The Power of "Dear Future Self"

Today I read over some blog posts from seven years ago. They made my stomach clench. They made my lips feel dry. I was not okay seven years ago. Well, I was "okay," as in "I survived." I'm here now. But I wasn't doing WELL. I was doing far worse than I even had the perspective to see.

I don't know why I'm writing this post except that I want to recommend you keep records for yourself. Not everyone journals, not everyone blogs, not everyone updates her Facebook status so that it will pop up as a "Memory" every year, but I want to encourage you do do SOMETHING to capture how you're feeling and how you're doing these days. In a few years, you'll care. In a few years, you'll want to know how far you've come in a specific, tangible way.

Consider writing letters to your future self. I've done that before too. Write a letter and date it to be opened sometime in the future. My fourteen-year-old self wrote a letter to my twenty-four-year-old self. My first-day-of-college self wrote a letter to her first-day-of-Christmas-break self. My Christmas 2013 self wrote a letter to my Christmas 2014 self.

Reading those letters to yourself is...almost magical.

It really helps in the moment. It helps you realize that there is a future; that the moment you're in in just a moment, the phase you're in is just a phase—for better or worse.

It gives you purpose. It makes you excited to "meet" your future self.

It can be a great way to keep your priorities in check. You can spell out what your principles are as a whatever-year-old, and remind your future self to bear those principles in mind. It can help you realize how much you've grown when something that was so crucial to your past self has given way to more important things.

It's cathartic.

It's fun.

10/10, would recommend.

If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to write a blog post to myself and schedule it to post one year from today.

~Stephanie

I Wrote a Love Scene at Age Eleven

I'm watching The Vampire Diaries. I'm not proud of it. It's not part of my Becoming journey. However, the thoughts it's making me have might be. As I watch this show about teenaged angst and emotions and love, I have the urge to roll my eyes, but I like to stop myself (mostly XD). The drama might seem melodramatic to me now, but it's not a bad portrayal of what might have resonated with me ten years ago.

I also recently watched The Outer Banks. Honestly, I can't think of anything good to say about that show. Oh, one of the main female characters isn't super skinny. She has a more "realistic" body type. There. There was something good.

The whole time I was watching that show, I kept thinking about how much I just couldn't care. I must just be way too old for this crap. A bunch of children run around and think all the adults are out to get them, and think they're Really Truly in Love, and that no one understands them, and that they're forced into making bad choices. It was so aggressively ridiculous that it almost crossed the line from "lol" into infuriating.

But the thing is, when you're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, you believe those things. You believe them really, truly, deeply. Now, y'all know I am not one of those "whatever you feel is true" types. There's Truth and it doesn't care about your feelings. Two plus two is going to keep being four no matter how upset that makes you.

But if someone comes up to you and says, with tears in his eyes, "I'm looking at two plus two, and I swear to you I see them equaling five," the right thing to do isn't to roll your eyes or tell him he's stupid or crazy or that he'll grow out of it one day. You need to understand why he thinks that. What is he seeing that's different from what you see? Where is the disconnect? What mathematical laws is he breaking without realizing?

If the math equation is actually the fact that all the adults are out to get him, that he's Really Truly in Love, that no one understands him, or that he's forced into making bad choices, there's a good chance he still isn't going to leave the conversation believing that the answer is four.

And, to be honest, I think that has to be okay.

I wrote a love scene between these two characters when I was in sixth grade. The characters were fourteen (and lived in maybe the mid-1700s). They finally kissed, and the boy character felt "passion." Not in a sexual way that would've been inappropriate for an eleven-year-old to write, but in an emotional way.

I showed the story to an adult, and the adult said said in a tone of disgust, "He's fourteen. He's too young to feel passion."

I was, myself, disgusted—and offended. I am to this day.

Who gets to say when someone is old enough to feel "passion"? Is not the person who feels the passion the ONLY authority on that? How dare an adult tell me that I couldn't understand passion or that my characters were too young to feel that strongly about each other?

I guess I understand where the adult was coming from, but I still disagree. The older you get, the bigger and deeper your emotional cup becomes. You're able to feel more and more deeply than you possibly could have when you were fourteen.

However, just because you can fit more into your adult emotional cup doesn't mean that the fourteen-year-old's cup isn't legitimately full.

I'm actually REALLY conflicted on this subject. On one hand, I feel like someone should punch the kids in the face and tell them they're wrong and to just zip it—mouth, heart, etc.—until they're, like, twenty. Stop ruining your life over crap that is literally not going to be important in the grand scheme of your life. On the other hand, the above personal anecdote. How DARE I start to become the very thing I set out to destroy? XD

I get that there's a healthy balance to be struck; I just don't know where it is. I tend to think it's...in the middle? XD I don't know. (I also remember, as a child, losing respect for adults and adult characters who were TOO taken in by teenage antics.)

It bothers me that I had such a condescending reaction to The Outer Banks. Granted, I think other shows and movies do a WAY better job of portraying the legitimacy of teenage emotional journeys, but, out of respect for my incredibly emotional and passionate eleven-to-eighteen-year-old self, I generally strive to take these things seriously.

It's why I do not laugh at kids when they tell me things that might seem "cute" or "funny" or "precocious" or any number of other things that make grownups laugh. It upset me so much to be laughed at as a little kid. It happened almost all the time. I have a mental list of people in my head who treated me respectfully, and I love them very much. (Bon, you’re on it.)

I know when I have teenaged kids, they're going to say things and feel things that I "know" to be ridiculous. But I really hope I still remember what it was like to be convicted of the legitimacy of my adolescent feelings. I don't know how to translate that into good parenting, but I hope at least remembering will be helpful.

...?

~Stephanie

This is Where I Might Lose You

I'm about to say something that is going to make some of you curl your lip in disgust and stop reading. Before that happens, I'd like to ask you a question:

Do you think that little of me?

The answer might be "yes," and if so, that is totally fine. I know many people for whom the answer would be "yes, I do." If that's the case, then feel free to curl your lip in disgust and stop reading. But if your answer was, "Well, no" or "Not usually," then I would ask you to hear me out. If you respect someone, then you ought to hear them out, even—maybe especially—when they start down a road you wouldn't normally travel.

I think Dungeons and Dragons might be helping me grow as a person.

If you're still here, let's get some things straight. (Gabe also blogged about this last year, so if you're interested in his take, you can check out his post here.)

1) Dungeons and Dragons is not necessarily a game about magic.

Dungeons and Dragons is a game where everyone except one person makes up a character, and the remaining person is like the narrator. The rules of Dungeons and Dragons are basically just a guide to translating any conceivable action into a die roll so that you're able to "do" it in the game in a quantifiable way. If you want to have your character squawk like a chicken and jump off a roof wielding a spatula, DnD can tell you which dice to roll to see how that goes.

Most people who play Dungeons and Dragons are into magic, so they set their games in magical worlds and have their characters use magic. Most DnD resources cater to this group. This is a choice, however. Gabe is currently playing a Sci-Fi game where there is zero magic; everything is technology-based.

2) Dungeons and Dragons has no more agency than video games, books, podcasts, or playing pretend with the kids you babysit.

DnD does not have the power to make you possessed, obsessed, or...duressed? Help me out with the parallelism XD DnD is just a game. It does not involve anything legitimately spiritual. If anyone has ever gone crazy from Dungeons and Dragons (and I know they have; Hello Satanic Panic of the '80s), the person was unstable to begin with, played with bad people, intentionally summoned demons, or some combination of the above.

As Christians, we do not need to be afraid of our imaginations in and of themselves. Monitor them, yes. Do an idolatry check on them, yes. But no game has the agency or authority to possess a person—especially a Christian.

3) Dungeons and Dragons is role playing, yes—but so is fiction writing, acting, playing video games, etc.

Role playing is not an inherently slippery slope. Most people will be able to keep fantasy and reality separate. For people who cannot, DnD is not for them. But neither are a lot of other things that would require a person to think clearly and keep her feet rooted in reality.

If you're concerned and it's bothering you, I suggest doing some research into what the bare bones of the game entail, or talking to someone who plays. Gabe would be glad to have a conversation about this (and he is much more empathetic and diplomatic than I am).

However, at the end of the day, I'm not here to convince you that Dungeons and Dragons isn't evil. I'm just here to ask you to read the next post that mentions it, because I think it's going to teach me how to open the Feelings Door.

~Stephanie

Jesus Had Limitations

I have always considered myself to be a lazy person.

Growing up, I was often told that I was lazy, and I assume it was true. I internalized it as part of my identity. Being told that I was lazy did not make me less lazy; it just made me aware of the fact that apparently laziness was part of who I was.

If I didn't get my homework done, it was because I didn't try hard enough. If I didn't take all the college classes I wanted to, it was because I didn't want to apply myself sufficiently. If I'm late to a function, it's because I didn't plan well enough. If I'm not a good enough friend to someone, it's because I'm too lazy to try. If I don't finish a work project on time, it's because I didn't work hard enough. If I'm not in the physical shape I want to be in, it's because I don't commit to it. If I can't have three careers and also be a stay-at-home mom, it'll be because I'm lazy.

It's part of my identity. I AM a lazy person. I don't have any limits at all except an unwillingness to work. There is no other reason besides laziness that would account for the above things. I am capable of literally ANYTHING and the failure to do literally anything is 100% a lack of focus and determination.

Except, maybe that's insane?!

I was listening to the Made for This podcast by Jennie Allen this morning and Kirk Franklin was a guest speaker. I was going about my day when he started hitting me with truths I had never considered before. The scales have fallen from my eyes and now I feel like an actual crazy person.

He quoted the book Ordering Your Private World by George MacDonald: "Jesus knew his limitations well.* Strange as it may seem, he knew what we conveniently forget: time must be properly budgeted for the gathering of inner strength and resolve in order to compensate for one's weaknesses when spiritual warfare begins."

If JESUS needed time to recharge, if JESUS had limitations, then how appallingly arrogant of me to assume that I have none; that my only limitation is laziness; that I have no spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual, relational limitations whatsoever. (I'm hearing how insane and arrogant this sounds as I process it. Good grief.)

Kirk went on to point out that one thing Satan does is tempt us to go beyond our limitations, to exhaust ourselves in any or many of the above categories. "Rest is a weapon," Kirk said. "It's very hard to tempt well-rested, emotionally healthy, happy, and serene people."

Maybe I'm not fundamentally lazy. Maybe I'm TIRED. Maybe I'm really, really tired. Maybe my assumption that I have no limitations has led me to be not only overextended, but emotionally abusive to myself. Until this morning, I ACTUALLY THOUGHT that the ONLY reason I had not succeeded in any number of "failures" was because I just hadn't tried hard enough, because I was lazy.

And honestly, I'm not sure which camp I find more uncomfortable: the You Are Lazy camp, or the You Have Limitations camp.

On one hand, acknowledging that I have legitimate limitations is both reasonable and reassuring. On the other...well, it is a strangely difficult pill to swallow. I have always been comforted by the fact that I COULD do literally anything, I just CHOOSE not to because I'd rather be lazy. It is humbling and disconcerting to think that I may not be ABLE to work a 40-hour a week job, tutor Challenge B, teach dance, have children, homeschool those children, run a perfect house, read a book a week, write and publish a novel, have a great tan, get into perfect shape, have a deep relationship with God, be a great friend, be involved in church, be politically active, become fluent in multiple languages, and relearn math simultaneously NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRY.

That was not hyperbole for the sake of making a point. That was the actual list of things I assumed I was capable of doing concurrently if I just weren't so lazy.

Even now, it's hard for me not to look at that list and narrow my eyes and say, "But, like, you COULD. You just WON'T." I still kind of feel that way. Maybe it's a weird millennial side effect of growing up on "you can do anything you put your mind to" culture.

I'm not sure what to do with this. Do I take a vacation? (It's been over a year since I took one...) Do I quit a job? (LOL) Do I...?

~Stephanie

*Obviously as God, Jesus had no limitations. However, he was also human, which comes with limitations that he chose to acknowledge and live within.