I did not set out to become a full-time artist lightly.

It’s not that I was scared of the uncertainty of that lifestyle. That aspect felt more thrilling than anything else. But I knew many people who walked that path had been blindsided by just how taxing the first couple of years are. Tight finances, rejection, and a continual questioning of your decisions from within and without are just a handful of the many plagues that come up in the creative industry. I wanted to be as prepared as I could possibly be, so that nothing would take me by surprise.

I read every single interview and article I could get my hands on. I heard all of the talking points from all of the seminars, and they were engraved on the forefront of my mind;

“Always practice; cultivate your style.”

“Do what comes naturally to you.”

“It’s ok if you start off slow, everyone does!”

“Having submissions turned down is hard, but it’s part of the process.”

“It’s easy to doubt yourself, but don’t listen to them.”

“Don’t worry.”

“You’ll be ok.”

This was everyone’s story. All of the articles and interviews I read boiled down to those principles. If that was the whole story, I felt that was something I could handle. With the map laid out before me, I plunged ahead, knowing exactly what hurdles to expect and what to do to overcome them.

The first few months were joyous. Bounding and splashing down the waterfalls of creative impulse is as freeing and life-giving as you can imagine. Paintings, designs, and illustrations flowed from my fingertips as I continued to sculpt and refine my talents with equal artistic enthusiasm. I made a few commissioned pieces, showed at a few local galleries, completed my first series, and was even hired to create live art for a stage production. Objectively speaking, I was moving along at quite a clip. My artistic journey was progressing much more quickly than I or any of my close friends should have expected.

But whatever was and still is happening in my artistic career, something else was happening in the back of my mind. I didn’t notice it for a long time. How could I have? Everything was going according to how I had heard it would. I was practicing my art as I always had, constantly critiquing what I could make better. I was allowing my style to affect my work as naturally as it could, doing my best to embrace the tendencies of my aesthetic. Things were moving more lethargically than I would have liked, which was to be expected in my first year. Many, many submissions had been turned down or not replied to, which, as I had heard just as many times, was a normal and healthy part of the process. I was fully prepared to encounter all of these aspects of the artistic journey.

And yet the voices I had heard so much about began to grow. Ah, yes. The voices;

“You can keep practicing, but it still won’t make up for your flaws.”

“Your art style is fine. Not nearly as good as theirs, though.”

“That’s why you’re starting off so slowly.”

“That’s why they’re not accepting your submissions.”

“Your voice is unrefined, generic, uncompelling, and basic.”

“And that’s why

You’ll never be good enough.”

That was a little unnerving, but the articles told me I was going to hear these voices eventually. This was normal. I was prepared. I pushed them away. I wasn’t worried. I told them I knew they were there. I told all my friends I knew they were there. I felt them digging at my mind. I was ok, though. I was more prepared than anyone. I knew that they’d done this to so many people. The voices are the blight of the artistic life. “But they wouldn’t get the best of me!”, I said. I declared. I demanded. I shouted. I begged. I cried. And I almost broke.

Wow. That was fast.

It’s like reading a set of definitions anew. No one could have prepared me for just how backbreaking the corrosiveness of doubt truly was, just as no one could have prepared for the depths of the color red by calling it “the long-wave extreme of the visible [light] spectrum”. The quiet voices I thought I could control had slowly but surely scratched their way to the front of my mind, weighing down everything I did with an oppressive acridness. I knew exactly where they came from, I knew exactly how they got there, and yet there was no way to prevent them from waking me up in the middle of the night, jaw clenched, throat tight, fully convinced that there was no way I was doing enough work even though I had already worked for 11 hours that day.

Did I know the solution to this problem? Of course I did. Believe me, I had done my research, and taking care of doubt was definitely on the checklist of things I prepared for; “When things get too stressful, don’t be afraid to take a break when you need it.”

And yet considering the solution in the face of this massive hurdle was an entirely different story. I knew I had to take a break. I knew that was the correct path to force the now roaring doubts to rescind. But the voices had seared their own version of wisdom right over that path; “If you take a break now, that’s it. You’ll have given up. Everyone will forget about the work you’re doing and stop caring altogether. What little you have accomplished will rescind into nothingness. You can’t let that happen. You have to keep working.”

That’s the cycle I was stuck in. Knowing I had to take a break, but too chained to the voices to do anything about it. Knowing my doubts were silly and that so many people have told me so, “But what if the doubts are right?”

This is what all those articles I read truly meant when they continually covered the topic of “doubt”. They didn’t just mean “to call into question the truth” or “to lack confidence in” one’s art. They meant a deep, visceral well of tearing emotions that can’t be described with words or sentiments alone. A guttural cracking of the artistic soul that is painful, heart-wrenching, and unavoidable, no matter how precisely you memorized the dictionary definition. There are just some things that are impossible to know outside of personal experience.

To be honest, I’m still in the thick of this conundrum even as I write this article. I did manage to get sick a few weeks ago, which forced me to rest a bit. But outside of that, my feeble attempts to take a sustained break keep getting overrun by the guilt-fueled drive to keep working. I have no doubt that these heavy feelings will plague me for the rest of my artistic career, as it has for so many people who walk this path.

Preemptive knowledge can do little to emotionally prepare you for the experiences you choose to cultivate for yourself. It certainly hasn’t helped me in that regard. But in an entirely different way than I expected, I’ve found they still have their place in my artistic career, especially in my current state of intense doubt. There is some preemptive knowledge that I can trust, even though I haven’t experienced it yet. Something that I can hang onto in the midst of my doubts. Something that I learned in my research from the very beginning;

“Don’t worry.”

“You’ll be ok.”

11:30 PM, Literally Yesterday:

Why did I do that? Why did I do THAT? I could have been nicer. I could have been meaner. I shouldn’t have said that. I REALLY should not have done that…

What are you doing?

What do you mean?

You’re doing this again?

Of course. This is my essence.

Well, you’ve been doing it a lot lately. It’s making me worried.

Why should you be worried? Everyone has those evenings where they lie awake in bed for hours on end reliving their cringiest moments. It’s a meme.

Do other people really do it this much? You’ve been thinking about incident after incident multiple times a day now, not just in the evenings. You wince and flail around at yourself practically every other hour now.

I’m just going through a phase. I’ll come out of it eventually. I’m just trying to avoid doing that again. Or that. Or oh God, that…

Stop it, you’re spiraling again.

Well, I don’t know how to stop! One cringey moment leads to another cringey moment which makes me think of another cringey moment and it seems like they’re escalating and becoming more frequent and I need to figure out how to never do that again or I’ll re-experience that one time I…

Girl...

What?

*sigh* This train of thought is not going to end unless you stop it. And you don’t stop it by passively flowing along with it, like what you’re doing. You stop it by stepping into it intentionally, actively seeking to follow the train to its natural conclusion. So, why do you hate cringey moments so much?

… Because I could have done better.

What do you mean?

I made a mistake in those moments, either intentionally or not intentionally. The calls I made weren’t right.

Right?

Well, not optimum to say the least. Social interaction isn’t about what’s right, I guess, it’s about what’s accepted.

I thought you were Ms. Independent. Why do you care about that?

I’m not sure that’s exactly it, though. It’s less about general acceptance in a vague sense, it’s more about being understood. Now that you mention it, almost all the moments I consider to be most cringey always happened in front of…

People you wanted to impress.

Yeah. I feel like because of what I did in those moments, I’m worried I could have made people think of me differently, especially the people I want to like me the most.

You could have made them feel differently?

Yeah… I guess I don’t know for certain if they did end up thinking of me differently… But that’s just how I feel. It’s why I’m lying awake right now. I feel like if I had just done things differently, the people I like wouldn’t have misunderstood me.

Potentially.

Yeah, potentially.

Girl, you know what that is?

… Yeah I know what that is…

It’s a core fear. Not a rational fear, but a base fear that speaks to what you think of your closest friends and mentors. You care about them a lot, and so you want to sell them on the fact that they want to be friends with you. You feel like if you present them with the best, purest version of who you are, they will have no choice but you like you. Which is partially true; no one likes a fake person. But the flipside of that, which you’re dealing with right now, is that

if I feel like they don’t understand what I think the best version of me is

then they have no reason to like you.

Huh…

Yeah.

I’m afraid the people I like the most have no reason to like me.

Yup.

And so am convinced they don’t like me.

Yup.

Well then…

Yup. Fortunately, this isn’t new territory for you. You know how to deal with this.

… I have to let go of the idea of people liking me. I have to let go of other people’s perceptions of me. It’s nice to think that I can control what other people think about me. But that’s simply impossible. Even when I think I can…

Like right now.

Like for the past month…

You really can’t.

No. I can’t.

So?…

I should just let it go.

You should just let it go.

Yup.

Yup.

…

…

… I feel better.

Yeah, me too. Like I said, this isn’t new territory for you.

Nope. It isn’t. I’ve done this many times before.

Good. You did a good job. Take a deep breath.

*Inhale.*

*Exhale.*

Ahhh…

Yeah. You got this?

Yeah, I got this. This is good. I feel good. Now I can finally let go of that one time. Or that other time. Or the time I, oh noooo, or during that one year in that one room in front of those people who…

You’re hopeless.

I make a part of my living managing creative people. Ideas people, people with skill, people with very good intentions. Being a creative person myself, I love them dearly and resonate with them deeply. But as an artistic director and project manager, it can be a strenuous and frustrating experience trying to get them to push their thoughts and ideas into the world of reality.

With all the discussion and publicity swirling around this past weekend, I’ve finally figured out that this exact conundrum I find in creative people is the one niggling misgiving I’ve had about the Women’s March. It’s a lot of empowered-feeling people coming together to tell everyone what great ideas and good intentions they have. But very few of these ideas come readily paired with the concrete action steps necessary to bring them into the world of reality, the place where they are actually needed.

So, if you would allow me to do the exact same thing I do with my creatives, I have listed a few practical things you can do to bring female empowerment to life now that this year’s Women’s March has concluded:

1. Vote. This is the point that was hammered home the most during the Women’s March. If you want your political system to reflect the ideals you care about, do your research and be informed about who advocates what, both in big politics and small politics. Then when voting day happens, dedicate the one hour it takes to head to the voting booth to give them physical evidence of your political support.
2. Personally validate women’s good ideas. A lack of validation is a huge deterrent for many women trying to use their voices, both in good situations (like bringing up a point in a business meeting) and in bad situations (like getting a creepy feeling from a guy at a bar). The act of either a male or a female simply saying out loud and in person “That is a good thought,” or “Yes, you are right” can make a world of difference in giving women the confidence that they will be heard.
3. Keep your friend’s voices accountable. Some of the most powerful discussions I’ve had with my female friends were them calling me out on speaking wrongly to friends, family, or acquaintances. Shying away from caring, rightful critique of your friend using her voice wrongly does the opposite of building up women’s voices; it enables her to misuse the platform women have been working to build in a negative way. Just as critique makes design better, caring critique from friend to friend can also make women’s voices better.
4. Teach young women how to use their voices well. I would not feel nearly as comfortable expressing my opinions had my mother and father not taught me how to communicate clearly, succinctly, and fully. You don’t have to be a parent to teach girls how to speak to be heard; all you need to do is talk with them so you can listen to them. That way you can give them the free and open space necessary to practice confidently speaking their thoughts into existence.
5. Don’t just fight. Fight with purpose. When “Fighting for Women’s Voices,” it can be easy to accidentally focus on the “Fighting” part of that statement. But we are not seeking to fight for the sake of fighting. We are seeking to create a culture where “Women’s Voices” are given the weight and respect they deserve. In order to do that, we shouldn’t waste our time being battle-hungry against general oppression. We should instead stay ready and vigilant for the actual moments when women’s voices are ignored and not heard, so that we can focus our efforts where they are needed the most.

A manager’s job is to break down a vision into separate, attainable tasks with clear goals in mind. And if these tasks do not sound particularly grandiose to you, you would be right. Change is not based on big people making big changes. It’s not even based on normal people making significant changes. It is based on small people making even smaller changes day in and day out to affect the lives of the one or two people closest to them. And it is through these tiny, deliberate changes that we will see women’s voices collectively amplified beyond what any of us could have ever dreamed of.

“Separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Def: to separate things or people that are of high quality or ability from those that are not:

“The first round of interviews really separates the wheat from the chaff.” — Cambridge Dictionary

I grew up hearing this phrase. It was one of my Mom’s many Mom-isms, parental phrases repeated over and over again that, every time I heard them, made me quietly roll eyes and say “Mahhmm!” droningly to myself. It was especially used in my high school years, when after receiving a lecture or some chunk of motherly advice that my Mom was absolutely sure I needed at the time, she would close her dissertations with a sigh and a “Well, what do I know? I trust you to separate the wheat from the chaff.” Cue eye roll number two.

Leaving behind the days of my youth, I moved forward into the adult world with my eye on my passions. I’ve always been a creatively minded person, with my hands continuously dabbling in music, writing, illustration, and graphic design. And if you are a person even remotely involved with these practices, you know about the unfun part of putting your work out in the open; listening to critique.

It can be gut wrenching to have created something, feel especially proud of it, publish it for the world to see, then have someone find something wrong with it. Even if you’re looking for someone to find something wrong with it in order to get better, it still can sting in a way few other things can.

Unfortunately for us, it seems that our brains are working against us in that regard, whether we want it to or not. In an article published for the BBC, psychologists Robert Nash and Naomi Winstone explain how, in many scientific reports, people would rather ignore reality, exaggerate their own good qualities, and shift blame onto the critiquer than accept any comments that could bruise their good perceptions of themselves.

And to the Christian, this comes as no surprise that this is in our very nature. The Bible talks over and over again about the dangers of putting too much stock in one’s self, the very definition of the word “pride”. Pride has been labelled as one of the Seven Deadly sins, and the Scriptures are pretty clear about how God feels about pride;

“Scoffer” is the name of the arrogant, haughty man who acts with arrogant pride. — Proverbs 21:24

The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, “Who will bring me down to the ground?” — Obadiah 1:3

Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin. — Proverbs 21:4

If you’re saying to yourself right now, “Whoa whoa whoa, Josie… I’m a Christian, I know pride should be avoided, especially in my walk with God. But don’t you think it’s a little much to be saying that feeling good about my own work is prideful? I should like my own stuff, right?” And by all means, like your own stuff! That’s a place many artists would love to be. But you shouldn’t be at that place at the expense of feeling wrathful toward your critiquers;

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. — Matthew 5:22

And oftentimes, we come to this place unwittingly, usually as a result of mistaken identity. In my journeys through the artistic realms, I have found that most artists would say that they struggle far more with insecurity than with pride. They have poured their hearts and souls into every piece of work they have made, and all they want is for people to like their work, and in turn, themselves. It is this mentality that causes artistic types to interpret critiques of their work as personal attacks on their self-worth, a self-worth that has been wrongfully placed in the work of their hands as opposed to their status as beloved of the Creator. Another form of pride to be sure, to try to define your personhood apart from the God who loves you.

So now we’re back to square one. No matter what we do, we are still prideful humans who think too highly of ourselves and the works of our hands. Even for the most tempered, even-keeled artist, it is difficult to prevent ourselves from feeling defensive when we seek out negative comments, even if we want to use them to make our work better. So what should we do?

“Separate the wheat from the chaff”.

Motherly wisdom always proves to be right in the end.

There are two necessary steps one must take in order to properly separate the wheat from the chaff;

1. Take everything in.
2. See what stays.

To understand this further, come with me to a wheat farm. It doesn’t matter which farm it is, who is running the farm or how they choose to harvest, because no matter where you go, the process is very similar. First, the farmer brings in the harvest. It does not matter how abundant or scant the yield is that year. They cut everything from the field and bring everything in. And they want to, in order to pull in as much yield as possible so they can make as much profit as possible.

Second, the farmer places everything he has gathered into some sort of device. These devices can look very different, but their intent in the same. They stir up all the stalks and heads of grain that have come in, tossing them around in the air. Since the wheat grains are heavier, they bounce back to the bottom of the device. And because the husks, shells, and straw surrounding it don’t weigh much more than a feather, they fly away with the wind or the blasting air of an industrial machine.

As artists, we must to the same thing in order to obtain the life-giving knowledge found in critiques. We first must take in everything. And I mean everything. Every helpful comment from a knowledgeable teacher and every “f*ck you” from a random internet troll must be taken into account in order to get the most out of every statement. We need to remember that help can come from any part of the harvest, and we should not ignore grain left out in the field because it seems like there’s a scant yield from far away. Since we are hard-wired to reject statements that makes us feel bad about ourselves, our initial negative reactions and snap judgements cannot and should not be trusted. Any inclination to listen to those off-the-cuff rejections is our pride and misguided self-preservation getting in the way.

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. — Philippians 2:3

Before destruction a man’s heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.
– Proverbs 18:12

The second thing we must do is to see what stays. This can be a complicated task, since everybody does this process a little differently. You will need to do some tweaking to find the way that works for you.

Do your best to return to a sober mind. If a negative comment is causing you emotional discomfort, ask yourself clarifying questions; “What about that specifically makes me feel bad?” “Why does it bother me?” “What part of me does it bother?” “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” If something is really bothering you, talk to a friend or loved one about it in order to sort it out. It is by working through the emotional discomfort of highly negative statements that you will be able to let the chaff of negative comments float away. Once you get good at this, taking in and letting go of unhelpful, disdainful comments will become easier and easier.

Once your mind has been quieted, you will notice something interesting has happened. Because you put aside your pride and self-defensiveness and accepted all comments as potential harvest, you have blown away the chaff and are now able to see which critiques can be used as actual nuggets of nourishment for your artistic growth. But even this can become an interesting task if you get some comments that contradict each other. For example, I recently performed Genesis 1 for a class at college. One written critique I got from a classmate was that I should have gestured more during my performance. But another critique I got was that I gestured too much and should have let the story unfold. So now what do I do? How do I find the comments that are not just good, but best for me?

Here’s where we do our quality check with more clarifying questions, this time regarding the critiques themselves; “Do I know who said this?” “How experienced in my field is this person?” “How could this statement apply to my artistic growth?” “How could a different statement apply?” Toss all of the comments around in your mind. Test the critiques against your own artistic journey. By quietly mulling over these grains of wheat you have discovered, you will find that the most nourishing brain food will be the stuff that you use to further refine your craft over and over again.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. — Romans 12:3

But each one must examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another. — Galatians 6:4

Well, as is usually the case when children come into their own, it is with quiet awe that I can say that my mother’s statement on accepting critique proved to be true. And I hope that in reading this article, you were also able to take it all in, separate the wheat from the chaff, and let whatever grains of truth you find here nourish your soul. If you can let go of the useless chaff, you will find that the heaviness of the critiques you need will stick to the bottom and impact your artistic quality for the better.

Yesterday, I opened up my Facebook account to find, as most people in America did, a slew of statuses toting the hashtag #metoo. This status was displayed minimally and plainly by itself, paired with some personal experience regarding the hashtag, or copied and pasted with this pre-made message;

If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too.” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.

This movement quickly spread to other social media platforms, as many women and men came forward to give their “Yop!” of problematic, sexually victimizing experiences. And a large chunk of women, myself included, tentatively but affirmatively submitted their experiences with catcalling under the umbrella of harassment. While being catcalled is absolutely not as damaging and humiliating as sexual assault and abuse, it’s still the deliberate reduction of a person to a thing so that the perpetrator may enjoy the victim however they please. As one Twitter user put it best;

Caught myself thinking, “it wasn’t that bad so my experiences don’t count”, but harassment is harassment & there’s no excuse. #metoo
 — @_breepi

While I agreed and sympathized with everyone participating in the campaign, I didn’t think much of it. I was even a bit pessimistic about it. I remember a similar campaign happening within my short adult memory, the #YesAllWomen hashtag, which attempted to convey the same message as #metoo; all women experience this sort of harassment at some point, and we want the perpetrators to finally listen.

And yet Brock Turner was released after just 6 months. And yet Harvey Weinstein was still able to have his rocking good time for more than 20 years without reproach. And yet every time I go outside I have to constantly be on guard in case yet another frat bro in a souped up truck pulls in front of me in an alleyway, looks me up and down from his window perch and declares “Yes, Daddy likes!”, as I’m forced to ignore him, walk in front of said truck to continue loading furniture into my car, and hear him mutter “Bitch” as he screeches away.

I wouldn’t be nearly as pessimistic about the matter if I was actually able to have civil conversation with the people who did these things. I am a firm believer in the power of open, frank, respectful conversations, and am thoroughly convinced that it is the best, if not the only way to create change in society.

But I’m not friends with any people like that. All of my guy friends are actually very respectful people and have never catcalled a person in their lives, let alone raised their hand against someone in a sexual way. And if the only way for me to talk to perpetrators of harassment is through social media, you can rest assured that said perpetrators will only double down on their behavior as they start an oh-so-productive-and-respectful Facebook fight in my comment section. My ability to talk to perpetrators of harassment has been shot on all fronts, leaving me feeling kind of “eh, whatever” about the whole thing. Harassers will be harassers, and there’s not much I can do about it.

I turned in last night feeling that “meh”ness, my husband following closely behind. I had just finished listening to my friends talk about the #metoo campaign, and felt like I didn’t have much to say about it. My husband had listened to them, too. We were both pretty quiet up until we got into bed.

“I’m just not sure what I think,” he eked out from next to me.

“Not sure about what?”

He hesitated. “… I’m just not sure if we should lump getting called out on the street with getting groped or raped. I mean, I get shouted at on the street too, and that doesn’t feel good for sure, but I can’t let it ruin my day. And as a big guy myself, it doesn’t feel nice to watch women on the street mentally prepare themselves to walk past me when I’m just a regular guy, do you know what I mean? It doesn’t seem fair to the guys who don’t treat women that way to get lumped in with those guys who do…”

“I mean, it happens literally all the time to me… we’re just trying to be prepared for whatever douchebag comes along…”

“But they’re just douchebags. I guess I don’t think run-of-the-mill douchebags should be called ‘sexual harassers’. I run into douchebags all the time, and I just deal with it…”

I was not entirely sure how to process what he was saying. My husband is a very kind man who needs to talk things out in order to come to conclusions. I knew he wouldn’t be talking about this unless he was truly, genuinely confused and needed to process through his thoughts with someone. So I talked with him a little more, still slightly dumbfounded by his choice of distinctions, but willing to help him sort through his thoughts. We went to bed shortly after. As I was lying awake in bed I continued meditating on how weird it was how a man I trusted so deeply and respected so much could encounter genuine confusion on this topic.

I didn’t think about that conversation at all when I woke up. It was the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had with the person I am closest with, but that was a one-time only thing with just one person. At least I thought that, until I received frustrated messages from a friend that she had the exact same conversation with her significant other; he did not think catcalling was a legitimate form of harassment, because the people doing it are “just douchebags”.

This revelation left me reeling. Another man I respected, who has never catcalled or harassed a person in his life, genuinely said that being catcalled “didn’t matter”, and equated it to being called names on the street. He gets called names on the street and in person all the time, but he can’t let that ruin his day.

It hit me over the head; this is the problem. This is why these things are allowed to continue for so long. The people that have power, respect, and access to the communities of perpetrators are able to keep living their lives by “brushing it off”. At least they are not like them. They know they’re terrible, but at least they respect people with less power than them. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing, because at least they’re doing a good job.

Let me put it to you this way, because I love a good analogy. When you are on a gun range, there are very important rules that you have to follow for gun safety. Make sure your gun is always pointed at the ground or at the range. Don’t wing it around or point it at people for fun, because even if it’s not loaded it’s very scary to be at the end of any barrel.

And if you don’t follow the rules of the gun range, rest assured that you will be chewed out on proper gun safety by the other gun owners. Gun safety is an almost personal matter to any good gun owner; you could even get kicked out of the range for not abiding by good gun safety.

Now imagine for a second that half the people in the world owned a gun, and liked to flaunt it in the face of non-gun owning people. Imagine having the barrel of a gun pointed at you, just because it’s fun for the other person to do that to people. Now, if you own a gun, that’s no big deal, because you can point your own gun right back at them. But if you don’t, you have to do what you can to get away. Because if it’s loaded, it could have dire consequences.

The main difference between the gun world and the real world is the willingness to vehemently call out anyone who uses their gun poorly. For gun owners, good protocol even with unloaded weapons can dictate how you handle life-or-death situations. In the real world, men waving around their power in the face of powerless people for fun is just what “douchebags” do. And you know what you do with douchebags! Brush them off so you can go right on living your non-douchbag life.

Men. You respectful men in my life, the men who are closest to me, the men who I care about deeply and who I know care about me in return… it is not enough to be a “non-douchebag”. It is not enough to ignore misuse of power because you yourself use your power well. If your solution to encountering “douchebags” is to brush them off with your own power without considering how many people have no power of their own, #youtoo are part of the problem.

#youtoo are part of the society that allows sexism to persist in the tiniest crevasses of human existence.

#youtoo are part of the enablers that ignore harassment at work, because “what can you do about it”?

#youtoo are part of the good lawyers, the good producers, the good employees, managers, people, who are able to let all of that slide, because honestly, you can afford to.

The thing is, I can’t. Neither can most women. We don’t know what’s on the other end of the barrel. We don’t know if we will be believed when we tell people that someone took us away and touched us without consent. That’s what makes victims victims. Victims inherently have less power than the people who seek to use them. And the most frustrating thing is to see the people close to us who do actually have power not even consider what it’s like to not have it.

But that power doesn’t have to go unweilded. You men who are closest to me, who I care about deeply and who I know care about me, don’t go on skating by with the power you do have, using it to passively brush away those who go against you. When you see that misuse, you have an opportunity to chew them out as any good gun owner would. Use the access you have to those conversations to affect those small changes to affect the reality of the lesser people they come in contact with. Actively use the respect that you have to save the personhood of the people who don’t.

Then maybe, if #youtoo start picking up the work that the many, many victims are trying to make happen, #youtoo can be part of the solution.

When news of the Nashville Statement hit the stands at the end of August 2017, I was not entirely sure how to feel about it. I knew how a lot of my friends felt about it, though; people on both sides made sure to be very vocal about their opinions one way or the other, snap judgments being made left and right about the other side’s credibility to the title of “Christian”.

Unable to know quite what my opinion was, I took the sentiments of my peers as they came up, and added them to my slow cooker of thoughts. The beeper was going to go off when it was going to go off. And as things tend to happen, the beeper went off at about 5 o’clock this morning during an unusual period of sleepless reverie.

With the core piece of evidence on both sides being the Nashville Statement itself, I decided to get out of bed and dive into the document. Presented on a slickly designed website prominently featuring the American bathroom symbols for Men and Women, the Nashville Statement is a concisely written, legally-formulated document with a preamble and 14 articles stating its purpose; to deny that homosexuality is appropriate behavior in the context of Christianity.

The thing that caught my eye the most were not the articles, but the preamble, seen on the second page of the website. In the preamble, many theological buzzphrases are used, sentiments I hear all the time as a current attendee of a conservative Christian college; “Western culture is Post-Christian”; the Church must hold fast against “the spirit of our age”; “our true identity, as male and female individuals, is given by God”; and that we must “[witness] publicly to the good purposes of God for human sexuality”.

It was in exploring the preamble that some words from the Bible floated to the front of my mind;

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

“You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” — Matthew 7:3–5

Let us presume, for the sake of the rest of this article, that the Nashville Statement is fully correct in its statement about the necessity of manhood and womanhood, and the wrongfulness of homosexuality, transgenderism, polygamy, and polyamory. Even if you, the reader, do not believe this yourself, it is necessary to enter into the logic of the Nashville Statement in order to see my problem with it.

So the Nashville Statement has made rightful claims about today’s modern society. They are working hard to stand strong upon the Bible, and using this firmly founded soapbox in order to declare the truth to those they know desperately need it. And as a Christian, it is good to stand strongly upon the teachings of God! It is good to affirm that God has specific thoughts about human sexuality, and it is good to show truth to those that need to hear it. It is true that there are specific verses penned in the Bible that talk about God’s creation of Male and Female, what He expects from their sexual interactions, and the wrongfulness and further consequences of going against those truths.

But if we’re going to stand strong upon the Bible in order to make these claims, we have to take a look at what the Bible says. The Bible explicitly mentions homosexual activity about 5 times, and some Bible scholars would say that there are over 30 verses that can be indirectly applied to the lifestyle. All of them convey negative sentiments, and these sentiments make up for about 0.096% of all Bible verses. The numbers are not meant to take away from the seriousness of these statements, and all Christians should be diligent in considering how all Biblical statements can and should affect their lives.

If the way the Nashville Statement interprets these verses are correct, then it is right to assume that this is an affront to God’s plan for one man and one woman to be brought together in a committed marriage. God intended the sexual experience to be kept to this context, and scriptures make that clear. The Bible talks about the goodness and importance of marital union over and over again in its pages, in Genesis, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, and all over the New Testament. There’s even an entire book of the Bible dedicated to the joy of sexual union between one man and one woman. Without much of a close look, I can safely say that at least 172 verses in the Bible talk explicitly about marriage, which make up 0.553% of the Bible. That does not count the verses that can be construed to implicitly talk about marriage, of which I was too lazy to include at this time.

On top of this, the Bible continually mentions all of the negative things that happen when this intended union is broken. To continue the theme of percentages, the number of times the Bible refers explicitly to the negative consequences of breaking God’s intended purpose for sexual union totals at least 236 verses, from what I could find in my lazy, barely-scratching-the-surface searching. And considering that’s more verses than any one of the Twelve Books of the Minor Prophets contain, that’s saying something. That’s about 0.759% of the Bible dedicated to talking about the importance of not going against God’s design for marriage. If you put all of that together, that makes the amount of time the Bible spends talking about marriage period a whopping 408 verses, or 1.312% of the Bible. That’s bigger than the entire book of Hebrews, whose 303 verses make up only 0.974% of the Bible.

The funny thing about all the verses I found describing all of the affronts to God’s plan for sexuality is that one particular topic is breached far more than the others. Yes, some verses talk about lust and prostitutes and the whole gambit of sexual sin, but an extremely large chunk of these verses have to do with the destructiveness of affairs. In the story of Abram and Sarai (what Abraham and Sarah were called before God renamed them), God caused a famine to waste all of Egypt because Abram let Sarai sleep with the Pharaoh. In the story of David and Bathsheba, God kills the child produced by the affair that the King of Israel had with the wife of Uriah because of how sinful the affair was. Throughout the prophetic books of the Old Testament, most notably in Ezekiel and Hosea, God consistently uses the analogy of an affair-hungry wife to describe the pain of Israel’s unfaithfulness to Him. And we haven’t even discussed the New Testament yet.

It would seem that this problem of extramarital affairs is not only limited to ancient times. There are statistics that run the whole gambit, but even the most conservative estimates of married people who cheat on their spouses hover at around 22–44%. And no, the numbers do not go down in the context of Christian relationships. Fallen Pastor Ministries, a Christian organization dedicated to helping Pastors recover from affairs, estimates that around 33% of conservative Pastors have admitted that they “crossed the line with a woman not their spouse” at some point in their careers. And that’s just the people who are willing to admit.

All this in the face of not just Biblical denouncement, but public denouncement. According to a Huffington Post survey that asked people what actions they considered to be morally wrong, cheating on a partner was far and away the thing that people agreed on, with 91% of the adults surveyed placing that action on their lists of affronts.

Compare those numbers to these numbers; 3.5% of adults in the United States identify as gay. 0.3% of them identify as transgender. And 8.2% of adults report that they have engaged in some form of homosexual activity at some point in their lives. Which, in light of the Nashville Statement, is still quite a problem. But not nearly as big of a problem as the one in their own Christian backyard.

This is the problem I have with the Nashville Statement. It goes on and on about how the non-Christian world and Christians who affirm homosexuality are an affront to God’s plan for sexuality with their actions. And entering into the logic of the Nashville Statement, that is definitely true. Just as true as the fact that cheating on your spouse is just as strong, if not even stronger, of an affront.

The very first article of the Nashville Statement says the following;

WE AFFIRM that God has designed marriage to be a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife, and is meant to signify the covenant love between Christ and his bride the church.

That’s a reasonable thing to say in light of the Biblical text. And that’s a reasonable thing to want to defend in light of the Biblical text. But why did there have to be a public petition, a flashy statement, a pseudo-legal, contractual obligation to defend Christian marriage from one of its tiniest sort-of threats? Why isn’t there another petition on another hip, tricked out website affirming that Christians will stand by their own Pastors and married friends, declaring their dedication to help fight off any temptation and threat that seeks to tear apart their relationship?

My point is this: Christians cannot pretend to defend the concept of Biblical marriage and sexuality when married Pastors and laymen alike are actively struggling right in their own circles. There are so many more practical, hands-on ways that Christians can uphold the doctrine of marriage and God-ordained sexual interaction that would be far more helpful than arbitrarily signing a brash online document.

If you are friends with a married person, why don’t you ask them how their relationship with their spouse is going? Ask them what they struggle with. If you are a married person, remember to be open about how your relationship is going with people who care. Don’t let temptation fester behind closed doors. If you go to church regularly, get to know your Pastor and Elders better, and see them not just as leaders, but as fellow Siblings in Christ. If you truly believe in upholding Biblical marriage and sexuality, be just as vocal about helping aid the marriages in your own friend group before you denounce the sexuality of others.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
— Matthew 7:1–2

If the Nashville Statement is going to create a Biblical measure by which one can judge the sinfulness of others, they need to be even quicker to use that measure on themselves.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” — Matthew 7:3–5

Christian. Do not miss what is already in front of you to fix. By putting in so much effort to point fingers at the sexual immorality of others, you are actively labeling the failing marriages in your community as “not your problem”.

Stop pointing to action outside of yourself. Work to uphold those already living in the reality of Biblical sexual expression. Let your own actions be the witness to “the good purposes of God for human sexuality”. Help the Church get the plank out of its own eye. And then maybe The Body can help get that speck out of the eye of “the spirit of the age”.

All week I had been thinking through a fog.

There was a lot I needed to do. The multitude of tasks that needed to get checked off kept drifting infinitely to the surface of my mind, like bubbles through the muck of a swampland. And just like those bubbles, as soon as they hit the surface, they quietly burst, disintegrating into the atmosphere as I struggled to catch hold of the stinky air they left behind.

For whatever reason, I had no energy left to harness. Try as I might, whenever I resolved to accomplish something, anything in order to move along the process of productivity, I was left blankly staring at a wall, zoning out on a table, leaving Facebook open on my computer only to have my eyes sink into the the crevasses of my keyboard.

And of course, this lack of productivity did not help matters. It simply began the cycle of mental task-processing anew. It left me spinning around on a sleepily turning wheel of task acknowledgement, task neglect, and task shame, leaving me in an even more foggy state than before with each of its successive revolutions.

I am not very good at handling stress. I have been a chronic slacker for most of my life, and it has only been recently that I have finally grasped control over the habit of shoving off responsibility. In the past year, I have been getting all of my work assignments done, all of my home assignments done, and accomplished all of them in a well-scheduled and timely fashion. It definitely has been a major victory for me, and something I continue to be very proud of.

But because I have spent most of my life being that chronic slacker, I had never experienced stress other than the rolling boil of “oh my gosh my homework is due tomorrow and I need to get it done NOW”. I had never experienced the natural, slow-burning stress that comes from working consistently and professionally. And so now that it is finally coming up in my life, I have a lot of trouble identifying it for what it is. It is such a new emotion for me, that I am unsure how to interpret it or handle it. Plus there’s the added layer of trying to untangle true stress from the laziness of my past slacker lifestyle. And because it has only been recently that I have gotten my act together, I usually air on the side of “laziness” when it comes to a block in productivity, forcing myself to plow through even when I don’t want to.

Today, however, it came to a head. On the way home from work, I started crying for no reason. A weird phenomenon to say the least, especially for someone usually quite in touch with their emotions. Then, upon arriving at my Church’s Seder Dinner, I felt my usually extraverted self recoil. It was loud and full of people, people who wanted to talk to me and expect me to be quippy and amicable. I wanted to sink into my coat in a corner and not be disturbed. I felt like crying again and didn’t know why. Very fortunately, I am married to an intuitive man who recognized how I was feeling and sent me home to be by myself.

Even with these seemingly obvious signs of overwork, I still felt guilty for my lack of productivity and lack of desire for community. I walked home in the same daze that had been coating my week since Sunday, still thinking about all that needed to get done that I hadn’t gotten done in the last week that ended up being left on the table for me to tackle as soon as I get around to tackling it.

I got home, and once again began zoning in on the floor. Now that I had the alone time I was craving in the face of the Seder Dinner, I still was not entirely sure how not to stew in the cycle of self-loathing I had set up for myself. I still felt a lot of pressure to be productive and get all of my tasks done, especially since I had been relatively unproductive in my work life for quite some time.

It was then I remembered; my friend had given me a cigarette quite some time ago, and that cigarette had been recently re-discovered in the top drawer of my desk while my husband and I were deep-cleaning. I am not a smoker by any means. I have never bought a pack of cigarettes, and the first time I ever smoked was only last summer. But my one friend always invited me to share a smoke with her whenever we hung out, and had kindly left one of her cigarettes for me when she dropped by a few months ago. I thought “eh, why not?” and stepped outside with a lighter and the cigarette in tow, ready for some time to be by myself. I lit up and parked myself just outside my apartment door, committing myself to stand there until the cigarette burned away.

There was nothing special about this private smoke break. The local sparrows were singing in the distance. The sun was setting as it always does beyond the brick three-flats that lined the alleyway. Tendrils of burnt tobacco swirled through the air as I breathed out the ashy particulates and inhaled the cool city air. A Ukrainian man who lived down the street walked by and said “Hello”. I said hello back. In all respects, it was the typical Thursday night that you would expect from living inside Chicago city limits.

Yet it was exactly that quiet observancy that I found to be so refreshing and necessary for my well-being. Focusing on nothing more than the warm, thinly-rolled cigarette, I was allowed a tranquil moment to just breathe. To observe the world around me. To let go of my self-designated purpose, and to inhale the Spirit who keeps me alive and grounded to His World and His Purpose, untied to the mundane tasks that drive my day-to-day living.

I am not recommending that you take up smoking. I am not recommending that you bum cigarettes off of friends so that you can find an excuse to draw “close to God”, whatever that means. What I am saying is that quiet, purposeless moments are so necessary to the health and well-being of any overworked person. And in that regard, habitual smokers have a leg up on all of us. Their smoke breaks allow themselves those quiet, private moments to care for themselves in the way that they know best.

Remember those moments of care. Remember to allow yourself quiet spaces of purposelessness. Your work is not so important that you should forget how to let go. Let the health of your soul be prioritized over the rigorous tasks of your day-to-day life. Those tasks will continue to be laid out before you until the day you pass on into heaven.

The tasks of this life will come and go. It is your unity with the Lord that will continue on into Eternity. And your remembrance of that spiritual reality through whatever means is best for you will allow yourself the grace and permeation of the Spirit that your soul so desperately needs.

I gave up dairy for lent. This should come as a surprise to no one. Good food is one of the great blessings of my life, and a lot my favorite foods just happen to prominently feature cream, milk, and cheese. Oh my word, cheese.

One of my preferred forms of dairy consumption occurs in the purchasing and imbibement of lattes, usually from my college coffee shop. I love how the dark zing of espresso mixes exquisitely with the light and frothy steamed milk, and the addition of flavors lends an air of experimentation that allows me to make each drink different from the last. I knew eschewing dairy meant I would also be without my favorite beverage for all of Lent, and I was, and am, content and even excited to forgo it for all 40 days.

Lent started yesterday. I did the whole Ash Wednesday thing, walked around with soot and oil on my head, contemplated the suffering of Christ and the mini-fast I was taking to remember it by. Buying a latte didn’t even come to mind. Then, while I was working, a friend of mine offered to buy a drink for me from the college coffee shop. And I said:

“Sure! Get me a black coffee.”

A black coffee?

Why do you want a black coffee?

You hate black coffee!

My own desires took me aback. Black coffee lands pretty solidly on the opposite end of my personal beverage rankings. I can appreciate black coffee for its flavor and complexity, and I understand why many people would find it delicious. But to me, it’s bitter and unpleasantly acidic. And not sweet at all. It is hard for me to drink an entire cup of it without almost gagging. Black coffee is pretty close to being one of my least favorite drinks.

You have already given up your favorite drink. Why do you want to drink black coffee?

My friend happily brought me my coffee. “Here you go!”

“Thank you!” I accepted the coffee, smiling at her kindness.

I began to drink it. This particular blend was especially acidic, or “effervescent” as the barista eloquently described it. It was not pleasant. I could feel my face wince slightly as I drank. A quarter of the cup gone.

Looking down at my mug, I considered; maybe I just had a bad attitude about it. Maybe I was not giving black coffee much of a chance and choosing to only see the flavors I don’t like instead of trying to find flavors I could enjoy. I took a few more sips. My lips pressed together. Nope. Still terrible. A half of the cup gone.

Licking my lips, I put down my cup and began working again. A few minutes into my work, a new prodding whispered in my mind: Finish your drink.

Wait, finish it now? You are such a slow drinker. It’s hard for you to finish drinks you actually like! Why would you make yourself down this black coffee??

Ignoring my reason, I took my fingers off the keyboard and picked up the coffee again. Taking three enormous gulps, I promptly coughed. My mouth began to water, and not in a good way. Persevere. Why? I can see the bottom of the mug. A quarter of the cup left.

I chugged the rest. My throat tightened as I drank it, and my eyes began to water. The corners of my mouth turned uncontrollably downward.

I put down the mug. There was no coffee left.

Well, there it is. I have no idea why you felt the need to do that, but there it is.

Truth be told, a day later, I still don’t know why I did that. And, funnily enough, I did the same thing this morning too; I made myself a cup of black coffee, and drank the entire thing in under an hour, which is a very short amount of time for me to finish a beverage. And I don’t know why I did that, either. But I do feel strangely compelled from some area of my being that it is a good thing for me to do. That drinking my least favorite drink in place of my most favorite drink is an appropriate way for me to behave this Lenten season.

Dairy is still the item I’ve officially given up for Lent. It was what I said I was going to give up, and I still believe it is a thoughtful and pointed item for me to leave behind in an act of fasting. But I have a feeling that, although I’m not holding myself to it, I might end up drinking black coffee every morning until Easter Sunday. Not because I want to, but because I feel called to.

Or maybe I’m just addicted to caffeine. I dunno.

So here they are; a short compilation of Biblical passages that I consider to be relevant to this topic. The passages are arranged according to idea, strung together to form an arc of complete thought. I will not be giving any commentary on the passages, and neither should you. Soak in the text and let it speak for itself.

1 Corinthians 8 — Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God.

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.

1 Corinthians 9:21–23 — Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone,to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Romans 14–15:3 — Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,

‘every knee will bow before me;

every tongue will acknowledge God.’”

So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. Therefore do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.

So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”

1 Timothy 2:1–4 — I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people — for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Mark 12:13–17 — Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him.

1 Samuel 8:4–9 — So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”

But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.”

The Word of the Lord.

“Huh?” I blurted, recovering from the mild state of shock I was launched into.

You laughed and reemphasized your opinion with bubbly surety, assuming my agreement with you. The thing was, I didn’t agree. In fact, I thought the exact opposite, and usually I would have the words to say why. But your surety made me panic. I tried to recover.

“No,” I said, just as surely as your affirmation, “No, that’s not true.”

“But it is!” You said back. Your surety had slipped somewhat, as you were coming to see I didn’t agree with you, but you still held out. “I know it’s true!”

I waved my hand, the rosary clinking on my wrist. “It was probably just clickbait,” I dismissed, swatting back your “yes” with the deftness of a ping-pong master. I didn’t want to even consider what you were saying. If I showed I was considering it, that would mean I was wrong. And I didn’t want to seem wrong on something I cared so deeply about. So I relied on my reflexes to get whatever you were saying away from me.

You were even more taken aback. Clearly I didn’t agree, but you weren’t sure why. Nevertheless, with your training on opinions being just as good as mine, you bounced back the ball with the same deftness. “It is not! I heard it! It’s not ridiculous, that’s just what the information says! Go see for yourself!”

I was done. I was growing angry. If nothing else, I did not want to be angry at you, regardless of what you said. But at this point, I really wanted your opinions away from me.

“Maybe it’s true,” I convened, “But we’ll see.” I said with finality, wanting to end the short exchange as soon as possible. You laughed as I grudgingly allowed your opinion through, and swung away, your schedule calling you to your next engagement. I remained seated in the crowd. In the wake of this 15-second conversation, as I quietly simmered with frustration, regret instantly sank in and overtook me.

Oh dear. I did the exact thing that I have said so often was the thing I absolutely hated.

I hate when people approach conversations with surety in their opinions. I hate when people put a sense of their own personhood in their way of thinking, making them needlessly offended when people question their beliefs. I hate when people do not take the time or the care to understand opinions besides their own, allowing them to see others as people and not just as disagreers. And yet when unexpectedly slapped in the face with the very situation I frequently say should be entered into with skepticism and control, I immediately turned on my acquaintance with the panic and intensity of a wild animal pushed to fight.

My friend. If you are reading this, and you remember what happened this morning, I’m very sorry. I’m sorry I treated you this way. I’m sorry I let the “correctness” of my opinion dictate how I perceived your thoughts, which you had cultivated with the same care that I had cultivated mine. I am sorry that I treated our conversation as a game of ping pong, two opponents throttling a ball across a table past each other, when I should have played it like a game of catch; two friends in a field throwing a baseball directly toward each other, firmly catching it and holding it before sending it off again. I have been humbled and reduced to the person I hate, which turned out in the end to be myself.

I can’t remake the snippet of a conversation we had. But know that I’ve taken into consideration the ball you’ve thrown. I didn’t catch it in the moment, and even chose to run away from it as it fell to the ground. But in the end I have picked it up from the dirt, brushed it off, and placed it in my catcher’s glove to mull on as a difficult but important opinion of a fellow brother in Christ.