Gold Stars & Grey Dots

For every sincere congratulations on my upcoming marriage, there's at least one criticizing remark about the rashness of marrying young or foolishness of not continuing my education.  I don't think the polar-opposite responses are limited to me, my fiance, or our plans.  The temptation to compare and judge runs rampant at this time of year, especially for graduating seniors.

We compare ourselves to those that are getting married, going to grad school, getting a job at XYZ company, teaching overseas, becoming missionaries, moving back home, taking an extra year to graduate, are in 5 weddings, didn't get invited to any weddings, are getting a job at IDL company making more money than the person at XYZ company, have 3 interviews lined up, are working at a summer camp, winning this award, volunteering with that non-profit, and the person that has no idea what May 17th will hold.  

To justify our own decisions, we line up all of these options, place our plan at the top of the mental measuring stick, and then demonize the rest to assure ourselves that we are wise, we are valued, our four years at college did mean something.

I've done it.  I've watched my friends do it to themselves, to others, and to me.  As I watch this phenomenon unfold, a children's book I read when I was 7 or 8 comes to mind. 

In Max Lucado's You Are Special, there is a village of wooden people, each expertly crafted by the Creator.  Each wooden person has a box of gold star and grey dot stickers.  When someone does something impressive, looks attractive, or says something witty, everyone rushes over and showers them in gold stars.  But if you aren't so good-looking, have a tendency to blunder, or trip over yourself, it's grey dots for you.  

It isn't until the protagonist, a grey-dot-covered fellow, talks to the Creator and learns that he isn't a mistake but was carefully crafted by the One that loves him despite earthly successes and failures, is he able to start shedding the stickers.  The more he trusts in the love of his Creator, the less stickers will stick to him.  This confuses the other wooden people.  They rush to cover him with gold stars for not having grey dots, but they fall off.  So they try to cover him with grey dots due to his lack of gold stars, but those don't stick either because his identity rests not in the comparison of relative achievement or lack of failure, but in his identity as a creation of the Creator.

The story is beautifully illustrated in this 8-minute video below:

The stickers only stick if you let them.  The stickers only stick if they matter to you.

While the moral of the story is obviously to rest in your identity as a child of God, I particularly love the point it makes about the foolishness of comparing oneself to others.  People will love you for your lack of grey dots.  They will judge you for your lack of gold stars.  Which means if your worth is wrapped up in grey dots and gold stars, you'll always be better and worse than someone else and you'll always be miserable trying to change that.

As peers all transitioning from our undergraduate experiences to something, anything, whatever it may be, I think it's time to throw away our stickers.

Layers

This is my senior year, last semester.  A multi-layer image of friendships made and lost or faded or stayed. Fun times and hard times, all dictated by the never-forgiving academic calendar and endless stream of lectures, events, chapels, dances, and the occasional game of bowling.  Everything I experience is held to the light of past experiences in the same place and time, just years later.

The Power of Habit

Disclaimer: This is not a review or promotion of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg although it has made my semester reading wish list.

I believe in Habit.  I believe in having habits just for the sake of having habits.  

I like going to the gym.  Not because I really enjoy straining and sweating on grimy machines to an odd mixture of Christmas country songs and ESPN but every morning that I drag myself out of the bed, is a day when I strengthen my habit of staying healthy.

Ritual, the second-cousin of Habit, also needs a seat at our table.  In my experience, modern technology and the speed of life has stripped us of the humanizing rituals that used to mark individual existence.  Everything must be new, exciting, and efficient in order to hold onto our shrinking attention spans for a nanosecond.

I've been studying Ellul this semester (to a very undergraduate and unimpressive degree) and his accusation that modernity has turned efficiency from a means to the highest ends and good struck a cord.

Because I'm all about efficiency.

I've mastered the three minute prep routine.  I can read, grade, and sort tests while listening to a podcast.  I flashcard while I elliptical and I eat while I walk while I talk.

I want my humanity back.

Five Rituals For My Life

I will make my coffee with a french press and not a one-press machine.

I will write with a pencil that needs sharpening and a pen that needs dipping.

I will talk with those around me and not those on the other side of a screen.

I will walk whenever possible.

I will make meals from scratch, not boxes.  I will heat my food in a pan, not plastic.

What changes would you like to main to create humanizing rituals in your life?

Necessary Endings: 5 Ways to Clean Up Your Life

As I eagerly await the beginning of a new semester and school year (t-minus 1.5 hours!), I am thankful for the quiet time to metabolize the experiences of my summer with the intent of building upon those bits of life learning gained throughout this next year.

In June, I read a book called Necessary Endings.  The book lays out and expounds on some basic principles:

1) Things end.

"...endings are a part of life.  they are woven into the fabric of life itself, both when it goes well and also when it doesn't." pg. 6

2) Endings are natural and needed and should be made normalized. 

"Just time and activity alone brings more relationships and activities than you have time to service." pg. 47

3) It's easy to get stuck BUT pruning leads to thriving. 

"But sometimes people get stuck in a type of misery in which they are prone more to inaction than action." pg. 58

4) A lack of action is a decision.

"Time is working either for your or against you in terms of your needed ending.  If you are stalling or waiting, then you are tacitly agreeing to more of what you already have or worse." pg. 150

5) You attract what you are.

"The clearer and kinder you are in your communication of endings and bad news to people, the better the people you will find yourself surrounded by in life and work." pg. 209

BONUS: Metabolize experiences and create closure for what you leave behind.

"Keep what is usable to you, and eliminate what is not...The pain, the bitterness, the feelings of failure, the loss and grief, and the resentment all need to be eliminated and left behind.  But left behind consciously as opposed to just denied and forgotten." pg. 217

If my rough summary and out-of-context quotes left you wanting more, I highly suggest you find a copy of the book and read it.  It has revolutionized my perspective on senior year, my e-mail inbox, my schedule, and my closet.

Loving Better

Since May 15th at 7:00 pm, when I triumphantly handed in my last final of my Junior year, I've slept in 8 different beds with 2 more to go before I return to my bright raspberry creamsicle room.

I never expected to stay in (multiple) strangers homes, co-author and self-publish a childrens' book, go to Boston, or take up kickboxing during this past 3 months span.

Through a series of  conversations, packing up and moving out, getting caught in the rain (always), making friends at the Y, learning how to write (again), learning about what makes a family, Skyping Siberia, and waiting tables at barn weddings, I finally picked up on God's creative ways of teaching me to love better by:

Loving Myself Less

I've always had a surplus of confidence, allowing me to walk into almost any situation with the assumption that I will not only learn quickly the necessary skills to thrive, but that I would come up with a better way of doing things.  Being an intern for HOPE International, an excellently run organization with competent leadership and a vision way beyond my overly confident self, was incredibly humbling and refreshing.  I was valued for my skills but expected to stretch myself and learn from those around me.  Not hard to do, when surrounded by some of the most intelligent and faithful servants of God I have ever had the pleasure of working alongside.

Loving Change More

Even though I'm leaving the summer with more to-do lists than I came in with, I've learned that plans not only can change on a dime--they will.  It's part of life and being able to embrace the unpredictability of not having the world under my control (who knew?) has released me from the impossible burden of always arranging everything just so.

[This book helped immensely.]

Loving Others Better

It's only because I am a mere 4 days from seeing my fiance again that I can say that this summer has been a wonderfully growing experience in learning how to one day (soon!) be a godly wife and in the meantime, love and serve to the best of my ability.  Of course, a month ago, I would have just whined about time zones and distance.  Thank you to all who have showed me examples of Christ-centered marriages and shared their candid advice.   More on this to come.

Loving Life Fully

Its a crazy adventure, but it's worth living.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

When asked if working hard is very important to them, 80% of Americans said yes.  Yet when that same sample was asked if they were working hard at their jobs, the vast majority (84%) said no.

That makes no sense.  We want to work hard, but don't.  Where's the disconnect?

It turns out, that the corporate culture and management style makes a word of a difference. As they say at my internship, culture eats strategy for breakfast.  You can set quotas and crack the whip all day, but if your employees hate you, no good work will get done.

I've had the unique vantage point of working for two different companies in entirely different industries.

At one, small milestones are celebrated.  The employees are given the tools and resources they need to succeed and the company takes care to match work with skill sets so that the days are satisfying and the quality is top-notch.

The other refuses to believe that Employee Relationship Management (ERM) is just as important as the more well-known acrononym CRM (Customer Relationship Management).  They are under-staffed and refuse to break out the checkbook to ensure that there are enough employees so they can work where they are best suited. The employees leave frustrated and company loyalty is tied directly to a bi-monthly paycheck and very little else.

As I start this absurd adventure of starting my own company, these are lessons I never want to forget.

 Treating employees as well as customers. 

 Celebrating small successes.  

Providing work that fulfills.  

Viewing people holistically instead of as cogs.

Time Zones

My sister has lived at least one time zone away from me for the last five years.  Minus one, plus two, minus three.  My time, your time, Eastern Standard Time.

This summer, my fiance has been in two different time zones.  At first, I consoled myself by thinking, "It will be better once it's a ten hour difference, not 7 hours.  7 hours is too awkward--10 will be better."

Turns out, any time difference is the wrong difference.  For now, I am eagerly anticipating the day when I can call all of my loved ones without whipping out the calculator.

Red Tape

When I was 4 years old, too young to be left unsupervised ( I was the child who had to learn not to touch burners the hard way ), my mom would take me downstairs with her to the laundry room.  One of my favorite activities during these monotonous times of sort, wash, and folding was button sorting.

We had a delightful jar of mismatched buttons collected through the years.  I'd grab an old tin pan, dump all the buttons out and then sort to my heart's delight.  Red, maroon, circular, star-shaped, old, new, thread-less, blue, green.  Each button had a pile to call its home.  Then, I'd throw them back into the jar and start all over again.

My dad is a handyman. I've never encountered a problem he couldn't fix.  Sometimes, though, his solutions required multiple trips to the local hardware store.  I loved accompanying him on these voyages.  While he searched for the perfect gauge of wire, I was magically drawn to the screw and nail aisle.  Beautiful blue bins with nice, clean labels on the front, telling the astute observer what contents were within.  Yet, more often then not, a quick glance inside  revealed that the screws and nails were all mixed up!  I made it my personal responsibility to right this great wrong.

I created my first spreadsheet at age 10.   I used it to schedule out my day, broken into 15 minute increments.  Each time slot had an activity or category.  If just a category was listed, an additional spreadsheet was utilized that listed out possible options under said category.  I haven't the slightest idea what first possessed me to budget my time so meticulously but if you know me now, it was the beginning of a life-long love affair with Excel.

Sometimes, however, I wonder if I'm stuck in a toxic relationship with my plethora of time-management tools.  I make sticky notes to create to-do lists to draft a spreadsheet with a Master Task List.  Every step and breath I take is color-coded and duly recorded.  It is a wonderfully predictable existence, but a dangerous one.  What if Outlook malfunctions? Or I accidentally delete a sticky note?  Am I left wandering aimlessly, incapable of eating or sleeping without being told to do so through a preprogrammed project management system?

Not yet.  But one day, I'm afraid I will wake up to find myself thoroughly entangled in red tape of my own design.

"Make your strengths extraordinary rather than making your weaknesses adequate"

I recently heard this quote in the context of leadership development.  It is the mantra of StrengthsQuest, an asset-based personality test.  As a two time veteran of the test and the training program, I appreciate the sentiment.  And I've largely followed that advice in my own life.  I fine tune what I'm already good at, and ignore the parts of me that I have deemed hopeless.

But hearing the strengths leadership methodology stated so simply made me think.  Have we killed the Renaissance Man?  Is the world so specialized now that there is no value in being decently good at everything?

I've been told to be a T person.  Choose one thing to excel in and stay shallow in other skills.  It is the hallmark of the marketable college grad and the individualized American.

What do you think?  Is the focus on strengths to the exclusion of areas of development destroying the well-rounded person?  Comment below and share your thoughts!

Following the Pact

When I was young and foolish, I could not get my mind around traffic jams.  Why were we just sitting there?  Why don't the first cars just move already?

Nowadays, I still don't understand all the dynamics of a highway, other than a slight decrease in mph
creates disproportionately high increases in road rage.  But I realize it isn't as simple as a large block of cars, moving at the same speed.  There are entrances and exits, merging highways, adverse weather, the occasional deer.

  Not to mention drivers' personalities and motives.  While some are perfectly content to putt along, 10 mph under the speed limit, others seem to see driving on the highway as a real-life version of Frogger and get sick thrills from merging at dangerously fast rates, for no apparent reason.  Some are rushing to an important meeting, others are dragging their feet in getting into the office.  One has a sick spouse at home that they can't wait to get back to, others have a sick spouse at home that they are trying to avoid for as long as possible.

I'm none of those.  I'm a copy cat driver.  I slow down when others do, speed when everyone else is, take the detour that the majority of cars are taking.  This works decently well on the highway.

But I have a tendency to do so in real life too.  We've been talking a lot about abiding in Christ lately at my internship.  One of my key take-aways was the foolishness of comparing ourselves to other branches (believers) instead of the vine (Christ).  I don't know where they are going.   I don't know there personality, motive, experiences.  I definitely don't know what God has planned for them.  So why do I spend more time trying to mimic the growth or avoid the pitfalls I see in others rather than nourishing myself?

Driving like that would end me up in Houston instead of Lancaster.  Living like that means I miss out on my own journey and end up exhausting myself just spinning my wheels.

How To Survive A Lecture-Based Conference

You open up the obligatory "Schedule of Events"  A quick scan reveals that all you were hoping against will be your reality for the next few days.  Hours of lectures.  A break-out discussion.  More speakers.  If they're feeling crazy, maybe even a panel discussion or two.

I'm very confident that we weren't designed to thrive in these settings.  Yet it is a necessary part of the Summer of Growing Up and so I have compiled a survival guide in case you find yourself in such a predicament.
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How To Survive a Lecture-Based Conference

1. Pretend that you have stumbled upon this odd gathering of two-legged creatures by accident.  Take detailed notes on their habitat, diet, behaviors.  Compile into a log journal--including the peculiar sounds they keep making.
2. Make friends.
3. Develop your doodling.  I had to graduate past my trusty triad--the heart, the balloon,  and the square house--in order to not appear completely disinterested.  Instead, trying organizing your notes in creatively graphic ways and transform interesting soundbites into typography.
4. Eat as much of the delicious food they provide as possible.  No portion control, no regrets.
5. Explore!  If given the time, do some adventuring wherever the conference is.  My favorite way to do this is to do a few investigative  morning runs.  You get your bearings, find neat things, and don't feel so sluggish during the 23rd keynote speaker.

Riding Solo

In this Summer of Growing Up, I have officially accomplished one of my many goals.  You'll be hearing about the rest later.

I successfully completed my first road trip by myself!  This may not sound that impressive, but given my affinity for getting lost, the mere fact that I made it to my destination within a five hour window of my intended arrival time is something that I gleefully celebrated.

Even though I wasn't able to indulge in my favorite activity of car sleeping, it went by quickly.  I became proficient in radio channel changing, food sign scanning, and meaningless merging.

Next Growing Up Goal: Surviving the Wild Topography of Lecture-Based Conferences

Stay tuned for more adventures!

Always,
Chloe

Three Sixty-Four

In three hundred and sixty four days, I will be marrying my fiance.  It is hard to believe right now, when we are literally a world apart and the future is as unclear as it always has been.

And 364 days is a lot of days.  Yet I am excited by the possibility engendered in each one of them.  On one of those days, we will decide where we are living.  Another one will mark the decision of whether my business should be continued.  There will be job interviews and decisions.  Apartment and housing contracts to be signed.  A million and one wedding details to cement.

I'm told they will go fast and I hope they do.  Yet I plan to savor them too.  Ready or not, here I come!

Cereal and Salads

Cereal. Salad. Salad. Cereal. Salad. Cereal. Cereal.  

With an occasional injection of coffee, that nicely sums up my diet from the past few days.  I'm not complaining though, I am honestly just very happy to know where food is located and when I can get it and where I'll be sleeping tonight.

Over the past two weeks, I've slept in 7 different places.  I have mastered the art of living out of a trunk of a car.  Looking back, it really was an adventure.  During my most dramatic moments, I felt homeless and rejected.  It felt like an over-privileged extension of the poverty simulation.

Confused yet?  I'll clarify my references.  This summer, I am interning with HOPE International, a Christian non-profit providing financial services to the poor across the world in a Gospel-centered way.  When I first arrived in south central PA, I attended the HOPE International 2014 Leadership Summit.  It was a great time of getting to know the staff, the other interns, learning about HOPE and God and life, and getting thrown into a simulation where I was feverishly making paper bags and giving out hugs in order to provide for my family (a group of 5 HOPE staff partners and staff).  It was an intensely emotional 30 minutes and gave me a very small dose of what it feels like to be trapped in poverty.

Needless to say, my home hopping of the last two weeks comes no where close to the kind of entrapment and powerlessness that millions of people experience worldwide every day.

This is a post of gratitude.  I am so thankful to be working with such a genuine and effective organization this summer.  I am also blessed with the surprise of a very good part-time job that allows me to do things I love and get paid for it.  I am living with some incredible young people that are constantly giving me examples of how I want to live and view life and I even have a closet all to myself now.

So long, suitcase living! Hello, breakfast munchies and leafy greens!

Until next time,
Chloe

Pretending to be an Insomniac

I'm not, though.  Rather, I'm quite good at sleeping.  I used to practice putting my brain to sleep at bedtime when I was little, and now it seems to turn off all on its own most nights (and most days it seems too).  Exciting things can put me to sleep and boredom can put me to sleep.  I'm probably closer to being a narcoleptic than an insomniac.

Yet tonight, I will fight sleep and I will win for a while.  I am afraid of what dreams might contain and want to hold onto reality a little bit longer.

I have nothing profound to say.  Nothing of value or intrinsic worth.  Which is why I haven't posted here in such a very long time.  The good thing is, I'm pretty sure I've disappeared off the blog sphere world and I doubt this will reach many eyes, let alone minds.

Not that my life is meaningless.  It is brimming with significant events and lessons but I haven't figured them out yet and don't feel like this is an appropriate place for such half-thoughts.

And maybe that is why I won't sleep tonight.  This blinking cursor mocks me with the thoughts I'm too scared to write. I'm constantly searching for distraction but the world around me is in temporary death and will provide none.

I Didn't Know

I have officially written as many drafts here as I have actual blog posts.  The fact that this blog has has over 10,000 views also seems remarkable.  Yet what really caught me off guard when looking back through this blog's history, was that I started scribbling thoughts here 5 years ago.

I don't feel like I am old enough to have been doing something for 5 years.  I'm sure some hobbies can claim that longevity, but in my mind, I started blogging when I thought I had something worthwhile to say which is  when I thought I had achieved some standard level of maturity and adulthood.

5 years ago, I was a freshman in high school.  I knew nothing.  But I also knew that I knew nothing, which helped a lot.  I knew that I was the product of society and my school system and The Town and my family.  I didn't do much about it, yet I knew it.

But there were a lot of things I had no idea about.

I didn't know that I wasn't going to be an engineer.  I didn't know that I was much weaker in some ways than I thought.  I didn't know how many people that I would see die.  I didn't know how much brokenness there was in this world and how little I could do about it.

But I also didn't know how much of a help I could be if I looked beyond myself.  I didn't know about the sleepless nights and tired days.  I didn't know how writing would simultaneously save me and destroy me.  I didn't know that God was truly my only Savior.  I didn't know that I would go to a Christian college, or even that I would still be a Christian at this point. I didn't know about the incredible friends and memories I would find here.  I couldn't have anticipated the amount of mental strain I would have to learn to overcome. I didn't know that I would see lives fall apart and God piece me together.

While I've never put much stock in who I am, I have an inexhaustible source of confidence of what can I can do.  Even so, alone, I am nothing.  With God, I am still nothing but I am with God.  Being able to say that is more astounding than 5, 10, or 15 years of life-changing experiences.

Fights with Strangers

Something I will never understand is the inflammatory comments on YouTube videos that never fail to start a fight with a stranger.  Who do you think you are that people actually care about your opinion about a song?  Except evidently people do care, because they respond, and re-respond, and get into entire debates about the merit of an artist that no one cares that much about in the first place.

Then I realize that I am staring at my computer, reading these absurd comments from people who have nothing better to do than write comments and I am someone who clearly has nothing better to do than read those comments.  Yet I do have better things to do, like use this public platform to rant about a pet peeve that is mostly irrelevant.

Things Don't Make Sense

To my rationalist mind, the worst judgement that I could pass on anything or anyone is: "That doesn't make sense."  I've caught myself saying that a lot lately.  For something to be good, it must be logical.  Unfortunately, this rules out a lot of the best things in life.

Like love, for instance.  Love doesn't make sense.  It is irrational to put someone else's needs in front of your own.  Likewise, emotions don't make sense.  They are messy and pointless, but they are what make people real.

War doesn't make sense.  Fighting with swords instead of words doesn't make sense.  Unfounded hatred doesn't make sense.  I don't make sense.

I contradict myself daily, whether in word or in deed.  I have unrealistically high expectations for myself and circumstances beyond my control and expect the world to fall into my preset categories and calendars and it never does.  Some days I want to smile for no reason at all, and other nights I feel like crying into my pasta salad.  And that doesn't make sense at all, because according to my calculations, happiness is supposed to be circumstantial and pasta salad doesn't need anymore salt and it really isn't sad at all.

The world doesn't make sense.  It never has, and the stubborn desire of one 19 year-old girl won't change that.  The world is broken, which doesn't help this confusion, but so am I.  We must learn to live in this broken, senseless world regardless.  Stomping my feet and scowling at the surrounding nonsense doesn't help anything.

You know what also doesn't make sense?  Friends that love you when you are unlovable.   Loyalty that lasts through the test of time and trials.  A perfect God that loves an imperfect people.  Beautiful sunsets that fall every night on a world that doesn't deserve them.

Things To Remember

Every once in a while, I make a list of the things in life that I hold strongly to.  Some of them are based on experiences and wisdom from those around me. Like many things in my life, a lot of them are rather arbitrary but I still cling to them quite tightly just to spite their lack of quantification.

I am not ultimately in control of my life or who I am.

Happiness is not our main goal here.  

Life is not falling apart; it was never all together to begin with.

Life is an adventure.

It’s going to be okay.

Expectations will kill you.

So kill them first.

The times that I am the worst are the times that I am spending the most time thinking about myself.

We are never alone.

There is no point in needless sadness.

But it's okay to be sad sometimes.

There are always decisions to be made, we just don't take the time to realize we are making them.

There is much to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Creating vs. Destroying

When I get rid of the things in my life that I don't need, I can start creating good things again.

Like writing.

and relationships.

I don't want to be in this world to simply consume my way through 80 years of existence.  I am made to make things.