Merry {Day After} Christmas

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders...

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders. Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour too.

{C.S. Lewis- Miracles}

...And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

{Isaiah 9:6}

Thanks Eve

I have discussed before my Community Group; a Bible study of girls my age that meets every Thursday night. I love it- it's a great opportunity both to learn about God and about my friends who share that time.

We did fun, social things over the summer since the teachers who get summers off were in and out on vacation, then met a few weeks ago to get back into a routine with the fall approaching and everyone back in school mode. I may not be in school, but I like when everyone settles back down, sharpens a few #2's and restores sanity to my mind so that I don't pop a blood vessel thinking about how everyone is having the time of their life while I'm at work.

That's a big fear of mine: missing out on fun.

So Thursday night rolled around last week (which was not spent blogging, I know) and as our friends dragged themselves into our house, we fed them semi-stale kettle corn and got into our discussion. Anyone who works or goes to school knows that Thursdays are a conundrum. You are happy that the week's almost over but completely exhausted from all of the working and the waking up early; you're happy to see your friends but your eyes are only half-open.

We all recognize this delirium and abate it as best we can during our hour and a half window of Community Group. This past Thursday we were in our discussion of the first chapter of Luke, one of the Gospels in the New Testament of the Bible, and we got to talking about Mary, who found out she would become pregnant with Jesus, and Zecheriah's wife Elizabeth when she found out after a lifetime of infertility woes that she too would have a child.

Elizabeth went into seclusion during her pregnancy, which segued into how awesome it would be to sit around for months and watch movies and read books while pregnant (unlike women today who work full-time until their water breaks). Since none of us can relate to pregnancy, we then detoured into talking about how women in Biblical times who were "incapacitated" could spend that week out of every month chilling out in the red tent. A better explanation might be that the red tent predated Midol.

What brilliance, we thought, to just let women go hang out together, be hormonal and eat chocolate in peace (or cocoa beans, as someone pointed out that Hershey's was not yet in business). And let's be honest; the ability to have a baby is an amazing gift, but it is a privilege that your body prepares for and recovers from for most of your life.

People paint the red tent to seem like women were shunned back in those days and had to hide out, but we thought it sounded kind of awesome... no complaining to the outside world that your abdomen is staging a coup on your body and affecting your ability to rationalize, no having to say "it's nothing" when someone male asks you why you are in a bad mood and/or crying. Throw in masseuses and central air conditioning and I think we could sell a lot of people on the idea.

Now to convince the outside world we need 4-5 days off every month... we'll have to discuss that at a later meeting.

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

-Gloria Steinem

Thoughts on Faith

Long story short, I've been working on this post for weeks and delayed posting it for no particular reason. Earlier this evening I was at my friend BF's apartment, checking email on my phone after dinner and while checking blog comments, I accidentally deleted two of them (not so accurate with the iPhone touch quite yet) from a bloggers who I did not recognize. One was asking me about my faith, a timely question that ties in quite well with this post, and this part of my life that I have not been as forthcoming with... 

Every Thursday night I meet with ten other girls ("women") my age in something we call Community Group. It is a Bible study that is also an accountability group, and I would also consider it a support system of girls who are part of each other's lives on a daily, and not just weekly basis.

 

My faith is not something, up to this point, that I have discussed on my blog, probably because I feel unfit to do so. I love to read and I love to write, but I've never been able to articulate my faith in an eloquent enough way for my standards. Any writing ability I have though, is a God-given gift, and though I'm no Beth Moore or Big Mama, and it has come to my attention that I've not been completely straightforward about my beliefs in this particular forum. In the simplest of terms: I'm a Christian, and I have been saved by grace through faith. I have a personal relationship with Christ, and whether in life's joyous moments or those when I am brought to my knees in prayer or need of forgiveness, He is with me. His love is the single greatest blessing in my life.

 

The Group I am a part of consists of 10 girls, all my age, who went to three different colleges and all had a link to someone else in the group when we got started. My friends CC and MG went to a leader training seminar some months back, then decided they wanted to try branching off to form one of their own. I walked in the first night last fall to see a friend I have known since childhood, sorority friends and some acquaintances from college, and total strangers. It was the perfect mix. 

Friends in the group are teachers, work in real estate development and management, we have a med student, a grad student studying speech pathology, an auditor, a girl who works in youth ministry, a (bi-lingual) family advocate for a non-profit organization, a design school student, etc. Keeps things interesting, I'll tell you that much to be sure. Thus far we have read a book called Lies Women Believe and are currently studying the book of Galatians... a book which has been humbling me, many times a week, as MK and I try to piece together a cohesive study on this book of the Bible; to understand the historical context of it, understand Paul's mission, sort through various theologian's commentaries and see, through all of that, what it is that we, as 23 and 24-year-old girls are supposed to learn from it. 

I've come to find through meeting with the Group that many people had a similar post-college crisis as I did, asking themselves, "Who am I? What is my purpose? What am I supposed to do with my life? Where did all these decisions come from?" All of these questions either hit you all at once, or drop into your lap one at a time. Either way, you don't understand the magnitude of them until college is over and you're actually forced to make decisions about you're future, to make a "plan". It's been comforting to find that it's not just me experiencing this.

And you know what's funny? Regardless of my planning or intentions, God often likes to remind me that He's got His own plan for me, and by surrendering and trusting Him, I am fulfilling that plan. Time together with the Group is a hiatus I look forward to at the end of every work week, and the ways in which God has allowed us to contribute substantially to one another's lives in the months we have been meeting is further proof of His blessings in my life. 

I'm glad tomorrow is Thursday. 

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

-C.S. Lewis