An Open Letter to my Brothers in Christ

Brother,

Thank you.  There have been some videos, some movements, some poems, websites and other media that have sprung up recently from Christian men seeking to encourage us as women - to remain pure, to not settle, to set high standards, to allow ourselves to be served.  Others have asked forgiveness for sins of lust, of abuse, of impurity, of disrespect, of anger, of selfishness, of arrogance, of inflicted pain - intentional or otherwise.

For this I want to thank you.  It is a joy and an honor to call you a brother.  It is good for us to see that there are men out there, pursuing God, loving friends and family well, seeking after the Gospel, waiting for their wife.  It truly is an encouragement to know that not all men are after me for my body.  That not all men are cowards, or are arrogant.  That there are men of Christ, and that someday, Lord willing, I will be able to say that I have a husband who genuinely loves Jesus more than me - because men like that DO exist. It is nice to know that I am not crazy, that I am not waiting on a fairy tale, and that men are seeking healing for the abuses and the pain they have historically or personally caused. 

But I think it is time a woman stepped up, to encourage you.

Many of you seek to serve us so well - as friends, as sisters, as wives.  You do so without recognition, without prompting, and with much joy.  Thank you for that.

You have taught me much in the last two years about what I ought to value in men, and how I ought to carry myself.  You have restored much faith, and you have led by example.  As friends, you have taught me about service, and what that looks like, and how I can serve you well.  You have taught me about being served.  You have taught me about brotherly love.

Many of you are already married. We single women (and men, probably) are watching closer than you think, and you have wonderfully led by example. You have taught and shown me much about life, about men, and about marriage.  I have seen what functional, healthy, Christ-centered marriages look like, and where I have much room to grow before I am ready to be yoked together with a man.  I have seen how you fight for your marriages when they are hard, and I have seen how you lead steadfastly when a storm blows in.  I have seen your honesty, and your attempts to destroy the lies the world builds up about marriage - in order that we single women (and men) can avoid some hardships and mistakes you have already walked through.  I see you discipling younger men and I can only hope and pray that my husband would have had this in his life too.  I see you advancing God's kingdom one life at a time, and this is a joy.  I see you honoring and loving your wives well - in a way that reminds me that my standards are not too high, and that I really am waiting for someone like you. 

Many of you are single.  Women watch you, too.  We see how you look at us, how you talk to us, and how you serve us as sisters - with grace, with dignity, with the utmost respect, and with love.  How you do not objectify us, but you value our whole being.  We see that some of you are dating other girls, and that you take the utmost care to protect your purity.   We see that you do not have to be our boyfriends for you to help us move, for you to just hang out with us because you enjoy our company, or for you to do spontaneously kind things for us.  You are willing to love us and serve us as we are, we do not have to earn your favor.  We see you seeking the Lord more than you are seeking a girlfriend, more than you are seeking a job, more than you are seeking influence and power.  We see that you, too, are advancing the Kingdom.  You are devoting time to your relationships, to go deep and to serve your brothers well. We see all of this. I know it is probably harder than you would like.  I know you do not do this perfectly all the time.  I know there are men who are on you to be better men.  Keep pursuing Biblical manhood, but remember that you are already doing a lot of things well. 

I have spent much of the last 6 years hating men - even men like you.  Railing against them.  Fighting for my own independence, despite all indications that I am entirely unable.  Propping up images and illusions of my own glory, my own sufficiency, and my own perfection, while lamenting, coddling, and nursing the wounds that had been deeply cut.  I have spent years convinced that all men are cowards, afraid of any sort of relationship because of the damage that might be done.  Afraid of touching scars that might cause me pain, and instead choosing to shut you out, to secretly be disgusted with you, to find flaws where they needn't be found.  Arming myself against "the patriarchy", which included all men and all forms of chivalry, meanwhile complaining that there were no "good men".  Resigning myself to the fact that I would be miserably alone forever, because "nobody was good enough for me", when really I was too afraid of you to give you a chance.  

I have simultaneously spent that time longing for someone to hold me, to validate my insecure conceptions of beauty, to affirm me in my comfortable state.  What I have really been looking for is the companionship one might typically find in a dog, I was just looking for it in a man that I could call "boyfriend" - one who would not challenge, who would not push back, who would only serve me, but not need to be served.  Who would require no labor and love beyond that of a cuddle-buddy.  I have been degrading your companionship, your friendship, and your very person to something that made me comfortable, instead of conforming myself to the designs of God, and admiring you for the way God has made you - and the way He intended for us to interact. 


For all of the hateful things I have said, for all of the hurtful things I have thought, and for all of the disgustingly un-Christlike things I have done (and they are plenty), brother I am sorry.  I truly am.  I cannot and will not continue to treat men this way - you are my brother!  Please forgive me, friend. 

Friend.  I am so honored to call you that.  Friend.  Please, please keep doing what you are doing.  Keep seeking the Lord.  Keep serving your brothers and sisters in Christ with humility, and with love.  Keep advancing the Kingdom, keep seeking purity, keep fighting for the good name of Christian men.  We know you are out there (even if we do not believe it or act like it all the time).  You have, in the last two years, taken my broken, terrified, and angry heart and turned it into one that is in the process of being restored.  Without knowing my story, without knowing my anger, my frustration, or my scars, you have simply lived out Christ-like servanthood and attitudes to me, and it has changed me profoundly.  Thank you.  Please, brother, in all humility, continue to walk with me as my heart is conformed to God's.  I am sure I will stumble.  Please call me out, but recognize that I am still recovering from the lies of the world and my own fickle heart. 

Thank you, brother, for doing what you are already doing.  Continue to do it.  We women are watching, and we are learning.  I am more thankful for the men in my life now than I ever have been before.

Affectionately in Christ,
K

Things I Wish I'd Known Earlier About College...

• You don't have to find your best friends immediately - or even your first year.  Cultivating relationships and building new ones is a good thing.  You're allowed to feel a little lost.  Just don't let it paralyze you.
• Procrastination is NEVER a good thing.  [And yet so tempting...]
• However, procrastination is never an excuse for not doing your homework.
• Group projects suck just as much as they did in high school.  Maybe more.  But professors still assign them, so get over it.
• Oreos and Ice Cream (together or separately) make the best late night desserts (or sorbet, if you happen to be vegan...)
• Learning how to laugh with your roommate, at your roommate, and allowing your roommate to laugh at you will make life infinitely more fun and easy.
• Sometimes implementing a bedtime, even in college, is a good thing.
• Grades are not as important as your parents told you they were.
• Journal.  It's good for the soul.
• You should never buy your textbooks from the bookstore.
• You're allowed to jump on your bed now, whenever you want - if you want.  And you should want, because it's great fun!
• You can even jump on your bed in red onesie pj's and sing Michael Jackson into your hairbrush at the top of your lungs at 12am if you want.
• Spend time with little kids.  They're one of the best, most sanctifying and most encouraging gifts God has given us, even if they aren't biologically yours.
• Make yourself a little bit vulnerable.
• Making friends with people who own cars is a good thing.  Just remember to give them gas money.
• If you have a car, be nice to people who don't.  They'll be eternally grateful, and you might make some new friends in the process.
• Sometimes people are just grumpy.  Some people are always grumpy.  It doesn't mean you have to be.
• You do not have to know what you are doing with your life.
• You do not have to know what you are doing with your life.
• One more time: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING WITH YOUR LIFE! God's plans are very often not our plans.  Tear up your 10-year plan.  It's worthless.
• Learn to love the chaos.
• Cultivating your silly is important.
• You will be poor.  It's ok - it will make you creatively resourceful.
• You will eat a lot of microwave food.  It may or may not give you cancer, depending on who you talk to.  But you will eat microwave food or starve, so you will eat microwave food and risk the cancer.
• Couscous is the BEST college dorm meal - boil water, pour in couscous, let sit.  Enjoy.  Easiest. Thing. Ever.
• You're allowed to bend some of the rules.
• You don't NEED a printer.  But they're nice to have...
• You DO need more than one set of sheets and one set of towels, no matter what your father tells you HE went through school with (the uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow-stories from your parents - tell them to be a big girl/boy and get over it.  You need at least 2 sets of each).
• Similarly, you do not NEED to do laundry until you are out of underwear.  But when you are out of underwear, you NEED to do laundry.
• Flip flops, tie-dye t-shirts, jeans that you have worn every day this week, sweats, pj's, oversize hoodies, and mismatched outfits are all acceptable to wear to class.
• You can fit 2 loads of laundry into 1 dryer.
• You need tupperware.  So you can steal a weeks worth of meals from the dining hall. Plan it into your schedule
• Living in a dorm is tight.  (Literally, it's a tight space.  But it can also be cool, yo) You will learn to deal.
• Living on campus is a good experience, even if it's hard some days.
• Stop complaining.
• Engage - with everything.
• Don't burn things.  Setting off the fire alarm in your building makes EVERYONE mad.
• Send letters.  Find a friend and be pen pals.  Getting mail is fun, sending mail is even funner.
• You're allowed to make up words like "funner", as long as you do it with authority.
• You're allowed to have hard days.  Some of them will be so challenging and difficult, you'll want to cry.  Some days you will cry.
• You're not allowed to have bad days.  Every day is a gift from the Lord, so treat it as such
• You are allowed to cry
• You are allowed to miss home
• Call your parents every now and again, just to say hi

 Most importantly:

• Learn, love, and grow.  Do everything to the glory of the Lord - all else will fall into place.  

Let's Talk Baptism!

I've gotten some questions about this recently, so I feel like I should articulate something that I maybe haven't done a great job of making clear: I decided to get baptized again out of obedience to the Word of God and as a public profession of my faith, NOT as a way to condemn or show preferential treatment to any particular denomination.

My decision to be baptized didn't have anything to do with denomination or a particular church. I think that all churches, regardless of denomination, have some variety of inherent flaws (they are, after all, composed of humans...). I believe God can (and does) use those flaws to teach us, to humble us, and to bring us closer to Him. I don't completely agree with Episcopal doctrine, nor do I completely agree with Baptist doctrine. I've discussed some of these (relatively minor) differences with my pastors, and we have agreed to respectfully disagree. They did make it clear that they value the fact that I am thinking critically for myself about the Scriptures, and not simply taking what they teach at face value without comparing it to God's Word. That, to me, spoke volumes about their character as teachers and pastors, and what they think is important in my relationship with the church and with God.

I chose the church I am currently attending based on the community that is growing there, and what I find spiritually nourishing - I have no particular issue with the Episcopal Church as a whole (or St. Timothy's in particular) that "drove me away" or caused me to leave - I simply find that a service constructed in a more ritualized, liturgical way is not as fulfilling or meaningful to me as a service with a little less structure and a little longer sermon. I don't think there's anything wrong with those types of services, and for some people (in particular, like my parents), they are wonderful. I just feel that at this point in my life, given who I am, it's simply not what I need. I believe that my church is very Biblical and Gospel-centered, and that the pastors and members are truly interested and invested in creating a community based in Christ. That is the most important thing to me.

Regarding baptism: my decision to be baptized is not my way of "officially switching denominations" or making any sort of declaration for the Baptist church or against the Episcopal church. It is not even really a part of me just becoming an official member of this particular church, but truly and fully becoming a part of His Church. Being baptized is something that God began to lay on my heart many years ago - before I fully rejected Him, even. I'm only choosing to be baptized with this new community because they truly have provided a communal home for me as my new life in DC grows, and as I grow in my walk with Christ.

I am not trying to undermine or downplay the importance of my parents and my upbringing in my spiritual walk.  I simply acknowledge that at the age of 3 months old, I was not able to decide for myself to follow Christ wholeheartedly.  I was never confirmed, nor did I ever take on the responsibility of that covenant with God for myself. My parents did in fact do their very best to raise me in a relationship with Christ. But I (and I alone) rejected that.

I believe that Jesus came to earth as fully man and fully God and replaced the old covenant with a new one of eternal grace and redemption, if we will only accept it. No matter how much my parents love me, or will me to the Gospel, or tried to raise me in a Christian life with a genuine relationship with God, they cannot make that decision for me. Because God, in his infinite love, gave us free will, I must own that decision for myself. And I have, finally. My baptism is not a condemnation of the Episcopal church, of the way my parents raised me, or a simple "re-acceptance" into the faith (we all experience ups and downs, even daily and hourly!). It is more than just a renewal of a covenant that I have already accepted - It is an acceptance of a covenant I have never taken part in until now. I did not decide to be baptized spontaneously or lightly; I have prayed through this decision and truly examined my heart in the matter.

Praise be to God for His infinite grace!

My Future Husband Had Better Have A Big Family

So I went to Minnesota this year for Thanksgiving - it's where my Dad is from and where most of his side of the family still lives.  Since my Mom got to keep her job (YAY!), we decided we could take a mini-vacation.  At first, I was excited - I didn't think I was going to get to see my family for Thanksgiving, so I was happy that they had invited me to go with them.  But that lasted for about a split second. 


Then I had this thought.  It went something like this - We never travel for Thanksgiving.  We always stay home.  We always have people over.  I don't like traveling around the holidays, it's too busy and chaotic.  I'd rather just stay home.  Why did we have to go to Minnesota, why couldn't we have just stayed home?  That sort of put a damper on my Thanksgiving.  I wasn't that excited about it.  :/

But then I went.  And I sat in my grandparent's basement with 20 other people around and I suddenly had this flood of memories - memories that I'd somehow forgotten, but suddenly remembered. Memories of traveling to my grandparents house for Christmas.  Good memories.  Really good memories.  I almost cried - how had I forgotten?  How could I have forgotten making cake with my grandmother, hanging some awkward glittery putty-like substance on the window in the shape of snowmen and stars and snowflakes (there's a good chance my grandfather invented this putty-stuff), Opening presents, playing in the snow with my little cousins, remembering my uncle bring home his new wife and me meeting her for the first time - the wife who, years later, stands in the basement pregnant?

My dad's family is sort of odd - everybody has their quirks, for sure.  Almost everybody is introverted, but somehow you put us all together and we are LOUD!  Kids run around everywhere, adults talk and cook, clean up messes and laugh.  We have our issues, sure, but I'm so blessed.  It's a crazy family, but good crazy.  Not crazy as in grandma won't talk to son 4 because he married a girl she doesn't like and cousin 12 picks on cousin 4 and uncle 2 isn't ever around because he's in and out of jail and nobody's spoken to him in twelve years.  Not that crazy.  Crazy as in it's almost an entire family of engineers, and if they're not engineers, they're damn smart.  Crazy as in everybody has strong personalities, and we're a stubborn family who is always going going going, crazy as in we eat a ton of food, and we're perfectionists, and babies are a treasure and always get all the attention.  Crazy as in we do things like set up dominos (not play dominos, no, we set them up to go tumbling down like one of those fun videos) even though we're not very good and it takes like 5 tries to get one good run in, and then somebody has forgotten to push the record button on the camera and suddenly we have to do it all over again.  Crazy as in we play board games instead of watching the tv and then get competitive but in a good way and stay up til midnight playing games.  Crazy as in there's just people, everywhere, all the time, and everybody sits on top of everybody else and talks to everybody and it takes 30 minutes to get one good family picture, because there are 4 amateur photographers who are all trying to get their best portraits ever.  Crazy as in all the cousins grew up watching the River Dance VHS, to the point where the tape got so worn out that it doesn't work anymore.  Crazy as in in the middle of a get together my uncle will suddenly jump up and run downstairs and come back a minute later with his entire library of old LP's and his turntable and we spend an hour going through them, and singing along to things like Elvis and John Denver and U2 and Neil Diamond and even the kids know some of the songs.  Just crazy.

And somehow this year I finally got it - my family.  I get why everybody says they're thankful for their family.  Because they're who you really need.  They're the ones. For the first time ever, I got it.  And I can't even begin to express how much I love my family.  And, how much I love having a big family. 

So, Mr. Right.... I hope you have a lot of siblings.  Because otherwise we might have an issue....

(If not, Lauren and James, you're going to have to make up the difference.  That means like at least 5 kids each.)