Divergent and the Job Search!

Divergent recently came out on DVD and I have watched it several times already. I loved it! But I generally love Sci-fi/fantasy movies, so I expected I would like it. What I didn’t expect were some of things I took away from the movie. Since I just finished the training on my new job I figured now is a good time to share some of my thoughts.

To give you a rough overview, Divergent is the story of a post-apocalyptic society divided into groups or factions. The division of society was to ensure governmental control, and is based on a test given to each person. The test places a person in a situation that causes fear and then evaluates that person’s response to the situation.  How each person responds to the different scenarios presented suggests his or her natural strengths. This, in turn suggests the faction a person should join. The factions are:

·      Dauntless – They are known for their courage and bravery and are relied upon to guard and protect.

·      Abnegation – They are selfless and guard against vanity, greed and envy.

·      Candor – They always tell the truth.

·      Amity – They live in peace and avoid aggression.

·      Erudite – They constantly pursue knowledge.

 In the Divergent story’s society, the kids are raised in their parents’ chosen faction until it is time for them to be tested (testing happens in their late teen years). After that, they either stay with the faction they grew up in or choose a different faction. If they choose a new faction, there is an initiation and training process that they go through. If they don’t make it through initiation, they are factionless. That means they do the worst jobs in society and don’t have enough food or clothing. Sound familiar?

I have been searching for a job. In the process of searching for a job, I have submitted more than a hundred résumés and job applications for many different kinds of jobs and I would guess that at least one application in ten has required me to participate in a personality or job assessment. What would I do if a customer left their credit card at the front desk? How would I handle being interrupted while working on a project? What if a co-worker needed help? And on and on… So decisions are made about me and assessments are made about my personality before I’ve met or talked to anyone. Why? Because before they, the human resource departments of these various companies, bring me in for an interview, they want to find out if I am part of the Customer Service faction, or the Hospitality faction, or the Sales faction, or the Administrative faction… You get the idea.

There is another group in the Divergent story’s society. They are called Divergent. They do not fit in any of the factions. They are unpredictable and non-conformist. The government tries to suppress them by killing them because they cannot be manipulated. The protagonists of the movie fall under this category. They successfully take on the some of the corrupt governmental leaders in order to protect innocent factions.

So how does Divergent relate to my job search? I have discovered that I do not really fit in any of the prescribed job factions, which makes me Divergent. I have pieces of all of the jobs I have applied to, but don’t exactly fit in any category  - my strengths do not fit with societal norms. I could be upset about this.

Why am I not upset?

Because being upset about it would mean being upset about who I am. I like being different. I like that my strengths are different. Instead of being upset about not fitting in, I choose to embrace how God made me. If I were upset with my strengths, it would be like telling God He made a mistake in making me the way I am. I’m not upset because I aspire—like Tris, and Katniss, and Eowyn, and other strong women of fiction; and like Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, and Rosa Parks and other real life women—to be a catalyst, a force for change in my world.

And lets face it—you can’t change world when you are happy being like everyone else. 

Wrestling with God = Transformation!

The conclusion of wrestling with God...

For each of these statements, I have not gone very in-depth. There are so many aspects to God and His power and His work in the lives of people that I cannot begin to cover all of them, and many others have already done this much better than I ever could. However, these specific things were enough to make me realize that I had no reason to be mad at God. As I stopped being angry with God yet continued honestly expressing my feelings to Him, instead of railing at God I began to talk to Him more as a friend who just needed to vent.

I have mentioned that I learned many things about God through this process. Aside from what I have already talked about above, there are a couple other things I have learned about God through my wrestling with Him:

1.     There is no safer person in the world to talk to than God. In all I expressed to Him, holding nothing back, He never betrayed me by talking about it with someone else.

2.     God is the only person who not only hears what I say, but also hears the cry of my heart. In so many situations, people I trusted did not stop to consider that my heart’s intent was good, but my actions were the flawed actions of an imperfect human being. God never misses my heart.

3.     God delivers. It may not be as soon as we want it or in the way we want it to happen, but GOD DOES RESCUE HIS CHILDREN!

4.     God wants us to make good choices! What I mean is that He and “the great cloud of witnesses” are cheering us on, rooting for our victory! Until I wrestled things out with God I never realized how much God wants me to WIN!

5.     I am one of God’s favorites! I learned how much God loves me. I learned that God does not view me only as one of His children collectively, but just as each child is uniquely special to their parents, I am uniquely, personally special to God.

I have to assume that just as I have wrestled with God a lot up until now, my wrestling with God will continue in different ways and in various situations through the rest of my life. As long as I remain teachable and open to God, I believe my wrestling with God is a good thing. Not everyone wrestles with God, and if you don’t, you should not feel guilty. But for those of us who question and challenge, who push the boundaries, and refuse to accept what has always been accepted: you shouldn’t feel guilty either. Wresting with God is part of the process, it can be life-changing, and transformational. Isn’t that the goal of everything—transformation?

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Still Wrestling With God: The Three Assumptions

I used to hold back in expressing my feelings to God. I was brought up believing it was a sin to say anything that could be construed as disrespectful, it was a sin to disagree with God, and it was a horrible sin to be angry with God over things that had happened to me.  I would think things—mentally carry on conversations, sometimes rants, but not verbalize anything. I am not exactly sure when the light bulb went off, but one day it occurred to me:

God already knew what I was thinking.

If He were God ONLY then perhaps my thoughts were a sin. But I had already experienced too much of the relational side of God and it didn’t strike me as logical for God to want a relationship with me, create me with feelings and then get mad when, as part of the relationship, I expressed those feelings, so I began to open up in my conversations with God. I began expressing my anger.

Many times, in the heat of the moment, it is hard to separate out the emotions involved in our anger. The secondary emotion behind anger is fear, so while anger may be an emotion, it is also a defense mechanism; it is how we protect ourselves. When I first started honestly communicating with God, I railed at Him. I was hurt and afraid and I thought He should have stopped the things that happened to me. But something happened as I continued expressing myself. I began to realize that my anger was misplaced. I don’t think it would be the same for everyone, but for me, as I expressed how I felt, I was able to sort through the different emotions involved in my anger. As I sorted through emotions, I was able to let go of them and see things more rationally. With rational thought came the realization that some of my feelings were not logical. When I realized my feelings lacked validity, I knew I had to reevaluate some of the things I thought I knew about God.

Little rabbit trail here… Yes, I know feelings are not logical and I don’t expect them to be logical. I also know feelings are not right or wrong; it is what we do about how we feel that is right or wrong. But I think we do ourselves, and those around us, an injustice in NOT evaluating our feelings for validity. We miss an opportunity for personal growth!

When people hurt, they look for an outlet for their pain, and they tend to look for a person to blame. They lash out in an effort to find relief. Some people point a finger at an individual and many people point a finger at God. I also felt, when I started honestly talking with God, like somehow He was responsible for what happened to me. I know God is sovereign, all knowing, and all-powerful, and I know He has and does intervene in miraculous ways to help those who follow Him. But what do you do with the times when you prayed and asked God to intervene and nothing happened? Does that mean that God failed? Is it a betrayal in some way? In evaluating God’s sovereignty and miraculous intervention, I realized that there were three assumptions I had to consider: God did nothing to help me, God is responsible for my pain, and God should have stopped the other person from hurting me.

Let’s consider these statements.

1.     God did nothing to help me. This belief is responsible for many people walking away from God. But upon closer reflection, it is actually rather arrogant. How do we know God did nothing to help us? Can I state with absolute certainty that God did nothing to help me? The reality was and is that there are many things that happen on this earth every day that we know nothing about. In order for us to state unequivocally that God had done nothing, we would first have to know everything that God is doing. So I may feel like God has done nothing to help me, but, regardless of the situation, that does not make it the truth.

2.     God is responsible for my pain. The fact that God did not stop the people who hurt us, does not indicate that God endorsed their actions. In evaluating my specific situations and evaluating how God feels about sin, I know that God wanted the people that hurt me to behave differently. Each of those individuals were given numerous opportunities to do the right thing, to walk away from the sin; in each situation the person or people made a choice. God’s ultimate power and authority does not lessen the personal responsibility of the people making the choices. Because I know that someday we will all answer for our actions, I also realized that, while they may or may not face any consequences here and now for their actions, ultimately they will answer for their choices.

3.     God should have stopped the other person from hurting me. As I consider this thought now, it amazes me that we put this on God. Most people are offended with God because of what He considers sin and because of what the Bible says we should and shouldn’t do. When we put this idea on God, we are expecting God to let us do what we want while he stops other people from doing what they want. We want to be free, but we don’t want others to be free. We can’t have it both ways.

The final part will be posted next week... 
 

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Wrestling with God: Walking the Tightrope

 Several months ago I posted a blog about wrestling with God. I thought I was done with that topic, but I have been through a huge change in the last couple of months. I packed up my life in Johnson City, NY, and relocated to Charlotte, NC, where I moved into an apartment. Once again I am searching for employment, and once again I find myself wrestling with God. The longer I wait to get a response from potential employers, the more I wonder if I have done the right thing in moving. I chose Charlotte because I believed God was directing me here. What if I was wrong? This kind of wrestling isn’t connected so much to the reality of God, but rather considers God’s faithfulness. I moved here in faith; will God provide for me now? And so I find myself still wrestling with God.

Sometimes a relationship with God feels like a tightrope: it is hard to maintain a balance. God is, after all, GOD. You know, sovereign, creator, holy––GOD. But He is also a friend, a companion—He wants a relationship with us. If I completely embrace a relationship with God, then sometimes I feel like I am disrespectful of His divinity; but if I focus completely on God as divine being, then He becomes unapproachable and the relational aspect is gone. This struggle between the divine and relational aspects of God brings up a dilemma for those of us who love Him and are trying to walk with Him: what are we supposed to do when God offends us? What do we do when we are struggling with God?  I wish there was a formula I could give you, that doing X,Y, and Z would bring everything back into balance, but it doesn’t work that way. All relationships are unique between the parties involved. It is up to you to figure out how you will handle your relationship with God. What I can tell you from experience, and what I think is the most important aspect of wrestling with God, is that God is okay with our wrestling with Him. In fact, I believe God LOVES it when we wrestle with Him because it tells Him we take the relationship seriously.  

Wrestling, as a sport, is up close and personal. It is not done from a distance. It involves physical contact, looking at the opponent face-to-face. It is impossible for wrestling to be indifferent. It is heated—the people involved are invested in the outcome and biased as to what the outcome should be.  Given these two factors involved in wrestling we can see that wrestling is intensely personal. It is the same when we wrestle with God. We omit the physical element as we cannot actually touch God, but the other components remain the same. We cannot wrestle with God unless there has been closeness in the relationship. When we need or want something from God and we ask, because we are told to ask for what we want from God, it doesn’t always go the way we hope. We care—about our relationship with God, about whatever the issue is, and about how the issue is affecting us. We cannot be indifferent in our wrestling with God. It is personal.

Wrestling gets very complicated and confusing, though, when it comes to the expression of our feelings. This is another one of those tightropes. If God is only a DIVINE being, then we do not have the right to express our feelings. But if God is relational, then communication of both parties’ feelings is essential to the relationship. Here is where it gets tricky. Most relationships are built on rules, and although the rules vary depending on upbringing and life experience, among these rules you usually find the idea of mutual respect, caring, and a balance of honesty and tactfulness. Those of us who have a relationship with God want to maintain a respectful attitude toward God; we get that He is GOD. But sometimes the pain is so excruciating, the hurt and anger so overwhelming that you cannot hold back in expressing how you feel. It isn’t that you intend to be disrespectful or that you are challenging God’s authority, but the emotions are intense and an honest and relational approach to God dictates the need to “let it all out.” It is critical to realize at those times in our life that God can handle the FULL WEIGHT of our emotions. 

To be continued... ;-)  

Music!

Music has always been part of my life. When I was little I listened to my parents sing in church. As I got older I listened and sang along with my parents Letterman and Sandler and Young records. In high school I sang in my school choir and the church choir and listened to Lionel Richie, the BeeGees, Billy Joel and Bon Jovi with my friends. As an adult I participated in church worship teams. Music has always been there. But I didn’t realize until the last couple of years that, for me, music is a necessity – I literally cannot live without it.

Life is strange.  You go through the day-to-day and while everything isn’t perfect, it is okay and you can deal with the occasional twists and turns. But then the bottom drops out of your world and it doesn’t take long for whatever reserves you had to be depleted. It is funny though, life doesn’t stop when your reserves are depleted and you have to figure out a way to keep going. I was praying, I was trusting in God to help me, but it wasn’t enough. And that is where music stepped in.

Music is not just something I hear; some days it is my prayers, some days it is my hope. I don’t understand how it works, but music is able to go deep inside and pull things out of me - dreams I didn’t know were there. Music gives me courage, it inspires me to keep going, it lets me know I am not alone, and it reminds me that life is still fun and full of good things.

While my taste in music may not be everyone’s taste in music, I will share a few of the songs that have kept me going over the last year.

Not For A Moment – the Vertical Church Band with Meredith Andrews

http://youtu.be/XD0cvWImVjA

Worthy, Worthy – the Vertical Church Band

http://youtu.be/NA1mOQJouRg

The Great I Am by Phillips, Craig, & Dean

http://youtu.be/BhlDGS8wTeU

You Won’t Let Go by Michael W. Smith

http://youtu.be/zl9blXdooqY

Let It Out and When We Come Alive by Switchfoot off of their Fading West CD.

http://youtu.be/vl9focF2tvg

http://youtu.be/QfTopfOAEdY

Dark Horses and Afterlife by Switchfoot off of Vice Verses.

http://youtu.be/5_5oE0ijhKg

http://youtu.be/j6z-H3_hgEU

Never Let You Go by Manafest

http://youtu.be/8g3lBhgMW-M

On My Own by Ashes Remain

http://youtu.be/4l7fhxNrrrM

These songs have gotten hours of playtime; sometimes the song is on repeat and I listen to it over and over again. There have been days when I wished that I could somehow take in the music intravenously as I couldn’t seem to get enough of it. And it never seems to be loud enough. Some days that is how consumed I am by music.

I am going to close with a quote that pretty much sums it up for me,

“I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me - like food or water.” Ray Charles  

My New Apartment

I recently moved. It has been hardest and most challenging thing I have done EVER. I left behind my daughter, my parents, numerous friends, and places that were familiar to build a new life

When I got to New York I knew I wasn’t going to be there long term. I tried to stay – applied for numerous jobs and didn’t get one of them. After realizing I wasn’t going to stay, I had to figure out where to go. Through a series of odd events and for several reasons, I chose Charlotte, NC. The middle of June I packed up all my stuff and I headed out for Charlotte; a couple of weeks later my parents drove down with all my stuff and a week after that I moved into a condo.

It is always risky renting a place when you aren’t familiar with an area, but it has turned out well for me. Target is around the corner, Trader Joe’s is less than 10 minutes away along with Ikea, Ulta, Old Navy, Hobby Lobby…you get the picture - I am centrally located to many stores that I like and shop at quite often.

Because of moving into a new place and making a new start I purchased some new things to hang in my apartment. I love them and I am going to share pictures of a few of them with you.

            This used to hang in the Broadway Cafe' at Davis College. I worked there this past year.

"

                     "at first glance it may appear too hard, look again - always look again."

                                                                        Love this one!                                             

                                                                      I love Dr. Seuss!

                                                      Some of my snarky coffee signs. 

 This one is special! My daughter painted this for me. She knows "Beauty and the Beast" is one of my favorite Disney movies. And she wrote a quote on the edge of the painting from another of my favorite Disney movies - Mulan, "The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all." Both the picture and the quote seem to fit my life.

This one is also special. Last December my daughter married into a wonderful family; I am truly blessed in that they also brought me into their family. My son-in-law's mother made this banner and gave it to me before I moved. I am so pleased to have something she made hanging in my house! 

Wrestling with God

This blog will be more philosophical than other posts as I have been contemplating life and its unfairness. I usually avoid talking about my divorce because I do not choose to dwell on the negative and I also am usually less open about my faith in God, but today I will not be. So consider yourself warned!

I, like many other Christians, recently went and saw God’s Not Dead in the theater. And while it was encouraging to hear some of the arguments for the existence of God, I was also incredibly disappointed. In the movie the college professor had faced a devastating loss and in his wrestling with God he turned away from God. He made the same choice many people make and it is a choice many Christians have to make at many times throughout their lives. But what the film never talked about and one of the things I think is missing in many Christian’s relationships with unbelievers is transparency about our wrestling matches with God.

I have wrestled with God. My deepest wrestling with God occurred after I found out my husband had been unfaithful to me. I had prayed for him and for us, I tried to love him unconditionally, I tried to encourage him while he struggled with a deep depression and still he was unfaithful. I was working full-time and had two teenagers at home so I was hurt and tired. I remember thinking one day – in a very detached manner, as I was not angry, just numb – I wonder if God is real. I grew up being taught about God by my parents who were taught about God by their parents. Did we all buy into a lie? I did not question the reality of Jesus or the Bible; I knew that if God was real then Jesus and the Bible were real too. But I did wonder about God and I continued to wonder about God for the next couple of months. It was no coincidence that I was taking an apologetic class at the time and I found this quote, “Conscience reveals to us a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, thus pointing to a supernatural Lawgiver." C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

Because I had grown up being taught about God I had also been taught that all people were sinners. I did not have any difficulty accepting this as a reality. Every day in the news there were stories of parents doing horrible things to their kids, adults enslaving other adults and children, and people killing other people over trivial things – the reality of sin and people being sinners I did not question. There are those who argue that man hasn’t always been bad – man started off good and has gotten progressively worse. But the Code of Hammurabi, written somewhere around 1700 B.C., a point we would consider to be at the beginning of civilization, seems to indicate a need for rules. Because the Code exists it seems logical to assume that mankind was not basically good. In my questioning the reality of God I was considering all these things that I knew to be true and the C.S. Lewis quote was always at the back of my mind. One day I was in the break room at work listening to two of my co-workers – one of them believed in God and the other was vocal in her disregard for God. They were talking about their relationships with their boyfriends and the person who did not believe in God made the comment that she would kill (figuratively not literally) her boyfriend if he ever cheated on her. Then everything clicked. At that point I knew God was real. A moral expectation from someone who didn’t believe in God could only mean that there is a moral law. And with man’s proclivity to do whatever he wants regardless of who gets hurt, the only way there could be any moral law is if God was real. The C.S. Lewis quote went from being a challenging thought to a reality for me that day.

Is it wrong to admit that I wrestle with God? I think if we don’t admit to wrestling with God we are lying to ourselves and our lack of sincerity and transparency is apparent to those around us. Does it make me weak to admit that I wrestle with God? I suppose in some people’s eyes it does make me weak, but the truth is that those who attack transparency show the depth of their weakness and insecurity - it takes strength to admit questions and uncertainties.

My faith in God is very important to me, but it is also important to me that it is not a blind, mindless faith. Because of this it is likely that I will always wrestle with God. I will wrestle with the reality of good, godly, loving people dying and selfish, abusive people living, I will wrestle with the horrors of human trafficking, women being raped and killed, organizations and institutions who do not protect the vulnerable, and “godly” people who do ungodly things. But never again will I wrestle with the reality of God.