Dear Idle Reader

I started reading Don Quixote a few weeks ago for the following reasons. One, I love reading! I am a nerd, and I surround myself with nerds, and so I always have to have some literature at hand to read when we decide that we’re bored of the five thousand piece puzzle we’re working on and aren’t in the mood for scrabble or trivial pursuit. Yes, sometimes I hang out with friends and we all just read…together. It’s a beautiful thing. (However, lately I’ve been getting a lot of flack for my special reading voice so it’s usually each reader to him or herself.) My next shot at the NCLEX is in a couple weeks and studying all the time is making me feel crazy again, so I need another book to fall back on when my course book is looking less than appealing. I also happened upon a sale at the bookstore on classics and decided to pick up a couple of the heaviest ones that I haven’t read. The result I’m pretty pumped for, and it’s beginning with Don here.

In his preface to the reader, Miguel de Cervantes addresses his audience with the following introduction.

“Idle reader, without an oath thou mayest believe, that I wish this book, as the child of my imagination, were the most beautiful, sprightly and intelligent production that ever was conceived. But, it was not in my power to contravene the power of nature, in consequence of which, every creature procreates is own resemblance: what therefore could be engendered in my barren, ill-cultivated genius, but a dry, shriveled offspring, wayward, capricious and full with whimsical thoughts peculiar to his own imagination, as if produced in a prison, which is the seat of inconvenience, and home to every dismal sound.”

First of all, I love the way he addresses me as desocupado (idle). This is exactly how I am as a reader. I have no job and thus have plenty of leisure time, and am using that time to read his novel. It hit me for a moment (thanks to an informative footnote) that when this was written many Spaniards were in the habit of cultivating leisure as an end in itself, versus using it for its productivity. I find myself currently much of this same condition. And so I actively decided to make my leisure time more productive so as to not fall into the trap of futility that I seem to be sliding toward.

I was also quite inspired by the way he downplays his own writing and describes the way we create from ourselves. This is a similar idea to that brought up within the first few sections of the novel, when he writes, “Every one is the son of his own works.” What we do is either a product of who we are or makes us who we are. This is interesting for me to think about from my recent frame of reference of feeling a lack of accomplishment. I look at the little I have been able to do in my life and can clearly see how either it illustrated who I was or sculpted who I am. At this point, I began to examine the current endeavors of my life both daily and sporadically and how this exemplifies my own genius and self.

I first considered the fact that I very much so see myself in the missionary role, and love the fact that I have a decent amount of experience on that front that I think very precisely demonstrates my heart. However, I have no planned trips for the future. Does this mean I’m changing? That my priorities have changed? We shall see.

(Please note that this is a post-dated entry, thank you.)

Just Because A Comes Before B Doesn't Mean It's Any Better

Normally I’m a very “go-with-the-flow” type of person. I have a type B personality, and this has often been seen as a weakness in my life, especially during my time at University. My school was overwhelmingly magnetic for type A personas. This made life difficult while I was there. I felt like less of a person because of my lack of motivation and focus. It was also difficult because type A people have a tendency to dislike type B’s because we appear apathetic and at times worthless. Almost all of my professors and classmates were unbearably ambitious, competitive and controlling. This very generalized perception is surprisingly accurate. If you were there, you would agree. Trust me.

So amidst all of these people who would be categorized as type A (and knew it, and were proud of that fact), I was different. Deadlines meant something to me, but not nearly as much as it did to everyone else. And keeping a close eye on my GPA to ensure that it was higher than everyone else’s was just about the last thing on my non-existent to-do list. It got to the point where my professors decided I have ADD and that was why I was different from everyone else. They couldn’t accept that I just had a different core personality. However, being surrounded by type A behavior, I slowly realized that I was far less neurotic than I thought. I saw that everyone was crazy in his own way. And I began to embrace my relaxed and seemingly disengaged natural affect. Once I embraced it I saw all the benefits.

The most obvious way that I saw my different personality work for good was when it came to going on mission trips. While the leader and everyone else were freaking out about every little detail, I was able to take on each challenge with patience. I’m not saying that everyone should be like that for a mission trip, because very little would have gotten done if we didn’t have the Susie Walters of the world to make things happen. But it worked well when everyone else was like that, for me to be a calm and collected force.

Mission trips have a very consistent tendency to change…constantly. We joke that the one thing you can be sure of in missions is that you can’t be sure of anything. There are a million things to be thinking about and most of them are full of worry. But I very rarely worried about these trips.

When I led the first winter break trip, we had no precedent to go from, but I decided that I knew I was going, and if other people signed up, awesome! I put the whole trip in God’s hands, and rolled with it. When I got phone calls the night before that two of the people signed up weren’t coming, I prayed that both of them would meet God where they were and for Him to work just as much in and through them as He would in everyone still going. It ended up being a life-changing trip for most (if not all) of the fourteen or so volunteers we had. It was a good size group and everything worked out. Also, it was the least expensive trip our ministry ever offered! (Okay, enough bragging Samantha.) But it felt good. I looked at what I put together and saw God working in so many ways. And that’s when I realized something. It wasn’t me or my personality that made the trip less stressful and allowed it to work out without anyone going crazy over every little thing, it was the fact that I gave it up to God. And that’s why all our trips worked out so great, because the leader always placed the entire trip in God’s hands.

That is the gift of my type B personality. I can more easily give God the control. I trust Him so entirely, and see that there is nothing I can do to improve what He’s doing except to follow His lead. This comforts me because it helps to see how God has crafted me specifically for His call on my life to missions. I cannot achieve this level of trust however if I’m not in constant prayer. When I skip my quiet time in the morning, I notice. My day becomes less intentional. I thrive on spontaneity, but I also firmly believe that we should be present and intentional in everything we do in this life. So when I decided less than a week before it started, to up and move to Mexico for five months and do a discipleship training school, it was spontaneous and outwardly random. However, I knew it was what God wanted me to do, so was in fact not random at all. We just have a tendency not to understand where God’s plan is going and thus are surprised when it takes us somewhere we never imagined.

Currently I have quite literally no external structure to my life. I’ve loved living like that because it comes naturally for me. However, I’m starting to get frustrated with myself for not being more productive. So I’ve gotten to the point where I have to review what all my type A friends in college taught me, and bring some organization and urgency into my life. I’ve started a more consistent weekly schedule by creating certain events around which to plan, since I don’t have classes or a job to do that for me. I found that planning my life around television shows worked, but then I decided I didn’t need to be watching the television shows and thus lost my dependable timetable of reference. So I am creating a new one. I’ve been going over to my cousin’s house each week to help her out with her kids. This has been doubly awesome because I get so spend more time with that part of my family, and it leaves them a little less stressed, plus there’s a baby! Also, my friend and I want to start a small group Bible study. I’m pretty pumped for this and so once we decide when to have it that will be factored into my vast amount of current free time. I’ve also decided that exercising whenever I feel like it could be turned into a more regular occurrence, along with showering. These things seem so fickle, but they’re all I’ve got. The rest of my time is filled with studying, reading, hanging out with friends, writing, and sewing. I also have been dabbling a little more into practicing my guitar and decided I want to paint more. These are things I want to do all the time, but haven’t had the time for in the past. Now, I have all the time in the world (well, what’s left after studying)!

To try and start off with this better, more productive lifestyle, I have created a to-do list for tomorrow. It’s sad, but I even had to put a wake-up time on the list, because I haven’t had to wake myself up at any particular time for weeks now, and I need to bring that back. I never thought I would voluntarily do that. So here’s to self-improvement, productivity and faking it as a type A!

Dust Myself Off and Try Again

You know those times in your life, or situations that seem utterly perfect, those moments you wish could last far longer than they do? That was this weekend for me.

Most of the “magic” of my last three days is obvious; I was in my favorite place in the world with three of my very favorite people. But past all the new inside jokes and adventures there were other details that made this weekend especially great. We stayed in my family’s cabin in Hayward, WI. This is a remote place off in the north woods with no television or Internet (although there is 3G coverage, I pretended that wasn’t true). And although our sleep schedule was out of whack due to a seven-hour drive that started at 2am Friday morning, I managed to wake up earlier than everyone else and have some Spirit-filled quiet time each day down by the lake. The simplicity of our time in Wisconsin and my sustained discipline to start my days in prayer and Scripture led to an eye-opening weekend for me.

First of all, God really spoke to me about the fact that I have a call on my life that I can’t ignore. I’ve been really struggling lately with the direction my life is going and the slow speed at which this is happening. I feel incapable and nearly powerless to complete the task I’ve spent the last five years working toward and at the same time I have the option to change my plan. I finished nursing school and got my degree, but now it seems impossible for me to get my license. I know I should not feel discouraged by the difficulty I’m having, but I do.

I know I can do all things through Christ because He strengthens me, but I don’t have to do this. I don’t need a nursing license to be a missionary. I don’t need to be a missionary at all. This is my frustration. I feel like I am questioning God’s call on my life, because I’m scared. But it’s not that I’m scared to go to dangerous places, or scared I might get sick, or scared of being in a constant state of financial instability, my fear is that of failure. I want to be the kind of person who can get things right, who is successful in their endeavors, and I feel like the complete opposite of that. I feel like every time I try to do something I fail. But then I look at people like Abraham Lincoln or the Apostle Paul both of whom I consider great men who led successful and world changing lives. Both of them failed, a lot, before they succeeded at those things for which they are remembered.

The failures I have met are not catastrophic, but they do allow me the chance to give up. I didn’t give up on graduating college though I wanted to so badly, and now I have my bachelor’s degree in nursing. A few weeks ago, I failed my licensure exam, and I am determined to keep going until I can be at this same point in reference to my license as I now am to my degree, being grateful that I kept trying. It’s not like I have to go all the way back to the beginning, I just have to pay a couple hundred more dollars and study for a few more weeks and answer questions for a few more hours. Hopefully this next time I get it, but I’m scared because I was so close the last time and I fear I can’t actually do any better.

2 Corinthians chapter 4 addresses this quite precisely. That God has called me to a certain ministry, and the fact that He called me means I shall not lose heart. And although I feel afflicted and perplexed, I shall remain intact and hopeful. My spirit is renewed every day, and these hardships and being forced to get back up and try again refines me and builds character. When I was waiting for my test results I kept thinking, I have already learned what I can from failure. I’ve been through it. It sucks. And I kept trying and now I know that I can do this. So I thought God wouldn’t let me fail again, because there would be no benefit. Now that I’ve had to decide to not give up (again), I realize that facing repeated adversity makes the character growth that much stronger. I am of a bolder conviction now to keep trying, over and over, until I am at last complete with God’s call on my life, which will not be until death or Christ’s return. And I am coming to the realization that failure is probably going to be a constant aspect of my life. But I also know failure is an event, not a person. I am not a failure. It is something I must overcome, not something to which I should succumb. And with God, failure is never forever.

I think one anecdote from this weekend illustrates this entire issue well. My friends and I were driving around old logging trails on a 4x4, when we went down one path that had a hill that looked far too steep for our Ranger to make. Two of my friends were convinced we were going to topple over or get hurt, and so they got out of the Ranger and refused to go. However, my other friend and I were determined to try it, knowing that we might fail. So I drove the Ranger up the hill and we made it to the top with no problem! The other two walked up the hill and got in, and after driving only a few yards down the path, it abruptly ended. So we did a thirty or so point turn and went back down the hill and path. I never stopped trying out new paths no matter how many dead ends we hit. And after we got back to the cabin, we watched the video that one of my friends watching us go up the hill took, and it looks like we’re driving on almost level ground! It didn’t look steep or scary at all. We all laughed at how much we underestimated the Ranger and the next time we went out on it, we drove up and down far steeper hills with success. This is the how I know getting my license will be. I’ll look back on it and laugh at how silly my perspective was. And then continue on to bigger and scarier things with success.

Godliness with Contentment is Great Gain

C. S. Lewis once wrote in a letter, "It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can."

Currently, my lifestyle seems quite ideal to much of society. I can sleep in as late as I want. I have no appointments of which I will have sustaining repercussions from if missed. I have an apparently infinite disposable income. I have no family commitments beyond those I create myself. I honestly have no one that expects anything in particular from me at any time, and can thus do whatever I want, without limit. I have utter freedom.

One would think that I am thus happy. However, I have found myself over the last four months often feeling depressed and discouraged. I feel as if I have nothing to offer the world and no motivation to move forward, or up, or sideways, or in any direction at all. I fill my time with an average of 1.5 films daily and a haphazard pursuit of self-improvement. This has come in many ways, but the way that I am realizing is most pertinent for me is through educating myself on issues of faith and society. Thus, when I discovered Steps of Justice and their Justice Awareness Month prayer guide, I fell in love. Not only does this book give me a schedule and template to follow in regard to social justice issues, but it prompts me with creative ideas to put my increased awareness into action. I would suggest investigating Steps of Justice to anyone who cares about the world around them and wants to help change it for better.

For me though, this has brought be back to the happiness in my life that has been hard for me to grasp. It has provided me with goals to achieve each day, and a framework with which to base my prayers and self-education. I guess this means that I am an outwardly motivated person, and that I do not intrinsically have a desire to do, well, anything. However, I am motivated by God and His call on my life, and He has once more provided exactly what I needed to continue working within His will.

One of my favorite Bible verses is Micah 6:8,

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

This has become a life theme I try to remind myself of often, because this is where I find joy, in my God, and He works in me through justice and mercy and humility. These are all things I am constantly working to improve upon in my life, and that is what I think this time that God has given me is about. In Psalm 37:4 He promises,

"Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart."

What delights my heart is to continue glorifying Him. So it seems we've got a pretty sweet cycle of glorification and delight going on between us. And I wish to continue on this road though I still don't know where it is leading except to eternity with my Father.