Month: March 2018

Wilderness

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I need another week on the proposal story (the second part to last week’s “The Ring”), so I hope you don’t mind a story from this week.

A month or so ago, I was privileged to discover Rev. on the Edge’s daily Lenten ruminations. Every day, she chose a word to explore, and one of them that I immediately responded to was “Wilderness”. The photo on her blog depicts C-3PO and R2-D2 in the red sand dunes of Tatooine, a deeply familiar image.

Even without the droids to put me at ease, desert isn’t wilderness to me. Wilderness is the woods. Wilderness is a place that, theoretically, I could, as a child, wander into and never return from. Areas I could enter, feeling confident of my way, and then become lost in. Wilderness is the big woods where Laura Ingalls lived, where Brian crashed in Hatchet, where Sam runs away to in My Side of the Mountain.

I grew up on an island on the coast of South Carolina. Family vacations were either to my grandparents’ home in rural GA near the fall line or Cherokee, NC. I remember trembling with fear when I watched a TV show’s dramatization about a Bigfoot sighting (and chase) in the Appalachian mountains. After that, I looked for hulking, hairy bodies stalking me from the woods as we drove those routes. I shivered, looking into the dark trees that edged the playground at school, behind the Holiday Inn parking lot, and my grandparents’ backyard. Wilderness was a place I could access and a place I couldn’t understand. Wilderness contained danger (poisonous snakes and poorly marked trails and kidnappers and cold and bears, and maybe Bigfoots). Wilderness could confuse and injure and trap and terrify me. Wilderness made me feel anxious, even if we were just passing through, and no amount of reading or hiking has broken me of the association.

Wilderness can also be a new social situation like the first day of school (oh, how I dreaded the first day of school) or the first day of a new camp or choir rehearsal or club meeting or doctor’s office. Even now, I equate wilderness with a new place and people I don’t know and no clear understanding of what will happen there. I faced this sort of wilderness Monday when Tyler and I went for the first time to a Bible study aimed toward engaged and newly married couples.

My social anxiety and shyness and introverted nature combine in the worst ways in social wilderness situations. I know going the first time is the hardest part. I know I’ll be nervous no matter what. I know it isn’t normal to ask a dozen questions about the format and set up and precise timeline of events and a list of likely attendees, so I don’t ask. Instead, to make the wilderness less formidable, I look up the exact directions, using Google street view to see the outside of the house, how it’ll look from the road as we approach, what the turn onto that street looks like, and back and back until I have a good sense of location and directions beforehand, as well as when we should leave to make it on time. I did this Monday afternoon, though Google Street View hasn’t traveled up that particular road before, and the satellite images were several years old.

I also fight the wilderness by planning details of my appearance so I feel more comfortable and confident. Unfortunately, on Monday I was completely out of clean jeans and my favorite work pants were dirty. I’d been out of town the weekend before, so I’d had no time to do laundry to prepare. It was also a cold day for this time of year, so I had to dig out a sweater and a scratchy coat that would match a pair of work pants that are lose in weird places.

That day, Tyler’s grandmother was admitted to the hospital (she’s doing much better now), and for a while we weren’t certain if it’d be best to visit her or go to Bible study. I found myself hoping we’d visit. You know your social anxiety is bad when the slight wilderness of an hour in a hospital you haven’t been to before to visit your fiance’s ailing relative is preferable to attending a Bible study out in the woods for the first time.

Tyler was nervous too. For days, he’d asked me a lot of questions about what the group studies and who leads and their style and what dinner would consist of. I didn’t know the answers, and with every “I don’t know,” my nerves ratcheted up another level.

On the phone with Tyler after work, as we both drove to his apartment, he told me what he’d learned about his grandmother’s health and that his dad didn’t think it’d be a good idea to visit that night. Tyler said we should just go on to Bible study. My nerves instantly spiked, my voice dropped half an octave, my answers became clipped. Tyler could hear the change.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just nervous.”

“About going tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Try not to be nervous.”

I didn’t answer.

“It’ll be okay,” he said.

“I know.”

“I’ll be with you.”

“I know.”

When we got to his apartment, taking my hand after we hugged, he asked, “Do you still want to go?”

“No,” I said immediately, “But it’ll be just as bad next week.” The last time he’d seen me this nervous and withdrawn about an event had been before his family’s big Christmas party.

“It’s just one night,” he tried to assure me. “We don’t have to keep going if you don’t like it.”

“I want to like it.”

And I did. I think it’ll be really good for us to be in a study together and with other couples in a similar life stage. But I did, desperately, wish not to go. I would have rather done most anything else.

Tyler held my hand on the drive.

I navigated, relying on the directions from my Maps app as well as my research earlier in the day. As we got further and further outside Macon, the road looked increasingly like my mental image of wilderness: thick trees and long shadows and underbrush, places to get lost in the worst ways.

Then we turned off the main road. At the top of a small rise, the road turned to dirt. I searched through the trees for any sign of the house, but it was too far away or the trees were too close together. Even though I knew from others’ stories that it was hulking, a mix of stone and wood.

We found the right gate and wove through still more trees until we arrived at the house. We backed into a space in a line of cars, right on time, but no one else was outside. We weren’t sure which door to go to. We followed a brick path to the nearest one as twilight fell in earnest, knocked, and received no answer. Tyler turned the knob and it gave. Upstairs, we could hear soft voices, so we let ourselves upstairs, me leading the way, smiling my shield, telling myself it’s going to get better. In just a moment, as soon as the leaders see us, it’s going to be better.

It was 20 minutes later before a face I recognized arrived. By then, we were learning names and wondering how the food situation would work (everything was laid out but no one was touching it) and where in the woods we were exactly. The rest of the night was like that, with no concept of what was coming next until the transition began. It’s a disconcerting way to spend an evening.

Once we were there and found the right room and were greeted by the hosts, most of my nerves calmed. The night was still difficult, and I felt caught in the unknown, but I know it won’t be so hard next time. And it did help, so much, to be there with Tyler. I tried not to lean on him too much.

Just because I’m going to have a husband and we’re going to be a team doesn’t mean I won’t have to go new places and meet new people without him. I need to continue to be able to do that. Resigning myself to the experience and the anxiety helps. So, near the end, I purposefully left a conversation Tyler was participating in to join one with strangers.

The drive back to Tyler’s apartment was much easier because we were more certain of the way. The dark had closed in, but we had things to talk about and the wilderness was slipping away with every minute.

In six months or a year, I’m sure I’ll feel familiar with every hill and turn, most of the signs and minor landmarks. I’m sure I’ll understand the pace and flow of the evening, and will probably forget to tell new people what’s going to happen before it does. But the first time in a place is always wilderness.

And unfortunately, in my limited experience so far, entering a marriage is a lot of wilderness.

The Ring

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This whole “how did you get engaged” thing feels like a lot, in part because I’ve told the story multiple times and it seems to take longer every time, despite my attempts to shorten. It also feels like a lot because I am keenly aware that I don’t want to be That Person. That Person talks about her wedding nonstop and forgets to ask about other people’s lives, which is annoying and hurtful. So I’m going to tell our proposal story in stages and hope you won’t get bored.

A couple of days after Christmas (2017), Tyler and I watched a movie (I can’t remember which one) at his apartment in the glow of Christmas lights. When the movie ended, he got up to play with the Lego’s he’d given me for Christmas and I stayed where I was. He covered me in several blankets and a small mountain of pillows, just to be cute, and I happily dozed off.

Tyler woke me to show me the tiny car he built for the tiny street with tiny road cones redirecting traffic around the tiny garbage truck that had toppled over. I oooh’d over it and fell asleep again. Later, he woke me to show me the tiny garage he built for the tiny car that had finally navigated the accident and made it home. By this time, it was around 1am, and he sat on the floor beside me to tell me that it was late and I should probably go home. I agreed and began unburying myself.

“Before you go, though,” he said, his back to me as I tossed pillows into the far corner of the sectional, “I want your opinion on something.”

Interesting, I thought. “Okay. What is it?” I balled up one blanket and pulled the remaining one more closely around me as I sat up. Tyler stood and slid open the end table—which he almost never keeps things in—and pulled out a Reed’s jewelry catalog, cover tinged with the blue and red of the pulsing Christmas lights.

“I want to know what kind of engagement ring you’d like.”

I wasn’t very sleepy anymore.

I looked through the catalog, which didn’t much impress me, to be honest, while he opened his laptop and pulled up a few sites. For the next hour and a half, I declared judgement on the rings we saw, and we found a site that let us build a custom ring. We knew we wanted to see an investment like this in person before we bought it, but it was fun to customize and wonder. The only thing I knew going in was I wanted a diamond and I wanted white gold, as I mostly wore silver jewelry.

Tyler asked me, “Do you like princess cut or round better?” as he clicked on the various toggles.

“Round,” I’d answer, not knowing the answer until I saw them both, like choosing “one or two” at the optometrist’s office.

“Do you want a colored diamond?”

“No.”

“Not even a chocolate one?”

“Not even a little bit. Those things are hideous.”

“I’m so shocked.”

(He wasn’t shocked.)

“What about this one?” he asked of an x-shaped monstrosity that I thought looked like an alien space ship and he thought looked like a shrunken chandelier.

At some point, when we had a design I basically liked, he said something like, “You like color. What about sapphires?” And clicked on a button that sent alternating cascades of sapphires and diamonds down the band of the virtual ring.

“It’s too much,” I told him.

“The sapphires?”

“No. The band like that.” He clicked around for other options.

I had heard of sapphires on a wedding ring, because of Princess Diana. I used to watch made-for-TV documentaries and biographies about her. After one show pointed out the details of her large sapphire ring, the central gem surrounded by diamonds, which is now Princess Katherine’s engagement ring, I asked my Mom why Prince Charles had picked a sapphire. “Engagement rings are supposed to have diamonds, aren’t they?”

My mom, whose gorgeous yellow gold set with round solitaire was my baseline for that statement, answered that sapphires are a traditional stone to use, but diamonds are more common.

I might have been eight at this time, so I’ve had a couple of decades to get use to the idea of sapphires in an engagement ring. But I had never thought about them being on mine.

Tyler adjusted the virtual ring so a diamond sat in the center, flanked by two decently sized sapphires. I liked it, but I wasn’t convinced. The idea was new to me and I definitely wanted to try something like this on. I went home, went to bed, and met him for lunch at Zoe’s Kitchen. I remember nothing about that meal, but I remember walking out of the restaurant toward the center of the outdoor mall where three large, name-brand jewelry stores dominated three of the four corners, including Reed’s, provider of the catalog in Tyler’s apartment.

As we walked, though, we passed Forever Diamonds, a smaller jewelry store we’d both forgotten about. Tyler hadn’t visited them during his research trip earlier that week, but we were there, so we went inside.

Debra and Ryan were amazing. Debra helped us primarily, listening very carefully to what I wanted, pulling ring after ring for me to try on. We talked stone cut, size, setting style. I was horrified by anything 1.25 carets or higher. Tyler, of course, was devastated that I wanted something smaller.

The night before, I’d asked him about budget. “Just pick a band you like and I’ll get a stone I can afford. Okay?”

He’s so very reasonable.

I found a gorgeous ring that was the sort of thing I would have imagined as a child, if I’d ever let myself do so. It was a white gold band with a round solitaire setting and three tiny diamonds, in descending size, set on in the midst of mill grain tear drop. I loved it. It’s the ring I would have chosen ten or five or even two years ago, before Tyler and I started dating. Which is why I ultimately didn’t pick it.

We still hadn’t seen a ring with a setting like the one we’d built online, and when we explained this, Ryan suggested that they could order a band to our specifications and build us a custom ring. This idea made me, at least, nervous, so he took a round .9 caret diamond from the safe along with two triangular sapphires, carefully arranging them between my fingers so I could get an idea of what it would look like. And it was gorgeous. But I couldn’t think straight any more and I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t sit up too high (the other ring did, though I was willing to ignore it because it was that gorgeous), so we thanked them profusely, took up our coats, and walked to the next jewelry store, where we were half ignored. In the next store, the sales associate didn’t know her stock well and complained to us about her coworker, who could hear her doing so. In the third store, the associate was experiencing severe back pain and had to lean heavily on the display cases to stay upright. I nearly ran out of the store just so she could sit back down and take a little relief.

We went back to Forever Diamonds. As Tyler talked with Ryan about what ordering a custom ring would entail, I asked Debra to let me see that other ring again. I wore it, and stared at it, and then gave it back.

It took me less than 24 hours to decide that I wanted a ring that reflected Tyler and I, not just me. We love Lego’s and cooking together. We like to make things together. The night after we went shopping, New Year’s Eve, I sat Tyler down during the party at my house and told him I’d decided. I think he was really surprised that I had already decided and didn’t need more time. He’d taken 2 months to buy a new truck and 8 months and counting to pick a new mattress. He suggested, wisely but unnecessarily, that we wait until the end of the week before going back to Forever Diamonds so that I would have plenty of time to change my mind, with assurances that it would be fine if I did.

The following Monday, we made an appointment with Debra and Ryan and went in to order my ring. Once again, they were incredibly patient and kind as we asked questions and pondered all the options. Tyler had been told that day that he would be put on leave without pay at his new job for an indefinite period of time. I suggested we wait until things grew more steady at work, but he wanted to go ahead and order it. He’d been saving and had good credit for financing options. Brenda sized my ring finger and, afterwards, I ran a couple more errands while Tyler went to Publix and cooked for us. I arrived at his apartment just in time to eat.

I didn’t see the ring completed until Tyler pulled it from his pocket on the beach in my hometown eleven days ago. I don’t remember this, but I took it out of his hand. I held it on the tip of my thumb while I said “Yes” and through our hug afterwards.

In the intervening weeks, I had noticed that I’d been wearing a lot more yellow gold and had begun to question whether I’d chosen well to want white gold. When I saw it, though, I knew I’d chosen right to have asked for white gold. And I am endlessly thrilled with it, even if I do sometimes forget and slide it onto my right hand instead of my left.

“Believe”

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I know many of you are expecting a blog post about Tyler’s and my engagement, but I need a little more distance (and time) to put that together. Instead, I want to talk about 2018. People usually post New Year’s Resolutions and the like in January, but I’m a rebel and not going to do it that way.

I did make a resolution for 2018, but I’m not going to talk about that. It’s not that interesting. (Okay, fine. I resolved not to buy as many new hardcover books. Yay Gottwals and county library and eBooks.)

However, I also chose a word for the year: believe.

Believe I can be a novelist.

Believe I can change my habits.

Believe my relationship will get stronger.

Believe in God’s sovereignty.

Believe the best of the person I’m in conflict with.

Believe that I can be adventurous again.

Believe that wedding planning can be more fun than stressful.

Believe that I can like my body more than I do now.

Believe that I can be a good friend while being a spouse and full-time employee.

Believe that I can be a good spouse while being a full-time employee and friend.

Believe that I can be a good employee while… you get the idea.

I’ve been shaking the branches of the internet (mostly on Etsy, if I’m honest) looking for a small sign with my word on it, which I can put on my desk at work and on my wall at home.

I want a reminder. It doesn’t do me any good to have a word for the year if I don’t remember it and don’t try to act on it.

While cleaning one night in February, I came across a printed photo of myself in Egypt my senior year of college. I’m standing in front of an ancient volcano in the Black Desert (so called because the soil of the volcanos has eroded and now the desert is covered in the black, broken up pieces of the cooled magma). I’m wearing my favorite shirt. My hair is golden from time in the sun. I can see my shape. It was an incredible trip, full of struggles but also rich in joy and knowledge and confidence and good health and adventure.

I slipped the photo into a cheap plastic frame and took it to work. Now it sits beside my monitor, in front of the hand sanitizer bottle, and I look at it multiple times a day.

It doesn’t make me feel badly. In the weeks the photo’s been there, I haven’t once bemoaned what I’ve lost since then. I feel inspired by my past self and I feel encouraged because she is me. She became me. My life is one of the ones she dreamed for herself, and in many ways is even better than she’d hoped. In ways, I can be her again.

I can take a painting class because I used to enjoy it.

I can reconcile with people who have hurt me.

I can resist the candy bowl on the corner of my desk.

I can drink more water.

I can learn the names of more countries.

I can start a new story.

I can slay the Jabberwocky.

She believed she could so she did.
—R. S. Grey

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
—Hebrews 1:11

Sacred Imagination

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A few months ago I finally listened to several coworkers who know me well and tried the podcast “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text”. Although I have since stopped for a variety of reasons, my favorite part of the podcast was the sacred practice portion.
 
The hosts would, for several podcasts in a row, engage in a sacred practice for a major world religion. Many of the first season’s episodes use Lectio Divina, a Christian practice I was intellectually familiar with before the podcast, but had never engaged in. Another Christian practice they use is Sacred Imagination, in which a person imagines what it would be like to be in a biblical scene with the goal of better knowing and loving God. St. Ignatius wrote the first instructions for this practice after imagining himself in the manger scene at Christ’s birth and becoming deeply moved by this experience.

I wasn’t familiar with this practice, and looked forward to its use in the podcast because I enjoyed employing my imagination to try to experience the sights, sounds, smells, and other senses as I’m placing myself in the position of a character. And, I learned a lot from the podcast’s hosts using this method, then talking through what they imagined and how it shaped their reading and understanding of the chosen passage of Harry Potter.

Last week, I took out an old Bible to read Psalm 118, the psalm being studied in the Chapter-A-Day project undertaken by my church. This Bible is an NIV Women of Faith Study Bible, meaning it includes profiles of women in the Bible and features short commentary excerpts on every page based on a passage or verse on that page. It’s also an easily understood translation and was given to me by my uncle upon my graduation from high school. It’s the only Bible I really used during college and is full of my underlining, notes, questions, and occasionally a date if a passage particularly resonated with my life or feelings that day.
 
Now I use an ESV Bible that I don’t write in, so even though I keep my beloved college Bible close, it’s not the one I usually read from. But I was curious what I might have written in college about the middle chapter in the Bible, so I fished it out of the stack of books on my bedside table.
 
I read the psalm through once, noting how my past self had divided the psalm into chunks of 3-5 verses (often with the help of the typesetter, who left a little space between stanzas).
 
When I got to the end, I found a note in pen that said “Sung at the Last Supper” and, at the very top of that page, “Remember the power in these pages.”

I knew my past self might be wrong (it’s impossible to know exactly which psalm Christ sang that night, though Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26 both record the singing, and Jewish tradition tells us that Psalms 113-118 were sung during the Passover week), but I decided to assume my college self was right.

Rereading the passage again one stanza at a time, I used the Sacred Imagination practice. I imagined myself in the upper room of the Last Supper. The Passover meal is eaten, the plates and scraps still on the table. Judas has left to betray Christ. The eleven apostles are pleasantly full and sleepy but excited, anticipating that Jesus will soon overthrow the Romans and rule as the reinstated king in David’s line. For each stanza, I imagined myself as Christ, keeping in mind what Jesus knew was coming, how he must have felt about the disciples around him. Next, I imagined myself as the disciples, recalling their heritage and hopes. I let the lessons I uncovered sit with me, then I read the next stanza.

I’ve picked two stanzas from the psalm to do this with so you can get an idea of what I mean and why the experience was so important to me. If you want to participate in sacred imagination along with me, read the passage several times, out loud of possible, and try to imagine yourself as one of the disciples around the table. What are you seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling as you sit in this room? What do you know? What do you think is about to happen? What do you want? What do these verses remind you of?

When hard pressed, I cried to the LORD; he brought me into a spacious place.
The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
The LORD is with me; he is my helper. I look in triumph on my enemies. (vv. 5-7)

Let’s consider Christ’s perspective first.

I thought of Christ being tempted in the desert and cared for by angels sent by God at the end of the 40 days, a “spacious place” after being “hard pressed.” I thought of the torture and crucifixion to come. Though “mere mortals” can kill Jesus, he has power over the grave and will be resurrected by God. This is all part of God’s plans to redeem mankind, as well. The mortals may kill him, but it’s all part of God’s plan. And the LORD will be with Christ. The Spirit will help him. He will, Easter morning, triumph over God’s enemies. Right now, he’s full. He’s been laughing with his friends and leading them in a ritual dinner to remember events that only he still has personal knowledge of. Of those alive on earth, only he was there when the angel of death passed over the Hebrews’ homes in Egypt. Only he is aware of every single household that participated in this feast from that evening to this one.

Now let’s consider what this stanza might mean to the disciples.

They are the chosen handful of disciples. They have learned to preach and cast out demons and heal and do other miracles at Christ’s instructions and by God’s power. They have been saved from storms; Peter’s been saved from drowning. They’ve helped baptize and feed and restore. All because of Jesus. Jesus is God incarnate, and he is with them. In the flesh. He picked them to be here with him. They have nothing to be afraid of! What can “mere mortals” do to them? They are going to be part of the new regime. They went from fishing and tax collecting and farming and normal, boring lives to leaders in God’s service and soon they will be rulers. Everyone who was ever mean to them will be “pea green with envy” (as said by Scarlett O’Hara).

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad. (vv. 22-24)

Christ knows this is referring to himself. The disciples around him don’t know it yet. They don’t realize, even if they should. He’ll be dead and resurrected before they realize all the ways that he is the cornerstone. All these plates full of broken bread must remind him of the breaking his body will soon endure. The lamb they ate is totally gone, but the smell lingers. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, he may think, looking around at these eleven men he loves so thoroughly. God will redeem you all, this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad.

The disciples are singing of the promised Messiah, just as their parents did and their grandparents—all their ancestors—but they are the only ones that have been with the Messiah. Maybe they look at Jesus, tears in his eyes, looking around at them. Maybe they are wondering if there’s any wine left in their neighbor’s cup. (Minds can wander in worship, even if the Messiah is with them.) God has done a lot of marvelous things, and they must feel proud that they’ll get to be there for all the marvelous things to comes. Jesus has done amazing things today, even. They can be glad about that. And maybe next year they’ll sing this hymn in the palace.

What stood out to you? What did you imagine differently from me? I hope sacred imagination can be a meaningful practice for you in the future.