Obedience Without Worry

4 July, 20203 July, 2020Marissa

I recently reread C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, and I’d like to start today’s post with one of the many quotes that stood out to me:

“Handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already.”

It’s a perfect way of describing the relationship between faith and works. We’re not saved by anything we do, but being saved inspires us to obedience and therefore faith-fueled action.

A Different Perspective on Law

This whole idea also makes me think of Psalm 119, which we were just looking at a couple months ago. The writer of Psalm 119 crafted a beautiful poem that pays homage to God’s law, precepts, and ordinances with every line. It’s a celebration of God’s precious words and of the positive effect following his instructions can have on our lives.

Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to Yahweh’s law. Blessed are those who keep his statutes, who seek him with their whole heart. (Psalm 119:1-2, all quotes from WEB translation)

I will delight myself in your commandments, because I love them. I reach out my hands for your commandments, which I love. I will meditate on your statutes. (Psalm 119:47-48)

How I love your law! It is my meditation all day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for your commandments are always with me. (Psalm 119:97-98)

When was the last time you thought of God’s commandments as a delight? Or felt like exclaiming, “I love His law!” All too often, modern churches describe God’s law either as a burden we’re well rid of or as something we still have to put up with and must fear breaking. The people closest to God, though, have historically seen His words as something precious; a gift given for our good. He is to be obeyed, but not out of a sense of obligation. We obey because we love, and because we are loved.

Don’t Settle for Less Than the Best You

5 May, 20204 May, 2020Marissa

I recently reread one of my favorite books, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. And I found that he spends quite a bit of time talking about the theme of my blog — finding our true selves in the people God created us to be. I didn’t purposefully have Lewis in mind when I wrote that tagline, but I’d read Mere Christianity before and I’m sure that’s partly where the idea came from.

Yesterday, I was struggling to come up with an idea for today’s post. It’s hard to go wrong talking about C.S. Lewis, so I thought I’d share some of what he has to say about finding the truest versions of ourselves. Of course, given the sort of man that he was, it is impossible for him to talk about such a topic without pointing readers to God.

“The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs,’ all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. … I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.” — Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

It’s an interesting concept. That no matter how hard we might try on our own to be an individual, authentic self we will actually be moving away from our real personalities if we are not moving toward God. As the inventor of personality, God is the one best qualified to tell us what we are meant to be. It’s the potter and clay analogy — that God is the potter who decides what sort of vessel He is making us to be (Is. 29:15-16; Jer. 18:1-6).

Don't Settle for Less Than the Best You | LikeAnAnchor.com — Photo credit: WhoisliketheLord Studio via Lightstock

A choice to be different

Perhaps this sounds like it goes against free will. It does not. The very fact that we can reject God and try to be something other than what He intends attests to Him giving us a choice. But choosing anything other than Him just means we’re crippling our self-expression and rejecting the greatest path to personal growth. Finding ourselves shouldn’t be our focus, though. In fact, getting too caught-up in the self is a good way to lose track of our truest personality. Read more →

My Anxiety Story

29 May, 201926 August, 2019Marissa

My first panic attack happened in a Blockbuster about 14 or 15 years ago. I was high-school age and trying to spend a gift card I’d won in a library reading program. I hadn’t been in there before and new places made me nervous, but I’d planned exactly what I was looking for and my mom and sister were with me so it was going to be fine. Then the DVD wasn’t there. And I can’t make up my mind what to do, my mom wants me to hurry up because we’re running late, my sister says just make a decision already, and suddenly I can’t breath so I grab a DVD march up to the counter, and get out. Then my family asks why I was rude to the cashier and seem so angry.

It didn’t feel like anger. My heart was racing, hands shaking, breathing shallow. I felt hot all over and my skin seemed too small. But other than embarrassing, I didn’t know what it was. And then it happened again months later in a Hobby Lobby. I’d worked up the courage to ask about a price that seemed too high, which lead to a confrontation with the manager and the realization that I was the one who’d read the sign wrong. Again the tightness in my chest, the shallow breathing, the shaking, and too-warm feeling. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

College didn’t make things any better. After I spent most of my first quarter hiding or in tears, I found myself in the Dewey Decimal 155.2 (Individual Psychology) section of a library’s bookshelves. Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Won’t Stop Talking* and Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You* were literal life-changers. I recommend them to people more often than any other non-fiction book except the Bible. I finally understood why so many things that other people treated as normal seemed overwhelming to me. But they still didn’t explain everything.

*please note that these are affiliate links, which means that at no additional cost to you, I’ll receive a small commission if you click on the link and make a purchase.

Realizing I Had Anxiety

I’m not sure exactly when I began to suspect I was dealing with an anxiety disorder. In June of 2013 I wrote on this blog, “I’m not very good at letting go of my anxiety.” But I was still thinking of it more in the sense of “I worry too much” rather than “a psychologist would say I have anxiety.” I started feeling guilty for thinking of myself as anxious, especially when people who knew they had anxiety started following my blog and I realized mine didn’t seem as bad as theirs. Maybe I was just a wimp who was overeating to normal, everyday worries. Read more →

Seeing Unicorns For What They Really Are

6 August, 20186 August, 2018Marissa

I realized after my last Classics Club post that I’m bad at writing book reviews. I’d intended to just write a short “this is what the books are like, this is what I thought” post for Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels but it turned into an essay on what makes a strong female character and the state of modern feminism. I think I’ll give up on book reviews. Apparently I can only write thoughtful, rambling essays.

That’s not a bad thing though, right? These are classics, after all. People have been writing reviews of them for decades or centuries. If you want to find out about the plot you can go on Goodreads. I’d much rather talk about the ideas prompted by these great books. And I think you might rather read about that, too.

NOTE: this post contains spoilers but not enough, I think, to ruin the book for you

Disclaimer: some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means that, at no additional cost to you, I will receive a commission if you click on the link and make a purchase on that website. Affiliate links are marked with *

A Perfect Fantasy Book

I feel like The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle* should have been a re-read for me, but this was the first time I’d read it. You’d think as much as I love unicorns and fantasy novels I’d have picked this one up earlier. Especially considering how much everyone loves it. Even the guy who wrote the best fantasy book I’ve ever read says, “The Last Unicorn is the best book I have ever read. You need to read it. If you’ve already read it, you need to read it again” (Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind*).

On the surface, The Last Unicorn seems like a pretty simple book. A unicorn overhears two men say there aren’t any unicorns left in the world. Worried that she might be the last one, she goes out searching for other unicorns and meets with the sort of adventures you’d expect in a fantasy novel. There’s a wizard, a merry band of outlaws, a wise woman, a curse, a wicked king, and heroic prince, a talking cat, and a beautiful princess. But there’s so much more than that, too.

How People See You

There’s a lot going on in this relatively short book, so I’m just going to focus on one theme that I found particularly interesting. When the unicorn first sets out on her search, I expected that problems would arise when people spotted a unicorn walking down the road. But all they see is a white mare. The unicorn is puzzled.

“I suppose I could understand if men had simply forgotten unicorns, or if they had changed so that they hated unicorns and tried to kill them when they saw them. But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else — what do they look like to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?”(p. 11).

What Are The Books That Have Influenced You The Most?

2 October, 20172 October, 2017Marissa

One of my Facebook friends shared a post about the ten books that have most influenced his life, which I thought was a great idea. But it took me two weeks to figure out which books I wanted to write about and by the time I hit 500+ words I thought, why not just make it a blog post? So if you are reading this and care to share your most influential books consider yourself “tagged.” I’d love to see what books have had the biggest impact on your lives either in the comments or on your own blog (there’s an article topic you don’t have to come up with on your own!). The original list was 10 but I ended up with 8, so post however many you like.

The Bible

A rather obvious first choice for a Christian blogger, but this book definitely deserves the top spot when talking about books that influenced my life. It’s still influencing everything I do and I fall more in love with this book and it’s Author every time I read it. It’s the greatest love story every told, the best handbook you’ll ever find for life, and an incredible source of hope and purpose. Since more than 50% of this blog is devoted to talking about this book I’ll stop now. You know I could (and have!) keep going on about it for several books worth of text.

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

I could have put several books by C.S. Lewis on this list, but this is the first of his non-fiction I read and it’s the one that’s been most influential (with Screwtape Letters a close second). I just love the way he writes about his faith. Not only is he firmly grounded in scripture, but he’s also a persuasive speaker to those who don’t already put their faith in the Bible. In the words of Anthony Burgess, “C.S. Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way.”

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

I started researching my personality after starting college and realizing I was even more different from “normal” people than I’d previously thought. This is one of the first books I read on the subject and it literally changed my life. Like many introverts, particularly INFJs, I always felt there was something off about the fact that I couldn’t seem to socialize the way so many other people did. This book pointed out how introvert brains are wired differently and that there are strengths in that personality. In other words, it shows that we’re not broken extroverts and introversion isn’t something to “fix.” Read more →

Why I Sponsor Children

9 February, 20158 February, 2015Marissa

“I’d like to help, but …”

We fill-in-the-blank with a wide variety of things for a whole host of reasons, but today I want to talk about giving to charities. I saw a discussion on an INFJ Facebook group several months ago asking which charities other INFJs support. INFJs are considered one of the “save the world” personality types, as evidenced by the fact that two of the most famous INFJs were Mother Theresa and Gandhi. Many of the INFJ profiles you’ll read online talk about how INFJs often find work in non-profits and support charities. But even among a group of INFJs, there were plenty of people talking about the fact that they never donate to anything.

Now, there are perfectly understandable reasons for not giving money and I would never suggest you donate money that you don’t have. But if you have the means and desire to help, excuses like “I don’t trust charities” or “I don’t have the time” don’t hold up well in my mind. You can donate your time and money within your own community so you can see exactly what effects your efforts are having. There are also charities with good reputations who use their money wisely — you just have to look for them. And after that initial time-outlay of finding a charity you like, getting online to send money takes about a minute.

Personally, I like to sponsor children. I use Unbound, but as far as I know Compassion International is a great option as well. This is the perfect fit for me for several reasons:

I’m making a difference now, on an individual level for this child and their family
I’m affecting the future, because children become the adults that shape their countries
I get to build a relationship with the people I’m helping, through letter-writing

I guess the main thing I want to do today is encourage you to think about the impact you’re having on this world for good. It can be in any number of ways — serving in our church groups, going out of your way to make someone smile, donating money or food stuffs, volunteering your time, sponsoring a child … the list just goes on and on. I want to leave you with a quote from C.S. Lewis that convicted me to start finding more ways to give, though I still think I fall short by these standards.

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity