Category Archives: religion

The Girl Jesus Asked To His Middle School Dance

Posted on April 9, 2012 | 2 Comments

I was raised hardcore Catholic.

No, not the girl in plaid pleated skirts with my button-down twisted in on itself. Not the rule-breaker, the line-walker or the daily devotionalist.

I glared at those who dared to enter the church doors like it was a semi-annual sale at Victoria’s Secret. Like we were selling something for them on those two days they packed into minivans and two-door sports cars and hauled hosts of kids, kids I’d never seen before, into the back pews just before mass began.

Imagine attending someone’s birth and funeral and nothing else. There is no way, I am sure, to know them.

They cannot tell you their stories or tap you on the shoulder as a timid toddler, grabbing hold of your heart so fiercely you forgot you didn’t want to let it go. They cannot coax you out of bed on a Sunday morning when you’d rather face the wall and count the stripes in the wallpaper.

Mostly, though, they cannot help you. Cannot ever be given a chance. Cannot ever be asked for that first dance in middle school with the beat thumping too loud for you to be sure you know what you just agreed to.

Now I know Jesus was not a hip hopper, a hipster kid, a pants-down-to-his-knees type. I know He didn’t call clichés into question or clique His way into the Perfect People Club.

If there had been a middle school dance, though, I am sure He would’ve at least attempted to ask some girl for one measly chance.

He was, after all, human for a time.

For as long—and longer than—some of us ever live. For a quest some of us dare to tackle—to etch our belief, aching in our chests, into someone else’s handprints.

And that little goal, albeit small, is something I can understand.

We coax our smaller selves into something bigger, scarier, newer. We rally our troops for something we believe in. We pound a path into the ground with our tapping feet and twirling toes.

I think Jesus was a dancer. A real crooner.

I think He knew the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you’re terrified someone won’t believe in the words spilling from your lips and stage-diving onto their eardrums. Knew the anxiety of Us versus Them lined up on opposite sides of the dimly-lit gymnasium.

Us, the Doers.

Them, the skeptics.

He was a little bit nervous, pushing glasses up the bridge of His nose, staring down at His two left feet. But He knew what He wanted. Knew where He was headed. Knew that someday He’d grow up and take this world by storm.

And you cannot help but wish you’d given those Doers a chance. Sashayed to the in-between and offered them a hand. Met them halfway.

Oh to have met them halfway. To have reached five fingers and two feet and a big bustling brain filled with ideas. To be the second Doer, the first Adopter, the first Believer.

Sometimes, it’s not the Doers we need most. It’s the Believers.

And my, oh my, do we have an army of those waiting for a Doer to sweep them off their feet. They are sitting in plastic folding chairs on the other side of your gymnasium, sipping punch and staining their lips red.

Among the red-stained lip smackers I’ve sat, fingers interlocked in my lap, itching to dance. Finally, I am standing up, pushing forward, sashaying into the center of the tiled floor. Letting this wild ride begin beneath someone else’s disco ball and a different artist’s techno beats.

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Posted in being yourself, Change Makers, college, growing up, imagine this world, religion

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Come on, grab your paper bag of granulated sugar and your metal spoon and let’s stand in my kitchen so you can force feed me the keys to happiness, tell me I’m doing it all wrong.

Posted on November 28, 2011 | 1 Comment

I am the girl who smiles at you from across the hallway, head bent toward the floor, cheeks pink from the cold air outside and the red flush running through my veins. I am the girl who knows sorry better than “so what?”, who knows not what she apologizes for, who does not take a second step into the deep abyss of trouble without a battery-operated flashlight and a group of equally-terrified best friends.

I am the girl who once believed a smile would be enough. But it is not.

__

Tea drinkers might tell you they’re addicted to caffeine. They probably won’t say it’s the warmth from inside that spreads to their toes on an unseasonable October afternoon. They probably won’t tell you it’s the sound of a clinking spoon against a handspun ceramic mug. They probably won’t tell you it’s the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.

Because a spoonful of sugar is not so sweet.

For weeks, I’ve felt like someone is shoving a spoonful of sugar into my mouth and making me swallow it. Like he or she is grabbing hold of me, duct-tapping my butt to the swivel chair in front of my desk, and demanding I read accounts of girls who struggled with something and overcame it, who said “no thank you” when it came to what they wanted because to say yes would be a sin.

And I spent one, two, seventeen years going to church every Sunday. I ran away for the same reason I’m feeling sick to my stomach now: I felt overwhelmed, almost nauseated, by the intensity of it all. By the idea that I had to be perfect always always always. Stand on the tips of my toes and reach upward and hope I might be better tomorrow because today I am still imperfect.

Today, I am still imperfect. Tomorrow, too, I’ll rise from my bed and begin the two-week trek to the end of this semester. I’ll screw up, get mad, spend money when I shouldn’t. I’ll eat dessert and lounge on the couch all afternoon and let the people in my life do the same without feeling like it all comes back to God.

Let it come back to Him. Let it. Let me here you tell me something about why I’ve felt like I’ve been through the ringer these last four years. Come on, grab your paper bag of granulated sugar and your metal spoon and let’s stand in my kitchen so you can force feed me the keys to happiness, tell me I’m doing it all wrong, that I’m being punished for not stretching myself thin.

Victoria wrote a post two weeks ago that I just got around to reading, and I could not stop scanning the page in awe. She has guts. She laid it out for anyone willing to listen. And I just wanted to thank her.

For what?

Reminding me that there is no perfect Christian. That I’m allowed to sleep at night. To live with myself. To drink my tea sweetened. To cross the line that so many have told me, again and again, I should be ashamed for crossing. I am not. I cannot be.

I’ll do what is right by me and I’ll vow to never shove a scoop of religion down someone’s throat. Because the only way to steer me from it is to push a plateful in front of me and make me eat every last morsel Matilda style. 

[Photo credit]

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Posted in being yourself, religion

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If Jesus had a car thousands of years ago, you think he would’ve passed that up in favor of walking across the desert for 40 days?

Posted on May 2, 2011 | 2 Comments

My mom never told me not to talk to strangers on the Internet. If she had, my life would’ve turned out drastically different.

my own road trip through virginia

My dad wouldn’t have driven me—on his 40th birthday—to a golf course down the road from our house where I would, presumably, meet a boy I’d never met face-to-face. Running on pure faith that he wasn’t a child molester.
Well, maybe not that much faith. He turned out fine.

I don’t remember how it started six years ago. The beginning doesn’t matter.

What matters is that my parents have, for as long as I can remember, trusted me to befriend the right people. Whether they live 20 minutes or 20 hours away. Doesn’t much matter.

The fact is, I’ve met so many wonderful people through this crazy Internet thing. And a lot of them are doing absolutely awesome things with their lives.

But I have a little story about two of them for you—Lauren and Max—who know a bit more about blind faith than my 16-year-old self did, standing in a golf course parking lot on a hot August afternoon.

More than two months ago, Max decided to travel the country. Counting on the kindness of strangers to carry him from one end of America to the other. And about a month ago, he stopped in the middle of Ohio to pick up Lauren—a girl he fell in love with through the Internet—for the ride. The two of them are devout Christians with a love so intense it puts a lot of people to shame. A lot of people.

And as they drive through the country on a wild road trip that many openly disapprove of, I am giving them major credit. Because even though I have never met these two wonderful individuals, they taught me one of the most valuable lessons:

That Christianity does not demand perfection. That to sin is to be human.

I’ve lost my way, steering toward all the other directions in life that are screaming out with flashy lights and bright colors for me to come toward them. They’re more exciting, more real, more right-here-and-now-oh-yeah. I have trouble sitting still, reading a book that wasn’t published within the last ten or fifteen years, and going on blind faith that in order to be a good Christian, you don’t have to be perfect.

For some reason, it doesn’t matter that making mistakes is in our nature, or that I’ve heard people write that and tell me that hundreds of times. Even Miley Cyrus. Or should I say Hannah Montana?

For the girl who makes her share of mistakes on a daily basis – yes, daily – but has a boatload of trouble accepting herself for them, this is a big deal. World changing thinking. My shins will thank you for stopping me from kicking them (figuratively speaking, of course).

Nobody who wanders the world on the generosity of others has everything perfectly tied up. And neither does someone who jumps in the car to follow, ready and willing to leave her city behind. But that’s good. That’s what’s real.

They don’t devote every single moment of their lives to other people. They devote a lot, but not all of it. They’ve both stumbled through moments in their pasts and they’re both trying to figure out what they want in this world, but they know they’ve got God in the backseat, making sure everything is safe.

They have houses to crash at, friends to depend on, and love to hold onto and spread out. And you know what? If Jesus had a car thousands of years ago, you think he would’ve passed that up in favor of walking across the desert for 40 days? Yeah, didn’t think so.

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Posted in Change Makers, religion

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Before I was an antsy 9-year-old in a basement rectory, I was my mother’s daughter.

Posted on March 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

My mother used to dedicate an hour a week to teaching antsy 9-year-olds in the basement of a church rectory.

Trying to convince them that this was the most important year in their spiritual life. Most of them were counting down the minutes, waiting to make a trip to the store for a chocolate frosted donut. Some were trying not to doze off. Few sat in rapture of the message.

Each year, she forced disinterested kids to do homework. Preparing them to receive First Holy Communion in the spring. Few were excited, but mostly at the prospect of eating something in church. It was a mystery to them, holding their interest for a short span of time.

I know because I used to be one of those kids. Long before I had my mother as a CCD teacher every Sunday at eight-thirty in the morning, she made my sister and I choose something to do for Lent.

We didn’t give up anything. Kids in her classes would offer to give up potato chips or Root Beer.

“Is that your favorite soda?” she’d ask.

“No,” the child would say. “I like Coke.”

And she’d sigh, frustrated that they were missing the whole point.

“I want you to do something for Lent,” she’d tell us. “Don’t give up something. Do an act of service.”

She’s big on people who do things. Her love language is acts of service. Buy her a bouquet of flowers and she’ll smile and nod, thankful, but if you offer to make her dinner she’ll love you forever.

I actually almost forgot about Lent entirely until I saw the blackened ash staining foreheads as I wandered my local Barnes & Noble on Wednesday afternoon. On the way home, I realized I needed to do something. Not sure what, but something.

I throw myself in ten different directions, it seems, but do any of them really stick? Lent’s about being less selfish and experiencing personal growth while helping others. What, I wondered, could I do to help others?

Sometimes, people need a reminder that they are loved. Unconditionally. That’s why, every day of Lent I’m going to spread a little anonymous love. I don’t want to say too much more because it’s anonymous.

What are you going to give? How will you grow?

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Letters to God on the Interstate.

Posted on December 17, 2010 | 2 Comments

day 10 – someone you don’t talk to as much as you’d like

Dear God,

I had an Elizabeth Gilbert moment last night. But instead of praying out loud on my bathroom floor in the middle of the night, I was in a car.

I cannot ride in the car without constant noise — the radio or my iPod playing, someone chatting in the background, the sound of the wind coming through my windows. But yesterday, as I drove along the interstate, somewhere between Hagerstown, MD and the Mason-Dixon line, I lost control of my car.

What did Casey say before I left? Steer? Don’t steer? Gas? Breaks?

I tried to control chaos, as I so often do. The only logical thought running through my head was I couldn’t go right. I was in the left lane of a busy highway, cars racing past me on the passenger side. Somehow, I ran my car into the grassy median between the northbound and southbound lanes. Somehow, I managed to careen backwards for another tenth of a mile before coming to a complete stop.

There was, quite possibly, no worse place to get stuck in a ditch. I was smack in the middle between one house and another, with two hours’ cushion on either side. It was the most lonely feeling, the scariest feeling. And when I finally did make it out of that rut, revving my engine as a state trooper guided me back onto the road, the only thing I could focus on was “what if it happens again?“

via weheartit.com

So I started talking out loud to you, God. I made a laundry list full of reasons why I had to make it home safe and in one piece. A string of thank you’s and reassurances that I would be fine. I turned off the radio before even turning my car back on, and whenever I got the slightest bit nervous, I repeated those words out loud.

It’s fine. You’re fine. Just keep driving. Just stay focused. One mile at a time.

I used to be a devout Catholic, a church-takes-presidence-over-slumber-parties-and-sleepovers kind of kid. That’s how I was raised. But for that same reason, I grew to resent it. Last night, as I literally prayed out loud, I remembered there’s something entirely reassuring about knowing someone, somewhere is listening to your solitary mumblings in a car on a dimly light highway in the middle of nowhere.

Thank you God.

Love,
K

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