Why Batman is My Favorite Superhero

Because he's a regular guy.  He doesn't have any superpowers.  He's just a regular guy (well, other than the fact that Bruce Wayne is a billionaire . . . I guess he's not exactly a regular guy) wanting to do the right thing for Gotham City.  No superpowers, no superhuman strength, nothing that makes him exceptional other than his own will.

Life Happens. Unexpectedly.

I went home this past weekend. 1. To see my friend, her family and her (my) little cinnamon bun babies for their first birthday. 2. To see my family.  3. To go to my home church's Fall Festival and see all the church folk.

While it was great to see friends and family, the weekend ended on a very tragic note.  A young lady associated with the church that I watched grow up was killed in a car wreck.  She was only 16.

I shed a lot of tears that day.  So many of us did.  Life is so fragile and things in this life often unfold unexpectedly.  In an instant.  How was I ever to know that the words I spoke to her the day before her passing would be my last?

Things can change.  Quickly.  One minute here, gone the next.  He gives and takes away.  His ways are higher than our ways.  All things work together for good.  True, it doesn't erase the pain.

I shed tears today, too.  The alignment of a combination of things which created the perfect conditions for a cathartic cry.  My logical mind knows that it's okay.  It's a season.  I'll come out on the other side very soon.  But sometimes a little rock of despair lodges itself inside and I feel the hurt until it passes.

This is my hope: Just as tragic life-altering things happen unexpectedly, exciting life-altering things can happen just as unexpectedly, too.

Resolutions (?) to Mind Rattlings

Saturday I wrote that I had several things rattling around in my mind.  So  . . .

Atheist friend debates
No more.  Say whatever you want to say however you want to say it, feel free to express yourself and share your opinion, but I'm not getting into it anymore.  I love you with all the love my loving heart has and always will have for you, but I will not talk about my faith in a defensive way anymore.

Bring Your Colleagues to Church Day
One colleague bowed out.  She was just getting back from a conference and was wiped.  She is still interested in coming.  The other, having been raised with no religious background whatsoever came and was enveloped in the eager friendliness of church folk.  "Why do you call each other brother and sister?"  "Why do people raise their hands?"  "Does that overwhelming worship thing only happen to women?" "Is there like a channeling thing going on when people touch other people while they're praying?"  It was so refreshing to hear these questions.  It's important for believers to consider things from the perspective of someone who is not church conditioned. It's so easy for us to remain in our bubble of church culture while forgetting that our whole purpose is to be accessible to people outside of that culture.

Intra-departmental coffee chats
To be honest, I was surprised by the invitation (I didn't tell him that), but it was a nice gesture, so I took him up on it.  We went to a spot I'd never been to before, right in front of my face, and I've been here going on three years.  After ordering, the dreaded question: "Is this together or separate?"  If there's one question I could obliterate from the world, it would be that one.  It's so loaded with societal pressure and awkwardness. As a woman, I do not want a man to think I automatically expect him to pick up the tab because he's a man (because I don't.  Especially since we're all grad students here), but I always hesitate a second before saying "it's separate" because I don't want to communicate brusqueness.  I take out my wallet to show that I am poised to pay, and if more than a second goes by after the dreaded question is asked, I'll speak up.  In this case, traditional gender roles won out.  How sweet (?)  Anyway, we had a nice chat and it was totally fine.  I was feeling like a weirdo about it at first.

Comps deadline
Ah.  There will be no resolution until I reach the end.  Gotta keep on keepin' on.  That's what I've resolved.  Gotta keep on keepin' on.

90s Music or Staying Out of the Hole

Listening to 90s Christian music while working on my professor's manuscript.  One of those Saturdays.  Filled with doing work I should have done during the week and domestic tasks like washing clothes and cleaning my bathroom.  I know, totally livin' the dream.

There's something about 90s music that makes me feel hopeful about the world.  It came from a time when I felt less jaded about things and everything was somehow better.  I guess everyone feels that way about the music of their teenagehood.

A couple of things rattling around in my mind: philosophical debates with an atheist friend I adore but who gets under my skin, the prospect of my own Bring Your Colleagues to Church Day tomorrow, the prospect of a guy in the department wanting to know if I'd "be interested in getting coffee or lunch sometime," the ever-approaching comps deadline that I still feel woefully underprepared for.

Part of me wants to write letters to all of these things that are rattling around in my mind, as I am wont to do, but maybe it's just better to pray about them/chill out about them.

I will make an admission: It's hard to be consistent.  I constantly struggle with my tendency to be all over the map.  My little froggy legs want to make leaps to where I feel more comfortable, to where I'm doing nothing other that what I want to do simply because I feel like doing it.  But then I have to remind myself of something really important: Being consistent and sticking to my guns is the only thing that has kept me out of the hole.

So, what am I doing wasting time by blogging when there's so much to be done?  Manos a la obra, honey.

Is It Just Me?

1. Message last Sunday morning: "The Proposal."

2. Rigsby and Van Pelt get married on The Mentalist.  (Why am I so addicted to such a formulaic show?  That's why.  Yezzir.)

3. At the top of my Facebook feed this morning was a former classmate in an absolutely gorgeous white wedding dress.

4. My office mate has an epiphany when our former professor suggests that she and her boyfriend "just get married."  It turns out her boyfriend had been considering it for a while.  They're getting married this coming summer.

5. My mom called me up giggling with a church friend at Starbucks and put me on speaker phone.  The church friend told me she had changed her name.  Completely puzzled, I asked why.  And she revealed she had gotten married to someone I never imagined she would be with.  At first I flipped out because I was so shocked.  But then I started crying, because I realized it was so right.

God, Friends and My Inner Weirdo

I'm not pushy.

I don't ever want to be perceived as pushy, particularly when it comes to my faith.

If I'm ever in a situation where the topic of faith comes up, I'm more than happy to talk about where I'm coming from.  If anyone ever wants to know more, I'm more than happy to share.

But I'm not the Apostle Paul.  

Sometimes I'm paralyzed by my inner weirdo.  The prospect of the anomaly that I am.  The person who is devoted to her faith and cannot deny the very realness of the power of God but who questions and critiques church culture and mentality.  The person who has devoted a sizable chunk of her life to academia and plans to pursue a career in that world, but whose belief system chafes against its very fabric.  The lone unmarried 30-something engaging in what must seem like some aberrant, liberal exercise in husband-repelling futility in the Southern corner of a conservative church culture.  The churchgoing, skirt-wearing, mild-mannered Pollyanna who must seem like a quaint anachronism in a largely godless profession teeming with competition and cynicism.

But guess where those characterizations of myself and what other people "must" think of me and what I'm involved in come from?  My own head.  

There is a reason why some people seem to be attracted to me and want to get to know other facets of what makes me who I am.  I realize that it's not really me at all.  It's the power of God in me.

I have to learn to trust God more and I have to learn to trust people more.  What I mean is, trust God that He knows what He's doing and that He's giving me the right words to say when I talk to my colleagues about my faith.  And trust people to judge me for who they know I am and how they see me live my life and not based on a reductionist characterization of my particular church's culture.  I should give God as well as the people in my life who I've made genuine connections with more credit.

This coming Sunday is "Friend Day" at my church.  One friend enthusiastically accepted my invitation and another reminded me she'd like to come to church with me sometime and I told her that it happens to be Friend Day this Sunday, so it was as good a time as any.

What I've Been Doing the Past Couple of Weeks Instead of Blogging

1. Baking pumpkin spice muffins.  I've given a couple of dozen away.  One dozen given just because, and another as a belated birthday present.  And you bet your sweet self I kept some for moi, gourmande.

2. Pitching my dissertation topic idea to my major professor.  She was excited about it.  Which made me excited about it.  Which made me feel like God is good.  I came into this program not having the foggiest.  And now I know.

3. Grading midterms.  Ay, caramba.  How can I love teaching with the same passion that I hate grading?

4. Reading, reading, reading.

5. Editing my former professor's manuscript.  And getting a check in the mail from a famous Ivy League (now her place of employment) as the fruit of my labor.  The money's nice, but getting an envelope in the mail  with anything in it from that place is kind of awesome.

6. Writing an article soon to be featured in a Pentecostal publication near you.

7. Eating all kinds of Caribbean delights at this new Puerto Rican restaurant that at opened up downtown.  Tostones, maduros, arroz con habichuelas, yuca frita . . . yezzir.  Or rather, sí, señor.

8. Rocking my boots.  When I start rocking my boots . . . see, y'all don't know nothin' 'bout that.

9. Volunteering once a week at my church's preschool to teach the little ones Spanish mini-lessons.

10. Remembering how much Anointed used to be my jam.  I've been humming this one all day today: