Is There a Remedial Class for Life? Because I Should Probably Be in It

I think that if I ever wrote a book about my life, it would have to be titled something like All the Ways I Missed the Obvious or Things That Make Perfect Sense That I Didn't Understand. To be honest, I would probably spend multiple days to think of a more witty way to say it, but the sentiment would be the same as the boring, previously stated titles. I tend to live inside my own head. It is a place where, I'm starting to realize more and more each day, things don't make sense at all. I somehow manage to convince myself that some things are true, but when I say them out loud or think about them for awhile, I realize they are incredibly not true. In fact, many times they are so untrue that they're borderline stupid.

Example:

As recently chronicled, I haven't been super-satisfied being single lately. And, I've been praying more. I had a bit of a crisis about praying about not wanting to be single anymore. I felt like it was just easier for me to spend time convincing myself that being single was so fun, so great for me, and that I totally loved it. Because praying about it, asking for a change, would be admitting that I wanted it to change. And it meant that I would be opening myself up for disappointment. In my mind, if I prayed about it and stayed single forever, then I would feel sad and disappointed forever. Who wants to feel sad forever? Not me. So, based on that, I felt like praying about getting married wasn't for me. I would rather just pretend I didn't want it. Because that makes sense....?

I started praying about it anyway because my book said that I should pray about stuff and ask for stuff. Plus I wasn't exactly happy with the state of things, so I might as well give it a go. So I start praying and expect two possible outcomes: A) Yes. Here's a superfab boyfriend. Go ahead and start planning your wedding (slash putting into motions all those things you've been planning since you were 5). B) No. Go forth and be sad and lonely for the rest of your life.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, this is the part where I'm stupid.

See, there's a third option. I could pray about it, stay single, but not be so bummed out anymore. This, naturally, is what's happened.

So, I learned quite possibly one of the most obvious lessons of all time. God doesn't want me to live a life where I feel sad all the time. He doesn't want me to feel alone and hopeless. So even if I feel that way, He's not going to just sit back and let me keep feeling that way. Praying about something makes room for God to work in my life. It opens up a part of my heart that I was keeping closed, asks Him in, and lets Him change me. And that's good.

Sure, there was some part of me that kind of hoped that prayer would be like adding water to some instant boyfriend powder and make someone just appear, but even I knew this was very unlikely. What I've gotten has been even better. God is showing me how sufficient He is. He is teaching me that my desire should be for Him and that I can be satisfied in Him. And it has been infinitely better than any human relationship could ever be.

Boo. Hiss. Boo.

I blame my little sister. She hasn't watched very much of a game this series. In fact, she just said that this is the most game she's watched this series. It was bad luck I think--if she's not watching, they win. If she is watching, they lose.

It's either that or the fact that the Red Sox used all the Boston sports magic to beat the Rays today.

Whoever is to blame, I now must forfeit my sleep on Wednesday. And I'm thinking about making my little sister forfeit her tv watching.

(Total aside: I now plan to watch all of the Lakers-Suns game tomorrow because Steve Nash will be playing with a broken nose. Is it possible to be a sports fan who lives on the East Coast and who still gets a normal amount of sleep? I think not. Alas, sleep is overrated. I can sleep June 3rd.)

I Don't Like You...

Jameer Nelson. Not at all. I used to like you when you were in college. But I don't anymore.

Dwight Howard, not a big fan of yours either.

But, Ray Allen, I do like you. Keep up the threes please. And your mom is quite cute.

Overtime?!?

Dear Celtics,

I don't think you read my post from last Tuesday.

Overtime games are not ideal.

I have school tomorrow.

(But, I will accept overtime if that's what it takes to win.)

Please win so this series will be over.

And I can get some sleep.

Thank you.

Happy Thoughts!

Thanks to some help from a very patient friend, I have somewhat sorted through my feelings and climbed out from the mountain of self pity otherwise known as this week.

Taking her advice, I let myself feel sad and quit beating myself up over the fact that being a 26-year-old who is sad about not having a boyfriend makes me a cliche (one of the dirtiest words in the English language to English majors) and my inability to perfectly control my feelings and make myself feel good emotions on cue. (Seriously we had a conversation where I complained about the fact that I can't make myself feel happy whenever I want to, which led to the conversation about how I don't like to not be good at something--I either work to get good at it our just quit--but unfortunately for me, I can't practice and get total control of my emotions because I'm a girl, and I can't quit having feelings.)

Then, I felt bad for posting a bunch of stuff on my blog that made me sound depressed. I do it because writing makes me feel better, but maybe I should keep the sad, Debbie-downer stuff in a journal....

Anyway, rest assured that I'm now feeling much better and plan to focus on happier blog posts from now on (If I can't control my own feelings, I can at least control my blog's feelings!).

When it Rains, it Pours/Learning to Pray: Part Two

So in addition to learning that my prayers don't have to be fancy, another thing I'm learning from my book is that it's ok to ask for stuff. The author of my prayer book tells lots of stories about his children and how as a parent he enjoys giving to them. If I, as an earthly father, delight in giving to my children, he muses, how much more does their Heavenly Father enjoy it? He goes on to write about how prayer leads to hope in our lives. And how this is a good thing.

When I pray, there are two things that I don't usually ask for. First, I usually don't ask for help with things I think I can do on my own. Second, I usually don't ask for things I really want because if I ask for it, I'm admitting how much I want it, then I'll start hoping for it, and then I'll be really sad if I don't get it.

One good example of this is getting married. I stopped praying for that. It's easier for me to make my list of reasons why I like being single and convince myself that I'm happy and that this is what's best for me. That I don't want it. And if I don't let myself want it, I'm not disappointed when I don't get it.

But, since I read in my book that asking for stuff is good, I decided to give it a try. Last week, my students had their state standardized testing, which means for two hours every morning I could do nothing but walk up and down aisles monitoring them. This gave me a lot of time to pray. So, one morning, I just thought, "Well, I'm just going to try this asking thing....it's worth a shot." So, I spent some time walking up and down aisles watching students test and talking with God about my desire to not be single anymore.

Now, let me just preface the rest of this by saying I was not expecting to ask for a boyfriend and then get home to find one sitting on my front porch. I am totally aware that that's not how this works. I was just expecting to be honest with God about how I felt and come away feeling better...or at least more at peace. It felt nice. And like Paul E. Miller writes, it felt hopeful.

What I was not expecting was for two people to ask me later that day about my roommate's boyfriend, which I didn't know she had (because it was a very recent development and I don't have facebook, not because my roommate and I have some strange relationship where we live together but never talk....I mean, I knew she was kind of talking to someone, but I didn't know they had made it official). Seriously, I thought, I finally own up to the fact that I would like a boyfriend, and my only single girl friend who lives near me gets one. (Then, for a brief moment, I thought that perhaps prayer was like detecting the use of magic in Harry Potter. The ministry can tell whenever anyone in a house uses magic, but they can't tell who actually used it. This is why Harry gets in trouble when Dobby does magic at the Dursley's. So maybe, there was just an alert that somebody at my house had asked for a boyfriend, but the request wasn't labeled, so since there were two single girls at my house, my roommate got one instead. Then I remembered that God knows everything, and He knew it was me. Plus, I was praying in my classroom anyway.)

To get to the point, I had finally allowed myself to have a little spark of hope, and then it felt like something came along and snuffed it right out. So, I've been feeling pretty low for about a week.

Add that to the end of the school year, which means kids are crazy, and you get the not-so-good-place where I currently am.

Then, yesterday, I planned a fun lesson for my last class to do--I actually got help from our drama teacher and planned some improv games for them to do in response to the book we just finished reading. I was excited because I thought they would be excited and want to do the lesson. But they didn't, which just made me feel worse.

Then, this morning, when I got in my car to come to school, it wouldn't start. Seriously.

So now, all I want to do is crawl in my bed, go to sleep, and pretend that the world has gone away because I'm rather tired of it right now.

I do feel like I need to say a few good things so no one thinks I'm horribly depressed and so my mom doesn't worry about me. Other than my last class, I had a great day at school yesterday. My other classes just finished reading The Giver, which is one of my favorite books. Lois Lowry won the Newberry Award for it, so yesterday in class we read and discussed her acceptance speech. I absolutely love it, and there is a part at the end that reminds me of why I wanted to become a teacher. My students liked it too, and we had fabulous discussion on it, which reminded me of why I love being a teacher. I baby-sat my brother last night, and we played board games, which was really fun, and after he went to bed I got to play the piano at my mom's for an hour, which always makes me feel better. And, last night the Celtics won game 2 and the Red Sox beat the Yankees. See, not everything is horrible.

Yay!

The Celtics won and are now up 2-0 in the series! (Two wins in Orlando no less! Orlando's first two losses of the playoffs no less!) Now, I'm going to think that I have to stay up and watch the end of all the games or it will be bad luck.

And before you think that I'm being too superstitious or something, I'm the girl who wore her Red Sox hat for the ENTIRE duration of the 2004 playoffs. Even on days when there wasn't a game. It only came off for showers and sleeping at night (but I did sleep with it in my bed). Naps? Oh yes, I wore it. Work? Totally wore it. Class? Yes.

The Red Sox won the World Series that year, and even though it makes no sense at all, I like to think my hat-wearing was somehow important in that. So, if losing sleep is what it takes, then losing sleep is what I'll do.

Dear Sleep,

I will miss you.

Dear Celtics,

If you could sweep the Magic, I would appreciate it.

I need my sleep.

P.S. Paul Pierce, you just said you're going to close out the series at home.

Do that. Please.

The Best Way to Get Untired...

is not by staying up late watching the NBA playoffs.

I inherited a lot of things from my dad, like my height. I missed out on some stuff too, like being logical and good at doing complicated math problems in my head. But, one important thing I did get was a deep love for sports, at this time of year specifically a love of the Red Sox and the Celtics.

As I type, the Celtics are battling it out with the Magic in game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals (they actually just gave up the lead...if you could see me, you would see my frown). And I'm battling it out with myself. I should have gone to bed at half time, but I didn't. Now there's just over three minutes left, the game is super close, and there's no way I'm going to bed until it's over.

So, tomorrow I'm going to be really tired and happy or really tired and sad. Either way, by about 1:00 tomorrow afternoon the reasonable part of me will be very angry with the nonreasonable part of me that made the decision to stay up late. Thankfully game 3 is on Saturday night, so there's no school the next day.

I know, some people might be thinking, "Why don't you just learn your lesson and go to bed? Check the score in the morning." But I'm the girl who epically failed a Calculus test her senior year of high school because she stayed up until 1:30 in the morning watching Andy Roddick's five-set quarterfinal match against Layton Hewitt in the US Open. The girl who woke up in the middle of the night to listen to the BCS National Championship game on her computer when she lived in Moscow even though she had work the next day. The girl who woke up to watch Red Sox games at 3:00 in the morning when she lived in Moscow no matter what she had to do the next day. If I was going to learn my lesson, I would have learned it by now.

(One last aside--yes, I just posted about how I sacrifice sleep to watch sports if it's necessary. And I'm single?? I find that ironic/strange/funny/entertaining/something.)

Learning to Pray--Part One

So I'm reading a book about prayer, which means I'm trying to pray more and pray differently. Parts of it have been good--the parts about how my prayers don't have to be fancy and formal, they can just be real and messy and honest. How I don't have to dress up my life and my heart for Jesus. How I don't even have to try and put it together myself first before I come to Him. Because the truth is I've been feeling rather unputtogether lately and it's been rather freeing to just go to Christ and say, "Here's my mess. It needs some sorting through, and I'm not sure how to do it and quite frankly I'm not feeling really up to the task." It's nice to just honestly lay out how I'm feeling instead of just praying about how I think I should feel. Because the truth is that those two things are rarely ever the same lately.

For example, I know I should be feeling this way: "I'm so thankful for my job and so thankful that I got a contract for next year. With the state of the economy right now, there are plenty of people without jobs who would love to have one. I'm thankful for my job because I work with some amazing people. I'm thankful for my job because I get to have relationships with students at such an important time in their lives; I get to help them as they are just starting out their journeys figuring out who they are. I'm thankful for my job because I get to make 49 students read one of my favorite books and discuss it with them."

But really, I'm feeling this way: "12 days. Really. I don't know if I can make it 12 days. And if I do, I think there are some of my students who may not."

So, I like that I can wake up in the mornings and instead of saying something like, "Jesus thank you so much for my wonderful job. I'm so thankful and can't wait to go to work. What a tremendous blessing my job is. Thank you for each of my students and the opportunity I have today to show them your love." I can say something like this, "Jesus, I want to go back to sleep. I'm not too thrilled about going to school and kind of wish that you would fast forward to June 3. I know you probably won't do that, but it's possible, so if you could make that happen, it would be great."

I know the first one is how I should be feeling, but if I prayed that, it would be a big fat lie. I could pray something to the effect of "make my heart feel this way," but most mornings I'm not even in a place where that's my number one desire, so saying I wanted that wouldn't be totally truthful either. By saying my second prayer, I'm being honest. And while it might not be churchy and "church-correct," it makes me feel so much better knowing that my feelings, my sinfulness, and my helplessness have been laid out on the table and I'm not going to go through the day trying to hide them underneath some fake super-Christian front I'm putting on for God. It's actually helpful because it puts the fact that I'm not able to do life on my own right in my face. It puts me up close with my inadequacy, takes away any hint of any part of me being able to be good on it's own. It frees me up to rely on Christ.

At first it sounds like this might just let me focus on the negative, but for me it does the opposite. It puts my focus on Christ. It reminds me I need Him. And it keeps me thinking throughout the day that all good things are coming from Him because when I'm honest about my shortcomings, I know they"re not coming from me.

Getting My Priorities Straight

I've recently been chided by several friends about my severe absence from my blog. The easy answer is that I'm a teacher and with the school-year coming to a close, exams needing to be written, students dreaming of summer, and state standardized testing going on right now, I'm so tired I can't even think about having anything even closely resembling a life. (Plus for the last two Mondays I was doing a practice test and final test in computer class, which is now over!)

While all of that's true, it's not really the answer to my non-blogging. I've been in a little bit of a funk lately. I have this tendency to try and do life on my own. Generally I can handle it. But when I get overwhelmed, which is what happens to me at the end of the school year, I tend to shut down and let everything that isn't a felt necessity fall by the wayside. In other words, if it doesn't absolutely have to get done at a particular time on a particular day, it's going to get ignored in favor of a nap or doing something mindless like watching a movie I've seen a million times before.

Unfortunately for me, my relationship with the Lord is usually not as felt of a need as it should be. So, as more and more of my time gets put into my job and into collapsing into bed when I get home, less and less of it gets spent with the Lord. And when what He's teaching me is what gets blogged about, this means I have little to blog about.

My small group just started reading Paul Miller's book A Praying Life. I'm really enjoying it....or at least really learning from it. He talks in one of the early chapters about how our lives should be integrated. What he means is that our relationships with God should be part of every part of our lives. This seems like it would be obvious, but apparently, I'm a bit dense. But, after I read it, things started to make a bit more sense.

Teaching isn't separate from my relationship with the Lord. My relationships with my friends and my family aren't separate from my relationship with the Lord. They aren't all separate entities that don't relate to or affect each other. My life is my relationship with the Lord, so it's in my job. It's in my relationships. It's in everything. Or, more appropriately, it is everything. And thinking that it's just another thing for me to do means I end up tired and overwhelmed when I try and do life on my own. I'm not meant to do life on my own. I'm meant to do it with Christ. And when I do that, I can rejoice in my overwhelmedness for in my weakness His power is made perfect. And that's the power that gets me through the day (and will get me to June 2...).