Holy Holy Holy…crap

Sometimes I get so fed up that I want to give up on the church. I want to pick up my relationship with God and take it elsewhere. There is this conservative older generation that seems to be so caught up on appearances they are missing out on opportunities to love and grow. Yes, we shouldn’t get so open and free that we throw all the rules out the window and let chaos take over. But the rules were never intended to keep us imprisoned. They are guidelines to keep us safe, flexible in the face of an evolving world and understanding of God. I see Pharisees walking around our churches today, passing judgment in the form of “accountability” and personifying religion as an embodiment of ideals. Their worldviews are stifling, making me feel cornered…claustrophobic. Boxed in by the label “Christian.” This isn’t some postmodern rant claiming that by knowing nothing I understand everything. It’s a very real struggle that a lot of people in my generation are dealing with. And I see people dropping like flies. Leaving the church disillusioned and disheartened. Judged. Condemned. It only strengthens my resolve to stay. “The church” (whatever that is) needs us. People like me who will fight the tide. Who earnestly seek God and know that it is not our place to “condone” or “not condone” human activity, and that, in fact, Jesus expressly tells us not to. 

Whitey-tighties and cowgirl boots

I walked into the room with just a pair of whitey-tighties and my red cowgirl boots on. “Mom!” yelled my oldest brother. “She needs to wear a shirt! She’s a girl. It’s not right.” I walked over to the phone desk and reached up on my tippy-toes, trying to grab a pen. “She’s so little it doesn’t matter,” said my mom, charmed by my three-year-old innocence. “It doesn’t matter,” chimed in my other brother. “Girls need to wear shirts.”

I was too young to really form a verbal response, but I understood what they were saying. It was a conversation that my family had been having a lot lately. I was a girl and I needed to start acting like it. Even though my brothers were boys, all of my cousins were boys, and my two best friends were boys- I needed to learn that I was a girl. My brothers were allowed to sleep in just their underwear, but it was inappropriate for me to follow suit. My brothers could take off their shirts when it was hot outside, but if I did it everyone was embarrassed.

I could sense the injustice of it all, but there was nothing I could do but listen to what everyone else told me to do. There was shame in walking around naked if you were a girl. Forget that my body looked the same as the boys’ bodies, just the knowledge that I was a girl made it wrong. Like Adam and Eve realizing they were naked in the Garden of Eden, I had to cover up now and leave that “ignorant” stage of my life behind.

From that point on, there was a clear distinction between boy and girl. I was no longer allowed to copy my siblings in their actions or appearances, but made to act like those in my same gender category. I needed to perform gender like other girls my age, even if my worldview was different based on what I had known up until that point.

I was not performing my gender in a way my family thought I should naturally and instinctually perform it, so I had to learn. “You become gendered by performing in defined ways- dressing in a certain fashion and speaking and behaving in certain ways- that are culturally associated with one gender or another” (P.166 Foss et. al). This further proves that gender really is socially constructed, and not a biological outcome of sex. I may have wanted to imitate my brother’s “masculine” behavior, but I also didn’t naturally wear dresses and play with dolls. I personally don’t agree with raising children without telling them what sex they are, but neither do I agree with forcing a certain role on a child when they don’t want to perform it. It’s a sticky situation, but in the end, I would like to think I turned out all right. I wear shirts all the time now, and I never walk around in whitey tighties and cowboy boots.

The F word

            Man-hating, tree-hugging, hippie government haters with hairy armpits. That’s the picture that popped into my mind whenever someone said the word “feminist.” I’m from a small, conservative town where change means trouble. That’s why I was so surprised when I left for college and met strong, independent, man-loving, women who shaved their armpits and called themselves feminists. And men who did too.  I went to a women studies seminar calling for women to really consider themselves equal with men. Not better- equal. I still remember the main speaker repeating a question throughout her presentation. “Who would you be if you weren’t afraid? Who would you be if you no longer cared what people thought of you or expected from you?”

I realized then that many of the ways I presented myself were because I was told and shown that women should act that way. I started becoming insulted when people told me I should be a nurse because they make good money. Why not a doctor? When I told people I was studying broadcast journalism they would say, “Oh! You’re going to be a weather girl!” like that’s the highest I could aspire to. “No,” I started responding, “I’m going to be a producer. I’m going to change the way media run from the inside out.” I should not have been surprised when people responded with statements like, “But you have such a pretty face!” or “That sounds like an awfully big task for such a little lady.” More determined than ever, I set out to be who I wanted to be- who I could be if I was no longer afraid- myself, regardless of if that fit into the prescribed gender stereotypes or not.

I’ve been taking a gender communication class this semester in grad school. Through it, feminist discourse has recently become more important to my life in two specific ways. First, feminist discourse has allowed me to take a step back from my day-to-day life and introspectively dig deeper, revealing my own gendered biases. Second, by taking that step back to examine my own thoughts and feelings, feminist discourse has shown me gendered injustice around me that I was not consciously aware of before. 

            As a whole, I like to consider myself a pretty self-aware person. I know my strengths and weaknesses and try to improve where I can. If you had asked me three or four months ago if I were prejudiced against men I would have probably laughed at you and said, “Of course not. How is that even possible?” But it is possible, and I am. It’s the little things that I don’t even notice where my prejudices are hidden. And those little things add up, and slowly creep up on me, affecting my worldview.

            Because I have had to work so hard in my workplace to prove myself as equal to my male counterparts, I automatically distrust them. I assume that they have not had to work as hard for their positions in the company, but were probably handed the role on a silver platter. This isn’t true. Or maybe it is for some, I don’t know. But my reverse discrimination is just as bad as any discrimination that has been thrown my way. In fact, it shows my insecurities and makes me less likeable, which does nothing to help my cause. I have many reasons to distrust men, but some men have many reasons to distrust women. I don’t want to be judged based on my sex, so I am now consciously making and effort not to judge someone based on his sex either.

             My eyes have been opened not just to my own expectations of gender, but to those expectations people place on each other and on themselves daily. An example of this popped up while spending time with my family over spring break. I had never been so acutely aware of gender roles within my own family. My mom cooked the dinners, my dad took out the trash, my mom talked my ear off, and my dad didn’t say much, but showed his love by fixing my car. These roles are not bad, and are a natural result of patterns that establish over time, but I felt like I was noticing those roles for the first time. I don’t think the way my parents interact needs to change, but I do think that it is always good to be aware of where I come from and how that affects me. “You have a unique way of making sense of gender that is the result of all kind of factors and influences, including how you were raised and how you interpret and respond to gender messages you received” (Foss, Domenico, & Foss 2013 p. 79). We all come from various backgrounds and place what happens to us into our own personal contexts, and I still have expectations of gender based on how my parents raised me.

            As I move forward I hope to take this self-awareness with me, and not get caught up in the day-to-day binary that we as a western society fall so easily into step with. I am not perfect, and I will make mistakes. I will continue to distrust some men, I will put myself in the kitchen when I really want to be outside grilling (so to speak), and I will probably make my guy roommates take out the trash because it smells and I don’t want to touch it. But I will make an effort to live out what I have learned this semester and be an activist in my own small ways. My name is Sarah Elizabeth Willer and I am a feminist…and I shave my armpits.

23 wishes for the next 23 years

I want a vegetable garden.

I want to invite neighbors over for coffee in the later hours of lazy mornings.

I want to write books.

I want to read books with cats curled up around me.

I want to take a dog camping.

I want to hike and swim until my limbs are sublimely exhausted.

I want to fish for 5 minutes until I’m too bored and then throw rocks in the stream, ruining it for anyone else who’s fishing.

I want to fall asleep in a hammock and become indented all over my legs by its strings.

I want to have big family-style dinners with too much butter.

I want to stay up all night having deep conversations with people who truly know me.

I want to wake up early to watch the sunrise with a huge mug of tea.

I want to bake sweets and give them away like wellwishes.

I want to throw surprise parties and laugh until I pee.

I want to take my children to dance lessons and school plays.

I want to watch films with fresh popped popcorn.

I want to travel to countries I’ve never even heard of.

I want to give of myself things I didn’t know were mine to give.

I want to know each person in my church and invest in their lives.

I want to slow dance with my husband when no one else is around.

I want to drink wine by myself and margaritas with everyone I know.

I want to live the life that’s in me, and love the life that’s lived.

SeizedByAGreatAffection: Subarus, Sex, & Porn Stars

I’m giving up.

Giving up on the notion that becoming a good person is a step-by-step process that can be achieved by checking off tasks. Giving up on the antiquated idea that you can become that perfect version of yourself by slowly getting better, better, better. It’s that mindset that causes people to backslide and give up when they never reach that goal. It’s impossible.

Once you are “saved” or “ask Jesus into your heart” or “give your heart to God” your life is supposed to magically change. Boom. Bang. Bam. You’re new! Oh wait, no you’re not. You’re the same exact person with the same flaws and baggage, just trying to live for a higher purpose. This is set up for failure. Because in those failures, we realize that we can’t do it. We’re powerless. We can’t control our lives and the harder we try the worse things get.

Those are the moments- the truly low moments- when you feel God the most. You need him. You actually depend on God. You’re wrapped in his grace and picked up in an embrace that’s undeniable. The end.

Oh wait (again), no it’s not. You’re still the same person.

I’ve come to the realization that being a Christian isn’t about reaching life milestones and slowly building up to be a better person. That’s not how it works. Having a relationship with God isn’t about climbing steps; it’s a constant cycle of humbling yourself to depend on him. It’s not deciding you’re willing to be religious and that’s it.

It’s a daily, monthly, yearly surrender of your power over and over. Because as soon as we get a chance, get distracted, or get disheartened, we take over the steering yet again and crash into the same old shit.

Picture getting into a car accident and having an ambulance pick you up. Then, on the way to the hospital, you feel better already and decided to take over driving. You’re still bleeding but with the rush of adrenaline of having your life back, you push the driver out of his seat and crash the ambulance.

Maybe it’s just me. But it feels like my life has been a series of car accidents. And this isn’t because I’m young or because I’m a bad driver (although both are true). It’s because life is messy and painful and I will never be safe from causing a wreck, no matter how good I try to be.

We can either accept this cycle, or we can go off on our own path, and try to clean up our own scrapes and bruises. We can even have friends and family put band aids on us. There comes a time when they will fail us though, because they’re busy trying to clean up their own messes. And when we can’t depend on anyone, God is the only truth there is. No judgment. No condemnation. He stands there with open arms and a clean slate. When it comes down to it, I’d rather not be alone. Even if that means admitting I’m not in control of my own life. 

There is nowhere I love more than my bed

I’ve written of my love affair with this bed before.

Flowered sheets under a white down blanket. 

Pillows piled high to catch my dreams as they leak out of my eyes

and

seep

from

my

skin.

Soft haven of protection.

Queen of comfort when my days are long 

and my nights are too short.

Just a moment of grace,

A breath of relief from the world  outside.

That hug of friendship I needed so badly.

A mother’s embrace and a father’s approval.

The wasted hours reading reading reading.

The days longing to be back here,

needing needing needing.

No judgement for my fears

or

dread

to

go

outside.

Full acceptance of my laziness.

A break from self discipline.

My ultimate goal for every day

to be back here where I love to stay.

There is nowhere I love more than my bed.

I’m not one of them

My two closest friends from college just made a trip down to stay in my city for the weekend. They didn’t tell me they were coming, they spent the entire weekend with a huge group of girls we all lived with, and they didn’t invite me to any part of their visit.

What does that say about me? I’m thinking it says that I’m “that friend.” The one you have but don’t really like. The one that when a person says, “Oh, we should invite her” everyone else says, “Do we have to? Let’s just make it us tonight.”

And that’s a horrible feeling. I must be annoying. I must be a Debbie downer. I must not be worth even a courtesy cup of coffee and quick update on life. Suddenly I’m in junior high again and every insecurity is popping up like bad achne.

On every facebook post and instagram picture, there were their smiling faces and perfectly manicured hands displaying their engagement and/or wedding rings. And I realized- I’m not one of them. I’m not married. I’m not planning some pinterest wedding…I’m not even dating anyone. I’m not in their exclusive club. It kind of makes more sense now. Maybe they just don’t like me, or maybe they no longer have anything to talk to me about. Maybe it’s both. While they all preen over upcoming nuptials and napkin colors, I would sit there as an outsider. What would they say to me? “Sooooo….are you seeing anyone?” No.

They’ve all been sucked into a world consumed with men. I am working in my career and going to graduate school, scoping out PhD programs in other countries. Not only is my world not consumed with men, but I’m deconstructing the way I view value in life and I can tell you one thing for sure: my value certainly does not lie in how big my engagement ring is or how much a man loves me.

I have this nagging fear that I’m going to wake up one morning, an old woman with an amazing career and adventurous past but no one to share it with. But now I take a deeper look at my college friends and realize that they might end up the same way. Who is to say what the future holds, even if you hold all your eggs in one gold band.

I wish them all the best and will try my hardest not to resent their rejection. In the meantime, I will carry on with who I am and who I will become, because if that doesn’t fit in with who they are, I need to embrace the difference and even revel in it. The world keeps spinning- pulling us apart in different directions.

Happy Depressedmas Everyone!

A friend of mine recently compared heartbreak to childbirth.

They’re both gruesome, potentially bloody, horrifically painful experiences that don’t seem that bad until you’re going through them. 

“I want that,” says the 16 year old girl when she sees a couple making out on the beach. A year later she’s sobbing on her parents porch with scars that will never quite fade.

“I want that,” the skinny 20-something says when she sees a cute baby. A year later she’s sobbing in her hospital bed with scars that will never quite fade.

Holy crap. This post got depressing really fast. Yay for love and babies! But it hurts. I guess everything great comes at a price; and it’s worth it.

Just like the pain of childbirth, heartache fades over time. You can’t make an immediate recovery, but months pass and you start to feel normal again. Even so good that you’re willing to do it again- forgetting just how much it really hurts.

And years later when you look back, you can never quite remember the reality of it…just a blurry mix of emotions that are bittersweet. Because let’s face it, if people could remember how awful they’ve felt, no one would fall in love and procreate. 

On that note, happy friday everyone! 

words

Writing comes the most easily to me when I have nothing to write about. 

When I have something that screams to be written, I back away from my computer and shun the task. It’s too big; too weighty. There are too many words that need to be written, scrambling over each other in my brain to be heard, forming a massive stampede, trampling over and killing innocent ideas in the rush to escape. 

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

Dear Women of Earth,

I have been needing to write this post for quite some time. Years, probably. But girls are SO sensitive that I’m sure every single one who reads this will think I have written it directly for her, and will therefore be mad at me and retaliate in some underhanded way. Girls exhaust me. I grew up with all brothers, all boy cousins, and boy best friends.

That’s why I was so confused in 7^th grade when that one girl seemed to lay claim to every boy who passed by our lunch table. If she liked him, no one else could. Her puberty-strengthened feelings made these boys her possessions in her mind, and anyone else who looked or talked to them was trying to steal what belonged to her. She might as well have lifted up her knee-length skirt and ran around the lunch yard peeing on all of their the legs to mark her territory.

In high school things only got worse. If a boy liked me, every girl who even mildly crushed on him suddenly saw me as the enemy. Instead of another teenager, I was the Jezebel of the town, maliciously luring these innocent young men to their destruction. Most of the time I was mean to these poor lads because I wanted the girls to like me. It didn’t matter. The destruction was already done. No matter how I responded; once a boy liked me, I was doomed to be disliked by the surrounding females.

It’s a nonsensical social malfunction that I assumed would disappear among the higher educated populace of my university. I couldn’t have been more wrong. In this new social setting, women are even more desperate to find a mate. This is the time, they are told, to find their future husbands. Claws come out, and the unjust disdain for potential competition descends with a renewed vigor.

Here’s something I’ve been wanting to tell my friends for over a decade: HE DOESN’T WANT YOU. Stop pining away. It’s pathetic and your constant chatter to me about it makes my opinion of you drop every year you can’t seem to grasp the blatant concept. If he’s not pursuing you, he doesn’t want you. It’s as simple as that. You being so desperate will only make him want you even less.

Here’s a secret: If you stop needing him, he will want you. Guys can taste desperation in the air, like some sort of pheromone your body emits when you want someone who doesn’t want you back. It puts a bitter taste in his mouth, making him push you away, in turn making you want him more, emitting more desperation to send him running.

Here’s another secret my friends don’t know: sometimes, I pretend to like a guy more, or be more anxious about if he likes me, just so that I can identify with them. That sounds crazy, and it is.

Dear women of earth, please hear me out…STOP. Stop hating other women just because men want them. Stop being possessive over men who you have no right to. Stop chasing after men who don’t show interest. Stop reading into every little thing he does or says to convince yourself he likes you. He doesn’t. And if he did, he would have made it crystal clear.

You are holding your sex back from being equal by considering men the end-all be-all. They are not. Once you have one, you still won’t be happy. He will make you mad and sad and crazy and your life will still move on.

Grow a backbone. Stop being so insecure and start having some pride. Respect yourself and have the decency to know when you’re not wanted. Turn rejection into an opportunity. Don’t admit defeat. Learn and grow from the experience, and move on with your life. Turn into the type of woman he wants: confident, self-assured, fulfilled, and happy.

Don’t do this for him, but for yourself. Because in the end, that’s who you need to be on the best terms with. You may want to spend your life with a man but you will spend eternity with yourself. Who do you want that to be?

The Muppets and Love

I want someone who will go to see the Muppets with me. He won’t convince me that another movie is better and that we’ll see the Muppets when it comes out on DVD. Because we won’t. I still haven’t seen it.

I want someone who won’t pretend to be open minded and respect my beliefs until he gets comfortable enough to scoff at them. He won’t tell me he’ll do whatever it takes and then do nothing at all.

I want someone who believes the same things I do. Who thinks this earth was created for a purpose. Someone who respects nature and doesn’t see man as the center of all life.

I want someone who has an imagination as great as mine, and isn’t ashamed to just lay around and daydream. He won’t need to fill his time with social drinking or watching movies. He can just read and talk and be present, enjoying each moment as it comes.

I want someone who doesn’t decide what we’re doing without consenting me. He won’t decide he wants to go listen to a horrible band and then going to a whiskey bar without asking me if that’s something I’d like. He especially won’t force me to go to that bar when I tell him I’m not up for it.

I want someone who will give me the time I need to make sure I can trust him. He won’t try to force a deepness to our relationship that doesn’t exist. He won’t tell me he loves me on the first date. And he most definitely won’t talk about getting married and what our kids will look like.

I want someone who does what he says he will. He won’t say one thing and do another. He’ll be true to his word.

I suppose that’s what all women want, really. But mainly, I just want someone who will go to see the Muppets with me.

A sore butt and a sore mind

There’s nothing worse than a know-it-all. 

I once dated one. It didn’t last long. Never again (or so I say to myself when I look back in disgust at how self-rigteous he was. Handsome and self-rigteous. Can there be any worse combination?)

Those know-it-alls….always lurking, waiting for you to slip up so they can point out your mistakes. They also tell you the truth when sometimes you just need a lie. Or silence. Or a hug.

As much as I hate those people, every blue moon I notice that I am, in fact, one of them. I’m hyper self-aware and I constantly analyze my life, leading to a sense of having it all figured out. A false sense. 

I don’t have it all figured out. What I figure is that with all I know, I know nothing at all. And everything I know will change. And everything about what I know will change before I know it. And I will change in the process. I will know more, and therefor, know less. Being aware of knowing less doesn’t mean I know more; it just means I’m more resigned to how totally not in control of my own life I am. 

This is starting to sound an awful lot like a philosophy class. I hated philosophy. Is this a chair? How do you know it’s a chair? Let’s ask questions about this chair all week and never get anything out of it besides a sore butt from sitting in the chair while we talk about it. 

I may not know anything, but at least I can sit in this chair and know it’s a chair, and know that I know nothing.