Caroling to Cars

Yes, as funny as it sounds, I was actually caroling to cars. :o) On a wet Christmas Eve, after stuffing our parents stockings (I think it's really fun to be the one stuffing stockings for my parents, who stuffed mine for so long. A great example of the circularity of life, huh?) my sister decided to just go stand out on the front porch, and I followed, having nothing else to do and becoming more and more excited about Christmas by the minute. She and I can hardly be in the same place for more than 10 minutes without breaking out in song- one of the things I like about being home!-so of course we started singing and, it being the season, we sang Christmas carols. I can only imagine what we looked like- two girls in jeans and sweatshirts nodding and gesturing (at one point during jingle bells we were can-canning and galloping) on the front porch of a wet and not very Christmas-y night, performing our beautiful harmonies to vehicles that could never appreciate it. I'm sure I could go on about the significance of beauty lost on machines that have no soul, driven by humans sometimes just as mechanical as their machines, but I'm sure that would be boring, and it wouldn't be in the Christmas spirit, anyways. Suffice it to say that my 3rd caroling experience may not have been in the snow and to adoring neighbors who offered hot chocolate and candy canes afterwards, but it was still a wonderful experience with one of my most favorite people in the world, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Especially when my little brother (too cool to be singing Christmas carols, are you kidding?) came to the glass doorway, looked at us and our shananigans for about 3 seconds, then walked away shaking his head. But at least the smile he tried to hide was there, and that's the whole point of carols anyway, isn't it?

Home

It's so strange to be in a place that is so familiar and foreign at the same time. Coming to my parent's house after spending the last 6 months at camp or my school apartment creates in me a wide array of feelings. It's great to be back, and the house is so familiar and welcoming. However, having a dishwasher is a little foriegn to me. Talking to my mom is familiar, living with her is foreign. Familiar: sleeping. Foreign: sleeping in a room that doesn't have music, sex, loud talking, or the trash chute anywhere near it. Familiar:my dog. Foreign: the smell of my dog. Familiar: my little brother Foreign: my littler brother looking increasingly like a young man and less and less like the 5 year-old I still sometimes define him as. Familiar: a computer. Foreign: a desktop computer on which I don't have to worry that I will accidentaly hit the mouse button and click on something I don't want to click on. Familiar: talking online. Foreign: talking online to my roommate, since I usually can just walk right into her room, or yell across the hall.

At home I can be relaxed, at home I can revert a little bit to the naieve high-schooler I was before I left for college 3 years ago. But also at home I must be the good daughter in a very visible way. At home I must show, in action and conversation, that I am a mature adult who can look after herself. At home I must be a tangible form of example for my little brother.

Yet depspite these additional stresses, at home I am at the one place where I know I am unconditionally loved, and when a big dinner is cooked because I'm home, I feel honored and appreciative. At home I am reminded of how proud I am of my parents and my family, and to hear them tell me they are proud of me is all I need to really feel at home.

Objectification

Never have I felt so dehumanized as I have this semester. Never have I had to deal with such objectification as I have dealt with in the past week.
The first time I experienced such a thing, I was walking back to my apartment and a random guy walking in the other direction began to yell at me "What you do for? Hey girl, what you do for?" Not being quite up to date on that slang, the only translation I could come up with was "What do I have to do to get you to do me?" I would never think of "doing" anyone like that, so the only reply I could think of was "Oh I dont, sorry." (Except that I wasn't sorry at all.) Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm used to comments and second glances by strangers, and can fend them off pretty easily. I would even have to say that sometimes I enjoy the attention, but never have I been explicity asked to do anyone from the street. I felt violated and disgusted by the mere offer. It was a strange feeling, to be seen as simply something worth "doing", and I felt righetously indignant about it. However, I know my own worth so it is easy for me to look over comments from strangers as inconsiderate and inconsequential because they have no knowledge of me whatsoever.
Perhaps that is why the recent events have insulted and hurt me so much more. I know the guy that is making comments about my body. Granted, we've not spent quality time or converstation together, but we went through job training together and can carry on small talk if we pass each other on the street. I would have hoped that he would know a little something about my character through our interaction, but instead he defines me by the size of my breasts. I feel like a part of me has been taken from me and presented to the world as the whole me, instead of just a part. It's as if the pieces are more important than the whole. I'll be the first one to list off my physical imperfections, but I can't separate myself from them, so what gives anyone else the ablity or right to do so? How do I respond to this? How do I put myself together in his eyes? Is it even worth it?
It seems to me that guys (hardly able to be classified as men) who tear girls apart and concentrate only on the parts they like are never able to fully appreciate the female sex. I love to see well-defined arms on a guy, but I don't classify men according to the size of their biceps, and neither do I think that that is their defning characteristic. I can appreciate their other characteristics and respect them as a whole, and that is all I ask from others. Perhaps I am most insulted because I feel underappreciated as a person, but this goes deeper than underappreciation. At least when someone is underappreciated their personality and ablitites are taken into account, yet this separation of my body from myself does not take into account any of my personality or abilites and thus seems takes away from my right to an identity at all. And this particular over appreciation of a physical characteristic of mine without any regard to my emotional character is painful.
Yes, I'm sure that I can grow through this experience, and I know that I can surround myself with people who value my personality even more than they do my physical features, but I wanted to share my thoughts on this experience. In a way, I feel like I have been able to identify with women throughout history and all over the world at this very moment who have experienced the same thing. As kind of an odd initiation into global womanhood, I can now say "I know how that feels. I am a woman."

Love is all around

I'm surrounded by love. No seriously. I mean, I know that in the movie "Love Actually" we hear Hugh Grant saying that "love actually" is everywhere and does exist, all you have to do is look for it.
So if love can be found everywhere, shouldn't I be happy and enamored right now? But for some reason I'm not. I think that the definition of love is so vague and overgeneralized. Most people will accept the difference between an "I love you" and an "I love ice cream." But I think that too many times we jump to the "I love you" without really understanding love. There's got to be something more to it than a description of how we feel about our favorite foods and a phrase that is tossed about so easily.
At a concert of his, Chris Rice asked the audience why Christian artists don't usually sing love songs, since they have the greatest example of love out there. That really struck me, because it seemed so obvious to me. If God is Love, then you can't have love without God, and how are you really able to understand love without at least trying to understand God. Of course, I would be naive and silly to think I could actually understand God with all the limitations of the human mind, but at least faith is a gift given so that we can grasp a tiny bit of Him. Yes, believers are called to spread the love, "Jesus loves you" we hear all the time, and its so easy to just spout off the verses and "proof" that God loves the whole world, but shouldn't it go deeper? If Jesus loved to the point of death even his enemies, is that what love is all about? Death? That doesn't seem right.
What is so liberating about love? Pop culture seems to have a grasp of this when the love songs on the radio say that they didn't know life or the fullness of it before they found love, and so many movies encourage to forget the rules and the sensibleness and just follow your heart into love. In the Christian community, I hear people swear that they didn't know the fullness of life before their faith gave them a new way of looking at it. They were now open to love, so life opened up. I think that there's something lacking in the generally accepted love in the love songs and romantic movies. Not that they don't have it all wrong, it just seems that they don't have it all there. Love is not just a gut feeling, but a way of life. A choice you make to be sacrificial and forgiving and to go beyond the superficial. To go beyond the like and the attraction and the lust and the pleasure and the butterflies. To love as Jesus did and be willing to die out of pure love. That's alot to live towards. A Love Life is hard to live. I wish from the depths of my heart that I could live that kind of life, though. A suicidal love- love until it kills me.


(we all nee a little Princess Bride true love in our lives, right? ;o) )