Getting Healthy - Numero Uno

After spending an entire night on WebMD, and diagnosing myself with GERD (fancy name for acid reflux) I've decided to make a few dietary changes in order to feel normal again.

This woman talks about singers who have dealt with acid reflux. She inspired me to tackle this annoyingly awful life-interrupting disease by eating stomach-friendly, alkaline, and doctor recommended foods.

I know I can't implement everything at once, so I'll start by adding things one at a time.

This week's kick: BONE-BROTH!

Sounds gross, but apparently it has healing properties. Very nutritious.



Here are some good recipes.

I called my mom tonight and said, "Hey, can you pick up some bones while you're at the grocery store?" So she brought home a lovely array of, um, bones. We cut up celery and carrots and let the bone soak for a good 2 hours. It should be done by now...

Possession

There are two ways to be broken and never heal.

The first is to believe a promise: that if I fully possess the thing I desire the most, I will be happy. But when I finally grab ahold of it and suck the marrow out of it, I come to the horrifying conclusion that I am still hollow.

The second is to believe another promise: that as long as I feel full right now, I will be happy. I commit to nothing fully because I can never love anything great enough to lose the other options. I am driven by the need to be filled...with anything.

Both promises are lies. The first can't deliver, and the second makes me a slave to my appetites.

There third promise I have held on to in brokenness is the only one that doesn't just act as a bandaid on a wound, but leads to healing.

Whatever makes your heart sick with desire, whatever owns you, whatever you think you can't be happy without: kill it. One day, when you are ready to have it back, it will be brighter, better, and fuller than ever, because for the first time, you will possess it fully.

Ginger

Meet Ginger: my sassy mentor-turned friend, who's spirit is truly poetic.


How many people can you meet for coffee and randomly start reciting poetry with? Really.

Haha, here you go ging.

SAY not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

Sometimes I get revelations while listening to Bruno Mars.

Living in a culture of choice presents unique problems. The freedom to choose can be liberating or paralyzing, because no matter what we choose, the anxiety of neglected choices looms over us.

In our 20's, it's game-time for choosing. We fret about where we work, but that's just one pea-sized piece in a jigsaw puzzle that's constantly changing shape. After you get a job, you still have to figure out what you actually want to do with your life and how in the world you're ever going to make money doing that thing when you probably suck at it. Then you have to decide who you love, and find ways to make sure they stay in the picture...or take them out of it.

We put the pieces together one by one, and then the puzzle picture changes, and we have to start over again. Then some wise adult touches our hand and says, "It all works out in the end."

It probably works out in the end because at some point, we get serious about our commitments. (Smedes writes a good article about this). He says most of our identity comes from making wise promises and keeping them. When you make a promise to someone or something, you create a sanctuary in a jungle of unpredictability.

What have you made a promise to?

Listening to the radio today, I thought about the process of pursuing music: how frustrating and fun it is, how sometimes I feel like a goddess but most of the time I just feel like a hipster idiot penning lyrics on duck tape to my kitchen table.

But things that matter the most always cost the most. I can't think of anything more foolish than an army of marching in circles around a fortified city for 7 days, blowing trumpets. We wish that walls would come down on their own, but that's not the way it works. Truly profound things are rarely accomplished normally, and, without bruises to your ego. You write 25 songs that are just okay and want to kill yourself. Then you write one good chorus and feel like you will live forever. It's an ebb and flow: glory and shame, glory and shame.

Success is irrelevant - what matters is that you have made a promise to something that matters. The rest isn't up to you.

Art and Longing

I had an epiphany on the purple couch this morning when Cindy told me about the process of a traditional Hebrew wedding.

First, the Father would choose a husband for his daughter and discuss arrangements with him (dowry, terms, etc.). Then suitor would be invited over for dinner, and at some point during the evening, drink from a glass of wine. If the daughter accepted, she would drink after. At the moment she puts that cup to her lips and drinks, she is married.

The husband, or "soon to be" then goes away to build a house for her. They do not consummate their marriage until he comes back, (usually a year later) and sweeps her off into a new life.

Here's the interesting part:

The bride would not know the exact day or time the husband would come home, only the "season." So if it was in springtime, she would have to be ready at all times for him to come home. It was a season of longing, waiting, and preparing even though she was already his.

If the bride is the metaphor God has given us for the church, then maybe this whole life on earth is the season of that longing.

Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time writing love songs, but if I really believed the trajectory of history from the angle of scripture--God saving, humans waiting, God coming--then wouldn't love and longing be the most important thing to write about?

Love songs help us cope with longing. They help us wake up desires from death and keep the lamps burning when they so frequently go out, and they remind us what we're hoping for. Art does this better than anything, and I guess until now I've underestimated how important it was.

Important Little Ingredient to Love

I think there is this little ingredient that tells you could carve out a life with a person and make it work. It's the ability to know someone's flaws and get excited about being a part of their renewal. When this happens, that's when I know there's something deeply magical about my feelings for them.

Tim Keller says it well in The Meaning of Marriage

"Many people have asked me, How can you tell whether you've got a friendship on which you can base a marriage?" The answer that Kathy and I have always given is this. When you see the problems in each other, do you just want to run away, or do you find a desire to work on them together? If the second impulse is yours, then you have the makings of a marriage. Do you obsess over your partner's external shortcomings, or can you see the beauty within, and do you want to see it increasingly released? Then move forward. The power of truth that marriage has should hold no fear for you."

Jeremiah 1-3

But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit...my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

We lie down in our shame, and our confusion covers us: for we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.

Turn, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.