choices

Island-Building

~ Alina ~ 12 Comments

When I was twelve, my family and I watched an island being formed.

The lava field on Hawaii’s Big Island looked like the surface of the moon. The black rock, brittle as glass, clawed at our shoes in a landscape where nothing lived. We stopped where the rock turned to a river: a slow ooze of hot lava, glowing dull red beneath its dark crust, hot enough to catch the tips of our walking sticks on fire. We watched it wriggle past our feet to the edge of a cliff, where it plunged into the sea in a waterfall of fire. There, beneath the waves, it was hardening, invisibly adding to the foundations of the Big Island.

Seven months into this freelancing adventure, I’m beginning to think about the cumulative effects of choices. The choices I make today don’t stand alone: they’re built on the choices I made yesterday and last month and last year. To move home after graduation. To pass up jumping for an immediate 9-to-5 job. To take seriously the gift of writing God has given me. All together, these choices start to form something: the new piece of land I am becoming.

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” It is our cumulative, grace-guided choices that determine the people we will become. Making the right choices is easier when you have a precedent on which to build. It’s less difficult to see where you’re going next time you take a leap of faith.

But building a new island is difficult when you don’t know what you’re aiming for. When setting out in a new direction, the first choice (do I trust? Do I risk? Do I sacrifice?) is the scariest. Even the best of role models can’t project what results our choices will have. So when we decide to follow God’s call, to writing, knitting, homeschooling, ministry, or something else off the beaten path, it can feel like shooting off a cliff in a stream of hot lava, wondering if we’re actually going to build something new or just get swept away in the tide.

But, once again, when the first layer is laid, the next is easier–you’ve set yourself a standard to live up to.

A friend of mine demonstrated this a few weeks ago. She interviewed for two positions, the first less desirable than the second. After the first interview went well, she accepted a job offer there. Then, suddenly, she was offered a job at the second company. Instead of bailing out on her commitment to  #1, she turned down a desirable position in order to stick to her word.

Career-builders might scoff at her brave choice. But success is more than a ladder. In choosing to demonstrate integrity, my friend sacrificed immediate gain–but set a precedent for future choices and added another layer onto her island of character. When jobs vaporize and companies fail, that rock still stands.

Of course, there’s also a second way. It’s so natural that many people, especially those in my age group, opt for this one. It’s the easy way out. When faced with a tough choice to land a great job or keep your word, to indulge yourself or honor your family, to beat the established path or trust God to lead you in His way–many people just “go with their gut” and push the long-term implications out of mind. Like Scarlett O’Hara in the wonderful Gone with the Wind, we say “I’ll think about that later.”

But Rhett (always wise) comes back to her and says, “It’s hard to salvage jettisoned cargo and, if it is retrieved, it’s usually irreparably damaged. And I fear that when you can afford to fish up the honor and virtue and kindness you’ve thrown overboard, you’ll find they have suffered.” (ch. 43). It’s hard to go back once you’ve set a precedent of taking the easy way.

So what kind of an island are you building? If the choices we make today set a precedent, do you dare to take the leap, making choices based on vision, hope, faith? Will you start building from a blueprint you can’t see?

Compass Living

~ Alina ~ 8 Comments

Are you a whole person?

I’ve been feeling tired a lot lately. Not just I-didn’t-get-enough-sleep kind of tired. The kind of tired that sets in the moment you wake up and see another sunrise–knowing it’s another day of the hamster wheel, running as fast as you can before you drop.

It’s called burnout. This kind of tiredness dulls my mind, numbs my creativity, and makes me feel excited about nothing. It feels like growing old before my time.

Why? I’m young and healthy; I’ve got a family who loves me and some great friends. I’m doing work I’m passionate about. Furthermore, I know God loves me–I have purpose and significance in that. But I’m still tired.

A tough conversation with my ever-wise friend Audry shed some light on the matter. (She also just posted a great blog about fighting off creative distractions here.) Whether your work is knitting, writing, painting, composing, or delivering sermons, you know that being creative takes a great deal of mental energy. It’s a God-like endeavor: creating ex nihilo, allowing us to be little singers of the Song of God.

But it’s draining.

And more than that–it’s crookedly draining. Creating involves a lot of sitting around and thinking, squeezing those little gray cells to imagine things that no one has ever seen before. Sometimes to put in those long stretches of intellectual labor on our Works In Progress, we shut everything else out.

But we humans are like four-pointed compasses. Rene Descartes only had part of the picture when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” Thinking is part of our being, but we’re also more. Being human means we’re not only brains, but also feelings, bodies, and souls. And if we only exercise our brains, we start to wear down all on one side like lopsided erasers, while simultaneously feeling unfulfilled in those other parts of being.

Maybe this was why I was tired. So this week I set out to experiment with my routine. I decided to give myself permission to stretch and exert the other three points of my compass, in hopes of restoring my mental freshness and creative vitality–and enjoying my life.

There are some things you know by studying about them. And there are other things you know only by doing them. One of these things is physical exertion. No amount of doctor-talk about the health benefits of exercise can describe how flushed and vital you feel after coming home from a 30-minute traipse in sprinkling rain, your head full of ideas and your blood pumping to write. Better still–a hike in the hills, overwhelmed with the beauty of emerald grass and shifting sunlight, brilliant poppies and clouds traveling overhead.

Another such thing of such indescribable value is time with people, and with God. E-mails and Facebook simply are not a substitute for time with friends, family, and the Holy One. You’ve got to have face-to-face time, quantity time, especially if you spend much of your work time in relatively isolated conditions. I’m a schedule-bent efficiency junkie, but I’m realizing that not taking time to be with people will kill my energy and desire to meet the day–so I’m actually more productive when I spend time with people, away from work. More time than just exchanging “good mornings” in the kitchen. Likewise, hasty prayers are like IOUs with God that stack up–they don’t bring the soul-healing peace of extended times of contemplation and praise.

Trying these things this week has brought the life rushing back into me–joy, energy, creativity, and a desire to live the life I have. It’s easier to be thankful when you take time to notice what’s around you: the beauty of the world in spring, the humor and kindness of the people around you, the way your lungs fill with air and your eyelashes sparkle in the sunlight. It brings back the wholeness of being human–the way life was intended to be.

What do you do in your schedule to nurture wholeness in your life? What are your habits for fostering mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being? 

Rhinestones and Diamonds

~ Alina ~ 11 Comments
I am blessed to have some of the world’s finest girls as my friends. They volunteer with the deaf, they start small businesses, they cook up exotic dishes with unpronounceable names. They’re going to graduate school, writing books, getting internships around the world. But not only are they energetic and talented; they are kind, loyal, dedicated, and faith-full people as well. They won’t tell you about the time they spend behind the scenes, supporting tired parents, making cupcakes for church events, encouraging their coworkers, starting conversations with the “fringe kids” on campus. They are the quiet gems in their communities, and I am honored to know them.

But here’s a mystery. Most of them spent a lonely Valentine’s Day this last week. I know that most of them came home that night to reheated leftovers, a movie by themselves, maybe some homework or e-mail. Why? While there’s certainly nothing wrong with singleness by choice, many of these girls haven’t even been offered the choice. In a world where their initiative and servanthood is exceptional, why on earth weren’t these young women of character, intelligence, and sincerity asked out to dinner by every available man on February 14?

A couple of weeks ago, I needed to clean a few pairs of earrings. I love shiny things, but I am a writer; thus, my jewelry is made mostly of tinfoil and rhinestones. To my chagrin, the Internet informed me that it is difficult or impossible to clean rhinestone jewelry. It comes down to the difference between rhinestones and diamonds.

Rhinestones, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, are imitation diamonds made from crystal, glass, or acrylic. They get their glitter from a reflective backing that refracts the light, creating sparkles and rainbows. They can be cheaply mass-produced, which makes them attractive options for impoverished English majors (and people looking for ridiculous stilettos):


This budget glitz is all fine and dandy as long as its reflective backing doesn’t get wet. Water washes away the glitter, revealing rhinestones for the plastic they are underneath.

Diamonds’ scintillating coruscation (dictionary break!), by contrast, will never wear out or wash away, no matter what they go through. That’s because their legendary luminescence comes from within one of the world’s strongest crystal structures, used for grinding metal tools or containing high-pressure lab experiments when it’s not perched atop engagement rings. Peerlessly beautiful and virtually unbreakable. I guess you get what you pay for.  

So if diamonds are where the real value lies, why is it rhinestones are so much more plentiful? And in higher demand? And for that matter, why were many of the best girls I know single on Valentine’s Day?

Cost, I think, is the answer.

It’s definitely easier to be a rhinestone than a diamond. A nice haircut and new heels are far less expensive than a heart of integrity and sacrifice. Developing those is back-breaking work that will take every day of your life and constant prayer to build. And when just a little lipstick and a flirtatious smile seem to garner instant attention and admiration, why go the distance to become a diamond on the inside?

Key word here is seem. To seem is to have one thing going on the outside and another on the inside, a double life—the opposite of integrity, being one person within and without. As women, are we all about the fragile falsehood of appearance? Are we nothing more than painted paper masks? Or can we say, with Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “I know not seems…I have that within which passes show” (I.2)?

So if it’s more costly to be a diamond, why do the boys so often choose the rhinestones? This question is even asked in the 1936 novel Gone with the Wind (which I have at last begun reading; only 1,215 pages to go!): 

Scarlett: “Why is it a girl has to be so silly to catch a husband?”

Mammy: “Ah specs it’s kase gempmums doan know whut dey wants. Dey jus’ knows whut dey thinks dey wants.” 


Cost again. It’s far easier—and seems more attractive—to accept the first girl who waltzes into your arms than to labor to win a woman who has a strong character and developed beliefs.

But rhinestone beauty washes away under pressure. I know for a fact that life will throw you curveballs (if it hasn’t already). When you lose your job, when a family member is diagnosed with cancer, when you have to make a hard choice between the easy thing and the right thing, which do you want supporting you: glitter-backed acrylic, or the world’s hardest rock (which also happens to be one of its most beautiful)?

I have met these women: those who choose God’s will even when it means laying down their own, who believe in His big-picture plan and are willing to wait for it, who sacrifice for their families, who show kindness to strangers. They may not always have time for makeup, but they make time to listen to friends in need. They practice the discipline of putting others’ good before their own and seize singleness as an opportunity to serve God. They are beautiful even through suffering, through service, through sacrifice. This is the kind of beauty that withstands hell and high water. Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. 

Men, I’m not going to lie to you. You’re not going to win the heart of a woman like that easily. It takes a lot of work and prayer to become a person worth having—believe me, these women know. But set your sights high, because their value is beyond price. Diamonds, as the ad says, are forever. No water, no hardship, no struggle can wash away the radiance that comes from within such jewels. No amount of bad hair days or wrinkles can ever touch their beauty. Time cannot tarnish them; no storm can shake them. Many women do noble things, but such diamonds surpass them all. 

So here’s to the diamonds, the ladies who are of such great beauty in God’s sight. Here’s to the single women who choose to spend their time giving, laughing, discovering instead of wallowing in self-pity. Here’s to you who keep on serving even when nobody sees; who keep on praying even when God doesn’t instantly say yes. To you who reject a superficial life of mask-wearing and take the hard road of integrity: your worth is far above rubies. 

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Who are the diamonds you know? What makes them so special? 

Holistic Reading…and Living

~ Alina ~ 4 Comments

Can you read just one book at a time?

I can’t, unless it’s impossibly engrossing (the last one was Here Burns My Candle, a Scottish historical novel by Liz Curtis Higgs).

I don’t always mean to get started on so many books. But I love them because they speak to my heart and mind. They wriggle past the outward fronts I put on and give me sharp lectures or hope-giving inspiration. They’re companionable when I don’t feel like talking. They’re adventures that come cheaper than a plane ticket. So I put a good read on my nightstand…and then add another…and another…and so it goes.

Really, though, I think I read multiple books at a time because real life has many parts. I am more than just a learning brain: I am also an imagination, a soul, and a body. I am a worker, a server, a dreamer, a pilgrim, and I stand in need of beauty as well as instruction. I read multiple books simultaneously for the same reason I schedule more than one type of activity into my week. I lesson plan, but I also watch movies. I have coffee with friends, but sometimes I’m alone in the quiet house. I spend time both praying and walking. We are whole people with multiple areas of life, and each of those areas has different needs.

I suppose you could call it holistic reading. The good part about it is when I have a moment to read, I almost always have something I  feel inclined to read right then, no matter what time of the day or week.

The downside?

Overextension.

Just as I sometimes schedule too many activities into a week, however holistic they may be, sometimes I take on more reading than I can actually handle. Ever have that feeling? The spines look so pretty, all fitting snugly together on the shelf, until you realize you haven’t opened any of them in a week. Or more. And that even when you do snag a stray hour for reading, you spend a quarter of it in paralysis before the bookshelf, worrying and wondering over which volume you should spend the time on.

Right now, for example. It started out as a very holistic plan, with some books for each different area of life. It went like this:

Tutoring:


Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Devotional books:


A study on the book of Isaiah by Navpress
Grace for the Good Girl by Emily P. Freeman (who, by the way, has a great blog: http://www.chattingatthesky.com/)


Fun Stuff:


Cover for 'Phoenix Feather' 
Phoenix Feather by my dear friend Angela Wallace (angelawallace.wordpress.com)


Classics:


The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

Nighttime reading:


101 Famous Poems (see “Why Busy People Need Poetry”) 
Whoops…suddenly I’m reading 7 books. And my “To Read” stack is still growing. 
Perhaps there’s balance to be found in this reading mania. There are so many great books to read, each equipped to meet different needs. Maybe the key is to limit the number of categories…and the number of books per category…and the number of times I say “yes” to a new book…
The challenge is to remain holistic without becoming overextended. Sounds a lot like my life. 
Imagine that.
What are you reading right now? Do you have a one-book-at-a-time policy?

When Faith Meets Fear

~ Alina ~ 6 Comments

Where do you get your security?

Less than a week ago, I babysat for 7 hours and started getting this uncomfortable feeling that I was wasting my time.

I’ve been babysitting/nannying pretty regularly since moving home in June, and it’s been steady work: great kids, predictable income, and a big improvement over minimum wage. I felt like it was a step in the right direction of becoming self-supporting.

Then, early this week, the Holy Spirit’s sharp elbows started to get in the way.

I made a chart, documenting where my time went each week. When I first started working, babysitting seemed like a small time investment with a big payoff. But when I finished the chart, I realized how little time I’ve actually spent writing this month. Those babysitting hours were coming directly out of my writing time.

That led to a series of small spiritual crises. In my neat, tidy little life plan, working as a babysitter/nanny would smoothly give way to a paying job as an editor, freelance writer, or ideally, Great American Novelist. However, I’m realizing that you don’t become Paid Writer until you actually write. You can’t write without time. And if your time is going to changing diapers and channel surfing through episodes of Dora the Explorer, you’re not even moving in the direction of Paid Writer.

However, beginning writers are not on anyone’s payroll. This week I was confronted with a crossroads between keeping my steady, predictable paycheck and moving in God’s direction for my life. In essence, it came down to the question, “Where do you get your security?”

File:Crossroad in winter 2.jpg

Funny enough, I found that God has a word or two to say about security this week. Isaiah 31:1:

“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, 
who rely on horses, 
who trust in the multitudes of their chariots 
and in the great strength of their horsemen, 
but do not look to the Holy One of Israel 
or seek help from the Lord.” 

Ouch.

Choosing to ignore the uncomfortable feeling and continue babysitting would be relying on chariots and horses. “If I have an income,” goes the thinking, “I have independence, I have control over my future, and I’m secure.” Funny thinking, because anyone who’s lived through this recession would laugh at that line. Like a pipe dreamer, however, I was living by it.

Choosing to quit babysitting would mean going out on a limb for God, to follow the purpose for which He’s uniquely designed me. I don’t know how long it will take me to earn money by writing; I don’t even know if I’ll make it (financially) as a writer. I do know that I certainly won’t if I don’t take time to write. I also know that a part of me suffocates if I ignore the thing I was made to do.

I was scared. Scared to give up the known, however mediocre, for the unknown, however glorious. Even the illusion of control dies hard.

A Longfellow line I read this week helped give me clarity:

“Our faith triumphant o’er our fears.”

The breakthrough was realizing that you’re not a failure at faith if fear still gives you stomachaches. It’s good news, because the two were wrestling fiercely in me, like the famous Gollum and Smeagol in The Lord of the Rings. Paralyzed at this crossroads, I begged God to give me courage to overcome my slimy, wheedling, comfort-loving but surprisingly strong inner coward and do the right thing.

He did.

Today I gave my employer one month’s notice. As of the end of November, I will be working only at pursuits that relate to writing: revising my novel, submitting articles to magazines, freelance editing, and tutoring English. I came home grinning and feeling like the Incredible Hulk.

Faith is the hard choice. But it brings a rushing sense of purpose. Today, my security comes from the One who called me to write, and He is faithful.

So how about you? Where do you get your security? I’d love to hear your story!


Living with Bifocals

~ Alina ~ 1 Comment
Those of you who spend time with me in person have probably heard too much of this analogy, but I like this one. I keep thinking that living life is like wearing bifocals.
Bifocals give you the ability to see at two distances. When you’re driving, they allow you to both scan the road and check your speedometer. When you’re speaking, they help you see both the notes in front of you and the audience you’re there to address. Things that are right under your nose and things that are more distant.
http://www.eabco.com/images/Neoptx01.gif
What brought this up is my job search. I’ve known I wanted to be a writer since I was fourteen, when I started composing my first novel by hand in a purple journal. When you’re fourteen, it’s easy to follow the advice “dream big!” because you live in a state of sweet ignorance about things like bills and taxes and insurance. My plans were purely long-term and big-picture.
In college, though, the message changed. Be realistic. Get a job. Interviews. Resumes. Monster.com. There are things called rent and health insurance and groceries that actually cost money. Ack! My focus shifted to the immediate needs of a self-supporting adult.
After graduating, I was blessed enough to be able to move back in with my mom, relieving the immediate pressure of bills while I searched for work, although I still felt the tension of long-term versus short-term concerns. It was the headache in every decision I made. I was presented with a full-time teaching job, some technical writing opportunities, and the opportunity to be a private English tutor, among others. Status symbols and material luxury aren’t important to me, but becoming financially independent and “proving” that I’m not going to be the 30-year-old bum in my mom’s basement are.
For me, the temptation to grab at instant security was almost overwhelming—is almost overwhelming, daily. Teaching full-time would pay my bills and then some. I could move out, get my own apartment right now. Tempting. But spending all my time on that would leave none for writing. Moving out immediately isn’t worth that sacrifice.
How do I not lose sight of the dream, the long-term goals, while still providing for my immediate needs? Do I have to choose between them? Is there a way to do both?
Here’s where the bifocals analogy comes in. Focusing only on the now would preclude following God’s will for my life and take away my sense of long-term purpose. But focusing only on the dream in the distance might make me the bum in my mom’s basement.
So I said yes to tutoring. I started working with my students this week. They’re a lot of fun, each one different. Yes, it is a time investment, especially now as I scramble to understand lesson plans, curriculum, and educational philosophy, but I think that will level out with time. Other than that, it takes care of my immediate bills and also leaves some time for writing, which is where I want to be in 20 years (though hopefully less J). It’s a bifocal job.
In Matthew 6, Jesus weighs the near-far tension like this: “So do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well.”
I read this to mean: don’t run after temporary things—don’t cop out on the dream of being a writer for the security of an immediate teaching job. This doesn’t mean ignoring the necessity of immediate things—even God knows we need them. Just put him first. First. Put the farsighted bifocal on top. He’ll take care of the rest.