Lady in Waiting?

One of our pastors at Shoreline, Scott, just got back from Uganda, where he and three other SoCal guys went to teach theology to a group of pastors there. Apparently, one of the more interesting (read: funny to share with the crew back home) conversations they had with those men was about dating--how they choose a wife versus what we do here. The advice of the Ugandan men to the single American guys of the group was--just pick one. Reactions to this from our lunch table varied--laughter, nodding, eyes rolling. One of the girls backed their idea with her parents' story: he was 30, he knew that she was a good Christian girl, they weren't really in love, but they got married anyway. When I chimed in with "that's sad," I was silenced by, "well, they're still together." Not silenced by the tone of response...but it really made me think. Just pick one?

Gut reaction: well of course that doesn't work here because women have a say in being picked, and whether that's good or bad or just different, it is what it is. Guys can't "just pick one" because the girl may very likely veto. Hence, dating is born. Now for arguments' sake, let's say that it would be better if our lives were like they were a hundred or so years ago when a man went to the father, bartered with cows and crops, and came home with a new bride. Maybe the problem, as someone suggested, is that we, as women, won't just go with the one who comes along to pick us--that we are always wondering if there's someone better out there...

Is the meaning of the title starting to click with you yet? Women raised in the conservative Christian church are well versed in the idea of patiently waiting for their Prince. After all, a "daughter of the King" should "guard her heart" because "true love waits," etc. etc. Now, these are great ideas--purity is commanded in the Bible and I don't think any of what we've been teaching young girls in the church is far from the mark. I'll be the first to attest to how learning this stuff personally kept me out of a good deal of trouble in Jr. High and High School, but my question is, then, how does this fit in with "just pick one"? On to the bigger question:

To wait or not to wait..?

First I should lay out some parameters for the hypothetical I'm working on. So you have a girl. For example's sake, let's call her "Meredith." Now Meredith knows several equally-qualified, good Christian guys. Let's call them "--ok maybe they can remain nameless...So Meredith is sitting around like a good Lady in Waiting--waiting on one of them to start pursuing. And when one of them does, one of the quality ones, should Meredith just go along with it? Is godliness the only qualification to consider? And even if attraction and common interests aren't important--how does Meredith go about deciding when someone is "godly enough?"

Awkward 3rd person references aside, how much is a girl supposed to wait for? If the man is supposed to "just pick one," then shouldn't we just say yes? Now, I haven't counted the number of question marks I've used so far today, but for fear that I might reach my per-post question-quota, I'll start working through some answers...

Answer #1: Clearly, the problem with our engagement process is that the bartering-with-the-father part has been cut out of the equation, so now we have to figure things out some other way--bartering becomes dating--and we want to know what a guy has to offer us before we agree to tie any knots.

Answer #2: This leaves us with new problems to consider: some of us suck at bartering. And there probably will ALWAYS be someone better out there somewhere. And unless I'm the only retarded girl in all of girlkind, it's not so simple to get the heart and mind to sync up...or the heart and mind to sync with his heart and mind...or any other awkward combination thereof. If we're going to be doing all this waiting, we better know what it is we are waiting for--and last time I checked, God's hand hadn't etched any names on my wall or anything like that, leaving me to trust in my limited wisdom, my gut feelings, advice from others and chance. Colmery's probably right about us not praying for what we really want because we fear it might be answered. I won't get a deposit back if there's a name mysteriously carved into whatever joke of a building material comprises the walls of my room. But, God, maybe a little less dramatically destructive form of revelation? I don't think I'll get charged for burning bushes since those are technically not our responsibility...

My Final Answer: If anyone wants to marry me, he can bring some goats over to my house in Texas and take it up with my dad. Or hey...I'll make it even easier and nominate Scott and Lara as my stand in parents (despite the fact that they are really only like 5 years older than me) and he can consult them for my asking price.

Which is 3 carats. And beachfront property. And a hot body. That likes to dance.

Ok maybe I do want just a little say in this...

Me, on the phone with my mom: "I'm like...a real woman!!"

Yes, friends, I have officially become a woman today. Yeah, that's right--I made my first turkey and it was AMAZING...if I do say so myself. Actually Justine says so as well, so you can take it up with her. Clearly, conquering a turkey completely validates my proficiency as a woman, and this means that I am now officially available for marriage proposals. (though I do recommend going through my Daddy first... Hey--I'm Southern. Whatcha gonna do?)

So this was my first Thanksgiving sans family (ok last year I wasn't with my fam either, but I had Inge and the rest of the Hergenrather crew as a worthy stand-in). Justine and I made plans for today's shin-dig, and in true Meredith/Justine fashion, we even dressed the part. Facebook will have the pictures soon enough, but let me just say that my trophy-wife attire made a re-appearance, only this time it included an apron, oven mitts, turkey and dressing, deviled eggs, and cranberry sauce. And honestly, I was perfectly in my element, dancing around the kitchen like a crazy person--waving knives, chopping onions, calling Mom and Dad and Neil and Grandmom... We made a ghetto/Christmas mix to set the mood and I just tried not to kill anyone. Justine was true to form as well. Perhaps my favorite moment of hers--classic Justine really--is the mental image of her in a fabulous, black sweater-dress and Aldo stilettos: with one hand she holds her cell phone to her ear, and the other grips a rolled issue of Vogue for dear life as she tries to kill a spider. I can still hear the squeals and screams. It was really so upper-middle class chic that I can hardly take it...ahh Justine.

Another perfect day of debauchery.

My Ladies

I just want to take a moment to brag about all of the incredible women in my life. Yesterday I was talking to a guy friend about a mutual friend of ours, also male, when the guy I was talking to began to tell me about "what a stud" our friend is. As he spoke, I wondered when I last praised a girlfriend of mine, either to her face or to someone else. It's a terrible shame that, as women, we rarely do that. Are we afraid that if we speak highly of another girl, it somehow takes away from our own "glory"? And what is our glory anyway? Those of you tempted to scoff and call this cheesy, please don't. I'm kind of in that boat right now as I try to write this...because I'm tired of people trying to heal my wounds with church catch-phrases that seem so dead before they are even voiced. But please read my honesty into this.

So, girls--yall should know that you are beautifully and wonderfully created by a God that wants to pursue and allure you in a way that you could never imagine--in a way that no man on this earth will ever be able to do. I am so blessed to have so many teachers and mentors--women who have taught me so much about godliness. Don't you dare let this world tell you that you have no value. You are worth so much more than the meager fairy-tales that life tells us to chase after.

Dad--Mom is quite the catch. You're a lucky guy. Neil, so are you. And the other Cooper/Johnson men--the ladies in our family are legit. What shining examples of the poise and beauty that died with the old South--those lost arts that these women exemplify...and the strength with which they support the people in their lives.

Men of Shoreline--I wonder sometimes if yall have any idea how incredible the women in our church are. I hope that you all get the opportunity to see firsthand their passion for the ministry God has allowed us to be a part of. I love seeing how eager these girls are to seek God and serve. And I can't tell you how often I've heard them speak of how they want to be better sisters to yall and learn to encourage yall.

My baby sister, my best girlfriends, and the women with whom I am lucky enough to interact--I don't tell yall enough that I love you. But I do. Our men are trying. And this world isn't perfect so they aren't ever going to quite get it right, but please remember that your worth isn't measured by their approval. Let them lead, pursue, and love you, ladies, because you do deserve to be loved in the way that God teaches men to love. More people should be bragging about how cool yall are. Because you are.

Pressure, Preaching....Au Pair?

Sorry to disappoint all of yall who have been waiting for my further thoughts on Sunday, but I really haven't had everything together this week like I had hoped. It figures, of course, that any time I start to think that life might slow down just long enough for me to catch my breath and catch up on a little blog-musing, I get slammed again. I shouldn't be surprised. I signed up for all of this--my school workload, my work workload...my other work's workload...

To finish up my sermon thoughts, I wanted to mention a couple of the other ideas we threw around on Monday night: how people often get apathetic about Jesus because he's not personal to them and my personal soapbox of late about how pathetically selfish I am--a revelation I really should have had a long time ago. Brian and Scott keep talking about how nothing is about us...it's about God. And I swear I'm listening and I think I'm applying all this stuff till I look up again and realize how far away I am from where I want to be. I want to be the kind of person who is never depressed because I am too focused on the blessings I have and how I can bless others. I want to be so overjoyed by others' success that I forget my own. It's funny how the basics are so simple...yet so frustratingly elusive. When it's been a week since I really sat down with God to read His word, I can't seem to understand why I've "lost" that passion to do so. Just the other day I spent an hour-ish in one of our campus cafes listening to worship music and writing out my prayers. As I glance over the words on those pages, why is it that they seem kind of foreign this morning? Maybe today is one of my more Israelite-esque moments. Last week I watched with awe as God brought me through sea after sea on dry ground...and today I'm packing up manna like it's my job--bread that I know is going to rot by tomorrow. I don't know if I'll ever remain permanently in the "personal" state with Jesus because I keep slipping back into apathy.

Ironically, though, I am also currently in this bizarre state of restlessness, and I hope it's not because of this that I seem to have hit on what I want to do next September when I am finished with school. I got this seemingly brilliant plan on Monday during my German class for how to get myself into the country, where I can be closer to my friends from Sprachcamp. I've played around with the idea of moving over there after graduation but was unsure how I would be able to get a job with barely conversational German skills. Then I realized that if I moved there as an au pair (live-in nanny), then not only would I be in the country, but I would get to play house-mom while I'm at it. What could be more perfect for me? I registered myself that night on a myspace-like website where families and potential au pairs can search each other's profiles and arrange details for a work contract. I want to do something crazy and I want to change the world and I want monumental adventures. So it seemed like a good idea at the time...

I want so badly to know deeply and shine brightly how personal and passionate Jesus is within me. I wish life always looked like seas parting, but I know somewhere in the back of my mind that waiting on new bread each morning is an equally great miracle.

Lord, au pair or not, teach me to delight in Your daily blessings, wait patiently on Your timing, and see each moment as the great adventure it is.

About the Sermon: Accepting Jesus as He Defines Himself

I absolutely adore my church. God has totally blessed my life with all of the people who have become my family at Shoreline. One of the things I have really enjoyed this semester is our women's Bible study, which meets on Monday nights to talk about the sermon from the day before. Between this and subscribing to our podcast (I love technology), I have been more consistant in carrying the message with me throughout the week.

So this week's sermon, via Brian Colmery, was quite a doosey (how do you spell that word??). We covered all of chapter 7 of the book of John, which is a lot of proverbial ground, making the sermon kind of thick. You can check it out on the website, although the end cuts out because of mic malfunction. One of the things I really appreciate and admire about Brian and Scott (our pastors) is that they are committed to teaching truth. So this week was awesome in that I learned a lot about what is really going on in the chapter. It's not some feel-good motivational speech, but actual truth, from the source. (Here a digression: I'm so over being spoon-fed a sermon. I want something that I have to chew. Maybe even some gristle here and there. As Christians, I think that we go to church for two primary functions: fellowship and teaching. We get to commune together as we also learn more about God. Now, I love a good faith, love, etc. talk every now and again, but why rely on funny stories and some random verses that are pulled out of context, when you could legitimately walk through the Bible (ie: the source). If I read the book of John on my own, there's no way I'd get as much out of it as I do on Sundays...because I don't know all the background, original text, etc. that would make it make sense. Yet at the same time, I've taken home Brian and Scott's messages each week this semester for some further mastication--having learned what the text says, I can work with God throughout the week to figure out how to make that truth a reality in the day-to-day) Ok--back to plain font. I was just finishing up my introduction about how fabulous Shoreline is, not because of anything we do, but out of the grace and blessing of the Lord (yeah, I've been listening to the sermons ;). Now on to my topic...

Brian intro-ed by talking about today's all-too-PC focus on identity: you know, all those cliche terms about "not putting on a mask," and accepting people for who they are. "No judgment." "Whatever works for you." The list goes on and on--and don't get me wrong, these aren't bad ideas--they are what they are...but just stay with me on this for a second...

Here Brian transitions (and beautifully I might add) from intro-anecdote to the main point. Like attention-getter-->bridge-->thesis in a by-the-book essay (sorry, I teach high school English). Throughout chapter 7, we see about 13 different responses to who Jesus is--all of which are people's assumptions or attempts to define Jesus on their own terms.

Here is where my mind, as it is infamous for, begins ticking--my logic follows that clearly the Pharisees and other stupid people living in Jesus day were not as mature, modern, and politically correct as we are today, since they failed to listen to Jesus define himself and take him as is. Just like the Israelites and Moses, it's easy for me to quickly condemn the Pharisees for their ignorant, close-minded behavior. Until I realize that I am EXACTLY like them, I tend to scoff at the nation who walks through a parted sea, then walks away from their Promised Land, thinking that the God who can part seas won't be powerful enough to drive out some 9-foot men. Yet this time I think I have a one-up on these just-like-us-today "back to the Bible" guys. Brian asks us, if Jesus were to come in today, would we accept him? In all likelihood, he'd be way outside our little box of what church people should be. Now this is where I start to get all gloaty about having the upper hand--I'm a theatre person. And as everyone knows, theatre people LOVE all that is weird, freakish, and odd. Now, the train of thought screeches to a halt. "But Meredith," says another of my inner voices, "You and I both know that people today are equally as crappy as back then, so there must be a catch." Indeed, that me is correct.

Lest you too should think that we're somehow cooler than the Pharisees for our open-mindedness, I shall explain. Granted, we probably would let Jesus define himself. We let everyone define themselves--but then we throw in this completely illogical catch: "whatever works for you...oh that's great...yes, that may be true for you, but..." I can be beautifully modern by accepting even the most vile people as they are...but I don't have to like them. Perhaps today we would let Jesus be Jesus, but that can't be where it stops. There are many people in my life who I accept exactly as they are...and then there are the people that I love for who they are.

Let Jesus be who he is...and love him for exactly that. His grace, his peace, his goodness, his power, his wrath. These must go hand in hand because accepting a person does not imply loving every quirk of their personality--their good qualities along with the flaws. While we are called to love despite the evil traits in others, we don't love those traits themselves. What's great is that with Jesus, there aren't any flaws, so we are able to love ALL of him.

On that note, see the next post...

Restless

I hadn't listened really to this song since I got it on a burned CD at the end of last year...and what's so funny about it to me is that I don't really even aspire to go to New York, but for some reason this morning as I was listening to it on my way to work, I got this crazy urge to get back on the 10 and drive East to somewhere new. What I find so funny about myself is that I can't be content to save my life...and I'm not talking necessarily about being content with the things I have or relationships (although those are struggles too). What I mean is that any time I'm still for too long I start, I start to feel this aching to do something crazy--like go cliff jumping or sneak Bibles into a closed country. I don't like to feel trapped, and I especially hate feeling stagnant.

People keep asking me what I'm going to do when I graduate in August--and I do have a plan, but it doesn't look like so many people think it should. My advisor said I should visit a career counselor, apparently one of those great resources that connects me to the Trojan family so I can find those 40 thousand dollar contacts that I'm apparently paying for. Ashamedly, I didn't give her the strait answer about "what I want to do with my life." I guess I just wanted to avoid the awkwardness of trying to explain to her that having a career doesn't really matter to me. In fact, I don't really care much about what kind of job I have...I mean, I do want to work somewhere that I enjoy, but I have so many ideas of what that could look like. And even if I do hit on a dream job at some point, I'll probably still get restless within it. I enjoy change. I enjoy not knowing where I'll be next. And there really aren't any corporate ladders, or any other type for that matter, that I'm looking to climb. Mostly, I just have a list of things that sound cool.

This might be why I can't seem to stick around here in college for four years like everyone else. I've accomplished the school thing, and I'm ready to move on to something else. Now, something interesting to consider is how this relates to the Shampoo Theory. Wayy back in my archives, there is a post about how I can't commit: to shampoo, a hair color, etc, which is probably why I've never been able to commit to any guy. So does being restless mean I can't commit. I guess it would seem so. Of course the honest truth of the Shampoo theory (which by the way, I've had the same shampoo for quite some time now) is that it's only half-serious, and all joking aside, I know exactly who I want when it comes to guys. Right now, I guess God wants to teach me patience, a lesson that I've been learning since, like...birth. Will I get restless about that, too? Have I in the past? No...not really. Getting tired of a stagnant place in life is completely different than getting tired of a person...probably because people are constantly changing and growing. Learning a person is intrinsically adventurous. Perhaps there is hope for me yet :)

Dream Like New York
Tyrone Wells

So many dreams come and go
We blink our eyes time flies by and we don't know
Whatever happened to those childhood years
When we thought we could fly
Gotta keep those dreams alive

And dream like New York
As high as the skyline
Aim for the stars above those city lights
I wanna dream like New York
I'm running down Broadway
Gotta catch the next train
I'm making my way

I race to work again today
From nine to five I only strive to stay awake
But the child inside me dares to believe I still can fly
Can't let those dreams just die.

I gotta dream like New York
As high as the skyline
Aim for the stars above those city lights
I wanna dream like New York
I'm running down Broadway
Gotta catch the next train
I'm making my way

How many times have you tried and failed
Have you watched your dreams slip away
But every hero falls and every soldier crawls
And every dreamer dreams again
Gotta dream again

Go on and dream like New York
As high as the skyline
Aim for the stars above those city lights
Go on and dream like New York
You run on down Broadway
Catch the next train
And go make your way

Go on and dream like New York
As high as the skyline
Aim for the stars above those city lights
You gotta dream like New York
You run on down Broadway
Catch the next train
You go make your way

Go make your way...

This Weird Place

I've been meaning to write this week but I have floated around in such a bizarre state of mindsoul lately that I hadn't really come up with any ideas that I feel would make a valuable (read: appropriate to blog about) post. I think God is trying to do something in me right now, but I've yet to figure out what that is. Maybe there's something in the air...I dunno, but whatever it is that's going on...something about it isn't quite as it should be. I think.

See, I'm having trouble sleeping and my mind is constantly racing every which way--even more so than usual, and with an eerie sort of bent to it. Then there's my dreams...which span from watching a good friend of mine die to being hunted by who-knows-what in some sort of amusement park attraction-thing. (Actually, that last one would make a pretty freaky movie script if I felt inspired to write it down.) Not that having weird dreams is out-of-the-ordinary for me either...but all of this is on such an escalated scale that it's really throwing me off. You'll have to excuse my completely ineffective attempt to pin point what it is that I'm trying so hard to write about, but the bottom line is--something is amiss.

At the same time, though, I have enjoyed how this uncomfortability has prompted me to pray more...and I'm listening to Shane and Shane on my iTunes like it's my job. It's like--I feel like something big is about to happen or is happening. And it kind of scares me, but at the same time it is really wonderful to yearn for God in this way. I really wish that my attitude were like this more often. Granted, my prayers feel so repetitive that they even bore me sometimes, but there is a fervency about them that I wish would manifest on a more regular basis.

Anyways, I shall keep you posted if I have any grand epiphanies.