thoughts on leap years

I pretty much only keep track of leap years by the fact that they coincide with election years.

I think leap year is one of the strangest concepts ever invented.

I also think that the term leap year is a contradiction of itself. In an actual leap year (such as this one) we add a day to the calendar. Every other year we skip that day--we leap over it, if you will--so really this is the real year and the other three are leap years...if you think about it hard enough and agree with my conclusions, which you are under no obligation to do.

I would hate to have my birthday on February 29.

I am glad tomorrow is the beginning of March. I find March to be a more hopeful month than February--I anticipate the weather getting nicer, and even if it doesn't actually deliver for me it is easier to hope in March than it is in February.

I am also glad it didn't occur to Lucas to get married on February 29. It would make it much too easy for him to forget our anniversary.

all we can do is keep breathing

Do you ever have those days when you wish you just didn't have to care about people? I'm serious. Between my students and the leaders on my team and my volunteers....sometimes I get so overwhelmed with everything going on in everyone else's lives that I wish I just didn't care. But the thing is that I do care--I have to care. I don't know how to not care.

Which is just so burdensome.

It would be easier to not care. But it also would be incredibly selfish. My problem is that not only do I care, I want to solve. I am a fixer. I need to have answers and solutions when things go awry. It is hard to admit that I can't fix most things.

Some days all we can do is keep breathing.

In the midst of all the hellish crap going on around me, all I can do is breathe...in...and out. And pray to God that something breaks, eventually. Because it can't always be this hard, right? It can't always hurt this much to watch people's lives fall apart, right?

Twenty five years is long enough to know that it never gets easier.

in the end...

Past the point of exhaustion and sanity and hope and all that makes us function as normal human beings, we reach the end of what we think we can handle. And then if we're lucky, we realize that we still have faith, and that even though we can't SEE or TOUCH or often HEAR God, He is there in the end.

And in that moment, the end becomes the beginning.

God's pulse beats for us. It stopped beating for us. The challenge is to believe it. And to communicate it to high schoolers who think they have reached the end of what they can handle or want to handle. And we get a tiny glimpse into the heart of God, knowing what it is to feel frustrated and helpless watching a student you love WANT so much to give it all up and really LIVE...but not having the strength to do it. It's a choice you can't make for anyone else, the decision to believe in love and Life and hope. It's infuriating to watch hope slip through her fingers like water through a sieve. And all the love you try to give, you try to smother her with it in hopes that it punctures her skin somehow, that it reaches her heart...and she won't take it. She won't believe in it. She won't trust it, or you, or anyone else for that matter.

And it's heartbreaking. It's a heartbreaking world.

Sometimes I think, in the end, that once our hearts are broken we have two choices. We can either leave them lying on the floor in pieces, or we can use all the strength we have to bend down and pick them up, holding them in our hands and crying out with all we are for the faith we need to let someone else put them back together. And while we hold those pieces, the blood runs through our fingers, our own blood pouring out of us and dripping to the ground, our lives seeping out of us in slow, steady drops. Which is why we mustn't hold on too tightly, or the wounds will never heal...we cannot do this alone. It is foolishness to believe that we can solve our own problems without the help of someone whose pulse beats Life into our dying hearts.

Yes, die to the old.

But choose Life.

All we can do is choose Life. Every single minute of every single day for the rest of our lives. I choose the abundant Life that Jesus came to give me, Life to its fullest, the only Life that sets me free from drowning in my own blood and living through His.

updates

The girl in my class who annoys me wrote her last piece on holiness. Of all things.

And the rug outside our door is gone.

mysteries

Me: JK, when did you get that rug outside the door?

JK: I was going to ask you the same thing. I almost texted you when I left for work yesterday but I didn't want to wake you up.

Me: Funny, I was going to text you the same thing when you were at work.

JK: So, you didn't buy the rug?

Me: No. I thought you did.

JK: Did Lucas bring it over?

Me: No, it was outside our door when he came over the other night. That was the first time I saw it, so I just assumed you brought it with you after work.

JK: I didn't see it until Friday morning when I left for work.

Me: So, neither of us bought the rug?

JK: Nope.

Me: Weird.

piety

Evangelism is not one of my gifts.

Case in point: last week in class I overheard a girl saying to the guy next to her (both of whom I know are Christians) "sometimes I just want to stand up and preach the Gospel!" I had a vague idea of what she was talking about, it had to do with some comments/language used in class. What does this have to do with evangelism, you ask?

In a setting like that I would not presume to push my religious beliefs on anyone else there. Her judgmental-ness was so off-putting that when I read her essay about going on a mission trip to Honduras, I was not nearly as moved as I should have been.

Call me a cynic--go ahead. But I cannot stand Christians who have a holier-than-thou attitude. They make me afraid to claim that I am one of them.

I think piety has gained a negative connotation in our society. The word itself (defined as reverence for God or devout fulfillment of religious obligations) is unassuming enough, yet has been transformed into a synonym for that kind of judgmental Christianity. Would you want to be called pious?

In our attempts to "modernize" Christianity, many words that people like my parents grew up using have become irrelevant, and even harsh--words like pious, devout, zealous--and they ring in my ears in a very negative tone.

I know that my classmates probably need Jesus--in fact, some of them need Him very much. (I have read their work about their lives--some of them are distressed indeed.) But hearing that girl make that comment left me with one reaction: What a pious and judgmental thing to say.

And now of course I am perpetuating the situation by judging her and her overly-zealous faith. None of us have this down.