worry&anxiety vs. prayer&thanksgiving

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."

Philippians 4:6 has been killing me lately. Of all the one-sentence baby verses I have memorized, this one escapes me more often than not. Worry isn't something I deal with consistently-- it shows up in awkward seasons of life and consumes me for a while, and then after all the plan-making is done, well...then it's done. No more worries. No more need for Philippians 4:6.

Ehhhhhh. That's probably not so good. Bible verses aren't exactly intended to be seasonal.

So right now I find myself in a huge, nasty, consuming season of worry and anxiety. Last week I was so stressed that I was making myself sick. It's mostly worldly plan-making that has me consumed. Planning just inevitably involves lots of thinking, which easily slides into worry. Trying to plan my study abroad/internship in Madrid this summer has enough worry in it for about five of me. Loans, plane tickets, applications, recommendation letters, language tests, background checks, orientations I'm unable to attend, and extra travel plans have pretty much filled my anxiety quota for spring.

Even more worrisome to me is anticipating what will actually happen once I'm there. My last home-stay experience was strange at best, and so I'm pretty darn nervous as to where I'll be living. I'm nervous about doing well at whatever internship I get. I laughed at my application-- I'm trying to pass myself off as a competent ESL teacher by explaining that I've taken one class about teaching. Realistically, I could probably handle a class pretty well, but I am TERRIFIED at the idea of teaching real live human beings this summer.

Apart from my study abroad, I'm trying to get things together for next fall, since when I get back, I'll have like 6 days before class starts. So I'm working on signing a lease and furnishing a house, finding a car for next fall. Annnnd passing all my current classes. And as always, maintain and grow important relationships.

So maybe it's this season where I try and break this habit of ignoring God's command to replace worry with prayer and thanksgiving. Sometimes prayers for really tangible things sound funny to me, almost whiny, or something. Which I know has to be another lie I struggle with believing-- that God doesn't want to hear about what I'm worrying about. But he tells us to pray about everything, and God isn't a liar, so he must really mean EVERYTHING, huh? Likewise, sometimes I forget that "Don't worry about anything" really means "Don't worry about ANYTHING." My mind interprets it as, "Don't worry about where you'll retire!" and "Don't worry about the long-term effects of health care reform!" and other incredibly far-off things that I don't struggle with worrying about anyway. I think it's time to interpret this verse to mean, "Don't worry about loans" and "Don't worry about interning in Madrid" and "Don't worry about your living situation" and "Don't worry about having a car."

Don't worry about ANYTHING........Okey. I'll try.

forty days (+)

It's time for Lent! After ceasing to consider myself Catholic, I kinda thought I'd never do Lent again. I felt like Lent was pointless if it was the only time of the year I sought discipline for God. I wanted to bring Christ-like discipline into my life year-round, not just in the springtime-- but we all know how hard that is. And right now, having a period of focusing on discipline would be GREAT. So I've skipped out on Lent for the past two years, but this year imma do it. It's a beautiful opportunity to start on something I've been thinking about for a while. Last week in small group, I mentioned there are lots of little areas of life that remain undisciplined, that I just haven't given to God.

One of these is my eating habits. While techinically being a relatively healthy eater these days, I have unusual restrictions on my diet that I just blatantly ignore. I have a chronic pain disorder called Interstitial Cystitis. If you've ever heard of it, it's probably because your grandma has it-- I'm one of the youngest cases recorded in the U.S. It's weird, I'll explain in person sometime if you ask me about it. And-- if you're reading this and you didn't know this about me before, don't worry, it's not fatal or debilitating in any way. It's just annoying.

Anyway, there's an extremely restricted diet that people with IC are supposed to follow. Basically, you can eat like 3% of foods in the world. Anything acidic, anything processed, anything artificial, anything carbonated, anything with lots of sugar, anything with lots of salt, anything caffeinated, anything with vinegar-- basically anything with flavor-- all out. What's left, you might ask? Pears, blueberries, and honeydew melon are the only okay fruits. Almost all vegetables have low acidity, which is nice. Meat without flavoring or sauce is okay. Breads & pastas made without preservatives are okay. As far as drinks go, your options are water, milk, decaf peppermint tea, pear juice and carrot juice (both of which are actually delicious!)

Following this diet is pretty much your only chance for the IC to go into remission, which you'd think would be incentive enough for me to do it. But I've never been intentional about it- it's HARD to say no to normal, healthy, seemingly okay foods all day long. I was diagnosed in 2006, and while I've cut out the super acidic stuff, like orange juice and lemonade, you will still see me eating apples and salads and chocolate and drinking coffee on a regular basis.

So then, Lent. My idea came about last week when I was thinking about making this issue part of honoring God in everything I do. He has given us beautiful, strong, glorious bodies as vessels to live out his truths and glorify him. And never did he promise health or perfection. So these weird sucky conditions that I have? They present not problems or annoyances, but opportunities: to grow in discipline, to glorify God, to learn to love him better.

So for the next forty days, and hopefully beyond, I am going to try and move through each day saying no to apples and bananas and Cherry Coke (ahh...) and salad dressing and spaghetti sauce. Oh man, and coffee. Shoot. I'm going to be praying that God align my desires in this situation with his, that he would bend my heart to know his perfect love for me, that this desire for discipline would flow from a heart set upon his glory.

Prediction: I'm probably gonna become one of those people who always have a Klean Kanteen in their hand.

it's almost springtime, right?

a SNOWSTORM? tomorrow?

gahhhhh. I think I'm about ready to throw in the towel with Michigan. Since coming to college, I have despised the cold like never before. I used to LIKE winter. My parents used to have to force me to come inside for fear of me getting frostbitten. I loved the cold and the snow, and sledding, and making snowmen, and ice-skating in the ditches and swamps around my house, and building complex igloos (complete with ice shelves, chairs, and refrigerators. booyah) and making snow ice cream, and even snowshoeing.

But then I came to school, and now winter means trudging slowly through the snow to class and headaches from the cold and wind. My body reacts differently to cold than it used to, too-- I am now a violent, violent shiverer. I shake intensely and my teeth chatter. And wearing boots-- I mean, dressy boots are great, but wearing boots because you have to just stinks. My boots (which are in the 3% of non-Ugg boots on campus) have already been glued back together once. Slush and salt are nasty catalysts to shoe wear-and-tear, and I have several pairs to prove it.

Slush is also fantastic in the way it changes everyone's walk. My roommate and I noticed in December that our winter walks look hilarious and ridiculously abnormal. We don't use normal, relaxed leg and feet motions. We both kinda tense up our legs, clench our knees still at a slight angle, and simply pull each leg in front of the other. Hunched over, hands in the pockets... It's kind of amusing to watch people you know well move around in the winter, because we all age about 60 years and appear to be afflicted with temporary arthritis.

I just want it to be warm. Forever.

academia slapped me in the FACE

You know that friend you never see?

The one you used to see several times a week, or even several times a day, but somehow now their days are filled with things you didn't even know they did? And when you finally get ahold of them, it's like, "Oh, well-- this week I'm available on...oh, wait, no. I could do Thursday between 7:30-8:00 in the morning. Coffee?"

I'm very reluctantly going to predict that this might be me this semester.

I have never been a particularly busy person. And never, ever, ever before has school required me putting forth actual effort. I blogged about this when I first began writing on here before... (http://emilyfluck.blogspot.com/2009/10/philosophy-of-apathy.html)

(And no, sorry to disappoint-- I don't know how to do fancy links yet. Someday i'll be a sophisticated blogger. But it is not this day! This day we...*cough*)

But yeah. I'm not used to feeling consumed by schoolwork. And here we are on day two of Spring Semester 2010, and I already want to cry at how much work I have to do tonight. All of my current classes are structured in a way that my usual study habits (or lack thereof) just won't cut it. I'll probably total about 2 hours of reading per day for various classes. I'll have assignments due on a daily basis. Basically, every day, I'll be spending more time doing schoolwork than I would in a week last semester. Or ever, for that matter. Seriously you guys, I don't know who I AM after yesterday and today! I really think I have to be diligent, and studious, and disciplined, and all of those qualities good students have that I never cared to attain for myself.

For real, academia gave me a good slap in the face today. My schedule was CRAMMED. I worked a shift early this morning, went to class for 4 hours, took a few hours to babysit, had dinner, and am now sitting down, finally, to do my work. I even have a big-girl, real-world planner now, into which I have already copied all of my work times, class times, exams, syllabus dates, etc. And it is FULL. And there's nothing I can drop.

I totally recognize that this could be a huge growing experience for me. This sort of coercion towards improvement is something I've seen God do in my life before. I think it's possible that humans- at least I- can thrive in this sort of situation, being between a rock and a hard place and really going through times of sacrifice and humility while working towards something you didn't even want or realize you needed. I would never be driven towards academic discipline unless it was absolutely necessary. Like now.

So I guess that's the joy I've found in this situation so far! I mean, God certainly promised to draw his people towards completion, to constantly transform them. Which is wonderful, and I'm grateful and full of praise for my constant, unchanging, perfect God who wants me to be like him. But I'm not exactly all smiles about how this semester is looking, and so if you're so inclined, prayers for a peaceful heart and perseverance in discipline this semester would be awesome.

And if it's mid-February and I haven't seen you since December and you want to get coffee at 7:30 am on a Thursday, let me know. :)

[insert color here]

I don't know about the rest of you-- but I already knew that breast cancer existed. And that, it seems to me, is the only thing it's possible for Facebook's post-your-bra-color-in-your-status phenomenon to "raise awareness" about. I'm not learning anything new about breast cancer: no interesting statistics, no prevention tips, nothing about donating to non-profits.

The only thing I am learning is what color your bra is. Which likely provokes a mental image of you, whoever you are, in your bra. And while the majority of facebook users wouldn't care at all, I have at least a few good guy friends who work hard at keeping their minds pure, and probably don't appreciate fighting off all of these mental images of girls they are friends with.

Just an opinion. Feel free to debate me on this one. And please, if you're reading this and participated, please don't think I am condemning you, or think less of you. At ALLLL. I'm absolutely not. I guess I'm just encouraging putting thought into what you do with your facebook page: Where did this phenomenon come from? Is it really helping anything?

My friend Mike Nichols said this in a recent Facebook status conversation: "A cure for breast cancer is a wonderful cause and I think we should raise money for it, but there's got to be a better way. What organization is putting it on? How do we know that they're legit? What if some teenage guy or dirty old man thought that it would be a good idea to find a way to get girls to post their bra colors? I mean, what legit organization would risk their reputation on such a ploy? I would believe it if it's a company that makes bras. That would be a clever way to gain product information. But honestly...if breast cancer is the only motivation for this idea, I would be very surprised. It would be pragmatism at its best/worst."

but you promised!

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of promise.

We have a God who makes a lot of promises to us. Seriously, the Bible is fulllllll of them! Promises of forgiveness, eternal salvation, peace, deliverance in days of trouble...He promises that he will never leave us or forsake us. Intense, huh? And we can be assured that he is an unwavering, good, and perfect God, and that his promises are finite and sound. They will not be forgotten. He will not fail to deliver those promises to each and every one of us.

So then I realized: People make a lottttttt of promises, too. In the form of spoken words, yeah...but they come from everywhere. A hug, a smile, a repeated action, a gift, emotional and physical intimacy. Stuff like this can feel like a promise, I think, even if that wasn't the intent. We're always making promises to family and friends, and to ourselves, and sometimes to God.

And so I'm wondering: How did we, human beings-- broken, faulty, flawed creatures-- create this concept of human promise? Because to be frank, our promises SUCK. They cannot even really be promises, can they? If, as the dictionary says, a promise is "a declaration that something will or will not be done; an express assurance on which expectation is to be based," then I'm wondering if humans even have the capacity to make promises. How can we declare that something WILL be done? How can we tell someone "I promise to..." or "I swear I will..." and ask them to base their expectation and hope on our word? We're imperfect, we're sinful, and we certainly aren't all-knowing or all-powerful. What can a promise be apart from God?

Human promises are shaky, shaky things. And we allow them have a lot of weight in our lives. We make serious decisions based on promises we've made and promises others have made to us. Relationships are the framework for pretty much every venture we'll ever make-- and each relationship inevitably springs from promises, whether they're stated explicitly or just implied. Somtimes, broken promises break relationships, and then entire lives can feel broken.

I don't think all this means we shouldn't make promises. It doesn't mean we shouldn't accept promises from others, either. People certainly merit our trust and optimism, and we have such great opportunity to glorify God when we do follow through on a promise. And I'm thinking it'd be hard to get through life without the web of human promises we're all involved in.

But I do think it means we realize the brokenness of people. I think it means we see God and his Godly standard for promise, but hold humans to human standards. It means we offer people grace and love and forgiveness when they break promises. And it means that if you have ever broken a promise, that Jesus offers never-ending forgiveness to you.

I think ultimately, it means that if we claim to follow Christ, then we acknowledge that he CAN and DOES make "a declaration that something will or will not be done; an express assurance on which expectation is to be based." We remember his promises, and we place every ounce of hope we have in him alone. And we absolutely rejoice in this. :)

carrying capacity

So, this isn't the blog I want to be posting. Last week, I was finally writing one that I had been thinking about for about a month, when my beloved macbook, for the first time since we began our blissful and spotless relationship, FROZE! and restarted itself. Boooo. My blog was gone forever. I'll re-write it soon. But here's a thought I had today...

Earlier this fall, I had a conversation with the lovely Kelly Hamelin that continues to creep into my thoughts regularly. Both of us were feeling overwhelmed by the number of friendships we were attempting to develop, maintain, and enjoy. We were kind of lamenting the fact that humans have such a limited capacity for relationships. Think about how many people you know that you'd love to be able to share every day with. There are just too many stinkin' people, and they are all too fantastic!

So often, I have a brief interaction with someone and walk away thinking that I want to pursue a friendship with them. But I just can't. No one can. We just can't constantly add new besties while maintaining every other relationship. It's like we have a carrying capacity. We're kind of like a plane, or a boat, or...I think I'll be a rollercoaster. We're always adding and losing people, bringing some closer, watching some drift away. There's certainly no solid number, not even close...and things like jobs and school and seasons of life make the carrying capacity fluctuate.

We meet so many delightful and beautiful and broken people, and in the midst of running around trying to love everyone, relationships develop without even trying. This world is so temporary; the only things with eternal possibilities are human beings. Relationships have intense purposes in our lives here on earth, and the idea of being intentional in friendship is something I've really enjoyed learning about over the past year.

I don't really have a big grand final point or conclusion to this post. I just was struck again this week by how many wonderful people I know, and how badly I want to spend time with all of them. And that's all. :)