For those of you who don't know, I am passionately committed to my job. So much so that I don't even like to think of it as a job. It's a calling. That may sound strange, but there is simply no other word for it. This is the work I am meant to do in the world. To teach students to think critically, write coherently, and above all to believe that their individual voice matters, well, the fact that I get paid to do all of that is really just icing on a decadently rich and rewarding cake.
25
That being said, the time I am putting in in the bookroom is hampering the 25 portion of this challenge. My upper body and legs are stronger without question--hauling books around and moving them from top to bottom shelves, packing and moving boxes weighing anywhere from 3-40 pounds, that's strength training if ever I've done it, but I miss sweating pushing myself to my limit at the gym, so I am trying to work out a schedule that will make that more possible. The good news is the book room is almost done, and when it is complete, I promise to post pictures so you can revel in the magical wonderland that is the newly organized space. I should have taken before pictures, but the afters will just have to do.
The good thing about this challenge, though, is that I am being more conscious of what I put in to and how I treat my body. From my time in the sun at the pool to the way I eat, I'm trying to be more aware and in the moment. At the pool, I lay and read for much of the time, but I try to take ten minutes out of every hour to watch the clouds, listen to the water lapping, breathe in the chlorinated air, giggle along with the littlest kids who find every new splash to be a revelation. And when it comes to food, I am realizing more and more that when I eat fast food--and yes, I have fallen off that wagon--I not only feel badly about my choice to eat it, but I also feel physically bad. So, tonights dinner of a spring mix salad with almonds, peas, cherry tomatoes, goat cheese, and an olive oil/white wine vinegar dressing is the kind of thing I am going to work to include in my diet. I like to eat healthily, I jut always take the time. But, if I'm not going to care for my body, no one else will, and I want to love myself enough to be good to myself, so here's to me trying.
50
I gave up on the Arsonist's Guide to Homes in New England. If I can't care about your main character in the first 100 pages, I'm not ever going to care about him, so your book can suck it. (For other revelatory things that make main characters detestable, check out this great list from novelist Chuck Wendig: 25 Reasons I Hate Your Main Character)
Luckily, the book I picked up after the Arsonist's debacle kept me riveted: Carolyn Jessop's Escape is a 400+ page recounting of her escape, at the age of 34, from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community in which she was raised. When she left she had eight children and had been married to a man 30 years her senior for seventeen years. The book never felt long, never felt like it needed to be edited, it was harrowing and shocking and honestly disgusting in some places. I just cannot believe that in people can confuse loving God with polygamy, child abuse--physical and sexual--and complete and total domination of women through a patriarchal power structure built around large families that seek to keep women pregnant and silent at all times. One of the most sickening notions was that of perfect obedience in which a wife will earn favor with God if she completely submits to her husband's will in all ways, even when he is being abusive, neglectful, or psychotic.
The older I get, the more I understand the nature of submission. Not in the sense that I want to turn my life over to a man, but I believe the Biblical teaching that a wife submits to her husband so long as he loves her to the point of being willing to lay down his life for her. That's the section of the verse that gets left out when people start talking about male dominance and the Bible. I am as feminist as they come, but this verse--to me--is about mutual sacrifice and true partnership. I don't know too many couples that exhibit these behaviors because they are damn hard to comply with. Isn't our first instinct one of self-preservation? Why would we lay down our lives for someone else, even someone we love, if it meant losing ourselves? And why would we give up our position and allow someone else's choices to speak for us if it means silencing our perspective? But I don't think that's what God calls us to do. I think we're supposed to try as hard as we can to love one another as fully as we can, to create a union made from perfect love that is forgiving, patient, helpful, and unconditional. It is not easy. It means bending when everything in us says to just go ahead and break under the pressure, but if two people really love one another--and I mean ANY TWO PEOPLE, gay, straight, lesbian, what have you--then I believe they should work towards that perfect love all the days of their lives.
Clearly, in the case of Carolyn Jessop--and in the case of my marriage and many others like me--there comes a point when bending is no longer possible. There are obstacles that cannot be overcome no matter how desperately we may want to hang on. In Jessop's case, leaving the FLDS meant abandoning the only life she had ever known, renouncing her faith that had instilled in her the belief that she was chosen among God's people to live the principle of plural marriage, and to begin again in a world she knew very little about. Imagine trying to navigate social services when your only access to money was through the cash your husband gave you when he felt like it. Yikes.
For the rest of us, often our marriages end because the two people involved weren't ever able to be honest with one another, because we grow apart, because what we need and what the other person can give us are so far apart that we may as well be living on separate planets. But this book, Escape, made me think deeply about what it means to love someone, what it means to love God, and what it means to love myself. I never renounced my faith, but I had some years when believing was hard for me. My mother's cancer took that faith and ran it through every wringer you can imagine. And I never like the treatment of women in the Bible. But I found my way back to a faith that works for me, one that is accepting and honest and full of love. And I've come out of my divorce with the belief that no matter how hard it may be to fall in love again, I'm committed to doing it because I deserve to be happy and to share my life with someone.
But first, I gotta love me. So here's to that.
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