joke between them. 

It appeared to me that she had been in a car accident but my lunch mate's implication was clear: the well groomed chicken wrap eater had done that to her.  

...Shame on him for being so mean. 

...Even more Shame on her for staying with him.  

The assumption that this relationship was wrecked instead of their Camry digs at me.  I've been down the abused path before (emotional, never physical).  I spent the next 10 years unfairly projecting a parallel.  I assumed that the public/private dynamics of my relationship must be the same in other relationships, too.  I made numerous accusations to that point that only cast my victim experience in sharp relief.  It did nothing to address the faults I projected onto others' relationship dynamics.  

I think it is natural to judge others for not being like you.  It is natural to judge others though the lens you judge yourself.  I always look at other women to see how I stack up --but I never look at the things I like about myself.  I look at the things I hate.  

We are conditioned to think in certain ways by many different things.  We notice things that stand out to us.  We notice things that we don't like about ourselves.  In the process, our individuality and others' individuality are left by the wayside like so much road kill.  

It is true that all people need their own sense of security. and Shame on abusers.  It is also true that we need to take a breath, recognize our own lens, and collect more information before we mentally accuse strangers of abhorrent actions. 

The Gospels urge us not to judge.  "Judge not lest ye be judged." from my experience, this might be in the wrong order.  Before my abuser, I didn't even see abuse.  How could I have judged it?  After that experience, it was all I could see for a time.  It was all I wanted to see for a time.  I'm relieved that this burden did not blind me today.

I've listened to many a sermon on premature and uninformed judgment.  Maybe I need just one more.  Maybe we all do. 

Tweetering on the brink

I love that I'm sitting right now in a conference on the use of social media and it's fun to see others on the edge of using Twitter just like me! 

There is a lot of potential to reach people through social media. 

Death of the Four Year Degree?

College graduation rates will peak then drop precipitously in the next 20 years.  The steady rise in the number of college grads has steadily risen for decades, but the proliferation of online learning that is cheap to free will cause a demand shift for work-ready skills training.  

 Fast Company published a story this month about how online courses are challenging the way universities are doing business. 

I have been around higher ed for some time, both as a student and as a faculty developer working with curriculum design - and now as an Extension educational media and online curriculum developer.  Universities are, by nature, giant slow moving beasts.  

So - the nimble, fast paced world of private entrepreneurial visionaries have once again monetized what was once the purview of university life.  The article tells the story of two Stanford professors who quit their appointments to pursue online curriculum development. If more visionary academics evolve into entrepreneurs, universities lag and the private sector wins.  This naturally means that the consumer should also win.  

This means that the very meaning of what it means to be an educated person will shift dramatically in the next 20 years.  Paper in a frame on the wall won't mean anything.  It already doesn't mean much except that you can jump through bureacratic hoops and wear a goofy hat while walking across a stage.  Perhaps those who study college student psychological development would disagree, but the four years between high school and B.S. become less important when you have spent more time and money getting skills that may or may not get you a job.  

Being educated will come to mean that you have skills in your field and that you can learn new things and retool without blinking.  It will have nothing to do with your an alma mater. It will certainly have nothing to do with whether you completed political science, public speaking, and two lab science courses as part of your core university curriculum. 

Because barriers to acquiring work ready skills are being removed, and access to high quality education is more open, and universities are hopelessly slow to adjust - the market will shift and universities will begin to see a decline in enrollment then in graduation numbers.  Smart people will get skills from more nimble sources directed not at general knowledge but at today's work ready skills. 

The gauntlet is thrown.  Bravo, private developers! 

Now for Extension to get more market-demand oriented.  

Until Then?

If I had a movie genre that defined my life, it would be romantic comedy.  Maybe that's why I don't like to actually go see them in theaters - they hit too close to home.  You know the scene, the single girl who's in a sad state then she meets/falls for the impossible guy then through some stroke of fate he falls for her.  That's all good and great, but I am stuck at the "Then" part. And have been my whole life. 

This is where my life turns more into tragedy.  It has happened to me pretty much continuously since I discovered boys in the 5th grade.  I even prolonged one of these relationships for 2 years.  

I haven't had a proper date in 4 years.  I've been hanging out a lot in the past few months with a pretty dreamy dude.  We've got a lot in common.  Family is a huge priority, learning new stuff is cool, we both like action flicks and cold beer with wings.  Life was pretty great - but - I just recently got to "Then".  

And just like the Ro-Com leading ladies, I'm at the moment where she catches the leading man in some sort of misunderstanding or they discover that they are at cross purposes.  This usually comes before the clarification of the misunderstanding after which he declares his undying love for her.  Generally during this part of the movie, it either rains or there is a gallon of ice cream involved.  (That's how you know that moment is coming...)

Insert any Katherine Heigl movie here!

I'm all kinds of good with living in Ro-Com land up until this part.  Honestly, it's pretty fun.  But it's not what I want deep down.  I'm not even sure I want a movie-perfect ending.  Heck, I'd just settle for an ending of any kind instead of languishing on the editing room floor.  For how I've been feeling - living in my Ro-Com turned Tragedy - I'd go back a scene or two and where the tension builds and builds and you begin to feel sorry for said single girl.  

So, I'm waiting for it to rain or for the gallon of ice cream moment to hit.  Someday something like that may happen to me.  Right now with this year's dreamy dude - I doubt it.  So - I'm waiting until "Then".   Again.  

What Not to Wear: Graduate School

I was talking the other day with my new Boss about my new job and my new work responsibilities when a woman walked by  - she would have been a perfect candidate for Stacey London and Clinton Kelly to fashion bomb right at that moment.  She was perfect:  black too-short double-knit slacks, frizzy hair with grey roots, shapeless faded purple t-shirt, intently watching her white Stride Rites hit the floor in front of her, dingy North Face backpack trailing behind, WalMart bagged lunch in hand.

He asked me an odd question just after she passed:  "Why is it that when people get their Ph.D. that they either lose their common sense or their ability to dress themselves?"  I LOL'd -quietly because the What Not To Wear team was surely standing by - and then he looked at me and asked me how it was that I had lost neither of those two things.

My wardrobe the past year of grad school and first year of my new dream job!

I've been asked to prepare a talk for graduate students on the basics of success in graduate school.  This is something I know a little about, as I have three graduate degrees which made it possible to now be working in my dream job!

Part of my talk is about fashion.  I must say that it is a bit difficult to articulate what graduate students SHOULD be wearing to class and to work, but it is not at all difficult to articulate what they SHOULD NOT be wearing to class and to work.

Graduate school is about becoming part of a profession, not about learning stuff or writing a thesis or dissertation. All of the classes and tests and papers are just the multi-year job interview with yourself to make sure that jumping into a new career is the right thing for you.  Graduate school is about immersing yourself into the culture of your profession.  That includes learning to dress like your peers.

My Mom tells the story of her first college years at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  It's quite a conservative place, and female student in the 1960's were required to wear skirts and pantyhose to class every day.  Men were required to wear ties.  She didn't much like it then, but she remembers that when she started working full time that she felt that her ORU dress code had given her an advantage.  She was already comfortable in work clothes.  She could focus on being awesome at work (not her words, but my Mom IS awesome at work...)

I will say this - my Faculty Advisor loves her fashion.  Since she was my mentor, I took up her love for dressing to the 9's along with all of her years of research acumen.  Also, in my job, I have to be ready to meet with bigwigs in suits and clients in the business world and be ready to impress them with both my words and my appearance.  During my grad student days, I learned both of those things from the best!

That's the point I'm trying to make here with my talk.  Dress for the job you want, and when you get it (because you have looked the part for years and years) you'll be comfortable in your clothes.  People will respect you more for it, and you might just get more opportunities as a graduate student because of it.

Bottom line:  DRESS FOR THE JOB YOU WANT, NOT THE JOB YOU HAVE.  

...even if that job is multiple years and multiple degrees away.

And folks who have never been to a day of graduate school in their lives won't suspect that you have a graduate degree (much less multiple degrees) because you've not lost your common sense nor your ability to dress yourself!

Of Cover Letters and Other Truth Telling

I'm applying for a new job because my current job is like a vampire for my professional self-confidence.  Every shred of skill, ability and attitude I have honed over the past 15 years of my professional career has almost been drained away by the past 160 hours of my work life.  I took this job because it was a timely opportunity and it was something I thought I could learn how to do, but things are not progressing as I had hoped they might.  Thankfully another opportunity came up that's a better fit for me.  And I have to get out before I lose myself in the trees instead of continuing to develop forests.  I'm good at developing forests - and apparently not so good at learning how to groom the trees.  

For me, the hardest part of applying for jobs is the cover letter.  I grew up in a culture of women where you were to be demure, you were to deflect complements, and you were not to speak highly of yourself in any way.  You were not to express your true opinion because "if you don't have something good to say, don't say anything at all."  So unless you were talking about how good the Jell-O salad was, you kept your mouth shut - or you just kept shoveling food in your mouth until it was the appropriate time to get up and help with kitchen cleanup. (I've wondered on more than one occasion if this is not the root cause of many a church-lady's plumpness.) Voluntary kitchen duty for me has more than once involved "mistakenly" disposing of someone else's hot mess of a potluck dish then disavowing all knowledge about where the rest of it might have gone. 

So writing about myself in a way that places my abilities, talents and experience in a positive light has been a difficult task I have had to learn during my last semester of graduate school. I've had to shed my genteel upbringing and learn how to write about myself in ways I'm not used to.  It has helped me to put myself in the shoes of my mentors, to think about the things they would say about me and my work.  It has also helped me to let go of the control I feel like I need to have over every word I write.  The letters that have won me the interest of prospective employers have been the ones I've fired off quickly, where I've written eloquently about my passions, and the ones where I've treated my abilities and talents with (Yikes!) the most honesty.  


I still shed complements.  I still deflect glory - but only because I work with other women who can only take credit indirectly.  They're also the ones who make the best potluck dishes.  And every Southern woman worth her salt knows that silence is actually the best complement you can give a cook during any meal.  The other one is not refusing to take home leftovers. 

Beef - It's What's Making Me Sick

Beef - It's What's for Dinner.  This is a familiar ad I grew up with - this triggers all kinds of happy memories from grilling out to the theme song from Rogers and Hammerstein's Rodeo.  I was raised on the gold standard of beef - grass fed.  Twice a year, my Dad would scope out a prime specimen among the hundreds of unknowing bovine candidates in our pastures to become our dinner for the next six months.  He'd carefully select the best one out there, load it up in the trailer and roll off to the butcher 80 miles away.  A few days later, we'd pack empty coolers in the back of the Suburban and bring Bessie back to the deep freeze as steaks, roasts, ribs and ground beef.  

Because I was raised on such lusciously wonderful beef, I haven't been particularly impressed by the grocery store's efforts at what they call beef.  This has apparently been a lucky stroke for me.  Several years ago, I had a student who was diagnosed with a beef sensitivity, along with sensitivity to tons of other crazy things like olives.  She was a high achieving student, but reached new heights after she quit eating beef.  A couple of years later, my Mom's skin rash that had been diagnosed as Lupus and subsequently as a Latex/Lanolin allergy was so bad she changed doctors.  She was diagnosed with all kinds of crazy food allergies, including beef, watermelon and Brazil nuts.  She never eats Brazil nuts, so cutting those out was obviously not a problem - the other two were.  But after she quit eating foods she was sensitive to, her skin rash totally disappeared after plaguing her for constantly for more than 10 years. It was when my sister-in-law was diagnosed with similar crazy allergies, including a sensitivity to grapes, that I started to pay attention to my own reactions to foods I eat.  

My culprits:  almonds, soy, fruit whose juice is red, melon/squash, and...you probably saw this coming...beef. I went to the hippie grocery store last weekend (as opposed to the regular folks grocery store with lower prices and *gasp* corn fed beef) specifically to buy the good stuff.  I made this super-licious spaghetti with meat sauce to store away for lunch this week.  I've been eating it like gangbusters because of just how yummy it is.  I've been increasingly indescribably uncomfortable, and I've lost sleep because I've had acid in my mouth all night.  Then last night, I had a pretty wonderful grass-fed burger at a party along with several tums.  I think it was about halfway through the fireworks that a light bulb came on over my head that the Beef was making me sick.  I hadn't eaten any of those other foods in weeks because I'm very careful about not eating them.  It had to be the beef.  

So - this discovery doesn't really help me today.  In a few minutes, I'm off to get antacids to get me through until the Prilosec kicks in.  I've already had as much allergy medicine as I can have and stay awake for work today.  So, goodbye grass fed drips of grease down my happy hamburger eating chin, goodbye chunk of savory Sunday pot roast, goodbye to the sizzle of Ruth's Chris steakhouse, and goodbye spaghetti with super-licious meat sauce - we had a good run.  Now to find an allergist to get official confirmation of my own crazy food allergies. And more Tums.

Shalom – Stillness of Spirit

“Cease striving (in some translations – be still) 

and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 

Wholeness.  When you’re whole, there is a sense of “cease striving” that allows you to truly experience acceptance and affirmation that only God can provide.  Without wholeness, you strive for it constantly – some unseen reality, a standard too high, an undefined nirvana.  Even if you’re the achiever-type and who can visualize exactly what success will look like, what your 3, 6 and 12-month plans are to get closer to that, achievement is not always what it’s cracked up to be. 

Especially for achiever-types, and I know this because I am one, achievements only open the door to other things you need to do to get to the next level of achievement.  I started graduate school in 2000, and just graduated in May with my Ph.D.  As if writing a dissertation and getting it approved wasn’t enough, my advisor is adamant about having publications come from it, which truly is a wise thing.  Then the other mentors on my committee are also after me to present my findings at conferences. Another wise thing. But these things only lead to more work, which leads inevitably to more work.  It’s like I’m always a step away – as if I’m walking up the wrong-way escalator.  Each time I get up a step to the top, another appears.  My lack of excitement at my graduation has mystified some of the people I work with.  I should be excited about this achievement.  But one achievement’s children become the next stairs on the escalator that leads only to new stairs. It’s quite a tail-chasing way to live. 

 In the middle of all of this, I’ve been dealing with some very important identity issues related to how I will choose to live the rest of my life.  I have friends for whom the search for a husband is the most important part of their lives right now.  I have other friends for whom getting rid of their husbands (or wives) is the most important thing they have ever done for themselves.  Some of my friends spend all of their mental and emotional energy investing in their children or taking care of their aging parents.  I don’t have any of those things in my life right now, so sometimes their stories are just entertaining rather than instructive for me, and sometimes they just make me feel bad for the storyteller.  It makes me perversely glad that I’m not in those shoes.

I feel most whole when dealing in the land of ideas, concepts and translation of those ideas into the lives of others.  Maybe I don’t need a romantic relationship to feel whole, don’t need a family of my own, don’t need to invest my life in those kinds of things.  Maybe ideas are all I need.  I have questioned for years whether the romance/marriage thing was something I really wanted or whether it was a social norm that I didn't want to conform to.  I even considered very seriously becoming Catholic so I could become a nun.  That's a pretty serious statement coming from a Baptist girl.

Maybe I’ve been looking at the wholeness thing all wrong.  What if instead of achieving in order to be whole, Shalom comes for me through simplicity, through stripping down what’s not necessary, through becoming poor in spirit.  And poor might not mean having nothing, but having only what's most important.  It may come particularly for me through peeling away layers of ideas and experience to get down to what I really need – to feel accepted even with my own flaws, with my own createdness in all its uniqueness including being at home in the land of ideas and big high sounding words.  And only God truly provides that kind of stillness, that all-inclusive wholeness, that depth of affirmation.  I feel myself wanting to jump off that escalator all of a sudden. Maybe someday I will.

Q-Tips: Enemy of Warrior 3

Yoga went much better today than normal.  In the past six months that I’ve been going to the Chiropractor regularly, I’ve recognized that I have one side of my spine and body that is much more flexible and strong than the other side.  That’s mainly because I have a tiny tad of scoliosis just above my sacrum.  I never guessed that clumsily leaping off a high jump mat and cracking my tailbone in the 5^th grade would echo into my 30’s. A valiant attempt to impress those 8th grade boys had become a miserable preadolescent fail.  

My main Yoga problem, however, is not my unbalanced strength and flexibility – it’s balance.  Warrior 3 is a joke for me – you want me to stand on how many feet?  Not all of them?  I’m quite sure that my instructor can feel my incredulous eyes boring a hole in the back of her head.  This whole issue, or so I thought, caused my right side balance to be much more stable than my left side balance on most days.  That is, until today. 

The past few weeks, I’ve been feeling sore in my left ear.  Saturday morning after my run, it started to get worse.  Monday I was fevered and the pain was beginning to diminish my appetite.  I noticed I could not walk a straight line down the hall.  Yesterday, I admitted to myself that I was fully into the 3^rd day of an ear splitting headache and was going downhill fast.  I left work early to go to the clinic.  After washing my ear, which felt like they were shooting a stream of water up into my eyeball with a stun gun, they made me lay on my side while they pulled out a piece of earwax larger than what should logically fit inside my tiny ear canal.  It was big.  And unnaturally gross.  It was a color that things that come out of your head should never be.  It was like a train wreck – I was utterly repulsed but I could not look away.  The culprit?  Q-tips.  The Dr. said that using Q-tips is like loading a musket with a tamping rod – it just shoves whatever is in the ear canal up against the ear drum.  Since I am a fan of really clean ears, it made sense, but I’m going to have to rethink my affection for the little white cotton covered tamping rods if this is the ultimate and super nasty conclusion of all things Q-tip.

 

After she removed the giantific ball of wax, I felt nauseous and the nurse had to hold me up because the room started spinning.  I recovered quickly, spent more than enough at the pharmacy for meds and went to bed early. This morning, after a massive dose of pain medication and my first round of eardrops since I was a baby, my Yoga practice was unfettered by any concern about my balance.  In fact, I’m wondering why I hadn’t decided to blame my ear wax for a less than stellar practice up to this point.  Warrior 3 was a one-footed miracle today – one that I don’t want Q-tips to ever steal from me again!

First International Church of Starbuck’s

I am friends with a group of people that includes several members of the staff of a large local church.  One recently was fired for being too outspoken about church policies he disagreed with.  One was even more recently promoted because her boss recommended her for the position after the woman retired.  The senior pastor of that church resigned a few weeks ago, the hiring committee asked the music minister to resign.  Drama, of course, ensued. 

The response from the church members I know has been strong to say the least.  One side trusts the hiring committee explicitly because “they know things about the situation better than the rest of us do.”  The other side wants to raise hell because they were not involved in the decision making process, ostensibly implying that they would have kept the people happy and found a way to work through things.  I regret to say that this is pretty typical of churches I have known.  The story line is always the same:  do one thing, someone else doesn’t like it, drama ensues. 

I know a lot of folks in conservative churches listen to talk radio – you know the kind I mean - where the radio host is intolerant of any liberal views, cuts people off mid-sentence, and is generally disrespectful of anyone who is even a shade of gray away from his own views.  I can’t stand that stuff, even though I agree with 99.9% of what is said.  I can’t stand it because of how the hosts treat the callers.  My Mamma taught me that that behavior was rude and any lady worth her salt doesn’t treat people that way. 

The sad part is that this is how disagreements are treated in the Christian circles I have been a part of.  Dissent is never treated as an opportunity for exploring a topic.  It’s treated like leprosy.  Only the leper colony is now bigger than the “pure” folks inside the walls of the city.  This is doubly bad for those who ask hard questions because the defensiveness that comes from being a minority compounds the need to draw hard and fast lines about which all members must make a public decision.  It’s Travis’s line in the sand – and I fear that those who stay inside will die a painful death like the rest of the Texan patriots at the Alamo. 

For this church to survive, and many like it, there has to be an intentional process of drawing out the conflict very carefully, skillfully moving toward reconciliation – or at least enough forgiveness that those who choose to stay can move forward together as a church body.  This might be a wonderful opportunity to learn the skill of debate – recognizing the merits and weaknesses of someone else’s argument and presenting your own before both sides come to a new understanding of the issue.  All of this is very Hegelian, and sadly most Christian folks know very little about this nor do they care to learn anything about how to practice it.  But it is likely the most important skill that the pure church insiders need to gain if they are to reach the lepers they have ostracized by their staunch foothold on their version of the truth.

 

I’m not advocating for a looser definition of truth here.  I am advocating for listening, for respect, for openness to others’ ideas & perspectives, for laying down your own pride and considering others as more important than yourself.  All of this is Biblical, yet these phrases do not characterize the way that this church has been treating its staff.  And the lepers become less and less interested in getting back into communities that treat people like they’re enemy guests on an afternoon radio show.  That’s why I think I’ll stay a leper and hang out with the other lepers for a while longer at Starbuck’s on Sunday mornings. The coffee's better there, anyway.  

Proud Mom of 3 Graduate Degrees

An article by Slate.com recently explored the experiences, motivations and rationale for women who remain childless.  Since I am a childless woman who is nearly 40, I was fascinated.  I’ve always said that my excuse was that I had my nose in the books and didn’t have time for boys.  Come on, I have three graduate degrees that I have collected in the past 12 years – that’s a lot of attention on the text on the page instead of the dudes across the room.

The first real truth is that I would love to find a man.  I just would like him to already have kids.  The men I know who have become dads since I’ve known them have expressed the most wonderful qualities since their kids have come along.  I remember my younger brother having a complete freak fest when he held my niece for the first time.  Now, he’s the primary care provider for his two kids, ages 2 and 6 months.  He’s more patient, more gentle, more relaxed, and has become the king of follow-through, bath time and diaper changing.  With my niece, he was in denial that there was even a living creature in the baby burrito much less was he willing to deal with the contents of her diapers.  The problem with the single men I know is that they need to be trained – in soooo many ways. 

The second real truth is that all of the moms I know who have young children is that they have lost themselves in their kids.  You see this on TLC’s What Not To Wear all the time – women who have become frumpy and without any thought of a gym membership.  No wonder it seems like celebrity moms buy their children on Rodeo Drive.  I touched base with an old friend over the weekend because I saw something that reminded me of her, and she told me she had no memory of it – which was odd because it was so much a part of who she was for all the years that I knew her.  I wondered at her response for a moment, and decided that my sister-in-law (mother of 2 under 10) swears that motherhood kills your brain cells.  My friend agreed but had to quit the conversation to go chase her boy down because he was being too quiet. 

So, between wanting a man who already has gone through the delightful dad metamorphosis and not wanting the medusa mom transformation to happen to me, I am childless and proud to be an aunt of 4 fabulous young people whom I love to spoil on a regular basis.  The possibility of children is not off the table – for me, it might be about finding the right person who could become the delightful dad and temper my medusa mom.  But for the time being, I’ll stick with the story that my graduate degrees are my children – at least if they are too quiet in the next room, I know that all’s well in there.  

Kick Something's Butt Every Day

Today was a bit of a workplace nightmare.  Your boss being on vacation only guarantees that a week of workplace bliss will be followed by several days of workplace chaos.  This was Day 1.  After a morning of nothing to do (remember this is only my 3rd Monday of a highly technical job for which I am still training), the afternoon hit.  I had told a colleague that I was afraid I would soon have more than enough to handle on my to-do list.  


Just after lunch, a flurry of email snowed me under for the rest of the afternoon - it will spill over into tomorrow.  I have a stack of papers to process through waiting for my prompt 8 a.m. arrival.  One of those emails led me like Alice through Wonderland, digging through stacks and stacks of forms, tracing through data files and subfolders I didn't organize (IF I had organized them, I would have gone right to what I needed).  


I started feeling overwhelmed, and by 4:30, I was almost in tears because of my lack of success.  I decided that I needed to kick something's butt today and finish the report.  After visiting my very well rested and happy looking boss, I systematically replicated his procedures, and on the third time running the data,  things came out just fine.  


After all, kicking something's butt must be on everyone's to-do list every day.  I wonder what it will be tomorrow...

You're Getting Stronger!

I always love it when Chalene says stuff like this in her workout videos.  I've heard other people say that her well-placed motivational comments push them through, and I always think that its a little cheesy when she says that stuff, but it really does work.  This is the beginning of my third week of ChaLean Extreme and I'm excited to say that I'm getting stronger.  I'm moving up in  my weights and seeing definition in all the places I want it.  Hitting almost all of the pushups on my toes inspires me to hit them all on the next round - or at least she makes me believe that I can!  


There is a Biblical proverb: As a woman thinks in her heart, so she is.  There comes a point in the lift-heavy mentality where you feel like you're pushing an immovable rock up a hill, and then she hits you with "You're not tired - you have the strength to get that weight up, and I guarantee you have the strength to get it down!"  And then you get the feeling like that rock you're pushing is not so big.  In fact, you've crested the hill and it's rolling down the other side.  Take that, rock!


Believing I can get that weight up, do one more push up on my toes, and finish one more perfect tricep press is critical to my success in this program.  To do that, I can't let myself think that it's too much for me.  I have to become enough for it.  In fact to do it right now, I have to believe that I am already enough for it.  These positive messages Chalene sends out make me believe in my heart that I'm already enough.  


It is easy enough to believe the bad feedback we get on a daily basis from ourselves and others.  I'm a girl with a strong perfectionist achiever drive, so I have a tendency to give myself bad feedback if I don't bat a thousand every day.  I read one time that it takes a vastly huge number of positive comments to balance out one negative comment.  It's a good thing that I work out in the morning before I dig my negative self-commentary deficit too deep.  Even though I know these workouts were filmed like 5 years ago, her positive comments keep my motivation afloat for most of the day.  


Chalene's motivational moments help me believe in my ability to get what I most want in life.  I have to believe right now that I am enough for the tasks of my day - whether it's one more posterior fly or trouble shooting the statistical software I run at work.  I have to believe that right now, even though I've just started pushing the rock up the hill, that there is a crest, and it's much easier on the other side.  I have to think these things, believe these things, practice these things - because then I live these positive things and not the negative ones.  As a woman thinks in her heart, so she is. 

A Word in Good Season

Yesterday morning as I was unlocking my office door, a friend and fellow graduate student down the hall was opening his door.  He's been about a year behind me, so I know he's going through the worst part of his program right now.  Last summer brought my qualifying exams followed by the approval of my dissertation proposal.  If this part goes awry, you're off track and you might as well quit and go back to teaching school as an ABD (all but dissertation).  More than half of those who start doctoral studies wind up in this category. 

So I felt like I needed to ask him how his program was progressing, and it turned out to be a good thing.  He told me about how nervous he was for his written exams.  I found out later that his exams had been much more demanding than mine were because of how they were organized - four hours in a room with pen and paper and whatever is stored in your beady brain.  Take that times four and you've got yourself a pretty emotionally challenging qualifying exam.  His oral exams are today, and I had the chance to encourage him and pray for him. 

He mentioned that he had not gotten the sense of internal peace that came just before his written exams.  But isn't that why we only get what we need for today?  Won't tomorrow worry about itself?  Manna doesn't keep  in the fridge so well.  Pennies from heaven rust away if you keep them for too long. 

Had I waited and postponed my talk with him, it would have been too late.  He's got a lot of people in his corner rooting for him, and yesterday morning (and today, too) he needed one more.  A word in good season is  indeed like apples of silver in settings of gold - and sometimes the season for those words only lasts a moment.  Don't save your encouraging words just for yourself, spread them in good season because you never know when someone is most in need of a shot in the arm that only you can give. 

Coloring

Today I will leave work a little early to go watch my niece have her second day of gymnastics.  During family dinner night on Tuesday, she came over to me as things were breaking up, threw her arms around me and did what she has not done in years – cuddled with me.  She was still wearing her leotard from her first day at the gym.  With tired eyes, she asked me if I would come today to watch her.  How can I say no to that?

A few months ago, I had the honor of being invited out to the East Coast for a job interview.  Things went really well, and I was confident about the match between my skills & experience and their expectations for the person filling their position.  Then came the big HOWEVER.  Immediately upon landing at the airport, I had a feeling settle right in my gut that this was not the thing for me.  Even though on the surface, things looked and felt really good.  When I got back, I spent the evening with my brother’s family and had the thought – If I go out there to this job, I won’t get to experience this.  The little moments coloring with my niece, listening to my nephew explain all of the various vehicles in Halo and how to get them and drive them and what they look like…, cooking with my sister-in-law, having impromptu lunches with my brother, and seeing all of the family who come down to take their kids to games and camp.

One of my life’s priorities is cultivating relationships with family and friends.  There is no question that for me, to cultivate my relationship with my family, this is the place for me.  So I will gush over my niece today, grouse about the weather with my sister-in-law and have lunch with my brother today.  What a wonderful life!

Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful

My strongest muscle group, and my favorite to work out, is legs.  My friend was showing off the results of his intense calf work the other day, and I knew not to reciprocate because my genes have gifted me with miraculously gorgeous calves.  Jealousy often follows this kind of conversation because of this, and I have to defer to the “Thanks, Dad” sheepish comment I always make.  The dreaded look of “I hate you” inevitably follows.  My mind immediately flashes to that Pantene commercial where she flips her hair and says in her ambiguously foreign accent – perhaps people feel that foreign beauty is somehow better than domestic beauty – “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” – just be the best you that you can be.   

This workout today – Lower Body Extreme Zone – is 40 minutes of the best of what will make it painful for me to walk the stairs today and tomorrow to my 2^nd floor office.  Quads, hams, abductors – lunges, dead lifts and squats.  I don’t often feel this way, but 30 minutes later during my awesome breakfast, my muscles are still tired (fried egg on Ezekiel toast, avocado and mandarin oranges if you were wondering).  I always feel like I’ve really accomplished something when I finish that workout because it’s one of the series that always challenges me. 

Sometimes it’s hard for me to get excited about another set of bicep curls or shoulder presses.  My body seems to think that upper body muscle is a really good idea (Thanks, again, Dad) – which it is to an extent, but developing giantific man arms is not my goal.  This is yet another reason why putting my attention into legs is beneficial for my overall approach to my aesthetic. It’s hard enough to find shirts to fit the balance between my shoulders and waist as it is without adding muscle.  If beauty is pain, then the sweaty face in the mirror with avocado stuck to the corner of my mouth and no gas in the tank – that’s beautiful.

Shifting the Balance

I’m beginning to lose sight of my goals again.  I had the opportunity to watch my team lose for a second time last night and their opponents moved on to the national tournament.  It was a late night and I relished the devil’s hour and a half of sleep again this morning, plus, I need to make up 30 minutes of work from leaving early yesterday. 

I feel discouraged because every day since Friday, I have had some social engagement that provided me with not so positive food choices that did not meet up with what I had planned and needed to eat.  If I am really interested in losing 10-15 pounds and keeping that weight off, I need to make some different choices when it comes to eating with my friends.  Most of the time, in my mind, I’m interested in losing that weight, but when it comes down to a choice between shrimp on a green salad and fried cheese, fried cheese might win every time. 

The times when I’ve been most successful at losing weight have been times in my life when I’ve been isolated socially either because a breakup/custody battle for the friend network or because I was at a multi-week training out of state.  Numerous articles demonstrate that people, especially women, will tend to be the same weight within their social network because they tend to eat the same kinds of things and exercise about the same.  It’s as if we carry around our social network around our midsections.  I don’t think I need new friends – I think I need to shift where I am on the “how much we eat together” spectrum.  I don’t think I need to stop going out with my guy friends, I just need to remember that my body does not need as many slices of pizza as they do. 

For this change to really take effect, I have to mentally practice making those choices so they become automatic when I’m in the moment.  Then, I think that when I make a better choice in the moment, I need to have a non-food reward that I get.  Thinking about that could be really fun…

The Goodness of Coffee

I grew up in a family of coffee drinkers.  If you were not drinking coffee, you pretty much were not allowed at the adult table at holiday meals.  I didn't get my first invite to the adult table until I was in college.  That's when I discovered the local coffee house - Sweet Eugene's.  I also discovered that black was not the only way to drink coffee.  "It puts hair on your chest," my Dad would say.  Maybe that's why I put off the coffee conversion for so long.  I could not imagine how that would be a good thing for me.  


Being introduced to Foo-Foo coffee is what keeps me coming back for more.  I have sought out the best way to make coffee, the best tasting coffee, and have a daily ritual surrounding these things.  I almost won't drink my Mom's coffee flavored water anymore - unless I sneak in to the kitchen after she has prepared the coffee pot for the morning and dump in a few more scoops of grounds.  I'm really glad my brother works in a country that produces good coffee, and that I get to partake of that abundance. 


I am a coffee snob.  I prepare coffee every day in my French Press - one cup of delicious goodness while I eat breakfast and blow dry my hair.  I have been committed to the French Press for years now...until my friend Kate bested me with decaf. 


Now decaf generally tastes like drinking aluminum foil to me, but Friday night - it was the best coffee ever to have crossed my amateur foodie palate.  She made this coffee in what looked like something you'd see in a mad scientist's lab - using filter paper and all.  I felt like I was back in Chemistry with Mr. Ramsey, just as clueless now as I was then.  I was doubtful, because the French Press is superior in every way to any other method.  Well, she explained how this method was actually better, and in the end - that few sips of decaf superseded any other past cup of coffee - smooth, no aluminum foil taste...it made me wonder what goodness it would bring out of my Guatemalan beans.  I might have to give in and get me one of those chemistry sets - if it's going to be that good every time.  It might be time to break up with my French Press.  

Remember the Sabbath Day?

Today, Saturday (this won’t upload until Monday at work because my apartment is slow to fix my internet access), is typically not referred to anymore as the Sabbath.  This has become part of the Western concept of the cycle of work because the beginning stories of the Bible record how early Hebrew people recounted the creation of the universe – and it ended with God resting and declaring that it was good.  So we get some time off at the end of the week.

I remember my small hometown would shut down on Sundays and all but roll up the streets.  As a little kid, Sunday after church we had to go straight home to eat or go to some family member’s house because there was nothing open, nowhere to eat, you couldn’t even buy a gallon of milk at the store because it was closed.  As a pre-teen, we started to eat after church at the Pizza Hut which had just opened.  It quickly became a tradition.  I remember the first time I was sent into the grocery store with money to buy milk after church.  I remember quizzically objecting, “Isn’t it closed on Sundays?”  Not anymore.  Nowadays, the only store I really want something from on Sundays is the only store that’s closed on Sundays – come on, why can’t I remember that Chick-Fil-A chicken biscuits are available on all days EXCEPT Sundays? 

My Bible study this week closed out with a reminder to take a Sabbath rest.  But taking a day off is easy.  Staying out of stores you need something from (or crave a chicken biscuit from) is difficult when you have the day off and others don’t.  The author of the study didn’t stop at challenging us to take a Sabbath rest – he challenged us to “reflect and celebrate” what the week has brought, what we have created, and who we are because of our created-ness.  The hard part of what he asked – that I will not be doing – was to stay home, require no work of someone else, and enjoy being with family. 

I had a friend in seminary who became Jewish, moved to L.A., and married a Rabbi all within a few months.  It was exciting to see her go on a journey toward expressing outwardly where she had already moved inwardly.  Her new Sabbath practices were instructive for me, too.  No turning on lights you didn’t need, no sweating, no walking/driving farther than a set limit, and spending a lot of time eating tasty food, talking with friends and family, and reflecting on the goodness of God.  I have to admit that the way it changed my perspective made me consider making the switch to the ancient side of the Good Book. 

Today, I plan to practice the second half of that list – the eating, talking and reflecting part.  But I am going to drive farther than prescribed to do that, and I am going to require that someone work to tear my movie ticket.  I might even require that someone work to listen to me complain about my lack of internet.  I hope to have my energy restored, to cultivate social connections, and to enjoy God’s creation along Farm to Market 485.  I hope to arrive back home tonight with a smile in my soul.  I think God would be pleased with that Sabbath practice.  I know I will be – now if only I could remember that Chick-Fil-A will be closed tomorrow…

Potato chips are meaningless without Yoga (or…Love Letter to my Chiropractor)

Today is the first Friday of my new career.  I’ve been sitting in an office chair for the past four days.  For eight hours or more every day.  I also have not one, not two, but three twists in my spine in the distance from my pelvis to my ribcage – a fact recently provided to me by my Chiropractor.  Add this to an 11 degree curvature right to left in the lowermost vertebrae and I’ve got one messed up slinky trying to hold up my upper body. 

So yesterday I brought in my back supporter.  I thought it might make things better – it is a back supporter after all, although looks like a Pringle’s potato chip married a backpack and this thing is the ugly child.  It did help me a bit, and reminded me to sit up more, but I came home needing to lay on my back with my knees up to give my lower spine some breathing room.  The problem I anticipate today is that my poor slinky of a spine will begin hurting before I even get settled and started on programming statistical scripts that almost turned me into the Incredible Hulk yesterday.  My back really never quit hurting from yesterday.  And I took some heavy drugs, and used pain rub, and I’m currently using my TENS device – all of which should have relieved the pain independently, and have not relieved it as a trifecta.  Yikes!

Perhaps my Friday workout routine needs to include a little more Rag Doll, Triangle, Boat, and Twist.  In fact, this used to be my Wednesday routine to break up my strength and cardio cycle, and it didn’t hurt that Wednesdays were my Chiropractor day – he used to say that I always did much better on Wednesdays than any other day, Thank You, Slinky!  I’m all for natural pain remedies and prevention, and Thank You, Chiropractor, TENS company and all of my YouTube Yogis!  And here’s to no more three-pronged failed attempts at back pain relief in the future! 

Holy Relationships, Batman!

In the June 2012 edition of Baptists Today (BaptistsToday.org), there are several articles summarizing and editorializing about the recent conference for Baptists and by Baptists focusing on sexuality.  Whatever views folks might have on this issue, it occurs to me that having deep dialog about a deep topic like sexuality is one of the greatest needs on Christian life today.  Topics ranged from human trafficking to homosexuality.  The collection of articles about the conference makes for thoughtful reading if you have half an hour to take that in.

It struck me as I was reading those reports that what is lacking in this conversation is a broader concern for Christian relationality.  Sexuality is a small facet of overall human relationality.  As a single person who hasn’t really had any/many boyfriends to speak of much less been married, as one who is attracted to men, and who is 37, I think that casting any discussion about sexuality in larger terms of Christian relationality would be valuable.  Baptists Today reserves one page (my favorite page) for various quotations about hot topics.  One of them this month goes like this:

“I got to weddings and hear how the two people getting married were ‘incomplete and now they are whole.’ My heart breaks for those who are single sitting in the crowd who just heard publicly that they are not whole persons.”  Jeanie McGowan (ethicsdaily.com)

This perception pervades Christian life, and I have heard this in sermons about romantic relationships, in Christian dating books, and in cultural norms regarding the reality that most folks my age are married (and some divorced multiple times by age 37). 

As a Baptist teen, I sat in countless youth group meetings focusing on the question of “how far is too far?”  As a dyed-in-the-wool BSM-er during my undergraduate days, there were at least as many conversations and sermons about that each year as there were in 6 years of youth group.  As a university minister, I have to confess that I failed to see Christian sexuality as part of the larger issue of Christian relationality.  We encouraged students to be “in the world, but not of the world” by equipping them (sometimes quite poorly) to fend off their partner’s friskiness. 

One minister I worked with commented that he had dealt with numerous students whom he said could quote verse after verse about avoiding sexual immorality while enjoying sex with their partner.  We also taught students to share their faith and to be friends with people whose ideas were just like theirs.  There was never a discussion about how to respect differences, how to dialog about the deep divides between people, or how to be consistent in difficult relationships.  There were glib statements about loving people, helping the world, and being a good Christian.

This approach, both to sexuality and relationships, was to essentially the “moat” mentality – keep the undesirables out and go on the defensive if threatened.  No wonder dialog in Christian life is unheard of.  It’s impossible to have a discussion through a brick wall and across a ditch of your own filth.  (Unless you and your buddies yell from the tower, ‘Your father was a hamster, and your mother smelled of elderberries!’ then hoist cattle over the wall at your enemies hoping they will scream out ‘Run Away, Run Away!’ as they haul it back to the forest.) 

Because of the moat mentality, I am now not surprised that when things start to get hot and heavy, things go wrong and good Christian girls get pregnant at 17.  I am not surprised that the divorce rate for Christian couples is no different than for non-Christian couples.  Ministers are not actively offering guidance about Christian relationality.  There is enough out there about what NOT to do, but just like dog trainers tell us, if we don’t know what we WANT them to do, why do we punish when they do the opposite?  Ministers need to focus on what TO DO, which includes a greater context of holiness in Christian relationships with all people. 

If sexuality was not isolated as its own issue, and if it was included in a larger conversation about what is dysfunctional about relationships in the Christian community, and if (I know that’s a lot of if’s) this inclusive approach was taught and lived in all levels, ages and denominations of Christian life, I bet my bottom dollar that things would begin to be different and Christianity would no longer have Christians as its biggest problem.