Fitting In and Coming Home

I expected that having time with God after having taken considerable time off would have been different.

For a number of reasons, I fell out of the habit of having quiet times in the last few months.  It was somewhat intentional at first, after getting over the hurts of having miscarried and then once my anxiety-inducing pregnancy was over, I didn't know where to start or where I was at with God.  I was also afraid of "hearing" something from God again, and having to decide whether it was from Him or not.

And of course there are all the other liberal reasons I always get hung up on -- the suffering and inequality in the world, and what I feel is the failure of His people (the ones in the U.S. anyway) to get up and help those in need.  I start feeling isolated in the church sometimes, because although my theology is conservative, my politics are not, and this is sometimes unpopular among believers.

What's funny is that I believe now, as I have always believed, that God is apolitical.  And yet, because I disagree with many other believers in some aspects of politics, I feel like it is HE who is judging me, He who is isolating me, He who doesn't understand me.

But that's just an excuse.  The truth is, I know what my relationship with God is like -- I know that He is not a Republican or Democrat, and I know that He knows my heart even if others don't.  I know that there is no "fitting in" with God.  He belongs to no clubs, no cliques, no classes.  He is who He is, and He knows who I am better than I do.

So why, when approaching God for the first time in a long time, did I expect Him to say, "Sorry, your membership is no longer valid?"  Why did I expect rejection, or to be issued some sort of probationary challenge? -- "If you want back in, you have to do XYZ."

Because, as always, I'm looking at God as though He is a human being, and perhaps even as though He is a man.  Contrary to what some believe about feminists, I don't hate men.  I have been happily in love with my husband for almost ten years now.  But I don't relate to men either, at least not the way I relate to other women.  Because I'm not a man.  Our culture is different and so are our chromosomes, hormones, and a variety of other things.  But God is not a man either.  We refer to him as "He" because Hebrew does, and because "she" is gender-specific when "he" is sometimes gender-neutral.  But He really doesn't belong to the "boys' club" either.  Though when I miscarried, I wondered...

But today, I prayed.  Really prayed.  Pretty sure I got out everything that was on my heart, even some tough questions.  And despite what I expected, it was relatively undramatic.  I didn't cry.  I wasn't angry. I was just...home.  Like when you get home from a long vacation and the house smells a little funny, but it's nice to have the familiarity of kitchen drawers with things arranged the way you know how to find them, and the ability to throw your clothes on the bathroom floor without inconveniencing anyone else.  It takes some getting used to, like reverse culture shock.  But it's home.  It's where you belong.

Fitting in is something I often long for, even though having labeled myself as a "nerd" growing up, I always said that I prided myself in not fitting in.  But the truth is, it's lonely.  I want to fit in with all the other Christians I know, since the very core of our hearts and intentions is the same, but my "crazy" ideas and political views sometimes get in the way.  (I try not to cause dissension, so I often just don't talk politics, but when you care so much about something, it comes up from time to time.)  On the other hand, I want to fit in with bleeding heart liberals because we really agree on so many social justice issues and I really am a feminist...but my pesky belief in only one true religion often gets in the way of membership in that club.

The desire to fit in is something I will just have to get over, if I want to actually change the world.  God has not called us to conform to the expectations of this world, although it seems to be the nature of human culture to try make each other conform.  He hasn't called us to isolate ourselves either -- culture can be difficult because it can be constraining, but it exists because it is unifying and makes the human experience meaningful.  My identity, however, is not in this world, and if I am running around changing myself for this person or that person so that I can feel like I fit in, then that's wrong.

And this time, I'm ashamed to say that the desire to fit in is something I am really struggling with.  Doesn't every (late!) twenty-something go through that when they finish their degree and find themselves in playgroups and church leadership and all other sorts of situations when the spotlight's on them, and their values, and who they are?  But being respectable middle-class people is a far cry from what we are really called to be, and culture is trying to pull us in, make us conform, and tell us that we really just need to fit in.

And that's why we need time alone with our God, who is acultural, apolitical, nonsexual, nongendered, unsocialized, nonhuman, and yet is everything -- He is the point at which time, space, and experience begin and end, the origin of everything yet the only One who has no origin.  He is everything we want to be -- generous, kind, just, understanding, mature, and unconcerned about what others think of Him.  He is everything good about being human without the hang-ups of sin and insecurity.  And even though the world would not exist without Him, it had no place for Him except a cross.  He didn't fit in when He came to the earth He created.  But He is the only One who can give us the familiarity we long for, the only One who can place us where we fit, and the only friend who makes me feel right at home the second I get back from a very long absence.

The Truth About Safety

     Now that I have become accustomed to getting around by bike, it seems a lot less dangerous than it used to.  Yet so many people feel the need to tell me to “be careful out there” when they see me unlocking my bike.  I used to feel this was sexist -- would they say the same thing to a burly guy going out for a ride?  They might, if they are like so many drivers out there who think that cyclists are suicidal maniacs out there just “cruisin’ for a bruisin’.”  Most people have the perception that riding your bike in the street is so dangerous and that if you do it for a long time, you will get hit by a car.  What’s funny is that when I answer with statistics about how low the rates of motor vehicle-bike accidents really are, even in a busy city like Long Beach or Los Angeles, they don’t believe me.  I won’t quote all the numbers for you here, but let me just say this:  You are just as likely to get into a crash with another bike as you are with a car when you are riding your bike.  Most bicycle crashes are solo crashes -- cyclists lose control of their own bikes and crash, injuring only themselves and usually only minimally. 

But numbers don’t impress people.  And what’s even more interesting, is that terribly frightening statistics do exist about driving in cars, but that doesn’t deter people.  So, what gives?  Why are people so afraid? 

“What gives” is that people are not emotionally affected by actual safety or actual danger.  What matters for most is what feels safe or dangerous.  That is, perception is more powerful than reality.  I think that the reason people feel unsafe on a bike is that they feel exposed, and they hear the other cars whooshing by them and they feel how fast motor vehicles really are.  But if one could feel all that in a car, the perception of safety may diminish greatly.  

But this post is not entirely about cycling.  Cycling (especially “vehicular cycling”) is something that cannot be understood until you get into it.  But it is something I have to constantly defend myself for, especially when I have my children on a bike seat in or in the trailer behind me on the bike.  We are a family who is committed to alternative modes of transportation, and to remaining active.  We are considering going car-free when we make our next move.  It’s important to us, and it’s something we’ve been called to.  

But there are other things that make us feel unsafe: living in apartments rather than detached, single-family homes can come along with a lot of noise and anxiety.  Hearing sirens frequently, or having helicopters fly over one’s head can be enough to make us feel like we need to move to a “safer” neighborhood.  And imagining all the possibilities of what might possibly happen to our children -- this can cripple us with fear pretty easily.  

Crippling fear is a major problem in our generation.  Not just as women, but as parents.  In America, people have the perception that “the times” are more dangerous than they used to be, and they keep their children inside instead of letting them go to the park with their friends (for fear of kidnapping, usually) and as a result, we have the fattest kids in the world.  Do abductions happen?  Rarely.  Do they happen to 10-year-olds who are at the park with their friends in a group?  Hardly ever.  Do these “numbers” matter to people?  No.  They still would rather risk their kids’ health, ignoring the fact that diabetes and heart disease pose much more real and likely threats to their children, than let them out of their sight, or out of their house, ever.

But here is the truth about safety:  No one is ever safe.  Ever.  Bad things can and do happen.  Consider the publicist  who was shot and killed (for no apparent reason) driving her Mercedes Benz in Beverly Hills, where the perception of safety carries a high price-tag.  Consider the recent tragedy in Tucson.  Surely no one is going to say that no one should ever go to meet politicians ever, as it is clearly too dangerous?  

Consider my husband’s aunt who, as a child, wanted to ride her bike somewhere rather than riding in the car.  Her mother, feeling it was dangerous to ride on a busy street, decided to follow her in the car and told her to cross as a pedestrian at stoplights.  Well, she did so, and got hit by a car turning left as she was walking her bike across the crosswalk.  Clearly, here the perception of safety (being a pedestrian is perceptually safer than cycling for most people) was clearly inaccurate compared to the real threat (a person not looking when turning left, which could be dangerous for anyone.)

Consider my former co-worker John, who survived the Vietnam War with no injuries but watched other soldiers fall, and then got shot by a robber when he was working from behind the counter at a convenience store many years later.

So what can we do to be safe?  Honestly, the only thing we can do is the right thing from our own end.  We can decide not to drive drunk, ever.  That will make the world a slightly safer place.  We can take vehicular cycling courses and learn the ways to best travel in traffic and be seen and as safe as possible.  That will keep us from causing our own collisions.  We can decide not to hurt people, not to rob people, not to rape people. And the government can play a part by actively prosecuting those who do.  

But it doesn’t keep things from happening to us.  Remember, when I miscarried I had done “everything right.”  I had made good decisions in my life, and every pregnancy I’d had was planned.  I was on prenatal vitamins.  I was eating healthy.  But it just happened to me.  

So then, if we can only half prevent things, and the half that we can prevent is us doing harm to others, then what does that say about decisions we make based on perceptual safety?  

What we must do is whatever we feel strongly and passionately about.  We must do what we know that we know that we know we are called to do, whether it seems safe or not.  Because we can be in the midst of war and come out unscathed, or we can be driving luxury cars in Beverly Hills and get murdered.  If we believe that God is sovereign, and that He can interfere in our lives but often chooses to let things happen to us anyway, then we have to accept that we are equally safe wherever we go, as long as we are being obedient.  We may experience tragedy, we may lose our lives or our loved ones -- or we may not.  We may live to see all of our grandchildren and die peaceful deaths.  It’s not in our control.  And if we start to really believe that, and stop blaming victims and making decisions based on perceptual safety (actual safety can never be determined until after the fact), then we will stop being crippled by fear and get up and get moving, and start actually changing the world.