My So-Called Life

Sunday, April 30, 2006

The One True Church

I was sitting in church today, pondering a question a guy from the singles group asked me last weekend after I had mentioned my, ahem, "liberal" views.

"So why are you still in the Church of Christ?" he asked.
"Good question," I said.

So why am I still in the Church of Christ? It's not something I set out to do, it just sort of. . .happened. I decided that I'd start visiting Churches of Christ in the area, and if I didn't find one I liked, I'd move on to Episcopal (because they ordain women) and community churches.

Here's what I told the guy:
"Well, I guess it comes down to music, really. I was raised non-instrumental, and it's what I prefer. And besides, if I went somewhere else, then who would get my Church of Christ jokes?"

The truth is that I found a church where the singles group seemed to want to get to know me, and cared if I came back or not. It is also the most multicultural church I have visited in the area and committed to sticking around in order to engage the increasingly urban area around it, and those things are important to me. There is a lot of work to do there and a chance for me to use some of my gifts (even if I have to keep that "teaching" one under wraps).

It's odd to me that I ended up at a pretty conservative church. No one in class asks me to lead the prayer or start a song, and I don't want to damage anybody's faith by volunteering to do that (at least not yet). I don't stay for the preaching, and the worship is, well, pretty white, even if all of the congregation isn't. For example, in worship this morning we sang that song Restore, (Restore my spirit, Lord, I need restore, my cup is empty, refill it dear Lord, replace all doubts and fears with faith so bold, renew my love, rebuild my faith, oh restore my soul) and I started laughing quietly because it was just so white. I love these people, but they don't have much soul. We're working up to that.

I'm the token liberal in our singles class, and it's pretty hard on me already. I'm depending on my non-conservative friends and family members to talk to me enough so I can go back to church every week and be the one liberal. (Thanks for inviting me over last night, Kim--that was a great dose of liberalism, and fun to boot!)

And I'm thinking that I'm pretty much killing my chances of finding a husband here in the good ol' CoC. A lot of that liberal stuff I'm willing to bargain on, but not on the breakdown of power in a marriage. I think it should be 50-50 (I'll provide the gory details if you want them), and I'm afraid that it's going to be hard to find a CoC guy who feels the same, and that's, as Dr. Phil would say, a "deal breaker" for me.

That's not the only thing that's going to make it hard for me to find a husband, though. I have recently decided that giving birth to babies is not the best decision. Let me say that I have always wanted to be pregnant because I think it would be just the coolest thing ever, but it seems pretty selfish to me to have a baby just because I want to know what it's like. I guess I should explain why I feel this way:

  1. The world sucks, no doubt about it. It is full of wars, hate, school shootings, soaring gas prices, cancer, heartache and traffic jams. Why bring an innocent kid into that?
  2. The world is also becoming overpopulated--there are too many people and not enough resources, and it's just going to get worse.
  3. There are lots of babies who no one wants and who will have to grow up without people to love them, and they will more than likely just further that cycle of war and hate without any guidance. I will only have so many resources when it comes time to raise kids, and will only be able to care for so many. If I have my own, then I will have less resources to devote to kids without anyone else to love them.

So how can I justify making new babies when there are so many good reasons against it? I still want to have kids and I still REALLY want to have my own, but I'm just not sure it's the best idea. (I'm hoping to work through this so I'll feel okay about having my own babies, but I'm not seeing that happen.) How many good CoC boys are going to be okay with that? (Although for those of you who know about that one guy in the singles group who is trying to make me his "special friend," apparently that doesn't matter to everyone. I hate my love life, but glad y'all find it so amusing. I'm never being nice to anyone again!)

Plus, I'm thinking the way we do church is not really the way God intended it to go. Twice over the past week I had an opportunity to help out and encourage two people in some pretty creative ways, and although the situation one of them finds himself in left me feeling sad at the state of the world, helping them did feel good and right. I thought, "Now THAT'S what church is all about," even though neither of them are technically members of the church I attend. Perhaps more on their situations later.

So for now I'm going to keep attending my CoC and trying to love people like crazy. I've joined the apartment ministry, and will probably get to relive some of my MY days (without all the kids knocking on the door at all hours of the day and night), and I'm excited. I'll keep you posted, even you Church of Christers. (I wanted to abbreviate that one, but it CoCers sounded sort of dirty. Oh well.)

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

No good answers

'God didn’t do those things. But he wants to bring good out of them.'

Monday, April 24, 2006


From http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

From the "Why Do They Get Paid 100 Times More Than Me?" File

So yesterday and today via email, some of my friends and I started a list of our least-favorite celebrities (just for fun, I guess). Here they are, in no particular order (with some comments still attached):

The Baldwin Brothers (all of them)
Mariah Carey
Kanye West
LeeLee Sobowski (spelling?)
Sharon Stone
Renee Zelwegger
Dennis Rodman
Pamela Anderson
The lead singer from Creed
Kevin Costner
Drew Barrymore
Barbara Walters
Whitney Houston
Star Jones
Britney Spears
Christina Aguilera
Lindsey Lohan
Paris Hilton
Colin Farrel
Carrot Top
Charlie Sheen
Bruce Willis
Sean Penn
Tim Robbins
Tom Cruise (remember when he used to be hot? Now he is just oogy)
Paula Abdul
Leonardo DiCaprio
Nancy Grace (she is the CNN correspondent at night and has her own show....I know I am a nerd, but every time she is on CNN it makes my skin crawl...she tries to act like she is smart, but I have serious doubts)
Jesse Jackson (I think that one is pretty self explanatory....it is amazing how everything...and I mean EVERYTHING can be turned into a race issue)
Current President George Bush
Pat Robertson
Jerry Falwell
Rodney Dangerfield, may he rest in peace

Feel free to add yours as well!

Another one for the Quote Board

"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense." ~PRESIDENT BUSH

Man, being the decider sounds like a hard job. Maybe ya should turn it over to someone else, Dubya.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Because names can be deceiving,

there apparently was not enough wrong with our public school system and racial stereotypes needed to be propagated further.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Hi, I'm A.Lo, and I'm single

I don't want anyone to think this is directed toward them because they have tried to set me up with someone or used phrases like "if you ever get a boyfriend again." ;-) This is not directed at anyone in particular; it just needed to be said.

I'm single. Not just not married, but not dating anyone, either. And I haven't been dating anyone seriously for a while. Like two years. And that was good for me.

And now I am taking time to make friends before I start trying to date anyone new (although as mentioned in previous posts, seriously dating someone new will take quite a while, since I'm on a FEMA schedule). I want to make friends right now, and I know that if I start dating someone, then it is a possibility that he will be my one and only friend, and that's not cool.

But this doesn't mean that I don't know the exact location of every single male in a one-mile radius at almost all times. I'm embarrassed to say that I do. And I do want to get married in the future, just not in the immediate future.

So I am still single. Very single. I have had some tempting offers since I moved here, but none that I could suspend my fear of commitment and stubborn high standards for.

And I'm not above admitting that being single sucks sometimes. That it gets lonely. That there's a certain "Why me" (or why not me) dialogue that goes through my head sometimes. That it would be very nice to have someone to help me make that drive out to visit my parents so I could nap in the car or rub my shoulders and calves when I get stressed. But most of the time, I believe that single is where I'm supposed to be right now.

And I have married friends and single friends, and I like them all. I have to say that generally, my single friends are more accessible, but this is not something that cannot be overcome.

So let me proudly declare that I am not yet in my mid-twenties, and I am single. And no one is going to make me feel bad about that. Or accuse me of needing to lower my standards. Or question my sexuality. Or throw me at every single guy they know.

Well, I guess they can try.

But wouldn't it be nice if they were proud of me for sticking to my guns, for knowing what I want and going after it? Wouldn't it be nice if they supported me in not settling down until I'm sure I'm not settling?

Let's just be sure that we clear up the fact that from now until some undisclosed date, I will be coming to weddings, family functions and parties by myself. Alone. Single. And this will have to be okay with all of us.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Happy Good Friday/Easter!

"The best thing I've heard lately is the Christian writer Barbara Johnson's saying that we're Easter people, living in a Good Friday world.

I don't have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion; I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday school, who drew a picture of the Easter bunny outside the tomb: everlasting life, and a basket full of chocolates. Now you're talking.

In Jesus' real life, the resurrection came two days later, but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for sure that it will come. I don't have the right personality for the human condition, either. But I believe in the resurrection, in Jesus', and in ours. The trees, so stark and gray last month, suddenly went up as if in flame, but instead in blossoms and leaves--poof! Like someone opening an umbrella. It's often hard to find similar dramatic evidence of rebirth and hope in our daily lives."

"The thing about Easter is that Jesus comes back from the dead both resurrected and broken, with the wounds from the nails still visible. People needed to see that it really did happen, the brutality, the human death. He came back with a body--not like Casper or Topper; he didn't come back as the vague idea of a spirit returning. No, it was physical, a wounded body. He had lived, he had died; and then you could touch him, and he could eat; and these four things are as bodily as life gets."

"We celebrated Good Friday that night, a week late. It's a sad day, of loss and cruelty, and all you have to go on is faith that the light shines in the darkness, and nothing, not death, not disease, not even the government, can overcome it. I hate that you can't prove the beliefs of my faith. If I were God, I'd have the answers at the end of the workbook, so you could check as you went along, to see if you're on the right track. But nooooooo. Darkness is our context, and Easter's context: without it, you couldn't see the light. Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us."

"Easter is so profound. Christmas was an afterthought in the early Church, the birth not observed for a few hundred years. But no one could help noticing the resurrection: "Spring is Christ," Rumi said, "martyred plants rising up from their shrouds." Easter says that love is more powerful than death; bigger than the dark, bigger than cancer, bigger than airport security lines." ~Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

This would TOTALLY go on the quote board

If my apartment had one, that is. (Man, I miss that quote board! It was good times!)

My friend Whitney, who is a junior high coach/teacher, said:
"I should probably go and pretend like I am molding the young minds of our nation for a while, when secretly I am trying to decide between pasta and subway for lunch."

Monday, April 10, 2006

But he makes me want to vomit!

Yes, yes. More things I should probably be keeping to myself:

So here's what I want:

First, I have to tell you about the guy who was trying to pursue me at record speed. He was nice and nice-looking. We, surprisingly, had some similar interests. But the more I talked with him, the more I felt like there was something. . .missing, somehow. I never really looked forward to talking to him (probably partially because it was pretty awkward since we hardly knew each other) and I was just not sure there was any chemistry. I wouldn’t mind hanging out with him as a friend, but I wasn't so sure about this dating-thing.

I don’t know if this was because I was closing myself off or if I really felt that way, if there was really nothing between us. I’ve been thinking that perhaps my standards are too high; maybe I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist.

But then I talked to Karen at work. I love Karen; she’s one of my favorite coworkers. She’s spunky and funny and drop-dead gorgeous (so I have to hate her a little for that). Karen's one of two Black women who work in my office, and when someone gets her and the other Black lady confused (which happens a lot), she says, "No, that's the other Black girl," and people's eyes get really big and it makes me laugh a lot.

But she was really pulling for this guy. She liked him a lot and thought he was really nice and really wanted it to work out between us. But when I told her about how something was missing, she totally got it, which sort of surprised me. But then she told me about her late husband.

Karen’s in her early forties, but she married pretty early in life. She met her husband when she started college at the age of 18 and they married after she graduated, I think. I’m not sure how he died or when, but I get the feeling that they were married for quite a while. She said, though, that what they had was magical. Even after they had been married for years, her stomach still got a little funny when he walked into the room. And she says that’s important if you’re going to be intimate with someone.

She says that her friends are encouraging her to date, but she’s waiting for that fairy tale. And she admits that her friends sometimes accuse her of not giving guys a chance, but Karen says that she either knows or she doesn’t, and there’s no sense in wasting guys’ time or hers. She told me that it was good that I have high standards and to keep them. She thinks I should have what I want. She assured me that it does exist, you just don’t find it every day.

And as I walked back to my office, I wondered whether or not I had ever felt that way about a guy. . .all light-headed and nauseous. (I mean, I know I’ve felt that way because I was sick, but have I ever felt that way as the result of the presence of a man?)

I could think of two guys who had that effect on me, and neither of those relationships turned out well. Not only that, but they were SO LONG AGO! One of them was an experience in which I did all the pursuing (and finally gave up when I learned that if he doesn’t pursue me at the beginning then he can’t really want me as badly enough as I want to be wanted). The other was pretty traumatic and hurt me a lot. And I’ve never really felt all giggly and light-headed about a guy since, I guess. Sometimes I wonder if this is because I have grown up some or because I’m shielding myself from hurting that badly again. But even if I am, then I don’t know how to fix it. And I continued to feel nauseous about this second guy even when I saw him multiple times after he broke my heart. This got me into a lot of trouble, and I continually considered dating him again, but then one day I realized that whatever I used to feel was just. . .gone.

And I couldn't help feeling that I’m a horrible person for not being more excited about the guy who was pursuing me. But at the same time, it was painfully awkward. So I told him that we had no chemistry. (Although I don't know how he didn't get that it was awful to spend time together because we had nothing to talk about.)

But I want someone who makes me feel all tingly and slightly vomitous (I don't think that's a word, but I can totally hear Whitney using it, so I'm going to use it, too). I mean, it doesn't have to last forever, but it's important to me.

And you know, I've been accused almost all my life of having standards that are too high, but that's what I want. That's what I've been waiting for.

And I agree with Karen. I should have what I want.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

A Big Tall Man on a Big White Horse

"The reason I never give up hope is that everything is basically hopeless. Hopelessness underscores everything--the deep sadness and fear at the center of life, the holes in the heart of our families, the animal confusion within us. When you do give up hope, a lot can happen. When it's not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it may float forth and open like those fluted Japanese blossoms, flimsy and spastic, bright and warm. This almost always seems to happen in community: with family, related by blood, or chosen; at church, for me; at peace marches." ~Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Alright, so there's this guy I met a month or two ago who I find. . .intriguing. I met him at night church, and he's very animated and funny and outgoing and confident and tall, and he seemed really interested in what I had to say.

And he sent some signals that I interpreted to mean that he was interested in me, too. (Who knows, though--guys are pretty weird about sending and receiving signals most of the time.)

The last time I saw him, though, was mid-March. I have continued going to these weekly church gatherings, but he hasn't been there in a while. (I admit that I skipped one week to hang out with my lil' sis from club, Misty, because she's so cute that you can't say no to her. And I stand by bros before hoes, anyway.) So there have been two services which I have attended that he has not.

My friend B says that I'm just interested in the idea of him. I don't completely agree, though. I mean, I agree that I want to make friends before I get all involved with a guy. But I met some of his friends, and I really liked them. I'd like to get to know them better, too. (But they're AWOL from church as well.) I mean, would it be such a horrible thing to have some people to hang out with who will invite me to the movies every once in a while? Would it?

And I'll admit, the last time or two that I went to that church service, I went just to see him. So my question is: "I go to church to see him; why can't he come to see me?"

I'm pretty sure that he remembers the name of the company I work for, and he knows the name of my apt. complex. He could track me down if he really wanted to. But he hasn't.

And I learned the hard way that if a guy's not pursuing me, then he's probably just not that into me.

But I want a good, concrete reason if I'm going to give him up completely. Like he has contracted flesh-eating bacteria, or he's pregnant, or he broke his arms and can't drive or dial, or he got kidnapped and was forced to listen to the theme song from Saved by the Bell over and over until his ears bled, and he's still scarred. I want some real closure here.

But my question is: how can I be sure that something's actually over if it never really started?

I suck at this dating-stuff. Good thing I'm "too cute to not get married," lol.

Good times

I got to spend some time last night and this morning with two of my four college roommates, and it was a blast. One of the things the evening accomplished was to introduce me to the videos on Vintage21.com. To see them, click on the link and then look on the left-hand side of the page. On the top of that montage is a picture of an old-timey film projector. (If you hold your mouse over it, you'll see the word "media" pop up on the page.) Click on the film projector and then choose "videos." Go to page two and watch all four of the Jesus Videos. They're GREAT! (For some reason when I try to link directly to them it takes forever to "buffer." If I had paid more attention in Electronic Publishing, I would probably know how to fix this, but I didn't. So I don't. I suppose if you don't have the brainpower to follow these instructions then you wouldn't find the videos funny, anyway.)

Another thing it did was give me a chance to spend some time with people who know me and take a break from trying to build community from the ground up. Wow, that felt really nice. (It's nice to tell a group about how a guy recently tried to pursue me at record speed and just have them understand that anyone pursuing me has to move ultra-slow. Like FEMA-slow.)

Someone asked me if I'd do high school over again, and the answer was: no way. High school wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. College, however. . .now THAT was great.

And I also got to talk with one of them about her increasingly interesting love life. It has always been weird to me that she never really dated. . .in high school or college. This never made sense, because she is one of the cutest, funniest, deepest, well-rounded people I know. Perhaps there just weren't many guys who could keep up with her? Regardless, there is someone interested in her now, and that makes me very excited! If she can find someone as cool as she is, then there's definitely hope for the rest of us.

Speaking of the rest of us, more than one of my coworkers has told me lately that I'll definitely get married because I am "so cute." What does this mean? It's meant to be a compliment, I know, but does this mean that only non-cute people are single? This can't be true, because I have certainly seen a lot of unattractive married people (and attractive single people). It's just aonther one of those things that people say that doesn't really mean anything, I think.

I've decided to keep a running list of meaningless things that I've heard Christians say, because I find them very interesting. First on the list is "God placed a call on his life." What does that mean? Did his cell phone ring and was God on the other line? It means nothing, except perhaps connotatively. Feel free to add to the list.