The Smile

                                                     by Alexandra Harmening
She jogged to the beginning of the stairs and pulled up, her abdomen cramping and lungs heaving. She walked out overlooking the gray sky and the stormy teal current. One flight below her view, a weathered man with thinning greasy hair and a puffy winter jacket stood shredding on an invisible guitar, rocking out to the private concert streaming from his over sized headphones. She smiled wishing she could take a picture and capture the strange homeless guitarist as he worshiped experience and the waves crashed beyond him.

Tiptoeing past him, she smooshed through the soft sand down next to the lapping water where the moisture seeped up and trimmed the earth.  A small pod of dolphins bobbed in the shallow surf and the deeper rollers. She smiled watching their fins peep through and their noses cut through the surging liquid
.
On her way back to the top and the street, she jogged upstairs past the man who had by this point removed the music from is ears and stood contemplating the surf. She flashed a smile in his direction. He stared up, grinning. His crinkled leathery brown skin sagged a bit. bristly silver hairs poked through about the yellow mouth. The eyes were glazed and distracted, but he grinned back, happy to be noticed not shunned.

He mumbled something unintelligible, so she asked, "Did you see the dolphins?" She was halfway up the next flight when he happily moaned, "No."

She stopped and pointed out, "They're right there. The dolphins."

He pointed at her and kept grinning, open mouthed. "You have a beautiful smile," he pronounced in an enunciated slur.

"Thank you." The smile grew into her whole face and shot out her eyes.

She had never considered anything particularly remarkable about her smile. In fact, most of the time it bothered her. The way her whole face scrunched up to allow her teeth to show. The way her large cheeks swelled and hid her eyes. When people took pictures, she always cringed at how her eyes practically disappeared into brown slits. So she worked to hold her eyes wide, straining her forehead muscles.

But despite all this, people always commented on the smile. Perfect strangers most of the time, usually older folk. "Keep smiling."

"That girl has a beautiful smile." The tech assistant, a white haired old man who loved to tease, would come into the library once a week, never failing to say something about the smile. "Well I will fix it for her becuase she has a great smile." And it always just made her smile grow.

"Ya," the leathery man on the stairs grinned through his gums. You are gonna make a boy. No," he trailed off. "Ya. Your husband weally..." She thought he said "really happy." But she just kept smiling and waited patiently for his mind to communicate with the muscles in his mouth. She felt unthreatened and unworried, enjoying being sweet. 

"Ya." He finished, grinning straight into her eyes.

"Thank you." She said sincerely. "Have a wonderful day." She trotted up the stairs blushing and still smiling.

Project Update

With just 2.5 weeks left on this year long blog project, I totally choked. There have been things happening but not much brain power left out to relate them. Although the time allotted for this whole Pride and Prejudice and gender ideas and Jesus doing awesomeness project is about to time out, the interesting lessons cropping up just keep coming.

One of these new lessons involves the possible co-dependence of trust and respect. I thought of this when thinking about how we sometimes want to say, "I will trust you as long as you do ...," or "I respect you as long as you don't..." Those conditions nullify the original statement. I'm still not totally sure yet what this all means, but I'm thinking it is really important.

Another idea involves the goodness of grief. Madeline L'Engle writes that "Wounds [can be] the Midwives of Loveliness." The importance of suffering is something that has danced around at the corners of my reason for the last year. But I'm learning as of last week that like Jesus weeping for Lazarus (despite knowing that he would bring him back in a couple of days) allowing grief over a wound might be the key to truly forgiving and stepping onwards.

I'm excited to see what God brings up next. Thanks for reading!

New Guest Post

Hey everyone,

Check out the post I had published called 4 Ways to Survive School Even If You Don't Have a Time Machine. It is featured on author Stefanie Weisman's blog Valedictorian's Guide.

If I Could Write a Letter to Freshman Me

Dear Me,

You're only 18 (which I know sounds officially old, but don't worry 'cause you will still feel like a girlish goofball at 21 and probably from here on out), and I know you are trying to figure out this college thing and this social thing and at the same time in the back corner of your mind--okay let's be real, the front and center of the cerebral cortex--you are watching out for some young man to watch out for you.

In the midst of the next six semesters which will drag and whirl simultaneously in one confusing hurricane, here are a few things to look out for:

• Relax. God made you like you are, so he obviously likes you that way and other people will, too. (I know. I know. It sounds crazy.)
• When he walks up to you and smiles for the first time, it's okay to get ridiculously excited. I'm pretty darn sure he really is the one.
• Mom and Dad don't want to tie you down, so try not to treat them like prison guards. 
• Graduating in three years. Not really sure what to say about that one other than, at least you only have to do it once. 
• Love people more, judge less. (There are already enough skeptics in the world.)
• Do keep trying as hard as you can. You won't be sorry. 
• Plunge in love with Jesus; he's so with you the whole time. 

Finally, lot's of people are praying. Thank them. 

Good luck, 

Me

Because He Knows Us and Wants Us to Know Him

A young man said, "You know how sometimes you want me to go ahead and then other times you don't?"
"Ya." His college aged girlfriend nods, smiling.
"Well, now is one of those times, but I'm not sure which one."
"Doesn't that suck for you?" She laughs.

Tonight, some friends and I were talking about how sometimes it feels like God just gives us the freedom to choose. We thought that this might be because God desperately desires relationship with us and will give us a choice instead of a directive so that we grow to know his character and and walk by faith.It reminded me of a chapter that I read last week about the ways his character is manifested in some typically feminine traits.

Women are teased for being "fickle" or for not knowing what they want but wanting someone else to know. Now, I think God always knows what his plans and purposes are, but I think sometimes God, like a woman, might want to be so known to the core that we don't have to have him tell us what he wants. Maybe he wants us so much that our choices match his desires because we want to please him.

But God, perhaps in the way that women sometimes want it all, also makes sure that he can never be understood completely. He is mysterious and draws us in.

God so wishes intimacy with his beloved ones that he will, in the words of Hosea 2, "slay" them if that is what will bring us back to him. But he will not leave us flattened. He will "speak tenderly" and call us back to himself with incredible gentleness.

And now we come to the part of the story where I fish for some connection with Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth is a woman who is willing to hold out for that deeper knowing. If it means risking everything, she'll wait until she knows she is known by a lover and a friend.

I think God is willing to hold out, too because "he delights in steadfast love," according to Micah 7:18

"I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord." Hosea 2:19-20

Worship in Suffering

It would seem that when one blogs for a living, she has fewer and fewer words left over at the end of the day. Hence the absence of a post last week. But here is a quick scribble before I pass out on my pillow.

I've been learning more about profound suffering. In this instance, God is teaching me through others' stories, not my own. Like so many things that are literally upside down in the kingdom of God, it seems that a righteous response to agony is worship. I'm not sure exactly what to make of this other than that God demands our attention. And if it takes baby steps where we learn to focus on his face and transform our thinking with a thankful heart, then he will wreck and tear until it is accomplished.

I'm not sure if this has a great deal to do with beloved old P&P at the moment. But Jane experiences pain. Elizabeth humiliation. As Mr. Bennet aptly pronounces, every girl likes to be tossed in love once and a while. Perhaps it's through this tossing of life that God simplifies our perspective and adjusts our focus and is never beholden to answer our why's, although sometimes he gently chooses to do so anyway.

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."--Romans 5:1-5

Getting Ready to Grow Up

I've been thinking. "Ah, a dangerous habit." True, but I do. A lot.

I was trying to explain myself Tuesday night. Trying to explain that I don't know if I'm ready to grow up to move on to the next adventure of life. And after finally saying I just wasn't, I began, for the first time, to think that maybe I actually am.

Subconsciously, I've known at my core for a while that after marriage life ends and begins. In other words, life as I know it is over, everything will change and I will be divorced from that which I know because I belong to something else. And I didn't think I'd ever be prepared for that.

But just this week, God has been planting little situations in my mind and perhaps nudging me that yes, it will be different and difficult--but. But it does not mean that I will be totally dead. And if it does, then I ought to have died a great while ago when I told Jesus I belonged to him.

And I think that even if it does mean radical change without ever going back, I still want to do it.

In less serious and brooding thoughts, I am actually really enjoying my new work. Yes, that thing which I feared and avoided for so many years I have discovered is really not so bad. Work consumes the better part of each day, but that is a few hours where I am busy and can't think which is sometimes a plus. I am learning a lot, and it is really pretty exciting to earn money and have a reason to wake up and be dressed and out the door in the morning.

So in some small ways grown up life is already happening without my knowing it.