story of a soul

Friends, this makes one of my Top 10 lists. I'm not sure which one yet. I plan to start working on making those this week.

Probably 10 Most Life-Changing? 10 Most Challenging? 10 Most Revolutionary? (The point is, it's amazing, and you should read it.)

I briefly touched on this book in my post about learning to be a child. The little way that Therese puts forth is so ridiculously, unbelievably attractive even in its unremarkable-ness. Because of its unremarkable-ness.

I've been struggling the past few weeks with the unremarkable-ness of my own life. I'm rebelling against it and trying to change it... how can I make my life exciting again? How can I be at the center of action and making amazing things happen for the Kingdom of God? I will never take the bubbling kind of life at school for granted again; I will harness its every power and make something fantastic. Just let me be remarkable.

But oh, isn't the remarkable getting kind of commonplace?
Is being useful not sometimes a roadblock to being truly valuable?

One of the things Therese talks about is the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells us to 'lend, expecting nothing in return' (Luke 6:35). She brings up something interesting... sometimes it is so much easier to give than to lend, especially when you do not expect something back.

If you could just make a gift out of your time/energy/money/whatever, you could feel some sort of virtue in it. It's sacrifice, right? Very noble. But if you're lending, the other person gets to feel like they'll pay you back (even if they won't), and you don't get any of the glamor or perceived virtue out of it. All you've done is lend. It's a much quieter virtue, and therefore a much harder one.

And that's what family life is like. I lend my sister a buck or two for Starbucks, but I know I won't get that back unless I bug her for it. Or I go with her to dog-sit overnight, and I know I won't get a cut of the money unless I bug her for it. But at the moment at which I'm giving her the money or sleeping on a bed with two snoring dogs, the understanding is that I am lending the money or lending the time.
(Confession: in both of these instances, I did bug her later.)

Or it's like my tutoring. My GED student is paying me $100 for the whole summer. It comes out to something like $4/hour, which is not very much at all... especially for tutoring, which usually goes more like $20/hour... but I also can't call my work with her 'volunteering' now or get the satisfaction of my gift of goodwill.
(Confession: I tried to do it for free.)

And my whole life is like this! I get so many opportunities for acts of half-charity, or what feels like half charity, and I either snub my nose at it entirely or try to force it into 'whole-charity.' I'm coming to understand that both of those are the same thing.

Sometimes the remarkable thing might be to actually remain unremarkable.

Again, read this book. It's a beautiful view of what Chesterton's 'The Paradoxes of Christianity' looks like played out in the life of a young woman in the simplest setting possible. It's threatened to change the way I think about things. Read it. Did I say that already?