False Start

In the days before I absolutely have to start working on an assignment I tend to drive myself crazy with guilt for not getting a head start.

I'm not a proud procrastinator. I'm an extremely anxious one.

So I don't do things like write a blog post about all that's spinning in my head or go out and do fun things with friends in these final days I have with them because I think I should be doing my work.

Some days (like Friday) I even skip class because assignments feel so immanent.

But the stupid thing is that in all of the fretting, the stomach pit moments when I think "hey, I have a lot coming up," the hours I spend in my apartment because I should start doing the work, I don't actually start.

So then the guilt is not really about the fact that I'm not doing my work, it's over the opportunity cost--what I could be doing with the energy and the time I spend on selfish anxiety.

And then I get to the moment that I really do have to start doing my work (now) and my thoughts feel jumbled and even though I know they'll make for a terribly uninteresting, uncreative blog post I write the words anyway, because it just helps to get the junk out. The nasty, real junk of admitting that sometimes I don't do life well.

Which, for some reason, surprises me just about every single time.

Well, it doesn't surprise God. And He made a plan for it long before I entered the scene so that I don't have to sit and wallow in my human-ness and terrible habit of mismanagement as if I was ever my own source of hope and fulfillment.

And then, when I don't have my own words to adequately express the thoughts my studies have set spinning in this feeble mind, I kill time reading other people's words and sometimes they have just the right ones.

Like Candice over at Sufficient Understanding, for instance.

She writes,

"why I didn't get any participation points today

To American Studies:

I don't know how to end poverty, racism, institutional discrimination, hunger, educational inequalities, the exploitation of the poor by corporations, or any other social injustice. I've read these books, and thought deeply about them, and I am in no way blind to these issues you want me to not only see but to solve. I don't have a sweeping solution, not because I haven't thought about what one might be, but because I already know what the ultimate solution is, and I have a hard time coming up with anything past Him.

I know that corporations will not solve the problem, that capitalism is at its core based on selfish interests, that America is really a place of great and lofty ideals trampled by the reality of inequality, exploitation, greed, and most of all lack of a solution. This is human nature. I know this because I am human and I see it in myself every day.

My professor today taught that "evangelical, Protestant Christianity" propagates the notion that wealth indicates favor with God, that the poor are being punished for laziness or some other sin. For this, I am sorry. That followers of Jesus could ever be associated with a belief so deeply opposite of everything Jesus taught is appalling and I am heartbroken and embarrassed at the thought. We who have the only solution used it instead to further power the negative cycle, and for that I know that we will be held accountable.

But please do not assume that because I pessimistically cannot see government solving these issues that I am resigned to these realities, that I don't care, that I am blinded because I am white and middle-class and have never been poor, or that because I place my hope outside of this world I have given up on the one in which I currently live. I understand that personal responsibility goes both ways, and though I do not exempt the poor from it I place the heaviest burden on myself. To passively pay slightly higher taxes and claim the act as having sprung from the generosity of my heart is not the same as freely choosing to give, both in numbers and in intentions.

But most of all, I know that for all the solutions I lack, my God lacks nothing, even answers. I can't see a solution the same way I so often can't see past the limitations of human nature. I wrongly view it as invincible in light of problems like these and cannot imagine a way out of so strong a reality as that of human selfishness. In doing so, I deny God's power. Not only is human nature not the dominant reality in my life, but it is one which has already been so thoroughly, beautifully defeated. My God not only is capable of envisioning a solution but has already provided One.

So I will keep on going in American Studies, and keep uncovering more depressing truths and delving into complicated problems only to find that there's no clean solution to be had. I will think, and overthink, and work myself into a frustrated state trying to understand how everything got to be this way, and more frustratingly why I can't understand it, and why I can't think of anything to do about it. But I will not be tripped up by it, nor will I fall into the trap of human band-aid solutions, but try instead to revel in the joy that God does not leave us in our confused state. He is not unaware nor uninterested.

Where my analysis and reason stops, there enters God's grace."

Praise the Lord for people who say what sometimes you just can't.

Thank God for Candice.

(who hopefully doesn't sue me because I definitely didn't ask if I could gank her post like I just did).

(one day I think I should share the excellent, beyond brilliant essay she wrote for me about play-doh).

("So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." -Psalm 90:12)

(apparently I'm just getting worse at parenthetical splintering)