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drsarahbellum
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Name: "Sarah"
Gender: Female
Interests: God, postmodern theology, literary criticism, chocolate, hiking, mountains, swimming, gel pens, maps, Vermont, NPR, Ben & Jerry's
Expertise: getting lost in New Jersey, falling for emotionally unavailable guys, sarcasm, dispensing advice I don't follow, mispleling words, procrastination [and for the record, I don't have a PhD, but I would like to someday]
Occupation: higher education, student affa
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
5/1/2006
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| I don’t like to be one of those people who just posts something that is primarily someone else’s words. Today I am going to be one of “those people” because I heard this recently and I thought it was great. It’s from one of John Piper’s writings (I love the title – it is so Piper): “How to Deal with the Guilt of Sexual Failure for the Glory of Christ and His Global Cause.” The full text can be found here.
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The great tragedy is not mainly masturbation or fornication or acting like a peeping Tom (or curious Cathy) on the internet. The tragedy is that Satan uses the guilt of these failures to strip you of every radical dream you ever had, or might have, and in its place give you a happy, safe, secure, American life of superficial pleasures until you die in your lakeside rocking chair, wrinkled and useless, leaving a big fat inheritance to your middle-aged children to confirm them in their worldliness. That’s the main tragedy.
I have not come to Atlanta to waste your time or mine. I have come with a passion that you not waste your life. My aim is not mainly to cure you of sexual misconduct. I would like that to happen. O, God let it happen! But mainly I want to take out of the devil’s hand the weapon that /exploits/ the sin of your life to destroy your valiant dreams, and make your whole life a wasted worldly success. . . .
What broke George Verwer’s heart back in the eighties, and breaks mine today, is not mainly that you have sinned sexually, but that this morning Satan took your 2 AM encounter in the hotel room—whether on TV or in bed—and told you: “See, you’re a loser. You may as well not even go to worship. No way are you going to make any serious commitment of your life to Jesus Christ! You may as well go back to school and get a good practical education, and then a good job so you can buy yourself a big /wide/ screen and watch sex till you drop.”
I want to take that weapon out of his hand. Yes, I want you to have the joyful courage not to even do the channel surfing. But sooner or later, whether it’s that sin or another, you are going to fall. I have come to Atlanta to help you deal with the guilt of that failure so that Satan does not use it to produce another wasted life.
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| I don’t understand why the leaves are changing. This is the first fall in 23 years that I have not being going to or working at a school. This throws me a little off balance.
Additionally, my life has sorta been in a holding pattern. I’m still in a state of transition with many things being put off until I get settled in my job, get all my stuff out of storage and settled into a new apartment, and get over Tom. But even if I put my life on hold, time still passes. The days get shorter, the air gets colder and the leaves change colors all while my warm clothes stay locked up in a storage facility 90 minutes away.
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| After the last entry, it is hard for me to come back here and admit that the job isn’t exactly going well. My first day of work, I was told that one of the other counselors was leaving – one that I really liked and was looking forward to getting to know. A couple of days later my supervisor told me he might be leaving, and the next week it became official. So, I was brought on to make a team of five, and now we are down to three.
I talked to one of the other counselors for a few minutes last night. He’s been with the church as long as it’s been a church. I asked him what I had gotten myself into to. “I don’t know,” he answered, “but a month ago I would have told you, yeah, come this is great. If you were just coming to me today, I would discourage you.” He’s staying for the money. I think I might be too.
I don’t like the idea of working a job for the money, not a counseling job and especially not a job that involves church and ministry. But I don’t even have a provisional license for this state yet. The odds of me finding a job in counseling that offers half of what this does (not only in money and benefits, but also in terms of experience) is so miniscule. Maybe I will stay for the two years it will take to get my professional license, and maybe I feel like I completely sold out.
And can I just say that I am missing Tom like crazy? He was my best friend, and here I am, in the midst of this situation, and he’s gone. It’s like the more time passes, the more I miss him. Isn’t this supposed to be getting *easier*?
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| Good news. I got a job working as a counselor at the church I am attending. Basically, if I could have written out a description of what I wanted in a perfect job, this would be it. It has all the benefits of working in a private practice (flexible scheduling, mostly high-functioning clientele, lack of mandated clients), with all the benefits of working for an organization (I get insurance and free supervision and don’t have to pay office fees or find clients). The only thing I would change is the hours. This type of environment means weekends and evenings.
And I didn’t go out looking for this job – it basically fell into my lap. So, one day before I had been officially hired, I got a call from the guy who would be my supervisor. He was talking about money and how the church wanted to be sure it could give me what I needed to live on so that I wouldn’t need to find another job to make ends meet. (In the same call he mentioned that he already had five clients lined up for me.)
That night as I got ready for bed, I looked in the mirror and wondered, Who am I to deserve something like this?
The response that came to me? “You don’t. It’s called grace.”
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| I spent some time this weekend helping a friend of mine move into her in-laws’ house. Her in-laws no longer live there, but they didn’t exactly take everything with them either. (Alternate title for this post: “Whatever You Do, Don’t Let Me Move Into My In-Laws’ House.”) In addition to a full garage and three incontinent cats, the jungle of houseplants was left in the living room.
I have to admit it, when I left the College, I did not take my bamboo with me. I had received said bamboo the spring of ’07 for helping with something that I didn’t actually help with. When it arrived, there were three stalks, two of which had already bit the dust. So, I removed the dead ones, watered the stalk I had left and set it in the window of my office. Even though it grew a bunch of leaves, the stalk never got any taller, and it looked rather pathetic sitting there. Still, it was a living thing that I had taken care of for over a year, I couldn’t just throw it out and I couldn’t find anyone to take it. And I wasn’t going to be dragging it around with me on my summer tour of the Mid-West. I left it in my office, hoping someone would find it and feel sorry for it and give it a home, like the baby left in a basket on a doorstep.
Anyway, all of that is to say I understand why my friend’s mom-in-law didn’t throw out the plants or take them with her. And because of that, I am going to refuse to adopt any future plants of the indoor variety because I understand my limits.
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Helping another person move helped me feel a lot better about myself, or at least my lack of stuff. My friend’s husband is a bit of a pack-rat, and I moved boxes this summer that I had moved last summer – boxes that had yet to be opened. I was able to put all of my stuff in a 5’x10’x10’ storage space. They barely had enough room in their 3-bedroom apartment. Of course, I do not have any furniture yet either.
Okay, before I go further, I have a confession to make. Tom and I are currently on vacation from each other (see last summer’s entries for more information on this terminology). He called it, not me, and so I am looking for reasons to totally rid myself of this relationship before it drives me crazy.
Me helping with this move was not a help for me to get beyond Tom. I came away appreciating his lack of stuff and his gold-velvet couch from the 70s. If he were to move today, he would have boxes of clothes, books, DVDs and kitchen stuff, but his furniture would mostly end up in a dumpster. And if for some reason I ever had to move into his mother’s house, I actually wouldn’t mind. I know that she doesn’t have incontinent cats I would have to be concerned about. No cleaning would have to be done either. This is a woman who moves her refrigerator twice a year to clean under it! The refrigerator at my friend’s mom-in-laws? There were jars of unrecognizable contents that were stuck with food to the shelves. The smell was less than appetizing.
The only thing that I find strange about Tom’s mom’s house is that the average number of clocks per room is 4.167. The ticking in that house can become a little unnerving.
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