still no journal

John Calvin once said:

"God is pleased to hide all future events from us, in order that we should resist them as doubtful, and not cease to oppose them with ready remedies, until they are either overcome or pass beyond all care... God's providence does not always meet us in its naked form, but God in a sense clothes it with the means employed."

Amen.

Dear Diary

Note To Self:

Must buy a journal. Have been fighting increasingly frequent urges to start blogging my feelings all over the place, and at this point, am quite sure that no one wants to read that.

It's a real drag when my journal runs out because I am a snob about my journals. I only like those bound in leather. With gridline paper.
But I didn't budget $20 for therapy from

Dr. Moleksine this month--->

I blame it on my love affair with Monseigneur Caffein.

Love is such a costly habit. 

my dad!

I'm not unlike my dad. Sometimes we cry at commercials together. I prefer to drink my coffee with cream, no sugar. While he's slightly more introverted and introspective, I take a little bit more after my mom- I can make conversation with a wall; I try not to make a habit out of it. People start to look at you funny.

But he's kind and thoughtful, hardworking, intelligent, handy around the house, and has a knack for saying the right thing when I call him sobbing hysterically. I can't boast in sharing any of these aforementioned qualities- I'm still in process. He's Jewish. So I am too.

And it's this weird idea that I've been tossing around for a while. Not tossing around. That makes my identity sound like a bouncy ball. Mulling over. It started when I was in first grade. We were lining up for music class and I began to talk about Hanukkah. Who was it? Emmy? Paul? That asked me, "You mean you get 8 nights of presents! NO FAIR!"

I was pretty proud of myself in that moment. Darn right I get 8 nights of presents and Christmas! Did not realize at the time that I wasn't getting extra presents. They were just spread out over a longer period of time.

Then I was thirteen and I hated my life because I was stuck listening to a tape of Isaiah 60 in Hebrew for my Bat Mitzvah. Woe is I. I let everybody know too how miserable I was. I looked at my parents, "YOU DID THIS TO ME! WHY DO I HAVE TO BE JEWISH?"Then I stopped crying when I opened up the bracelet from Tiffany's after all was said and done. Pain is beauty.

But then, always with the up and down and back and forth. Sometimes being Jewish was a nice cop-out answer when someone asked if I was religious and I wasn't excited to tell them that I was a Christian. Sometimes I was just a Christian so that I could avoid the raised eyebrows and the perplexed looks and the question: "So wait. You're like, Catholic or something?"And to some, I was neither. My high school principle, for example who looked me squarely in the face and announced in my AP World History class, "Oh no honey. You're not Jewish. You can't be Jewish if you're a Christian."

Tell that to my dad. Actually, I did tell that to my dad. He didn't like it anymore than I did.

So what does it mean? What does it mean to be Jewish? Is it a culture? Ethnicity? Nationality? Religion?

All of the above?

Like I said, I'm in process. I'm still trying to figure it out.
But one thing I am sure of. The longer I've walked with the Lord, the more heavily I have felt burdened by my Jewishness. Not in a bad way. I haven't ever wanted to get rid of it. More in the sense of, "what does this look like for me?"

This is a rather inconclusive post. I am really trying to work through this and figure it out. I am about to start a research paper that asks if being Anti-Zionist is synonymous to being Anti-Semitic. Is it? Maybe?  If we deny the Jewish people the right to have a Jewish state, an ethnic state essentially, then it would be anti-semitic. And I don't think it's fair to say that being Jewish is simply a religion. Because then we couldn't call the Holocaust a genocide, and what else could we call it?

A million things. Horrific, to start. But definitely genocide.

So I'm learning. I'm learning from my Dad who taught me many things well. And I'm learning from my heavenly Father. I bear His image too.

feast your eyes!

I have a certain conviction that my blog is boring, so I wanted to add some pictures to spice it up.

So this is my family
<---- See them? How cute they are!

Mom and Dad married for 35 years in April.
Brother and his lovely girlfriend.
My best friend and sister, Sarah.
Oh and me in the middle in this fab little dress I bought from H&M that is itching to come out again.
Probably with tights and boots seeing how it's October already.

BAH. October? September! Where the heck did you go?

It was certainly here because the first wave of people I love turned 22 this month. Birthdays on the 16, 18, 20, and 22. I am hoping that the next friend I make is born on the 24. Or the 14. I would like to eat cake every other day in September for the rest of my life, regardless if you're here with me to celebrate (or I with you. How about whoever lives in a cooler place...). Here's to you, I'll say on the even days of the month of September. And I'll raise my cake (or cupcake) wish you well and then eat.

I don't have anything of consequence to say this post around. But I think there's only so much proverbial wisdom you can handle coming from a nearly 22 year old who still sleeps with a blankie.

Secret's out.

the great "e" word

"Is that edifying?" Mom would ask us. We'd freeze in our spots on the couch, eyes darting from television screen to each other. No one wanted to move. We'd just pretend that we hadn't heard her and keep on in our merry way.

"Rachel?" Now things were personal. She was calling me out by name. I couldn't pretend that I hadn't heard her. I'd watch Sarah and David breathe a sigh of relief as they settled back into the couch. Mom had just made me the family whipping boy.

"Well, it's not that bad!" Pitiful attempt to try to dance around the inevitable answer that no, it wasn't exactly edifying, but durn well if we liked it! Rookie mistake really, because then mom would reply with, "tell me what's edifying about this television program!" And really, what can be said about the Simpsons. Or Seinfeld. Other than--- nothing, really. Homer and Jerry were crass. And both had bad hair.

So we'd turn it off, and mom, placated, would go back to whatever she was doing before her sixth sense of children-acting-in-folly would alert her.

Even though we rolled our eyes until we gave ourselves headaches, and even though Sarah and David would pinch me for not doing a good enough job defending why we were watching that television program, and even though sometimes I was convinced that you were trying to sabotage my life-- well, I just want to say thank you.

Thank you for introducing me to the word edifying and teaching me to choose wisely.
Thanks too for loving me even when I didn't choose wisely and ended up watching Maury when I had strep throat and then didn't sleep for 8 months after that for fear of a serial killer coming to snatch me in the night.

I love you Mom.
Happy Mother's Day (Five Months Later)

I told a nice girl in my Systematic Theology class today that I blogged. As soon as I said it I instantly regretted it. I'm no blogger. I write three times a month, produce some kind of emotional spiritual cocktail and then pat myself on the back. Well done good and faithful Procrastinator.

Yes. There it is.

I'm sorry that I don't have a fancy camera and that I don't tell you funny stories about my life. I'm sorry that I'm not a mom and I don't have cute kids to put up on the interweb for you to drool over.

I don't know if Bible college is making me boring, or if it's just this weird transitional being 21 but needing to be a responsible RA/Student thing that's really cutting down on my "bloggable thoughts."

Maybe I will just walk away from "titless" for a little bit.

that was supposed to say titleless.

ok, now that's funny.

throwback.

"My pants smell like poverty."

That was actually something that I wrote in my journal a year ago. Can you believe it? Who comes up with a thought like that and then goes so far as to write it down. Granted, they did smell like poverty- that's what 3o hours in New Delhi will do for you.

It's weird to think that it was over a year ago that I was in India. Weird to look back on that whole experience actually- some moments the memories are fresh; poignant and sharply focused usually induced by the taste or smell of curry. Other times the experiences slink into the back of my brain like a quiet fog- my heart strains its eyes to make sense of what comes from the shadows of that dark spiritual place.

Did I ever really talk about what happened in India on this blog?

I'm not sure. I know I talked about have curry armpits, and that one time that little boy tried to mug me and he got more than he was asking for. But I don't know if I ever really painted a good picture of what it was like- for me at least.

I am only able to recall it now because I spent an hour or so reading through my red leather journal from Massah. A lot of the things that I wrote in there are embarrassing- petty frustrations and my general immaturity. Some of the pain was so acute though- so crushing, and so familiar that I had to give pause and think for a moment.

I thought that God had left me. Over and over again I begged Him to speak.

Say anything! Don't you hear me, God?

I had a lot of doubts. How do we know that Jesus is who He says He is? How can God become man? What if Jesus' death wasn't enough? Is it really Jewish to believe in Jesus?

I wasn't sure if His loud silence was judgment, passivity, or absence. I demanded answers.

I began to realize that my whole life was tied up with Christianity- school, family, friends, future career goals... Jesus was the thread that held it all together. To pull on that thread would mean that I would totally unravel.

And then what?

Well, the doubts didn't just stop. I still had (ok, have) massive questions about God and his character and who I am and how the heck I can't do a single thing on my own to please the Lord... the list goes on. We can talk about that later if you want.

But the first part of my journal was an e-mail that my friend Natalie had sent to me. Gosh, what a beautiful e-mail. I might post it some day. The part though that helps me articulate the necessity of the depth of pain and spiritual wandering I felt in India is in the line that she quotes from Oswald Chambers:

"Dare to invest yourself in the character of God."

Way catchier than my pants smell like poverty.

If we're investing ourselves in the character of God, that means that we will often be deeply rooted in things that do. not. make. sense- at least in this life. Like unconditional love. Faithfulness in spite of faithlessness. Forgiveness. Grace.

Especially grace.

But here it is:

I prayed that I would be able to live in the reality of God's character, and as much as that means owning my own failures, I think it is more owning God's sufficiency in the face of my failures. When my faith fails, he is faithful. When I am selfish, He is working for His glory. When my sin has left me dirty and disgusting, filthy and naked, crushed under its burden, it is His hand, which is not too short to save, that reaches down and makes me new.

I guess- well, is that a creed? Maybe.

God was not silent. He answered my "dare" and placed my roots deep into His character.

And I am free to grow and thrive and be pruned and to sometimes whither.

But above all, I am His.

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Romans 8:38-39