Follow-Up Friday

Corroboration, supplementation, take 2, whatever you want to call it.

Courage: Resolved

a response to Courage, Resolved. (1/03)

I had made a list of 9 people with whom I longed to share my heart. Two months later, every name is crossed through. Some conversations took only a few minutes; others, a few hours. There are still a few loose ends, but overall, I am so glad for each and every conversation. Also, I’m still grateful for the encouragement I received from those who commented on my first post in January. People are awesome, finis.

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Prom? Yes, Please.

a response to Prom? No, Thanks. (1/26)

The Joy Prom, planned and hosted by Carmel Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC, is for teenagers aged 16 and older with special needs. It is a large-scale event, requiring over 750 volunteers over the nights of April 27 and 28, 2012 (Friday and Saturday). According to the website: “Formally attired guests arrive on the red carpet and are escorted by volunteers who help them with make-up, shoe shines and photo opportunities. A dessert buffet is served for all guests and is followed by an evening of dancing the night away with their friends. This year, we will provide an enchanting evening for the guests while letting them know they are loved by Jesus and precious to Him.”

It is inspired by Luke 14:12-14 in the Bible, one of Jesus’ many parables: “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” This is a completely literal interpretation, and it looks like it makes for an awesome event (just watch the video!).

Volunteer activities include serving food, acting as “paparazzi” when guests arrive on the red carpet, and guiding guests from activity to activity throughout the evening. This is a way for one teenager to help another!

Sign up at Joy Prom > Volunteers.

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A Serpentine Picture

a response to A Bigger Picture? by Katie O’Neill (02/05)

Katie wrote about the pain of changing and growing (“absolutely everything is stripped away”). In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis writes a scene where a boy Eustace (weird name, but it’s British), having been transmuted into a dragon, must have his scales removed, layer by layer. Aslan the lion, symbolic of God, does the removing; this scene is symbolic of letting God remove our sinful “dragon” skin.

Cyril of Jerusalem wrote a very similar idea in 300 AD (!) when he wrote:

Be not then henceforth a viper, but as thou hast been formerly a viper’s brood, put off, saith he, the slough of thy former sinful life. For every serpent creeps into a hole and casts its old slough, and having rubbed off the old skin, grows young again in body. In like manner enter thou also through the strait and narrow gate, rub off thy former self by fasting, and drive out that which is destroying thee.

The Catechetical Lectures of our Holy Father, Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem

Fasting is one way to deprive sin and weaken the desires of the flesh. I found this quote in A Hunger for God by John Piper.

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Passion in Fasting

a response to Passion in Action (2/21)

This past week, I’ve been so inspired and encouraged by A Hunger for God by John Piper. The entire book is available for free download as a PDF from desiringGod.org. However, if you want to print it, here is the chapter that deals specifically with “taking bread away from your own mouth” and putting “it in the mouth of the poor” (p. 137):

Download “Finding God in the Garden of Pain” from A Hunger for God by John Piper.

I recommend the following print settings: In Adobe Reader, under Print > Page Handling, select Booklet Printing, and in your printer’s settings choose Duplex or Double-sided Printing.

The reason for this is that the page is set up for 5 x 8 in. book printing, so you will waste extravagant amounts of paper by not printing it as a booklet or at least 2 pages per sheet (I don’t recommend multiple pages per sheet, since it will be more difficult to read in the correct page order).

Or you can read it all digitally! That saves paper, too!

Defining Success :: My Story, Part II

Last week, I was looking at my personal “yearbook” from last year. It is not my school yearbook, but one I designed myself, using pictures that I took of my own family’s and friends’ smiling faces, essays and journal entries, and other memories and markers from the year.

This is me literally on top of the mountain, around Thanksgiving 2010.

After looking at the pictures, I felt that I had regressed in comparison to this year. I thought:

"Success is deceptive, no matter how it is defined. My past haunts me, demanding me to do more and do it better, holding me to an impossibly high standard. I hate the feeling that I cannot break my PR in any area of my life.”

A PR typically refers to a race time, such as in cross-country. My coach believes in individual definitions of success, and so my goal for cross-country the past two seasons has been to stay relaxed and enjoy the season with my teammates. Staying relaxed, to me, means not obsessing over my performance. As long as I did that, success based on times was simply a bonus and a lack of such success was okay. Last year, I broke both my emotional and physical (times-based) PRs.

Extending that motto to the rest of my life, I often feel frustrated, and failure to meet even my own ‘expanded’ definition of personal accomplishment feels bitter indeed. The time I spend on schoolwork dominates my schedule, eating up time erstwhile filled with personal devotions, memorizing verses, cooking, bracelet-making, photography, graphic design, or blogging (all activities I enjoyed my first two years of high school). It dominates my thoughts, too; I often want to escape my own thoughts about homework and school, but even with my friends I find myself in a rut of concentrating on school. My mental exertion is just not balanced with every other area of potential growth: emotional, spiritual, physical, which are the remaining cornerstones of a solidly balanced lifestyle.

Even though I’m 16 with my life before me, a specter of past success flickers behind every bush and around every corner, because I always feel as if I must improve.

It appears that Mr. Jeff Goins and I are riding the same train of thought: speaking of viral success, he wrote, “No single creative success can be sustained. That’s why you can’t create solely for profit or accolades. In the end, it doesn’t work. Not if you want to be an artist, anyway. There has to be something more.”

There’s a reason this dreaded bitterness of failure keeps resurfacing in my life, despite my total aversion to “trying to be a good Christian”; despite my friends and family and God who love me no matter what. It has to do with self-esteem, part three of my story.

on the iPod, in the head.

Did you read between the lines?

A couple of months ago, I shared a song, “Stones,” by Alisha Mann. I linked to the free (and legal) download, the YouTube video—the whole works, but I never explained why I identified so strongly with the song. It was a busy morning when I posted it, but I also didn’t want to explicitly define everything for readers—there’s value in reading between the lines. Afterwards, I left my blog alone for a while, for I felt a sense of fulfillment regarding the driving force behind my ventures into blogging since January 2010.

“Stones” by Alisha Mann: I could have written it.

The song outlines an emotional and spiritual journey, beginning with “try[ing] to last on my own,” and ending with the realization that the “castle walls” are “hiding me from the daylight.” She sings: “I want you to see me, revealed and free. Please touch me; please look on me again. I can’t do this anymore on my own.” At the “shout of one man”—Jesus—her carefully constructed “stones” crumble.

“My imperfection stands revealed…”

In the beginning—of high school, of this blog—I built up my identity, my persona, but I couldn’t let anyone see my imperfections. Not online, not in real life.

Every post was a recipe, results from track meets, or photographs from events that I somewhat cared about. Sometimes I would write with more depth, like for this early post about happiness. I wrote it because I wasn’t happy.

 

My freshman year was a traumatic experience. I internalized every expectation, but I found it impossible to live with my anxiety, my insecurity, and my self-imposed restriction. I thought that my actions and attitudes were the cause of every problem in my life, ranging from confusing emotions about boys to my inability to feel successful at cross-country (whether that meant looking “right” or running fast). But as I said myself, “The problem is all in my head.”

All that came to a head a few months later in 2010, with a messy confession and the beginning of a slow journey to recovery. (This has been a common thread on my blog, but I covered this in June here and in December here.) Praise the Lord for every single wonderful person I knew along the way. However, the ill effects of my neurosis can still be felt, as I struggle to develop vibrant relationships and constantly confront my fears about life.

The song was fulfilling because it is the short version of my years-long endeavor to be revealed and free. This is post #126. I’m getting there.

While I’m at it, I want to share some other really meaningful lyrics:

Almost.

I start school tomorrow. Thursday, August 25. The anxious anticipation is killing me.

My classes for the first semester are as follows:
• AP US History (technically not AP until the second semester)
• Pre-Calculus (Honors)
• AP English III
• AP European History.

So, it’s history, math, English, and more history. I’m afraid it is too many history and AP classes for one semester, so I’m trying to change AP Euro to a different class. I like science more than history, but there’s only one science class left to take (Anatomy and Physiology) and it doesn’t fit my schedule.

Let me back up some. This is what’s been going on in the past three weeks…

Click for full-view images.

August 14-16: JAARS Youth Group Summer Retreat

Mid-Sunday through mid-Tuesday, my brother and I (that’s us bottom-right) went to our youth group’s retreat—both of us our first. We camped at Jellystone Campground in Marion, NC, and on Monday the 15th we went hiking at a place called Linville Falls. The purpose was to meet and assimilate new people: rising freshman and those who just moved to the area. Because of my position in the YG’s service team (ACTS), I was supposed to reach out to people, which was easy because I often found myself the odd one out (some of my closest friends couldn’t make it!)

On our Thursday night meeting, some of us re-enacted our cheers—one example:
“My name is David.”
“YEAH!” (shouted by the crowd)
“I ride a moped.”
“YEAH!”
“If you don’t like it,”
“YEAH!”
“You must be sto-ped.”

(I’ll tell you mine if you don’t laugh: My name’s Alisha / I like to write. / With pen in hand, / I’ll go till midnight.)

August 18: JJ!

The days in between weekends were a blur of twice-a-day cross-country practice and volunteering at JAARS, with a few exceptions. I enjoyed a mid-morning breakfast at Stack’s with my friend, the lovely and completely non-awkward JJ. I had the most delicious walnut banana waffle with butter, syrup, whipped cream, and powdered sugar.

On Friday I went to my high school’s first football game of the year. We lost 6-8 to the county’s “loser” football team. Does that make us the new worst team? Hmm… good thing I don’t care about football. The game, to me, is a purely social event.

August 20: Whitewater Center with XC Team

This past Saturday eight people from our cross-country team went to the US National Whitewater Center. We went whitewater rafting, climbed a rock wall (for like 15 minutes), and rode a 1000-something-foot zip-line. We spent a lot of time waiting in line, but it was a fun bonding time with the team! (Friends, forgive me if you don’t like the pictures. I love them because I love you.)

Keep reading for borderline-oversharing  >>

take a different street.

(source)

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I very much like the following paraphrase of this poem by Portia Nelson.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter one: I am walking down the street. There is a hole in the sidewalk. I don’t see the hole, and I fall in. It is not my fault. It takes me forever to get out.

(source)

Chapter two: I am walking down the same street. This time I see the hole in the sidewalk. I fall in anyway. It takes me a long time to get out.

Chapter three: I am walking down the same street. I see the hole in the sidewalk. I try to step over it, but I fall in anyway. It is my fault. This time I get out quicker.

Chapter four: I am walking down the street. I see the hole in the sidewalk. I walk on the other side of the street and avoid falling into the hole.

Chapter five: I take a different street.

paraphrase from Authentic Beauty by Leslie Ludy

(source)

 

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Thank you to everyone who takes time on this blog not only to bookmark my recipes and look at pictures, but to also read my thoughts—such as about my problems and the solutions. I know I can be quite wordy (prolix, anyone?), so I know you must really care!