If Boys Posed Like Girls...

Ever notice the unique "girl pose" in photos?

You know the one:

Right arm on the hip, right leg slightly bent inwards in front of the left, body facing 30 degrees to the left with the head aimed at the camera but angled slightly downwards.

Of course, that is if a girls "good side" is the right side of her face. If it's the left side, the science is totally different.

At least that is the cliff notes version. The true science of the "girl pose" is too in depth for the blogosphere.


The other day I had a new thought, though (I know, scary)....

What if boys posed like girls?

 

Interestingly enough, the men in my family were readily available to help...

Did I say MY family? I mean I got these off of Google...

What Was I Thinking Wednesday: Facetime

What Was I Thinking Wednesday will showcase photos that left me asking, "What was I thinking?". The series hopes to provide readers with life-lessons I had to learn the hard way. 

Teaching Boppy to Facetime.

 

What Was I Thinking?

Being a Christian in the Humanities

By: Michelle Day

This guest post is written one of my favorite new friends, Michelle Day. She is a part-time lecturer in the Composition Program at the University of Louisville and member of Crossing Church. Plus she is a killer sand volleyball player AND on my team so I like her a lot. 

If you are also interested in guest posting on my blahg, see how here.




Trying to stand in my faith during college was a spectacular failure. That is why I was pretty excited to try again two years ago, when I started a graduate program in a humanities-related field at a public, secular university. I thought, “This is great. I will learn from my mistakes in college, commit to being the same person at church and at school, and the rest will be easy.”

Wrong. 

As soon as grad school started, it seemed like church and school required me to be two completely different people. It felt like I had split personalities. Reading the Bible and Nietzsche in the same morning, or having back-to-back conversations with people who love and distrust feminism can do that to you.

 What I realized was that I was asking the wrong question. I was asking, “How can I be the same person no matter what context I’m in?” when I needed to ask, “How can I be a consistent person, one whose actions in any context are informed by my belief in Jesus?”

 Actually, it doesn’t make any sense to think you can behave and speak exactly the same in contexts with very different social practices; even though I’m a teacher, I don’t stand and give lessons at my community group or grade what people share. But you can adapt to any context in ways that are make sense given your identity in Christ.

 In other words, the real question is, “What does it look like to follow Christ in the humanities?” And to be honest, it’s not entirely different from asking what it looks like to follow Christ in my local church.

 Consider the list below reflections on the work-in-progress the Lord has been doing in my heart on this issue over the last two years. They represent goals, not accomplishments, and I hope that they encourage any Christians in a similar position, wrestling with how to answer the bolded question above or any variation of it.

Don’t look for “THE answers,” because there’s not a set of reproducible answers to my question. I won’t find a life formula by thinking about it long and hard. Instead, I need to be looking for Jesus in everything. Elisabeth Elliott says that we often look for guidance from the Lord, but it’s more important to become someone who is guided—someone whose heart is softened to truth and toward being led by the Lord. Along those lines, the Bible exhorts us to not lean on our own understanding—finding the answers—but instead acknowledge God in every situation, and He will make our paths straight (Proverbs 3:5).

 Be honest about who you are up front. When I was in college, I usually kept my faith on the down-low until my friends who didn’t believe got to know me better, hoping they wouldn’t automatically associate me with negative stereotypes of Christians. But in graduate school, I adopted the opposite strategy. I let my beliefs come up naturally in conversation, but I do look for opportunities as quickly as possible to identify myself with Christ. I feel like this allows me to be honest about who I am from the beginning rather than me feeling like I’m hiding. I also hope that it helps me be more authentic and set the stage for others to feel comfortable sharing their beliefs with me, because I love having those conversations.

Look for common ground. It’s tempting to assume that there’s not much crossover between environments dominated by different worldviews. But that’s just not true. And for me, conceiving of the academy and the church as completely different made it that much harder to act and speak consistently. When I started finding similar language and ideas that the two environments use (even if they use them differently), it helped me bring my two worlds in conversation with each other, and it opened my eyes to how my studies and my church-related activities can inform each other.

Allow your beliefs to be challenged. Obviously, this one requires careful balancing. But my faith in God has deepened because of things I’ve learned from people who don’t believe in Him. Because the humanities studies human culture, I’ve studied communication, how communities develop, and how people form identities through language, all of which are relevant to Christianity. But more than that, I’ve learned that people who believe differently than me can hold up a mirror to my beliefs, so I see, through another’s eyes, the assumptions I take for granted, the things I hadn’t thought about, or the ways I’m acting inconsistently. And THAT has unquestioningly helped me love God and people better.

Ask people you trust what they think, and ask them to hold you accountable in areas you struggle. Let’s be honest; there are very few important things that we can really handle without any help. I am blessed with many friends and family who are faithful to help me work through specific instances where I wrestle with how I should respond as both a Christian and academic. I have also been blessed with three other brilliant Christians in my program who all meet to discuss how our faith and studies inform each other. All of these conversations have been invaluable parts of learning to be a consistent person. It also helps when they lovingly ask me how I’m doing with the ways I am tempted to not act consistently with my faith.


 Remember the two “greatest” commandments, and pray for the grace necessary to keep them. Figuring out how to stand in your faith when working in a highly secular (potentially even hostile) environment has to start with keeping first things first, and leaning into spiritual disciplines even more. Jesus says two commandments sum up all of them—loving the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31). We are called to constantly seek, above all else, deeper relationship with the Lord, and show respect and love to people, who are all made in His image. But the whole point of Christianity is that we can’t do that in our own strength. Instead, we are called to work out our faith with fear and trembling before God, no matter the circumstances, knowing that as we seek Him, it is really God who is working in us “both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).

Why do you think Christians struggle with being a consistent person in different contexts? Anything you would add to Michelle's advice? Leave your thoughts...

What Was I Thinking Wednesday: Accidental Engagement

What Was I Thinking Wednesday will showcase photos that left me asking, "What was I thinking?". The series hopes to provide readers with life-lessons I had to learn the hard way. 

Not realizing my friend's hand would look like mine...talk about Facebook drama.

What Was I Thinking?

Sundays with the Days

Remember summer days as a child? They probably included running around the neighborhood barefoot, playing games in the lawn with your friends, and learning to do cartwheels in the grass.

Yeah…that’s my every Sunday.

 No, not allegorically.

 Literally.

Every Sunday I’m a ten year old in all the greatest ways. I hang out with my closest girlfriends, sit in the grass and goof off, play sand volleyball, whiffle ball, or whatever the sport of choice is for the day, and I’m even learning how to do a cartwheel. Yesterday we even played in the rain.

 And the best part is, my mom doesn’t yell at me to come inside.

 By dinnertime on Sundays, I hop in my car with dirt caked head to toe and drive back to my apartment exhausted, but full of more happiness and joy than I can explain. And I’m usually thinking the same thing:

Thank God I met the Day Family. 

The Day Family has become my family here in Louisville, as they have for so many other young people. I met this incredible family at Crossing Church, where I am now a member. I don’t just have an invitation to come to the Day household on Sunday afternoons, but an expectation. Because, by golly, I’m a part of the family now.

And Sunday afternoons are family time.

But I’m not the only one with a regularly extended expectation. On any given Sunday you are sure to find many more than just the Day family of five. You will find my four lovely Hawaiian sisters, a couple other twenty-somethings, a young married couple with their newborn, and probably a few strangers that just visited church for the first time that Sunday.

Because that’s community. And that’s the Days.

I first met Michael Day at the entrance of Crossing just less than a year ago. What he doesn’t know, is I cried my entire way to church that morning. I was terrified. And I was experiencing a lonely unlike I had ever before.

 I was in a new city, working a new job – one done most days from my computer in my one-person apartment. I didn’t know much besides this move to Louisville was the biggest mistake of my life.

 I didn’t want to go to church. I didn’t want to walk into an unknown place full of strangers being happy. I feared I would feel that much more alone surrounded by people who knew each other and smiled and did all the “church-like” nice-people stuff. No one would see me.

 But Michael Day saw me. 

And Michael introduced me to his daughter, Abby. And Abby sat with me. And when church was over, I was expected to come to lunch at her house. There I met Abby’s mom, Ruth, grandmother, Mimi and sister, Michelle.
  
I met my family. 

I now have a very large family here in Louisville. Sundays are a little slice of heaven. All ages, all types of people, but all with one commonality – we love the Lord, and we want to know him deeper.

In fact, He is just the reason the Days open their doors to so many. Because Jesus opened the doors to the Days. From what I hear, Jesus has made all the difference in the Day family in just the last few years. He took brokenness and recreated it into something beautiful – something He is pretty good at doing.

 Kind of like He did with this “biggest mistake of my life” move to Louisville.

 Ha! I wouldn’t trade this move for the world. 




So if you are ever visiting Louisville and you want to make a travel itinerary, make sure you set aside Sunday to come to Crossing Church then go to the Days’ afterwards. You will eat an amazing homemade meal, sit around the table and talk about the Lord, and even have the opportunity to be a kid again and run around the neighborhood barefoot.

 Seriously, I invite you to join us.

Scratch that.

 I expect you to join us.