One of the major themes that seems to keep popping up in my writing is the idea of commitment. Its a word that somehow seems to get under most of our skin. Even seeing it all typed out in blue like that is enough to make me squirm in my seat just a little. And that is exactly the phenomenon that I am trying to point out. Somehow our culture, or society or moral norms have changed life for us twenty-somethings. We aren’t like our parents, in that most of us couldn’t get married and make a life for our families at 20 or 21. Most of us need (or think we need) until 30 to get it figured out. Now for those of you who read my blog on marriage, you know that I think that it a complicated issue that cant easily be argued one way or the other.

It was a blog from a good friend of mine, Ben Schroff, call “I am Divorced” that began to focus my idea of commitment. And of course, going with the notion that none of us really ever have an original thought, Ben was able to pull much of his thoughts from a speaker with YWAM. Patrick Dodson. If you have a moment to listen to his ideas on relationships- well his ideas on anything really – they are amazing.

But what Patrick and Ben were getting at is the idea that we are incredibly naive and unprepared to deal with life. Statistically speaking directly toward the issue of divorce, by the year 2010 it is projected that 70% of couples will be divorced. Now this means that divorce doesn’t make you a failure at relationships, it simply makes you just like everyone else.

The question that is interestingly proposed by Dodson is “How do you think that you are going to stay married when you get married?” Now, alot of us throw out ideas like “God is at the center of our relationship” or “work through my baggage before we get married.” But to these things Dodson has a challenging response “Dont you think that these 70% already had thought of those things as well?” Clearly, it is a HUGE disservice to Christians and Non-Christians alike to buy the belief that we know something that divorced people dont.

This idea of commitment isn’t something that is solely isolated to marriage either. For those of you who remember my blog on living life, I reference Dr. Irwin, whose book talks about success in the work place being centered around the idea of commitment.  Irwin points out that there is skill involved with success in the workplace. And this skill is not simply knowing and executing your roll well; it is extrapolated further to being committed to your dreams, your integrity and your ideals within your work life. He points on the the same notion that many of us are simply naive, or maybe we can call it unintentional when dealing with our work life. He argues that the trick, much like in marriage, its intentional commitment.

Adding to this idea, Dodson argues that as a culture, us twenty-somethings are missing something. We dont know what real commitment looks like. In a world where over half of our parents use their marriages to show us that you dont have to do what you promise you will do, our reality of commitment is skewed. Instead of saying that we will do something and ACTUALLY DOING IT, our words seem to be closer to the statement “I want to will to do that.” (I know, you might have to read that one a few times to get it. )And even beyond wanting to commit to something, it’s completely natural for us twenty-somethings to say to one another “I meant that when I said it, but things have changed and I dont mean it now.I wanted to mean it forever, but I’m sorry I dont.”

“Well, I meant it when I said it…”

My point can clearly be seen in the new Sex and the City Movie (ok, I know half of you men are rolling your eyes, and although I agree that this TV show may have been inappropriate, it did make major social headway in terms of sexuality and equality for women…but that’s another blog). I loved the movie. But the part that got me, was one of the characters, Samantha. She is against marriage. She is against commitment. She is forward about believing that the most important relationship is with yourself. And that message is clear when she leaves her long term, live-in boyfriend when she realizes that she hasn’t FELT happy in months. He stood by her during cancer. Things got hard and ugly. Her friends encouraged her to leave. And the part that was so blatant was what she said to him…

“I’m just going to go ahead and say what you arent supposed to say. Its not that I dont love you… its just that I love me MORE…”

Shocking. I hated that part of the story. I felt like it was mixed messages. On the one hand, you had story lines saying “Love will conquer all” as could be seen in the love shared both by Carrie and Big and Steve and Miranda. And if the message was that love was enough, it seemed backward to me that her same friends would encourage Samantha to leave Smith when she no longer felt happy.

I suppose the message was supposed to be “love yourself,” but I wasn’t ok with that.  I’ve obviously never been married, and maybe I’m the wrong person to be asking, but from what I hear, relationships arent supposed to be about you and your happiness. They are backward, like everything else God created. They work when you DONT worry about yourself. They work when you die to yourself, and commit to forever. And in the words of Patrick Dodson, when you are really thinking in a long term mindset, like of your children’s children, one shitty day is only that. Its just one shitty day. It passes. Even shitty years are just that, just time. They pass. But in the face of 100 years, it changes your prospective.

Ok, so how do we beat our daunting statistic?

Its right there staring us in the face, the reality that MOST of us won’t make it.  Its like in the movie Patch Adams with Robin Williams, when the students are in Medical School. The professor says to them “Look to your left and look to your right.  ONE of the people you just looked at won’t make it.”

I love how Ben concludes his blog. He points out that we dont just wake up as married people, fantastic at commitment. We have to practice it. (I know this thought blew my mind too). WE HAVE TO PRACTICE IT. We have to begin looking at the things in our life like practice to being committed. Committed to marriage, to our jobs, to our children. We have to stay committed to good friends when they start making crappy-ass decisions. We have to start being committed to our jobs. This means showing up everyday, ready to do 100%. Not calling in sick when we just want a personal day. It means driving an hour each way to take your little Catholic grandma to mass because you told her you would. It means being inconvenienced. It means being late. It means being broke sometimes. But above all, this means doing what we say, not just what we think we want to do. It means shedding our naivety, and not thinking “that will never happen to me.” but rather changing our game plan to say “that’s going to be me unless I do something radical about it!”

I dont know about you, but it sounds good on paper. The more that I have read over and edited this piece, the more I realize that this subject is really easy to simply sit in my safe single-woman- world and type to other people….married people. I do love the idea of commitment, but there’s still a part of me that is twenty-something, and gets freaked out. I feel confined. And I like the Samantha’s dating mantra; that life is really all about me feeling happy.   But there is another part of me that continues to say what I have said before “Anything worth having is going to eventually ask something of us.” So I suppose I need to learn to take my own advice – and start looking for places to practice being committed.

Tonight I went to a “Network Marketing” party thrown by my friend’s cousin. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term “Network Marketing,” it is the marketing practice used by companies that try to get you to buy their products from one of their sales men; and then they get you become a salesmen yourself, recruiting your friends and family, until they become one of you, selling to their families and all of their friends. Some call the pyramid schemes, some call them genius money-makers, some call them straight out – a headache.

The product in discussion at this particular party was Monavie, the amazing “Super Fruit” juice, as endorsed by Oprah…and we all know, if Oprah says it goes, then you might as well etch it in stone, because its the God Honest Truth. In reality, I’m on the fence about the product itself. There are alot of doubts in my mind, like for example “Are we harvesting this precious Acai berry at the hands of the Brazilian farmers, both risking their lives and destroying the Amazon Forrest that it comes from – like blood diamonds?” And “Is this really that good for you? Or is this another shee-shee Newport mom drink that is going to work out all of the wonders of life?” Because I’m sure human beings couldn’t function as people before we found the technology to harvest the Acai berry and bottle it in wine bottles to sell for 45 bucks a pop. But who knows, like I said, I’m on the fence – I could be calling you in a few weeks to get you to have a “Tasting Party” so I can sucker you into the crap with me.

Now I have been to “Network Marketing” parties before, and we all hate them! Why we continue to accept the invitations is beyond me. Maybe we think that “I’ll really leave my wallet in the car this time, and I wont buy anything!” But they always end the same way. Me sitting there trying to convince myself that I really want to buy this over-priced novelty, while I fill out an order form.

The quintessential experience was the last time I went to a Party Lite Party. My girlfriend had bought the lie that if she really got into it and made it her full time job, she would make 3 million dollars a year….by selling over priced candles to her friends. Now here is the scene with that party:

There is a beautiful platter of strawberries, blueberries, brie cheese and crackers, decorated with small white doyleys. There couches are filled with beautiful women, dressed to the nines, as they politely listen to the sales pitch and thumb through the catalogue of products. By the end of the evening, the hostess is counting her orders, the guests are all questing why they just bought a candle for 36 dollars. All of the brie cheese is gone, and the fruit platter is demolished. The friends smile and hug, thanking each other for their time before they head for home.

Now let’s flip to the Monavie Party. There were also beautiful platters of strawberries, blueberries, brie cheese and crackers. But the major difference was that the Seller was a male, meaning that the majority of the guests were male. The speaker was a male. Now, we listened to the sales pitch, and most of the men sat with their arms crossed. By the end of the evening, all of the brie cheese and strawberries lay completely untouched, and the men were screaming at one another.  Ok, maybe not really screaming, but I think the word “explosive” was used to describe the events. The men didnt want to just sit with their hands folded and listen. They asked questions,…hard questions. They were calculating numbers, and debating right back at the speaker. And it wasn’t just one boisterous man, it was most of them.

Now here is the part that I get a bit jealous of. Those guys didnt walk to their cars asking themselves why they just bought a 46 dollar bottle of juice. The screamed their piece, they calmed down, they shook hands, and they went home as friends. No hard feelings…closed just like that. Now, my question is

Why can’t women do that?

I think if that would have happened at the PartyLite party, women would have gone home fuming, turning over the events of the evening, and calling her girlfriends to “Just make sure I’m not crazy on this one.” Now when I came home and told my roommate about my experience, she quickly responded “women are just more SENSITIVE to each others feelings!“

…? Ok women of the world…where is our logic in that!

We are more in tune with each others feelings, so we repress our own and buy things that we dont want? While the MEN just sit there and lay in all of the table. They feel irritated, they yell. They feel they disagree, they interrupt the speaker to interject their opinion. Isn’t THAT more on an example of being in touch with your feelings….so we can express them to one another? If we as women are SO MUCH MORE in touch with emotions, shouldnt we be SO MUCH BETTER at expressing them to one another? Telling each other what we feel? And the cherry on this Sundae is the part where all the men could just STOP – realize that the conversation WAS NOT personal – they cracked open a beer, hugged it out  and headed for the door. No hard feelings, just like that.

Monavie or no Monavie…I’m stumped. Sorry girls, but I can’t help but be envious of the guys on this one. They seem to have to “Emotional communication” way more figured out than we do. And even thought I’ve been walking around feeling and thinking woman thoughts and feelings my whole life…..I still think we’re crazy.

It started slow. Like a lift of an eyebrow, or the waife of an eyelash on the breathe of exhale.

Heads were lowered and tucked with dark security, vowing to never come out. Curled in our hiding spots, we thought that we could exist; breathing in and out, but never lifting a foot to tred outside of our crafty secrets.

We didnt want to talk, to even whisper the thoughts that traveled through our hearts and minds – like that of a news ticker, clocking our very words as they ran along the bottom of the TV screens of our lives. We wouldn’t utter a single sound, but instead fastened our lips and pulled the covers over our heads, content and convinced that “It didnt really matter, and I’m better off inside here. Its soft and warm, and there are no other people to ask me questions or share my stories with. I think I’ll stay in here for quite some time.”

But then something happned one quite afternoon. As if we were bears waking from a winter hybernation, our eyelids lifted open to let in the first spring light. Suddenly our warm quite secrets didnt comfort us, but instead they began to make us aware of our tight quarters. They confined us not allowing us to breathe or stretch. We noticed that the sun was quite nice and quite warm, but in our little winter sleeping spots we were just out of the reach of the sun’s embrace.

The ticker clock at the bottom of our lives began to remind us more of a beating drum, like that of an marching band, calling us to fall in line in the parade of the world. The longer we listened to the pounding thud, the closer the walls came crashing in, reminding us that this space was not for us to sleep in any longer.

We were like spring seeds, pushing through the icy winter soil to be whips of flowers, proudly displaying the banner of Spring that was to be on its way. We heard the call, and we had to grow. We had to stretch from our winter’s sleeping place, and let our heads untuck from their quite nooks.

The light struck into our eyes and we were flooded with calling. To shed the sleeping, to push through the icy ground. To leap from the winter stifle, and rush into pastures of new green blades of grass.  Our paths were littered with small colored flowers, like confetti falling from the sky of a Spring Parade.

Our pace quickened as we drank in the crisp air. We were not the same. We had to run, to run like there was not a care in the world. To run like we would never tire. To run with arms and legs flailing, down hills of green pasture, the glory of spring’s climax rushing past our ever seeing eyes.

Winter could not hold us. Spring had called us. And we had to run.

Once, early in my twenties, I dated a truly horrible guy. I dont know that he always meant to be horrible, but there is no arguing the fact that he was more than terrible to me. He was manipulative, and arguably emotional abusive – telling me I should loose weight, and dye my hair, and always talking about the attractiveness of other women in my presence. The list of discrepancies goes on and on, from isolating me from my friends, to constantly telling me cutting remarks about my family….which over time I began to believe.  

Why I was blind to this, I could not tell you. Maybe this is part of the entire dating/relationship journey for me at this point  – to reconcile what lead me to permit such destructive patterns in my dating life in the first place.

But the climax of our dysfunctional story took place in March of 2004. At this point I had slunked down to barley over 100 pounds due to depression and the need to appear attractive. I was in my junior year of college, and the classes were beginning to get to the point where they would swallow me alive if I would let them. And our relationship was spinning out of control – the way that he was treating me was getting steadily and progressively more unbearable. One night, after leaving a swimming party at his house, I had the gut sinking feeling that something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. So, I went back to his house (which I realize makes me a neurotic woman – but in this instance direly necessary)…and I found him in bed…with another woman.

Needless to say that at 21 this kind of event could kill a girl. And it nearly did. I couldnt keep food down for weeks. I had no more friends…he had successfully picked fights with all of them, leaving me alone in my hour of utter despair. Well, I chose not to leave him through all that time – which left me in utter despair.

Now I don’t want to drone on all of the awful minute details, but what I am getting at is this. This was the first time in my life that didnt have a relationship to hide behind. It was the first time that I was so unrecognisably smashed, I had no choice but stop hiding from God. To come clean, to look Him in the face and say “Ok Lord, lets do this your way.” I can honestly say that night back in March of 2004 was the darkest hour of my life. And looking at all of the places that I have been and grown since then, I am amazing that I am even here sometimes – for there were days, weeks, or even months where mere survival felt like the only objective.

It was not only hard because my heart was crushed, but because I didnt trust God at all. And I didnt want to. Not being able to hide in relationships anymore meant that it was time to face the music and do some serious business with God. And that scared me shitless. SHITLESS.

Now, in those dark hours, there came a promise from God. “Jenni, you will be vindicated.” (God speaks to me often through music, so of course this was a message whispered in the midst of the Dashboard Confessional song, Vindicated.) I knew what the word meant, but I didnt really know the gritty details of the word. So I looked it up. Vindicated was explained as being “to claim ones self for another, to deliver from; liberate, To justify or prove the worth of, especially when the party at hand could not do so on their own.”

Needless to say, I clearly lost it when I read this. And in my mind, that vindication played out in thousands of calculating ways. If I had my way about it, I would have grown up to be entirely successful, going to law school, and making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Then one day, looking stunning and powerful in an expensive suit, I would be getting into my brand new Porche, and he would be homeless, begging for money on the streets. He would turn to me and say “Got any spare change?” And in that instance, he would recognize me, and vindication would be won. I would answer “For you?” And then spit in his change cup – or something equally degrading. (ok, I can be mean when Im mad).

So here it is 2008. Its been years. We still go to the same church, so over the years there have been instances where we have seen each other. Usually we ignore each other. But my heart still races, my hair stands on end, and I feel like I am going to vomit. Usually old thoughts come back like “I wonder if I look ok? Do I look skinny? Is he jealous?” Clearly childish, and I would remind myself that I simply dont care anymore, and move on with my life.

Tonight in church he was sitting DIRECTLY in my line of vision. Ten feet away. Its the closest we have been in 4 years. I’m fidgety in church trying to make myself pay attention. And then something happened during worship. God says in my ear “Forgive him. And tell him you forgive him.” FUCK NO! Seriously God? Forgive maaaaaaybe. But walk over there and TALK to him. No. Absolutely not.

And then a crazy thing was happening. My feet were moving. Towards him. My hand was reaching up to grab his shoulder. I was smiling, then leaning in and saying “This may be more for me to say than it is for you to hear…but I forgive you for all those things that happened.” And then he was saying back to me, “I apologize for everything I did to you.”

Vindicated.

 I dont know that he really meant it when he said he was sorry, or that he even knew all that he was apologizing for.  But I am realizing, I dont care. It doesnt matter.

I’m smiling because this is NOTHING like what I wanted or pictured vindication to feel like. But I feel like I have taken a suitcase of poison, that I never really even knew was there, and cut the chord between me and it. He still may not think that he ever did anything wrong, anything worth forgiving. He may think that I’m a crazy girl with a 4 year old grudge. But none of that matters.

He can be or think whatever he wants. Because in this moment, I am realizing that vindication looks like being able to walk away….to REALLY walk away emotionally. To see him in the hall way at church and feel nothing. Not anger, or hatred, or nausea. Vindication looks like realizing that between the two of us, I was big enough to rise above the pain. That I was the one who was big enough to surpass all that he threw at me, and then, even in light of that, to be able to say “I forgive you.” Vindication looks like being a beautiful woman with a beautiful heart…not a skinny girl who has made her ex-boyfriend jealous.

So maybe I didn’t go to Law School, and I most definatly dont have a Porshe. And he still isnt homeless. But I can tell you, that this vindication feels so much better than Law Degree, and expensive suit and a sports car ever could.

I am a birthday person. As someone in my counseling group said tonight, “Loving your birthday is like self care – people really should celebrate the entire month!” Needless to say, I whole heartily agree with her opinion.

Now, I dont know that this is a widely known fact, but people have “Golden Birthdays.” Your Golden Birthday is when the age that you are turning matches the date that you were born (17 on April 17th for example). Your Golden Birthday is supposed to be a very special birthday, or at least an excuse to have an extra -umph in your birthday hoopla.

Even less commonly known are “Silver Birthdays.” This is simply you 25th birthday; the date that you are ushered into your quarter of a century. These birthdays also cause for greater celebration – celebrating the fact that you’ve survived childhood, made it mostly into adulthood, and that you are well on your way.

For a very few special people in the world, you get one day in your life that surpasses all the rest of your birthdays. If you were born on the 25th of any given month, you have your golden and silver birthday on the same day. Dear friends, I was born on October 25th. And I can tell you, I have have been excited to be 25 since I was old enough to figure out the colossal coincidence of my birthday.

So, as we are rounding the corner onto my big day (ok, so we really have 5 months, but we are over half way there!), I have begun to think about the reality of being 25. 

Twenty Five.

Looking over the course of my life, I wouldn’t tell you that I had an agenda. I wouldn’t have told you that I have a schedule. As organized (and arguably neurotic) as I am about planning, I have never sat down and planned out the events of my life. “Get married by 23, have a house by 24, pop out first kid by 26.” In fact, for the most part, I’d say that I have been pretty content to figure out my life events as they come at me.

But as I have begun to roll downhill to my 25th birthday, I have begun to look around at the scenery of my life at this point. And as I look at where I am in my life, my job, my growth and emotional development, I am completely caught off guard.As a six year old, dreaming about having a party on the 25th of October, with 25 candles in my cake and 25 people singing me happy birthday, I always imagined something a little different than this. I’d love to believe I didnt have an agenda, but as I am am coming closer and closer, I am realizing I DID.

I don’t think that I had specifics, but I know that I thought that I would be a little bit more settled than this. Maybe that I would be a little further and successful in my career. That I would be relatively emotionally stable, and dating someone seriously. I would MOST DEFINITELY have my own place by now. I didn’t have every detail etched in stone, but I know that I didnt think that it would look like this.

This week at church, we brushed upon an interesting point. In Exodus 16, we find the Israelites in the midst of a mess (What else is new?). They are lost in the desert. They are hungry. And they are pissed. We find them talking smack on Moses and Aaron – making accusations that they are frauds leading them into the desert to die. And the really interesting part is, they begin to dream about Egypt.

The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenthday of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’shand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Flip back a few chapters, and we all seems to remember the Israelites being in complete bondage – slaves, working 15 hour days without adequate supplies, while their families are starving, dying, and agonizing.  But that’s not what the memory looks like to the Israelites in that moment. In their minds, Egypt was the best days of their life – they remember meat,  parties, and relaxation.

Slavery?? …Naa… Egypt was more like this:

  Now I would laugh at them for so clearly being ….um…RETARDED… except for the part where I do the same thing. I look at my life, and dont see all the tick marks where I thought they’d be at this point in the game, and I realized that I’m a little irked by that. Even for my future, I have things that I want to happen a certain way. Read my blog from earlier last week and you know that it’s a dream of mine to get out of Orange Country; to live internationally and work overseas.

And as I’m sitting in church, it slowly begins to sink in…my schedule for my life is my Egypt. The check list that I thought I would have finished by my Golden Birthday is my Egypt. My dreams for my future are my Egypt. I have been freed from so much in the course of my life. The more that I have trusted God and walked with Him, the more crazy adventures, interesting stories, and wild desires have come. But still, I have the urge to turn around and long for the days where I called the shots, where I got to say what life was going to look like. “At 25 life will be…[fill in the blank].”

So it turns out that I don’t have much on the Isrealites. Leaving Egypt is harder than you think. I dont know that I am able to say “God I don’t care if we never go anywhere interesting. I dont care if we stay in Orange County. I dont care if we wander the desert for 40 years. I just want to be with you, no matter where you are. You are always withy me in a pillar of fire or a cloud, you give me manna and quails, and I’m cool with that.”

So, when is your next birthday? And what’s on the checklist before that day? Where is your Egypt?  Are you ok with your dreams looking more like desert than promise land? And, if you do find that you have managed to find you way out of Egypt and into contentment, … Can you please pass the map?