Regards, Anxiety

Dear Brain/Stomach,

Hiya! I wanted to let you know that the medication you’re taking made me sick for a few months earlier this year (I had to lay low while I recovered), but I’m feeling much stronger now and am quite keen to get back to work. I fear some decisions have been made without full consideration during my absence; I won’t let that happen again.

I know you’ve been preoccupied with study for the last little while, but now that the class is over I expect you’ll have some time to think over the following concerns I’ve been trying to raise with you recently (see previous emails from August, September, and earlier this month). I’m particularly interested in addressing the issues I foresee with Moses starting school next year (we can move on to Hazel and the chances of Alan’s business suddenly going bankrupt once these have been adequately mulled over). It would be great if you could turn your attention to the attached points ASAP.

Regards,

Anxiety

from here

POINTS OF CONCERN

1. How are you going to manage to get out the door at the same time every morning in order to ensure Mo’s at school within the 15 minute drop-off window?  
2. What if Mo’s school is terrible and you scar him for life by sending him there?
3. What if Mo hates the extra time away from home and seems devastated about the idea of going each morning, and what if this lasts for an entire term or more, as others have told you to expect? 
4. What if the work isn’t challenging enough? 
5. What if the work is too challenging? 
6. What if Mo’s teachers are hard to get along with?
7.  What if Mo doesn’t make new friends? 
8. What if Moses makes friends with kids who I don’t really like, and starts behaving more like them? 
9. What if Mo’s bullied? 
10. What if Mo’s a bully?
11. What if you do reeeeally badly in your final essay thanks (in part) to your ridiculous stuff-up, and this lowers your overall mark for the subject and, consequently, your GPA, and then no university will want to accept your Honours application and the whole course therefore turns out to have been a waste of your (and my) time and all your dreams about working as a psychologist come crashing down? (I’m sorry, I know I said we were focussing on Moses, but this is really bothering me right now and I couldn’t help myself; think on this for a bit, will you? Preferably before sleep, for an hour or two.)
12. Will the 20 minute drive to and from school every day be enjoyable (it is the only time you find out what’s going on in the world), or increasingly annoying?
13. Will your study days feel frustratingly short if they’re fit in between two 40 minute drives at each end of the day?
14.  If the answer to questions 11 and 12 is ‘increasingly annoying’ and ‘yes’, should you consider moving closer to Mo’s school/Hazel’s preschool, or would a move be the last thing any of you need in an already-stressful year?
15. The limited amount of not-in-school time will mean that extra-curricular activities need to be considered carefully: 

• How will you cope with regular afternoon/weekend activities if having two plans per week currently makes you feel nervous? How much stress will multiple deadlines (school start time, activity start times) add? 
• Which activities will you choose? Should you go with one sport and one music activity, just one of those options, or neither? If Moses has no interest in either sport or music, how long should count as having “given it a go”? Should he have to give it a go at 5, or is that too young? 
• What if Mo would be a brilliant drummer or swimmer if he focussed on those, but you instead sign him up for guitar and soccer? What if he wants to do all of these things? Given that lots of people who are now very good at what they do say they started doing it when they were aged 5, what happens if Moses misses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be an olympian/superstar, and it’s all because of you.
• If, on the other hand, you go with the piano option at school, which seems to involve a lot of parental input, will this mean you spend a lot of your time nagging Moses to practice, and will this end up making you want to die? 
• How much will these activities cost, both money- and time-wise? Will they be worth the cost? 
• Does Hazel participate in these activities too, or does she just watch? What happens when Hazel’s old enough to participate and she and Moses choose different sports/instruments? 

I’m sure I haven’t covered all possible things to be fretted over; please feel free to add to the list as you come up with more. I look forward to going over these with you, again and again. And again. Thanks, A.

Offspring | Friday Night Lights | VEEP

I speed-watched the first season of Offspring in the few days before my last class started, and LOVED it; if my library’d had season two, I’d have borrowed it in a heartbeat/whenever we could next get there. I asked my sister to check her library for season two, but had no luck there either, and I considered buying it, but couldn’t quite bring myself to (the money, but also the thought of owning just one season of a TV show that’s not the first season makes me feel weird). And then I remembered I was still a member of the library from the place we lived in before the last place we lived in, so I checked their website and THEY HAD IT!! It came in just in time for this break - thank you, Jesus.

Anywho, back when I finished the first season of Offspring and realised I might never be able to watch season two for free, I decided instead to check out Friday Night Lights, which had been recommended to me by a couple of friends. It took me a little while to get into it – it’s based on the players and coaches of the Dillon Panthers, a high school football team in Texas, so there wasn’t too much I related to initially, but gradually I became a little bit obsessed and now that I’m watching season two of Offspring I’m finding myself wishing I was instead watching Friday Night Lights and finding out how my friends there are getting on in season two of their show, and I’m desperate to borrow it and continue my one-episode-per-night dates with them. It’s very well acted, and there are interesting and lovely characters and plots (I pretend the kids are 20 rather than 15 or 16, and that makes me feel better), and I’ve cried a lot while watching, and laughed quite a bit too, and basically I’m completely hooked and desperate to find out what happens next. CLEAR EYES, FULL HEARTS, CAN’T LOSE. 

Season two of Offspring’s not as good as the first, I reckon, although I don’t know whether this is because I cheated on it with FNL or whether it’s because something’s actually changed. There seem to be more ‘as if’s about this season (like, do people actually spontaneously pash other people after knowing them for three episodes’ worth of time?! And why is there suddenly an anaesthetist always around when there was none last season, and where is the replacement paediatrician this season, huh? THINK OF THE BABIES! It seems the writers are more concerned with Nina’s next romance. Also, watching women give birth while lying on their backs drives me crazy). I’m not too far in yet, though, so perhaps the season gets better as it goes on. (I finished watching it today; it does. I now don’t know whether to move onto the third season of Offspring or whether to switch to season two of FNL. This is perhaps the toughest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.)

In the last week of my class, before I started the second season of Offspring, I borrowed the second season of VEEP from the library, because the episodes only go for 20 minutes (or so) and I found it to be a nice way of taking my mind off study for a bit before heading to bed. I find VEEP 6.5-out-of-10 entertaining rather than hilarious, but Julia Louis-Dreyfus is just incredible to watch; the awards she’s won for her performance in the show are absolutely deserved, and I’m sticking with it purely to marvel at her brilliance.

Faith

Back in May I promised I was going to return soon to write about church. WELL. I  tried, and I tried again, and I tried yet again, and I stopped trying so that my ideas had a chance to percolate pressure-free, and then I tried again, and still: no post. I have no idea where to begin, or where to end. Much like my earphones when fetched from the depths of my bag, my ideas about church are a tangled and knotted mess, so that thoughts on why and how Christians gather lead to thoughts and questions for which I have no answers which eventually leads to me giving up, confused and exhausted. This post is therefore not about church.

A couple of years ago I compared my faith to a cement slab foundation, waiting for me to start laying the bricks that would soon form the walls of what would become my shiny new Faith House. I’ve only recently realised how wrong I was about where I was at in the process; though I’d spent a couple of years by that point wondering why my inherited house was built the way it was, I hadn’t yet started taking it apart. I’d thought at the end of 2012 that I was ready for construction; in fact, I was just about to start the deconstruction.

I’m closer now to just a slab, I think. I think. I have a skip bin full of discarded doctrines and balled-up blueprints for my future faith. Is anyone else enjoying this metaphor as much as I am? No? Okay then. Moving on.

///

Perhaps I should have paid more attention to Lou’s comment after one of my posts, pointing out that the root of all the issues I was ranting about seemed to be biblical interpretation, but it took me a while longer to realise that this was true. I used to think it problematic that my realisation that the Bible is not the textbook/instruction manual/guidebook for life I used to think it was had left me with nothing to use to argue a case for… well, anything. It’s very easy to back up what you believe with the Bible, and to have a cracking argument by pointing to the passages and verses you’ve gathered to show that God is evidently on board with your point of view. These types of arguments rarely change anyone’s minds, but they’re quite fun, and I used to enjoy participating in them (ask me what God really thinks about women in ministry! GO ON!). My main issue was realising (and it shocks me that others still haven’t) that you can find what you like in the Bible. For example: long ago, in a land, far, far away (the United States), both the pro-slavery folk and the abolitionists appealed to the Bible, and sometimes to the exact same verses, to argue for their (opposing) views. This might have led to these folk beginning to scratch their heads and think, “Say, this is strange! Maybe we should stop calling each other heretics and instead reflect more deeply about what the Bible is and how we go about interpreting it,“ but no. In her post, Is abolition “biblical”? Rachel Held Evans writes,

I think it’s important to remind ourselves now and then that we’ve been wrong before, and that sometimes it’s not about the number of proof texts we can line up or about the most simplistic reading of the text, but rather some deep, intrinsic sense of right and wrong, some movement of the Spirit, that points us toward truth and to a better understanding of what Scripture really says. 

This is where I am. Which means that nowadays, the Biblical basis for what I believe appears something like this to those still in the Bible-as-textbook/instruction-manual/guidebook-for-life camp:

I’m okay with that now. I’m done with all the arguing. I’m done with all the judgment.

///

Returning to that view of the Bible – and the view of God I had, then, too – isn’t an option anymore; I’ve changed irrevocably. A couple of years ago I was explaining to a friend that I could no longer worship a God who would use His(/Her) sovereignty to give the divine nod repeatedly to kidnaps and cancer, tsunamis and suffering, all the while convincing Christians it’s for their ultimate good, an important lesson they needed to learn, as if when they made it to heaven they would say, “Gee, thanks for letting me get raped, God! You’re awesome.” My friend told me she couldn’t believe in a God who wasn’t in control of everything. She’d found a way to make her peace with “God the bastard” (as our minister calls it); I have not. I know of many who have also made peace with God’s authoritarianism (“Obey me or burn!”), God’s hypocrisy (commanding followers to love their enemies, yet threatening His own with eternal torment in a fiery lake), God’s disgust at humanity (it sounds better if you call it “holiness”), God’s high-maintenance-ness (apologise repeatedly! Constantly tell God how amazeballs He is!), and God’s unending sadness at how we’ve all turned out (at a church service I went to earlier in the year, someone prayed, “We’re sorry we disappoint you every day.” Every now and then on Facebook I see a quote from theologians with captions such as, “Luther understood it. We’re never good enough for God”). I’ve not made peace with those views of God either. 

But where I used to panic over the idea of us having two (or more) different ideas of God, it now reassures me: I think it’d be scary if we could all agree on exactly what God was like, stuffing Him into our embarrassingly teeny boxes. I love that ‘Israel’ means “he struggles with God.” I’m not sure we were ever all meant to arrive at the one conclusion, stop wrestling, and then call that “faith.” 

///

The gospel I grew up with is this: God was so angry with me, he wanted me dead. But Jesus showed up and God murdered him instead of me, to offer me the choice between an eternity in hell or an eternity not in hell. I chose not-hell/God. (Micah J. Murray’s “theologically correct” rewriting of the parable of the prodigal son captures this grace-less God perfectly. Hark! This is the good news!)

This is the gospel as I know it now: God is love, God is love, God is love. It’s the answer to all of my questions.

How does God feel when God looks at me? God is love.

What happens after we die? God is love.

What was the point of the cross? God is love.

And so, again, still, I choose God. I can’t help but choose God, my whole being is completely enthralled by God, Jesus, Spirit - Love - in a way I can’t fully understand, let alone articulate.

I guess it’s called faith for a reason.

Snapshot

Hello!!!!!!! I’ve missed you!!!!!!!!! To catch you up on life since the last post:

< Hazel in July | Hazel in October >

Moses and Hazel both suddenly matured after their birthdays, thus outdating almost everything I wrote in their birthday posts. Hazel now knows far more correct pronouns and tenses and is now chatting to anyone within earshot (my favourites from yesterday were “Excuse me? We having sparkling apple juice and pies for dinner” and “My daddy put my hair really up,” both of which were excitedly shared with a woman in a lift who could not have cared less about either piece of information). She demands that we leave her alone to put on her own shoes, and wishes she could dress herself without help, but isn’t quite there yet. Her face is looking older, too, although I can’t pinpoint how; I think her cheeks have deflated a bit, and she’s looking more like a little girl (our baby's growing up! Waaaaaaaaaaaah!). She’s also been regularly peeing on the loo, and I half-heartedly jumped on this opportunity to get her out of nappies; we bought her some undies and gave them a burl one morning, during which she innocently - but with alarming rapidity - doubled the amount of washing in the laundry basket. I gave up. This summer will last for a while – we’ll give toilet training another go early next year. She’s also realised she can say no, and sometimes calls out to us 15 minutes after we’ve put her to bed and tells us that Moses just woke her up, even though he’s quite obviously fast asleep in the bed opposite.

Moses has graduated from another swimming class and is now learning to breathe while doing freestyle, thus overtaking his father in swimming ability. He’s decided he’s desperate to start reading, and also that he doesn’t want to be a police officer when he grows up because they carry guns. (Swords are okay apparently; his philosophy on violence needs some tweaking before it’ll be completely consistent.) He also lost his first tooth! He bit into an apple last Wednesday and started shrieking that it had broken his tooth, which sent us all into a bit of a panic until Google reassured us that 5 was a perfectly normal age for the first tooth to fall out. After this, Alan and I both started getting a bit sniffly (Our babyyyyyyyy! etc., etc.) while Mo continued to bawl about the fact that something that was solidly stuck in his mouth an hour ago was now quite wrongly wobbling about and yet his mum and dad were looking at him with proud, teary eyes instead of treating the situation as the seriously dramatic dramafest it actually was. 

He calmed down upon realising the tooth fairy would bring a gift, and that this could be his last chance before Christmas to score the Ninja Turtle figurine he’d had his eye on. After some clarification (you only get a toy the first time you lose a tooth, after which the Fairy leaves a coin; maybe the Tooth Fairy actually exists, we’ll have to see!!!!; yes, she’ll still come despite the fact that you have no pillow), Mo went to bed excited, and then spent the next few days madly pushing the tooth this way and that, and asking me to do the same but with more force, and generally tried his darndest to get that stubborn tooth out of his face. Wednesday evening he was distraught over the fact that his tooth was going to fall out; Thursday evening he was distraught over the fact that his tooth hadn’t fallen out yet. Then on Monday morning he went and swallowed it while eating a pear.

Alan’s business is thriving, but he’s been kind enough to refrain from any smug “told you so”s (which I totally would have done if I were him). He’s moving up in the world – he no longer works from our bedroom but has shifted to a friend’s garage at the end of our street (ours has no mobile phone reception), and comes back here to make lunch/use the loo/take a break. It’s possible the heat will drive him into air-conditioned premises when summer officially arrives; we’ll see. He finishes work at 4pm and cooks dinner for us, so I can take the kids to the park after picking up Mo from preschool and return home to an already-cooked meal, which truly is as splendid as I imagined it must be last year when it was me doing the cooking and Alan doing the coming home.

As for me, I’ve just finished my fifth class of ten – I’m now halfway through my graduate diploma. This last class was incredibly intense and killed off all motivation to study anything ever again; I’m hoping the break over the next couple of weeks is refreshing and that my next subject restores some of my initial excitement about the course. Over the last six weeks I’ve read an entire textbook (~600 pages) as well as 50-or more journal articles on the topics of impulsivity and cross-cultural differences in self-esteem and self-presentation. I also read a novel (Life After Life by Kate Atkinson) and a memoir (The Anti-Cool Girl by Rosie Waterland), but I can only blame myself for those two; obviously I need to find a new, non-reading way to unwind.

Anyway, the reading was more brain-deadening than inspiring. At one point I switched on enough to realise that I’d just typed the following in my notes:

• Shared and non-shared environments
• shared: environments that are shared between two individuals
• non-shared: environments that are not shared between two individuals.

One would hope I’d have remembered that without any help. 

Anyway, after submitting my last assignment 2.5 minutes late thinking I was actually submitting it 2.5 minutes early (turns out the deadline was 11:55, not midnight), thereby immediately losing 10 marks, and after reading the wrong chapter of my textbook in order to prepare for my final exam, thereby wasting three hours of my precious time and adding an extra three hours of right-chapter-reading, I AM DONE. I’m officially on holidays, and am one subject closer to this course being over. I’m not thinking beyond that, or if I do I picture fields filled with unicorns and liquorice allsorts beyond the horizon, rather than three further years of study.

That pretty much brings you up to speed; I plan to be back soon to talk about cakes and Friday Night Lights and anxiety (three separate topics, although thinking about how they may be related will keep me entertained for a little while now).