25 Things You Won't Read About Me on Facebook

Facebook has been abuzz this week with these 25 Things You Don’t Know About Me notes. I haven’t written a proper one for Facebook, so I will instead put one here to keep cobwebs from growing around the place.

1. The house in which I grew up had a leaded glass front door and two stained glass windows inside.

2. Every other day I ride to work in a Volkswagen “shaggin’ wagon” that is falling apart.

3. I have never been to an Eagles game.

4. I once paid a ticket guy $375 in cash for a mediocre seat at an ‘N Sync concert. And I don’t regret it.

5. Cosmo is the seventh cat that has lived with me, and by far the most troubled.

6. I would like to be an aerobics instructor. I’ve definitely got the personality for it; the body is another story.

7. I have a five-year-old godson named Dimitri.

8. Between 1998 and 2003 I saw the Dave Matthews Band in concert at least ten times.

9. I hate emptying the dishwasher and I refuse to iron. No other chores bother me, but these are odious to me.

10. I often consider gaining a bunch of weight so that I can go on The Biggest Loser.
10 a. I have a huge crush on Bob Harper.

11. I still have a concert t-shirt from U2’s Joshua Tree Tour in 1987. My brother bought it for me because he was allowed to go and I wasn’t. I am not the least bit bitter that he was there the night Springsteen joined them on stage.

12. I gave all my Barbies buzz cuts.

13. I save the Sunday crosswords from the newspaper every week so that I can do them during the summer.

14. I have a thing for stationery: journals, note cards, pads. I’m a fool for paper.

15. When the teacher of my elementary school gifted class dismantled the class aquarium and gave us all an animal, I brought home a clam and named it Clamentine. It lived, briefly, in an aluminum pie pan.

16. The coolest job I’ve ever had was working as a bodyguard for the characters at Sesame Place.

17. It makes me angry that my neighbors allow their dogs to poop all over my yard and never clean it up. What irritates me more is that I am too much of a coward to say anything about it.

18. Whenever I have an injury, I have an irresistible urge to show people. Ask anyone I work with about the burn I got on my finger from pop-tart filling.

19. I have supernaturally large, rock-hard calves.

20. I keep a picture of Bruce Springsteen beside my bathroom mirror. Something about seeing the Boss first thing in the morning puts me in a good frame of mind. Some mornings he’s singing, “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right.” Other times, he says, “Down the shore everything’s all right.”

21. I love pumpkin pie.

22. I can’t stand being told what to do.

23. Even though I grew up in Pennsylvania, I visited Prague before I visited Pittsburgh.

24. When I was really young I wrote a “D” on a wall in our house hoping Dave would get in trouble. No one ever noticed it and I wound up confessing in my teens or twenties.

25. When I get to Heaven, I am looking forward to meeting Jesus, of course. But I am also very excited to meet my nieces and nephews.

Out of the Inner Circle

I’m a big fan of Facebook. It delights me to see my elementary school classmates 20 years later, grown-up raising elementary school kids of their own. I love seeing photos of dear, old friends that live in another part of the country. Lately, though, I’m realizing there’s a hollowness to these connections.

Tonight I looked at my friend Amy’s page. There’s a picture of her, holding her fifth child and first daughter, and as I thought about what to write on her wall, I was overwhelmed. When I see her picture, I remember having so much fun with her and learning so much from her. Do I write about a favorite memory? But I’m so thrilled to see the wife and mother she’s become. Do I commend her on being the long-suffering mother of 5? How do I fill a gap of 15 years on a wall post?

In the end, I settled for an awkward, “Hey, what’s up?” kind of comment that I would also roll out on an elementary school acquaintance I haven’t seen since 1987.

Social networking is supposed to make our worlds smaller, but I feel like it’s making the gulfs in my life wider. It’s easier to remember people as they were than it is to accept growing apart from them. It’s easier to keep people in my fond memories when I don’t see their status updates or their latest ski trip photos.

But the reality is still there. People move apart, relationships change. The people who knew me best 10 years ago have been replaced, for the most part, with people who may not know me well 10 years from now. And just as I have replaced old friends with new, I have been replaced in people’s inner circles. Ouch.

This is something I’ve thought about a lot recently. I hate seeing my old friends’ profiles and realizing I’ve been replaced. But before I can despair for too long, I look at my own profile and think, if I were to go back in time or geography and stay close to those old friends, I would not have my Thursday night homegirls, nor would I have my mentors.

Looking over my life, so far, I can see God using specific people to teach me specific lessons. 15 years ago, Amy was teaching me about freedom by making me pee in the woods. Now Debbie is teaching me about freedom by empowering me to say no even if it means disappointing people. 15 years ago I needed someone to challenge my body-consciousness. Now I need someone to challenge my need to please people. The lessons I get to keep; the people don’t come with the same guarantee. I will always know Amy, I will always be welcome to post on her wall or sleep on her couch, but I will never know her quite like I did in 1994.

There is one truth that keeps this from being utterly hopeless for me. For friends like Amy, or Debbie, or my Thursday night crowd, there is a promise of eternity together. Even if our paths on Earth diverge and even if Facebook can’t hold us together, I can look forward to Heaven when we’ll have nothing but time to praise the One who created our friendship together. Hopefully, we’ll have time to catch up, too.

27 Disses

I recently heard a prayer for a couple’s engagement. The petitioner began by thanking God that the groom-to-be would not “have to be 27 and single.”

I wasn’t particularly stung by the comment, nor was I offended. I wasn’t even surprised. This was not the first time I’d heard God being thanked for marriage before a certain age, and it likely won’t be the last.

Traveling in evangelical circles, I’ve become accustomed to the institution of marriage being praised, while in contrast, singleness is regarded as something to be borne, and to be endured. It is seldom seen positively. One lifestyle is clearly favored over the other, even though Scripture affirms both (1 Corinthians 7).

Does such an elevated view of marriage affect the way Christians see individuals? Do we praise the married woman and tolerate the single girl? (I may have to write another post dissecting that sentence!) Have you ever found yourself wondering, if marriage is the ideal, why doesn’t everybody have one?

Asking these questions reminds me of the occasion in the Gospel of John when Jesus and His disciples pass a man born blind and the disciples ask Jesus who is responsible for the man’s blindness. Is it a result of his sin, or his parents’ sin?

In my twisted imaginings, married people ask each other, “Why is Joy still single? Was it her sin? (She really let herself go in college…) Was it her parents? (You can tell they totally spoiled her, she lived with them for, like, ever.)”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” John 9:3

Back in my imagination, Jesus is telling my critics, “My girl isn’t single because of sin. She’s unmarried that the work of God might be displayed her life. Look at her go.”

God has ordained the circumstances of the married and of the single. Just like He allowed a man to be born blind so that His glory could be revealed, He puts each of His children in specific circumstances that will show His power. For me, this knowledge levels the playing field. I am not the inferior of a woman who is 27 and married. I don’t revile or pity my singleness and, if I am allowing the work of God to be displayed in my life, no one else will either.

So What Happens Now?

I've considered starting a blog for a while, but any time I've given the idea serious thought, I've turned and run.  What will I talk about?  What will the purpose be?

The other night at Bible study, the ice-breaker question was posed, "If ______ had a blog, what would it be about?"  When it came to me, Holly suggested that I share my observations of the world.  Laura thought I could do some sort of biblical, feminine commentary on society.  Someone else suggested I tell funny stories about the gym where I work out.  

It is with much gratitude to my Thursday night homegirls that I am finally taking some faltering steps in the blog direction.  Hopefully, I will produce what they envision for me.  Hopefully, some of them will produce what we envision for them.  Emily's New England Girl in the South promises to delight, as does Laura's Accomplished Woman.

I'm going to resist the urge to define this blog at the outset.  I am going to let it evolve.

But, before I evolve, a haiku from the gym and tonight's hip-hop choreography class. 

Hip-hop humbles me.

I persist so I can rock

wedding receptions.