Beware of Community

I was 12 years old when I developed my first phobia. My brother had passed down his newspaper route to me, and being an eager 12 year old, desiring independence and a big-kid identity, I embraced the job with enthusiasm. Riding my bike through my partly-rural Canadian neighbourhood and delivering the local newspaper, The Barrie Examiner, made me feel older and more mature than my 12 years. I often felt like I was watching myself perform the task. There goes that smart young woman, with wind blowing through her hair, tossing those newspapers so effortlessly. What a care-free girl, cool she must be!

As you can imagine, I found myself making enemies with many of the neighbourhood's Labs, Golden Retrievers, Poodles, and German Shepherds. Territorial by nature, and protective of their master's turf, I was to them nothing but a persistent intruder. They couldn't understand that I was doing their master a service, and that they should welcome and appreciate my efforts. No, rather, they chased me. And barked. And bared their razor-sharp teeth. At first it was a game to me; being from a dog-owning family i thought nothing of the creatures - I considered myself a natural dog lover. So I just rode, ran, and jumped away faster than they could. Until the day I had a western-style stand off with the next door neighbour's German Shepherd named Bud (after the beer). He had me shaking in my boots, tears streaming down my face while i held my bike in between us, acting as a shield from his slobbering, snarling, angry growl. And then it happened: I took one step away from my bike, turning my back on him to make the run for home. He lunged forward and sank his teeth into my then-not-so-meaty butt, and didn't let go until my squeal alerted his master who then called him away from me. I limped home, shaking more than ever, tears soaking my quivering lips, and thus was born my fear of dogs.

It took me many years to get over that incident, and many stages of dog-phobia-rehabilitation by many sources to help me love dogs again. They smell fear! Act brave, even if you don't feel brave, my dad would say. Dogs need a leader, they need to know your intentions, who the boss is, I would read. If you want to enjoy the benefits of their company, you must be willing to get close, to be confident, to pretend you love them, and eventually, you will, I would tell myself. Eventually, it worked, and today I am able to walk by any sized barking dog and remain perfectly calm. I'm even proud to be the loving momma of a darling little Maltese puppy named Bailey. (He's no German Shepherd, I know, but it's a start!) His companionship, playfulness, loyalty, and adoration are worth all the pains it took me to challenge my fear and overcome it.

I also must confess another phobia that developed in my childhood: community. No really. I have been scared to death of deep, authentic relationships with multiple people at the same time. Once upon a time, I think around the age of 6, I remember thinking that people were really normal and fun to be around. And then it happened. For about the longest, most painfully lonely and fearful 11 years of my life, I was bullied, controlled, taunted, and manipulated by my peers. I was the class loner, the class clown, the class target, and the class loser. I was told I wasn't hip enough to be in the all-girls Cool Club, I wasn't fast enough to play first-basemen in baseball, I wasn't worthy enough to deserve the friendships anyone at school. I was told that I was ugly and nobody liked me, that my parents should have aborted me, that I ruined people's days by showing up at school. I could go on and on about how Steve Ellors*, the class hunk and eventually valedictorian, would pay first-graders to throw rocks at me, and how Anita Padon*, the coolest girl in the class, would turn everyone against me and manipulate them to not even look at me. And thus, I developed a dreadful fear of people. I thought they could just see how abnormal I was, how ugly and nerdy I was, how selfish I was, and I would just hide from them.

It's taken me many years to get over those incidences. At times I didn't think I would ever be able to interact normally with people, as I just didn't know how for the longest time. My community-phobia-rehabilitation has included therapy, anti-depressants, biblical counselors, prayer, the support of loving family members and friends, and lots and lots of tear-stained self-help books. And all these things have taught me plenty. I've learned that because God is in community with Himself in the Trinity, and we are created in the image of God, we are created for community. Being in authentic relationships with others is necessary, literally, for our survival. I've learned that true community is created when we are selfless and seek to meet the needs of others before our own needs, as modeled by the entire life of Christ. I've learned that community requires risk, the willingness to just get out there and try, even though you might get hurt. But most importantly, and most recently, I've learned that true community, true relationships, create a mess worth making. Relationships are messy, difficult, hurtful things. They can be full of misunderstandings, judgements, betrayals, and conflict.

So why bother? Well, why did I bother to get over my fear of dogs? Because I saw that the benefits dogs could bring to my life far outweighed the safety of my fear. Likewise, relationships with others, though painful at times, are capable of enriching our lives in ways that nothing else can. They drive us closer to our Most Satisfying Relationship by forcing us to cry out to Him for wisdom, strength and the power to forgive. They act as mirrors that show us how we are not yet like Christ, so we can strive to grow in specific areas. They reveal to us our shortcomings so that we can grow and be the kind of person that we never imagined we could be: more loving, more forgiving, more gentle, more selfless, more Christ-like than we ever dreamed possible. And in the close, sweet times, they teach us much of love, joy, peace, laughter, trust, and the bliss that only pure intimacy with others can bring.

Community is a dangerous, scary thing, and it is not to be entered into lightly. Many of us have been burned at one time or another by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with someone who ends up betraying our trust. But we cannot survive without it. In fact, we will never fully be alive unless we chase it, and when we fail or get hurt, to continue, in God's grace, to get up, dust ourselves off, and chase it again.

May the Creator and Imitator of Deep Relationships grant us strength, wisdom, and grace to beware of community, and then dive in head first.

Me, Nikki, Dan, and Clayton on our recent camping trip


*names have been changed to protect the people involved, who, by the way, i completely forgive and wish the best for

to hell with writer's block

so i haven't written anything in an ENTIRE year due to this mythological wall that has been blocking my creativity, so i've been telling myself, and i'm SICK of it telling me what i can't do!!! so i'm just going to write about whatever comes to my mind and we'll see where this goes...

so i'm currently re-adjusting to celebrity-ship, according to my facebook status, by returning to my position as, insert pretentious British accent, "Professor of English Language and Literature" (if you can call "Worldview 2 - Intro to English Coversation" *literature* , here at Kosin University.) Yes, that's in Korea. And yes, I'm still here, it's been 2 1/2 years, but that's a whole other blog post.... The thing is, I've never felt so ridiculously and quite shallowly *idolized* by so many people. I walk into a building, and i am welcomed by waist deep bows and screams and hyper-quick waving hands and many lines such as "Hi Professor!!!" and "I love you!!" and "Hello!! Hellooooo!!!!" It's just insane. Today I (and the other foreign English Professors) were called on to welcome the English students back for another semester at an opening Chapel service (it's a Christian university, btw), and the SCREAMS were so deafening, you would have thought Wentworth Miller walked in the room(or ok, Brad Pitt for you non-Prison Break people - and, side note - good for you, i just found out they KILLED SARA and i've never wanted 51 hours of my life back so badly). I've almost started to picture myself as some high-fashion skinny little Hollywood goddess, struttin' her stuff down the freezing cold cement hallways, and then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in some glass doors and I see nothing but a pasty-white, plumper-than-normal, older version of myself, wearing something i never EVER imagined myself in - a pinstripped chocolate brown suit that i got made in Thailand for a price i should have put towards my debt and darn-it! - i don't even like the cut of it anymore. But despite the delusion, in the end, it *is* endearing. Because I ADORE my students. This week back at work has been so much better than I expected. After returning from a blissful 3 week holiday wandering around Thailand (which was SO divine), I was fearing that Depression would welcome me back with its cold, ugly familiar arms. He (depression has just *got* to be masculine) opened them up for an embrace late last week, especially after i found out that my dear old high school friend had been killed while skiing, in an avalanche. I wanted to go home and say goodbye, to properly remember her, to be with her family. But there was this problem of a giant body of water called the Pacific in the way....blast.

And THEN there was this whole deal at the Professors retreat, an hour away at a fancy-smancy hotel in Gwanju. Three things that REALLY irked me happened: 1) They announced that they were cancelling the fine art program (stab in the heart! I think the arts are SO incredibly worthwhile and desperately needed, but this culture simply does not value them - "no job for art students! can not become rich!"). 2) A woman working for a broadcasting company, while addressing us Professors, encouraged us to "teach the students to have an obedient heart while new in the workplace, not to express their ideas and opinions." Awesome. *Please, no independent thinkers! No creative ingenuity! No democratic mindsets! Obedient, subserviant little clones, only, for us!* And 3) A woman who was supposed to give a speech on the school's sexual harrassment policy (a gov't requirment) skirted around the issue by giving a 5 minute schpeel entitled, "How to do Mathematics" that mentioned SQUAT about sexual harrassment and too much about men and women being "different" because they have different centers of gravity which can be figured out by some ridiculously complex math equation. 5 minutes of this, and i'm waiting for her to address the seriousness of sexual harrasment, but she doesn't - she just wraps up her neat little speech about gender differences and sits down, with a hearty *applause* even, by the entire Korean faculty, all straight-faced and nodding with approval! The foreign staff all just looked at each other, with jaw-dropping stares and fits of laughter - like we just could not *believe* that just happened. So there's this culture for ya: hatred of the arts, love of obedient little workaholic slaves, and suppression of anything slightly related to sexuality. SO, needless to say after that, Depression was running straight for me, as I was thinking, "WHY do I work in this country again??" But i rejected the embrace and decided that, after all, I have a LOT to keep me content in this country. Since working at Kosin, I've made a LOT more Korean friends than I've had in the previous 2 years in Korea (I had been doing the typical English Teacher thing, hanging out with other English Teachers who were, just, way too comfortable). And they are *delightful* . So fun, and giving, and loving, and so it's easier to love Korea when there are Koreans that you just *adore* . Along those lines, I'm learning more about living in the present and enjoying the people who are in my life RIGHT NOW instead of longing for past relationships or dreaming of future ones. I have a job that allows me to befriend people from totally different cultures - Kenyan, Cambodian, Fiji-an (i don't know what that culture is called), and Korean, of course. Yep - there's many international students here - its cool! SO i guess what i'm trying to say is that despite the cultural, er, *differences* , and the overtly enthusiastic response to my blonde hair and blue eyes, I'm deeply, deeply BLESSED to be in the position I am and I refuse, from now on, to accept any other ideas about it. Freaking blocks and walls and ugly embraces, you can control me no more.