six months (and three days) ago: part I

Micah Scoggan and I became friends last January. Not hugely significant in and of itself, but in hanging out with Micah I also began spending time with a man named Gregory. He started inviting me over for game night and making pretty regular stops at his best friend’s office, which also happened to be my office. I was very comfortably in the ‘not dating’ category at the time, and didn’t think anything of it. I was so unaware, in fact, that I continued getting to know the man. The whole scheme would have been shut down in a moment if I had known what was going on.

Come mid-March I realized this man wasn’t calling because he just wanted to be my friend. By then, however, I thoroughly enjoyed his friendship. I told myself, and anyone who would listen, that I really wasn’t interested. In fact, I even told him one day at Dunn Bros. I sat across the table and laid, line upon line, the boundaries that needed to exist if we were to remain friends. My oratory may have included things like “I’m not dating,” “I’m not interested in dating” and “if it feels like a date that’s not okay.” I was completely comfortable with and unwavering about everything I said…

…until he opened his mouth.

a subtle distinction

Saying ‘he was an emotional abusive parent’ is quite different than saying ‘he was emotionally abusive to me’. The former allows for a distance between the pain and the speaker; the latter confronts the speaker with no apologies or qualifications.

best wedding invitation ever

‘we all clapped our hands and believed in fairies’

This blog title came from an article in Time Magazine on the economic crisis. First I laughed, then I wondered…

What exactly were we believing in? It’s not as though Christians didn’t participate in the reckless spending, risky investments and bad mortgages that brought us to this situation.

As ridiculous as it is, we may as well have believed in the power of fairies. It would have done us the same amount of good.

a series of [insert adjective here] events

The first 46 minutes of my day looked a little something like this:

First I woke up 30 minutes late. Let the rushing around, ‘don’t forget to brush your teeth and put on deoderant madness’ begin.

Then I fell down the stairs on the way out the door.

pure awesome

Picture this:

While on the shoulders of her grandpa, a 15-month old toddler has her arms stretched out straight in front of her for more than 30 feet. Upon reaching the sidewalk in front of Target, she immediately climbs down and runs off to the right of the front doors. She stops only when she reaches her goal: a large concrete ball that she imagined was a giant toy.

P.S. She looked super surprised (and a little annoyed) when it didn’t move at all. She then proceeded to run to the next giant concrete ball 15 feet away and try again.

cotton candy literature

The DaVinci Code had just come out when I started working at Borders; after a month of customers asking my opinion, I decided it was time to break down and read it. The theology was terrible though the visceral reaction it elicited in me had far more to do with the fact that it was written at the reading level of, oh, an eight year old.

thoughts on Christian movies

Dear Dallas Jenkins,

As someone who grew up in the theatre and art world, your article was like a breath of fresh air.

In “Christian film,” you’ve got a genre defined entirely by its message.

The problem is that everyone knows good art should always put story and character above message.