Random Thoughts on Engagement

August 30, 2010, 4:47 pm » Abbie Smith

I’ve mentored a lot of girls through seasons of engagement, but meandering through it myself has affected me with a new lens and set of perspectives.

1. The ring meant more than I thought it would (for both my fiancé, Micah, and me).

2. Prioritizing “marriage” over “wedding” has kept our feet on the ground most weeks. The weekend we got engaged, in fact, knowing our first impulses would jump to wedding plans, we intentionally set it aside to consider God’s views of “marriage,” “union” and “life together,” versus the glam of one day.

3. We’ve savored having friends give gifts in the form of their “giftings.” From photographer and flowers, to favors, cake and design, we’re thrilled to have our friends and families handprints all over this beginning celebration of our marriage…and it's cost effective!

Tags | Relationships | engagement | marriage

8 comments

Society Attempts to Unpack Twenty-Somethings

August 26, 2010, 7:58 am » Abbie Smith

There's no mistaking the fact that society is on to something in its increasing attempt to unpack mysteries of the modern "twenty-something." I wonder how the Church might most aptly come alongside, if not lead, this process?

August 18, 2010

What Is It About 20-Somethings?

By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG

Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?

This question pops up everywhere, underlying concerns about “failure to launch” and “boomerang kids.” Two new sitcoms feature grown children moving back in with their parents — “$#*! My Dad Says,” starring William Shatner as a divorced curmudgeon whose 20-something son can’t make it on his own as a blogger, and “Big Lake,” in which a financial whiz kid loses his Wall Street job and moves back home to rural Pennsylvania. A cover of The New Yorker last spring picked up on the zeitgeist: a young man hangs up his new Ph.D. in his boyhood bedroom, the cardboard box at his feet signaling his plans to move back home now that he’s officially overqualified for a job. In the doorway stand his parents, their expressions a mix of resignation, worry, annoyance and perplexity: how exactly did this happen?

Tags | Relationships | NY Times | twenty-somethings

3 comments

Identity

August 9, 2010, 8:50 am » Abbie Smith

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Tags | Relationships | dietrich bonhoeffer | identity

1 comment

"the m word"

August 3, 2010, 5:41 am » Abbie Smith

I wasn’t there, but I heard. And it made me really sad. At a well-to-do Christian conference, a brave young soul had the courage to ask two prominent women in today’s Christian circles their thoughts for those who struggle with masturbation. Both speakers got flustered, eyeing each other with the look of, “Did she really just ask that in public? And how are we supposed to respond?”

After some awkward moments, one of the women said, “Umm, honestly, I don’t know if I can say "the m word"…it just feels so…beyond me. Granted, I’m a married woman, but I’ve just never understood why people do that.” At this point, she turned to the other speaker and asked if she had anything to add.

“No…definitely not. Just keep yourselves pure from it and God will protect you.”

Tags | Relationships | ashamed | masturbation | shame

3 comments

Sex Tourism

July 30, 2010, 5:33 am » Abbie Smith

30 July 2010 Last updated at 05:19 ET

Brazil's sex tourism boom

Chris Rogers encounters many young girls on the streets of Brazil

Young children are supplying an increasing demand from foreign tourists who travel to Brazil for sex holidays, according to a BBC investigation. Chris Rogers reports on how the country is overtaking Thailand as a destination for sex tourism and on attempts to curb the problem.

Tags | Relationships | sex tourism | sex trafficing

2 comments

Alone

July 26, 2010, 9:40 am » Abbie Smith

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” CS Lewis, The Four Loves, 1960

I was counselling a gal recently who worked at a well-known church and carried herself as a well-confidenced single girl. We were brainstorming about what she could do this particular evening to practice “enjoying God’s presence,” and I nonchalantly suggested a walk on the beach.
“That’d be nice, but the thought of people seeing me out there is too much to bear.
“What do you mean? Cause you’d start skipping, or something…or singing Jesus Loves Me?”
“No,” she chuckled. Just being by myself. I’m not good at that, and especially not good at letting people see me like that.”
“What about a movie, and then by the time it’s done it’ll be dark outside?”
“Yeah, but same thing…what would I do if someone saw me at the movies…by myself!?”

We’re petrified of being alone. We avoid situations and resist it at all costs. We reconvene with ex’s or return to abusers because being with someone feels better than being alone. When asked in an interview if she’s scared of death, well-known French singer, Edith Piaf answered “Not as afraid as I am of solitude.” Sometimes I wonder if Jesus ever felt his aloneness, or loneliness? I wonder how he found strength and courage and purity in his singleness, and in his last days on earth, feeling the unfelt presence and abandonment of God?

The thing with being alone is that when you enter its presence, you realize there aren’t a lot of answers. There aren’t ways to fix your plight, or safeguard your horizon. You are you, standing in the face of you, and there is nowhere to turn. You can lessen its weight, or distract its weighty implications, but once felt, the raw face of your self will never leave you alone. If you desire comfort and ease and the romantic highs of an illusion, never let yourself be truly alone. But if you desire the truth of yourself, and truthful state your soul, wholly embracing the reality of who you are and who you are not, seek solitude and wait for holy union.

Tags | Relationships

3 comments

"Loves Me Not"

July 20, 2010, 3:29 pm » Abbie Smith

Pardon my lack of posts the past couple weeks. I've been traveling and working hard on a manuscript exploring singleness and sexuality. Here's an excerpt from a chapter titled "Break-ups and Death."

“And then, there's another kind of love: the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. It’s called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert. Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone? We are the victims of the one sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded.”
–Iris, The Holiday, 1996

Tags | Relationships

3 comments

Season of Healing

July 5, 2010, 5:38 am » Abbie Smith

(2008 journal entry I found recently...still learning most of its lines.)

Where I have so punished, let me so Love.
Where I have lived in fears, teach me Freedom.
Where I have restricted, help me trust the Table before me.
Where I have hurt others, teach me to Confess.
Where I have hurt myself, teach me Healing, unloosing the hands from around my neck.

Where I have been hurt, teach me to Forgive.
Where I have controlled, show me Surrender.
Where I am alone, let me be Embraced.
Where I remain tired, lead me to the gift of Rest.
Where I remain afraid of tomorrow, or ashamed by yesterday, unveil to me the gift of Grace today.

With Love,
Your daughter

Tags | Relationships | healing

5 comments

A.A.

June 30, 2010, 6:22 am » Abbie Smith

My friend Deborah just forwarded the following NY Times article. So much to learn from these lines...

June 28, 2010

Bill Wilson’s Gospel

By David Brooks

On Dec. 14, 1934, a failed stockbroker named Bill Wilson was struggling with alcoholism at a New York City detox center. It was his fourth stay at the center and nothing had worked. This time, he tried a remedy called the belladonna cure — infusions of a hallucinogenic drug made from a poisonous plant — and he consulted a friend named Ebby Thacher, who told him to give up drinking and give his life over to the service of God.

Wilson was not a believer, but, later that night, at the end of his rope, he called out in his hospital room: “If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything. Anything!”

Tags | Relationships

1 comment

What's Real?

June 28, 2010, 12:17 pm » Abbie Smith

“Real isn't how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.
“It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don...'t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.

Tags | Relationships | authenticity | real | reality

1 comment

What Is It About 20-Somethings?

By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG

World

Brazil's sex tourism boom

My friend Deborah just forwarded the following NY Times article. So much to learn from these lines...

Bill Wilson’s Gospel

By David Brooks