For When You Mess Up

About this time last year I was visiting the Promised Land. I had a whole list of places to see and touch and walk. Never did I anticipate these sights and steps to impact me so much.

At the Wailing Wall, women were praying, reciting, reading, and, yes, wailing. [I, being a good tourist, wrote a prayer on a pink post-it note, rolled it up and stuffed it in the wall, careful not to push another’s prayer out.] I had to fight for a brief moment at the wall—those ladies claimed their ground. I became emotionally overwhelmed and claustrophobic.

You see, I was there right after I had done something not so good. And at that point in my little, Grinchy heart, I wished for a place to go and cry and be repaired. I wanted it to be undone—like it never happened. But that’s the thing about life—it keeps moving on no matter how hard you will it to stop.

Esoteric conversations among ex-pats sometimes revolve around…mystery…How we can’t explain ourselves. Ya think you know a person [or yourself] and then you move overseas and enter a new world. Suddenly… you’re struggling to BE you. Sometimes you do things totally out of character. You get home and say, “Whoa. Who was THAT?!” in the store, on the street, in the car, at work. My friend once timidly and quietly told me, “I found myself doing things I never thought I was capable of. But now I know: any one of us is capable of doing anything.” I was stunned by her confession. She has a secret well of hurt and regret—one I never imagined beneath her love and joy.

Just this last week [in the States] I was driving and listening to TED TALKS. [TED: Ideas Worth Spreading—look them up. I’m slightly obsessed. Please know that they’re completely secular.] I listened to a talk by Kathryn Schulz entitled, “Don’t Regret Regret.” She makes the argument that we’ve built a society that’s taught us to “live without regrets.” But, she says, people who have no remorse for things gone badly are usually those who have suffered some kind of brain damage. That, if you are indeed fully functional, you will experience regret and have to learn how to live with it. She says that regret requires two things: a decision and an imagination. In our minds, we play over and over again the situation and imagine another ending. While I don’t agree with everything she says [she never mentions the need to be sorry, forgiven or restored], her last lines have caused me to revisit my “year ago” with a new heart:

“If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best,
and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them,
then we SHOULD feel pain when things go wrong.
The point isn’t to live without any regrets,
the point is to not hate ourselves for having them...
Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly—
it reminds us that we know we can do better.”

I hate my sinning heart. I hurt people. I fail to honor God. I build walls and carve out holes—not to tuck a tiny prayer in—but to house my secrets in its shadows. Psalm 38 has been the sincere cry of my heart: “My iniquities have gone over my head… My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness, I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning…” David, the man after God’s own heart, wrote these words.

I’ve had to stop what I was doing
and say that I was wrong.
I’ve been sorry and been forgiven,
and our Father continues to restore me.

So what happens when you mess up? Because you will, ya know. [Maybe you know because you already have.] I think we’re afraid to admit these things. I hope you know what His Word says about confession and repentance, and forgiveness and redemption. Count it a blessing to be humbled and broken and... wrong. Worse than regretting regret would be forgetting His [and others’] forgiveness. Remember that He’s continually saving us—not just that One time. What a joy to not wallow in yesterday, but press on for today. Be reminded that you don’t strive to be good at a religion, but rather daily engage in a Relationship.

I touched that Wailing Wall. I elbowed my way to the stones towering over men and women begging for mercy and miracles. They pray there because it’s supposed to be the gateway to the Holy of Holies.

You don’t have to fight your way to this wall,
as old and beautiful as it may be.
Just go to the foot of the Cross.
He’s saved room for you.

Butterflies, Shebab [Youth Males], and My Apologies

Happy New Year, my sweet friends. Wanted to let you know… I’ve developed a newfound desire for a superpower: Invisibility. Ya see, sometimes I have to walk down streets and come within a few feet of men I would prefer never see me. But I have to go that way. And yes, when I can, I re-route myself and take a longer, less convenient way, but sometimes I just don’t want to go through the trouble. [Or don’t think I should have to.] I’m dressed modestly, I’m acting “properly,” and I think that I should be left alone. [Ahh, yes… welcome to my dream world.]

Enter my new role model: the Monarch butterfly. Not only is she royalty and British [therefore, totally exotic], but she’s ingenious. [Definitely a well-thought out creation from our loving Creator.]

I would like to say that Monarch butterflies have always been my favorite. Not only because they’re super pretty, but also because I don’t know the specific name of any other butterfly besides them. [Yes, I have a master’s degree, and now we all know it’s not in butterflyology.]

Here’s a picture for your reference:

She has polka dots, color and is wildly symmetrical. I was flipping through a children’s science book one day, and there it was, in a little “DID YOU KNOW?!” box: Monarch Butterflies are incredible.

But in more words. As caterpillars, they feed on poisonous milkweed. The poisons don't harm them, but they absorb them and keep them with them. Also, their bright colors of orange, black and white are beautiful to me, but a warning to birds and other predators, who actually learn not to eat them and end up leaving them alone because of their poisons or overall unpleasant taste.

And I got to thinking...

Yesterday, on my way to go run at a park here, I got into a little bit of a fight/shouting match with some 2nd grade boys in my neighborhood. [Classy.] That was truly unprecedented. I usually play with kids on the street—it’s like they want me to, or something. But these little rascals were totally mad when I kind of helped them retrieve a ball and then scored on them. They yelled at me. No sir, we don’t yell at adults.

Then, on my way back, since we were running [haha] late, my seventeen-year old friend [and running buddy] and I decided to run outside the park—like, on the streets, back to my house. I've never done this before, but we had to hurry. We came upon three young men [shebab]—maybe 14 or 15-years old. They opened up their little “I-have-nothing-to-do-but-hang-out-on-the-street-and-harass-and-stare-at-people” shebab triangle and postured themselves to watch us like the parade my friend and I were.

As we ran by I was overwhelmingly annoyed and disgusted with them and said: "Oh, go watch TV."
Well, they of course loved that and one of them even responded, "Oooh!! She's a sassy one!"
To which I totally freaked out—to my friend, not them—“sassy??!" People don't really know or use this word because there isn’t a really accurate translation for it in Arabic. [I've tried.]

"GIRL!! He knows English!! Like, really knows it! … Whoops!!"[She missed it because, unlike me, she has two working ear phones for her iPod...]

But I feel like, in some small way, I take it on myself sometimes to be a Monarch Butterfly—to be an unpleasant taste in these shebab's mouths so that they will be less likely to mess with the next girl and just let her run through the streets if she wants to.

And sometimes, like yesterday, I just totally fail. I actually think I just revved them up to interact with the next foreigner they see even more boldly—so this is my formal apology.

Sorry, ladies. I tried.

Again, not one of my finer moments,
but hey, at least I’m being honest.