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GazingSoul
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Name: Jen
Birthday: 4/9/1983
Gender: Female
Interests: I think most of them change pretty often. But some pretty steadfast interests include my family, friends, psychology, bowling, fairy tales, rivers, listening, traveling, and sleeping to name a few.
Expertise: They say I'm being trained as an expert in human behavior... but then astronomers are supposed to be experts regarding the entire universe, no?
The notion of being an expert as a human is a rather silly one then, isn't it? (This may be a semantic injustice to the term, and if it is, I do apologize, expert.)
Occupation: Student
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Wicket493
Member Since:
5/18/2004
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| Ok, my dedicated readers, I have heard your cries (all, what, 2 of you?) and will act on your behalf.
It has come to my attention that I am missing out on many valuable and needed responses to my posts by remaining committed to my xangan roots. Therefore, I am moving to blogger where I myself have enjoyed the luxuries of posting comments on whosoever's site I desire even though I myself had not been a registered member.
I do hope you will follow me as I move my ponderings to http://gazingsoul.blogspot.com.
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| It seems as though my mind keeps running around in circles these days--resignation and mindlessness, conviction and desperation, determination and hope... and somewhere around here I wind up back at the start when it seems I should be tasting at least a bit of victory and purpose.
"I'm horrible at this life thing" or "at personhood"--some thoughts that keep running through my head of late. Not so much a depressed, hopeless cry as simply a blunt acknowledgment of how living seems to me at times--often after spending an evening out with a group of people and hearing familiar comments about my silence or complete misunderstandings of expressions on my face or perhaps after bumbling through a meaningless conversation with a crush.
Somewhere in the middle of my childhood I feel as if I took the bench in life and never got back on the playing field. Granted, I know I've grown and learned a lot... but old habits die hard. And when life gets either stressful or slow it's just so easy to fall back into familiar patterns. I think this is one reason I've felt so homesick lately; I learned to watch, cheer, and enjoy playing the audience of life in that context--the role I've taken makes sense there. But here, in a new city where I lose that context--little sister to 3 brothers, only daughter--I realize that people don't get that role. Suddenly I'm supposed to stand on my own and perform for others with no context to support me.
Of course one would think that 4 years of college away from home would be time enough to figure out at least some of this--which I suppose I have to a certain extent--but again, I turn back to the fact that the familiar is just so much easier and sometimes I get tired of trying so hard.
I was wondering the other day if life is really meant to be this way--the American, middle-upper-class way of leaving home and making your own path. If the foundational reality is relational--as seen in the Trinity--and if relationships take time to form, develop, grow, and flourish, then it just doesn't make sense to go hopping from city to city every 4 years. I heard someone talking the other day about this 4 year perspective...how at this stage in life, post-college, it's hard to understand what life is supposed to look like in longer than 4 year increments: 4 years of high school, 4 years of college... and now I'm doing it again with 4 years of graduate school, and then maybe spending only 1 year in another random city for internship. Adventure is great; traveling is good; but I guess I'm just realizing that there is a lot to be said for putting down roots. Is that what people are talking about when they feel the need to "settle down"?
Hm, but what I really meant to write about when I put up the title--"Missing the Point"--was a recent conviction about the purpose of life. It is elementary, but then we humans are apt to forget the basics, no? What does God desire of me? Intimacy with Him. That I would walk with Him all the days of my life; that knowing Him would be my reason for waking and sleeping.
So I put forth this question for myself: Jen, are you walking with God? It's easy enough to say, "Sure." But how do you know? I mean, what would it really look like for you to literally walk with God each day? Afterall, even if you are horrible at this living thing and sometimes feel like only part of a person, what matter is it if you are walking with the King? Even the King who calls you His child?
"My covenant with him [Levi] was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him as an object of reverence; so he revered Me and stood in awe of My name. True instruction was in his mouth and unrighteousness was not found on his lips; he walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many back from iniquity." Malachi 2:5-6
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| “Vocation is found in the place where your heart’s deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” Clinical psychology is this very place for me, and I would be honored to have the opportunity to pursue this vocation at Virginia Commonwealth University.
These were the closing words to my personal statement upon application to VCU.
I remember listening to Brewer and Rasmussen talk about graduate school and the necessity of being willing to eat, drink, breathe, and sleep psychology... the notion was distasteful to me. I came to the conclusion that I could handle this if my God were part of the eating and breathing... Psychology and Theology. This could work.
I seem to have lost touch of the gladness I once felt in psychology, and I have to wonder if it is this distaste I had felt in the first place... a repulsion at the thought of having my entire being consumed in the discipline.
I miss college. I miss the balance of always having that random class in the mix that is completely different than the rest--astonomy, poetry, even French. I also miss my religion classes. Yes, I think I miss them a lot.
Hm, I wonder if I can do something about this...
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| "I don't pay attention to politics."
"You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat."
"I don't pay attention to that, either."
--an exchange between Jill and Ben in Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein
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| "All we claim in this life of sanctification is that by an act of faith we put ourselves into the hands of the Lord then, by a continuous exercise of faith, keep ourselves there." --Hannah Whitall Smith
Complete trust and confidence in someone is an activity. Is it just me, or does this seem odd? I have a very trusting personality, and as such it comes naturally to me to trust people--even when they may not be trustworthy. So the thought of actively trusting someone, I guess choosing to trust someone, seems odd to me... though I think it is not odd to most...
I suppose the goal is that this exercise of faith becomes so second nature that it is like breathing. A runner runs by nature of who he is. When I run, it is not as a runner in a race... for I am not a runner. But we are called to be... faithers? Heh.
Faithful means constant, steadfast, loyal. The act of breathing for a human is faithful. In the same way, we are called to be faithful in our faith... This does not make sense to me as a derivative of faith... To be full of faith is not the same as being faithful, is it? If someone or something is faithful then it is something worth putting your faith in... not something that itself is full of faith... So perhaps we call it faithful because it is or should be filled with the faith of others? Ah semantics...
I am not a very good runner--in the real or metaphorical sense. I'm much better at resting. Lately I have not been resting in the right place, though... and I see that seeking, finding, and remaining in the correct position for rest is an active, continuous pursuit. But then, as Hannah was alluding to, once one has found the right bed, it does no good to continue questioning and doubting the support of the mattress, for then no real rest can be had!
How is it that our bodies know not to roll off of the bed? Oh that my heart and mind would know how not to roll off...
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