I could do my own insurance commercial. You know those commercials where there is a frazzled-looking someone talking into the camera saying, "You know that place between ____________ and ________________? I'm so there." And they're usually so clever, like the girl sitting in the airport who looks like she hasn't done her hair in more than 19 hours and has Sock-Foot rubbing his feet all over her shoulder and saying, "You know that place where your inbox is overflowing and you haven't had a day off since the third grade? Yeah, I'm there."
Yeah, you know that place between frenzied excitement and absolute panic that you've forgotten something, will forget something or left something completely undone??? Yeah, I'm so there.
I leave for the Mediterranean tomorrow morning. In just 14.56 hrs my boyfriend will be picking me up and heading over to hitch a ride with his sister to the airport, from whence we shall all embark on a long flight to Barcelona to begin 11 days of fun-filled travel. Excited? Oh, yeah.
However, I'm not totally packed, I've still been running errands for things I need, and I think my list that I made is out-dated by several light-bulb moments of, "Oh, I better pack this." I'm afraid I've forgotten to pre-register or pre-book or pre-check-in, and when I go to board a plane or boat they will say, "Sorry, you can't," and I will be left looking like a little lost soul while everyone takes off for places foreign. Add to this the LOOONNNGGGG list of things I am supposed to have done before I leave and.... Experiencing "a sudden overwhelming fear, with or without cause, that produces hysterical, even irrational behavior"??? Maybe just a little. ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/panic)
It is all part of the pre-trip hysteria that is both fun and frantic. Believe me, as soon as I am actually on the plane out of Kansas city, I'll be fine.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Why Thank You!
A friend of mine and I have made an informal pact to start changing the way we, and maybe the girls in our youth group, respond to compliments. It has been our observation that we as women can never take a compliment without qualifying it first. The general course of conversation in regards to a compliment usually goes like this:
"You look so good today!"
"Really? Oh, my hair is such a mess. I couldn't get it to do anything today. I just don't know what to do with it. It's going crazy."
"Oh. Well, I thought you look good."
"Thanks, but, yeah, my hair looks horrible."
Or,
"Wow, I love that dress."
"Oh, I just got this at Walmart. It was only $___. Really, I guess it's not too bad for a Walmart find, but it's kind of cheap."
We as women do this all the time. Perhaps it is our insecurity, or perhaps we really want the complimenter to reiterate what they have said. I'm not sure, but we can never simply say thank you. Instead we have to qualify everything that we think is wrong with us and apologize for it. And women from the age of thirteen and over do this. I've never see a young girl complain about her appearance, she'll often say "thank you" and run off to see her friends. It's as if once we hit puberty, suddenly we can no longer acknowledge what is good in us, but must apologize and moderate and make exceptions.
So, my friend and I decided that we should teach our girls, whom we have heard do this again and again, to simply smile and say thank you when they are complimented, and hopefully to accept what is said to them. Only, we realized we should start with ourselves.
I've found this to be a very difficult exercise. I am trying, but I'm not always good at simply accepting the compliment, and even worse at believing it. I once had a very dear friend write back to me, lecturing me for calling myself a "chubster" (yes, I did). She went on to rebuke me for consistently "putting myself down." I wanted to argue with her. I wanted to point out to all the very real factors in my appearance that lead me to labeling myself as "pudgy" and "tubby" and other such words. I have them in my arsenal. But I also wanted to acknowledge the compliment she gave me in genuinely believing that I am none of those things. I found I couldn't do both. I couldn't accept and acknowledge or appreciate her comments if I was writing back to her the long list of proofs I have of my overweight "reality". The two just didn't mesh. So in the end, I didn't send her any of them. I acknowledged that I wanted to argue with her, but that I really wanted to recognize the good she saw in me, even if I couldn't see it myself.
The result has been a humbling experience. I consider myself the expert on my physical appearance. Who knows it better than I do? I'm the one who stares at it every day in the mirror, assessing, critiquing. It doesn't help that facebook displays ads of women who can barely pinch a centimeter of fat off their bodies and have headlines of "Want to lose 50lbs by the summer??" But I'm learning that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. My boyfriend, inexplicably to me, seems to think I am good-looking (how much so is still undefined). I have difficulty seeing it, but then, that's the point. He may not see me the way I see me. Neither does my friend see me the way I see me. And perhaps, I do not see myself so clearly. I see all the faults, measure it against those ridiculous ads that make me want to stab my computer screen, rather than seeing what might be good and pleasing about myself. And I won't qualify that last statement, no matter how much I want to.
"You look so good today!"
"Really? Oh, my hair is such a mess. I couldn't get it to do anything today. I just don't know what to do with it. It's going crazy."
"Oh. Well, I thought you look good."
"Thanks, but, yeah, my hair looks horrible."
Or,
"Wow, I love that dress."
"Oh, I just got this at Walmart. It was only $___. Really, I guess it's not too bad for a Walmart find, but it's kind of cheap."
We as women do this all the time. Perhaps it is our insecurity, or perhaps we really want the complimenter to reiterate what they have said. I'm not sure, but we can never simply say thank you. Instead we have to qualify everything that we think is wrong with us and apologize for it. And women from the age of thirteen and over do this. I've never see a young girl complain about her appearance, she'll often say "thank you" and run off to see her friends. It's as if once we hit puberty, suddenly we can no longer acknowledge what is good in us, but must apologize and moderate and make exceptions.
So, my friend and I decided that we should teach our girls, whom we have heard do this again and again, to simply smile and say thank you when they are complimented, and hopefully to accept what is said to them. Only, we realized we should start with ourselves.
I've found this to be a very difficult exercise. I am trying, but I'm not always good at simply accepting the compliment, and even worse at believing it. I once had a very dear friend write back to me, lecturing me for calling myself a "chubster" (yes, I did). She went on to rebuke me for consistently "putting myself down." I wanted to argue with her. I wanted to point out to all the very real factors in my appearance that lead me to labeling myself as "pudgy" and "tubby" and other such words. I have them in my arsenal. But I also wanted to acknowledge the compliment she gave me in genuinely believing that I am none of those things. I found I couldn't do both. I couldn't accept and acknowledge or appreciate her comments if I was writing back to her the long list of proofs I have of my overweight "reality". The two just didn't mesh. So in the end, I didn't send her any of them. I acknowledged that I wanted to argue with her, but that I really wanted to recognize the good she saw in me, even if I couldn't see it myself.
The result has been a humbling experience. I consider myself the expert on my physical appearance. Who knows it better than I do? I'm the one who stares at it every day in the mirror, assessing, critiquing. It doesn't help that facebook displays ads of women who can barely pinch a centimeter of fat off their bodies and have headlines of "Want to lose 50lbs by the summer??" But I'm learning that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. My boyfriend, inexplicably to me, seems to think I am good-looking (how much so is still undefined). I have difficulty seeing it, but then, that's the point. He may not see me the way I see me. Neither does my friend see me the way I see me. And perhaps, I do not see myself so clearly. I see all the faults, measure it against those ridiculous ads that make me want to stab my computer screen, rather than seeing what might be good and pleasing about myself. And I won't qualify that last statement, no matter how much I want to.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?
In my Sunday School this week, we watched a video of a speaker named Voddie Baucham. I think it's the best Sunday School I've had in a long time. Baucham is a good speaker: humorous, eloquent, concise. He spoke on why the question, "Why do you believe the Bible to be true?" was the most important question a Christian could answer, as it is the basis for everything we believe. His answer, which I totally agreed with, that the Bible is an accurate historical document written by 40 eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eye witnesses in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek on the Africa, Asian, and European continents over the course of 1500 years, is not the point I want to make today. (And, by the way, he said it much more eloquently and concisely.)
During the course of his sermon he mentioned the fact that Jesus made this statement on the cross: Eli, eli, lema sabachthani? Which is Aramaic, and translated into English, means My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Now, over the course of many years I have always heard about how God had to turn His back on Christ, His Son, His own Person, because Christ took our sins upon him in the moment of his crucifixion and God could not be with sin because of His righteous nature. (Hence, our predicament.) But Mr. Baucham brought up something else that I had never put together before, and subsequently left me with a funny expression: the cross between a grin and a hanging mouth.
Mr. Baucham pointed out that chapters and verses in Scripture are only a recent invention: since the Reformation period, or perhaps later (I can't remember the exact time). So, during Christ's lifetime, and pretty much any time before chapters and verses, people referred to a passage by the beginning verse in the passage. He then went on to point out that the words, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me," are the beginning to Psalm 22. The very psalm many refer to as the crucifixion psalm.
In this psalm, written by King David hundreds of years before Christ, before Romans, before crucifixion, David writes of an event he would have known little about. The psalm details the events of Christ crucifixion in startling fashion (at least for those who are skeptical of prophecy). It describes a man delivered to his enemies to be mocked, surrounded by Gentiles and enemies, being poured out like water, his heart melting within him (Christ's heart likely burst during the crucifixion and killed him b/c separated blood and water flowed out when they pierced his side); he thirsts, they divide his garments, his hands and feet are pierced, he can count his bones (they did not break Christ's bones on the cross, unlike the others), and so on. It's actually quite detailed, and fulfilled in the Gospel accounts.
Christ refers to the opening lines of this psalm upon the cross. The Jews among the bystanders, especially males who had been educated under the rabbinical system, would have known that this is the opening line to this psalm. And they should have realized that it was being fulfilled in their midsts.
This is not the first time Christ proclaimed Scripture fulfilled in His Person in the midst of the Jews. In Nazareth, Christ read Isaiah 61:1-2 to the Jews gathered at the synagogue and proclaimed if fulfilled in their midst (Luke 4:16-30). I had never considered it before, had never put it together before, but Christ was still pointing those who would hear them to the truth of His purpose: that He had come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not abolish them (Matthew 5:17).
During the course of his sermon he mentioned the fact that Jesus made this statement on the cross: Eli, eli, lema sabachthani? Which is Aramaic, and translated into English, means My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Now, over the course of many years I have always heard about how God had to turn His back on Christ, His Son, His own Person, because Christ took our sins upon him in the moment of his crucifixion and God could not be with sin because of His righteous nature. (Hence, our predicament.) But Mr. Baucham brought up something else that I had never put together before, and subsequently left me with a funny expression: the cross between a grin and a hanging mouth.
Mr. Baucham pointed out that chapters and verses in Scripture are only a recent invention: since the Reformation period, or perhaps later (I can't remember the exact time). So, during Christ's lifetime, and pretty much any time before chapters and verses, people referred to a passage by the beginning verse in the passage. He then went on to point out that the words, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me," are the beginning to Psalm 22. The very psalm many refer to as the crucifixion psalm.
In this psalm, written by King David hundreds of years before Christ, before Romans, before crucifixion, David writes of an event he would have known little about. The psalm details the events of Christ crucifixion in startling fashion (at least for those who are skeptical of prophecy). It describes a man delivered to his enemies to be mocked, surrounded by Gentiles and enemies, being poured out like water, his heart melting within him (Christ's heart likely burst during the crucifixion and killed him b/c separated blood and water flowed out when they pierced his side); he thirsts, they divide his garments, his hands and feet are pierced, he can count his bones (they did not break Christ's bones on the cross, unlike the others), and so on. It's actually quite detailed, and fulfilled in the Gospel accounts.
Christ refers to the opening lines of this psalm upon the cross. The Jews among the bystanders, especially males who had been educated under the rabbinical system, would have known that this is the opening line to this psalm. And they should have realized that it was being fulfilled in their midsts.
This is not the first time Christ proclaimed Scripture fulfilled in His Person in the midst of the Jews. In Nazareth, Christ read Isaiah 61:1-2 to the Jews gathered at the synagogue and proclaimed if fulfilled in their midst (Luke 4:16-30). I had never considered it before, had never put it together before, but Christ was still pointing those who would hear them to the truth of His purpose: that He had come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not abolish them (Matthew 5:17).
I love red letters
Red lettering for Christ's words in the Bible make it so easy to find one of his quotes. All Bibles should have them.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Truth to tell
I can't claim any real coolness in that the title of this blog is not really part of my lexicon. Among the wide variety and numerous words I have at my disposal, wordisbawn is not originally one of them. I found it on a slang dictionary when I was checking for negative connotations of my URL. And I liked it.
According to http://www.slangsite.com/slang/W.html the definition is as follows:
When someone comes up with a new idea or news, this is what he/she'll say.
So, an example might be, "Hey, at youth group, the girls totally dominated the dot-game, wordisbawn."
If there is anything more to it, I don't want to know.
According to http://www.slangsite.com/slang/W.html the definition is as follows:
When someone comes up with a new idea or news, this is what he/she'll say.
So, an example might be, "Hey, at youth group, the girls totally dominated the dot-game, wordisbawn."
If there is anything more to it, I don't want to know.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)