Wow. Oh. Wow.

I was driving around town in my daddy’s Prius flipping through channels (NPR was on commercial) when a gem of a song came on the radio. It was Usher’s OMG and o.m.G that man knows how to turn a phrase!

After hearing that song, “Got me like, oooh myyy gosh I’m soooo in love!”

But, as Will.I.Am (featured) interjected before the first chorus, “I’m gonna let the beat drop.”

I realize, Mr. Usher, that I’m no “shawty,” and I was never “on the dance floor . . . dancing sexy, pop, pop, popping, dropping” and that I didn’t “hit [you] on the first sight . . . like dynamite,” but even my physical assets deserve more lyrical adulations than

“got a booty like pow, pow, pow—

Got some boobies like wow,  oh wow.”

Because “oh, oh, oh my, oh, oh, oh my, my, my, my, my, my, ooh my gosh oh, oh” I know four year olds who have a more advanced lexicon.

Ladies: join me in demanding more advanced diction regarding approbation directed towards our many and varied attributes. Our bodies deserve both ice cream and thoughtful commendations.

“Baby. I can break it down.”

The Marriage Plot

I recently read The Marriage Plot by Geoffrey Eugenides. As with many modern books that aren’t for young adults, it was difficult for me—and that’s not because I have trouble understanding words like uxorious and subitize (neither of which were in this book).

These kinds of books are difficult for me because the characters are so realistic and (thus) frustrating. One of the main characters is Madeleine, a rather oblivious rich hottie with a passion for Jane Austen and planning her life around her manic-depressive-abusive boyfriend. Looking for love and intimacy through sex and romantic destiny, she is quite lost but neither she nor Eugenides solve what is a glaringly obvious problem. Defining her life through intimacy with other people (boyfriends primarily, using sex primarily), gives her no foundation from which to build a solid life.

I have trouble identifying with books like this because they show the clear source of a problem many people face today (loneliness, aimlessness)—and then sort of shrug and wander away. “Dudes,” the book (and current armchair philosophy) says, “life’s a bitch, and people let you down, but . . .you know . . . there’s no real answers, so yeah. Make the best of it. Love yourself, be “true,” and good luck.”

We’re smarter than that.

It’s uncool right now to believe there are black and white rules, Biblical right and wrong—designed not to curb pleasure but to enhance it. But why? Why are we so hell-bent on freedom that makes us act like jerks and feel lonely?

One of the other characters rants a little about Job. We all know the story: God allows Satan to do all sorts of horrible things to Job, because he is God’s poster-boy. All of the horrible things—the killing of his children and destruction of his property and so on—occur before the first two chapters of Job are complete. The next 36 chapters are a conversation between Job’s friends and Job, as he cries out in anguish to God.

So this character says, “In the Old Testament, Job is always asking God questions. ‘Why do you do so terrible things to me? I am your faithful servant.’ He goes on asking and asking. But does God answer? No. God doesn’t say nothing.”

False. God does answer after 36 long, annoying chapters. What’s more, the book of Job could have gone on and on past those 36 chapters of conversation and questioning (on the subject of 2 chapters of action) into the twenty-first century when people are still asking, “Why God? Why would you do this to me? Why is there suffering?”

God answers Job; he answers us—and he is very, very clear.

He speaks from chapter 38 to chapter 41 and I recommend the full version, but here are the verses relevant to this discussion (in rather sarcastic glory):

Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said:

“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? . . .

Have you ever given orders to the morning,

Or shown the dawn its place—

That it might take the earth by the edges

And shake the wicked out of it? . . .

Would you discredit my justice?

Would you condemn me to justify yourself?     . . .

Unleash the fury of your wrath!

Look at every proud man and bring him low

Look at every proud man and humble him,

Crush the wicked where they stand.

Bury them all in the dust together;

Shroud their faces in the grave.

Then I myself will admit to you

That your own right hand can save you.”

God answers Job and he answers us. When who we are defines our lives, we don’t like to hear how unimportant we are. When the people we surround ourselves with define our lives, we don’t like to hear how unimportant they are, too.

Read the full version—it’s even more badass.

Can You Raise Your Voice to the Clouds?

When my parents came to visit my in Busan, there was a moment on the subway with them when I felt my identity as a Schnabel more forcefully than perhaps ever before. As the subway doors closed, my dad nodded his head back and forth, precisely to the beat of the three perky warning tones the subway always plays when the doors close. Unconsciously, he was making exactly the same motions I had been making ever since my first Busan subway ride—even the scant music in the beats compelling me to nod along automatically.

We are indeed a musical family, but, contrary to what people might think considering our family’s string quartet, we actually talk about other things than music quite a lot. A favorite topic is athletics. After finishing morning workouts, we give each other play-by-plays while dad turns on the Tour de France and mom and I ice ankles and rehydrate. Right now it’s Joe Paterno this and seriously, our U.S. Men’s soccer team didn’t make the Olympics? that and, as we watch cyclists churn up a hill to the strains of commentators remarking on Lance Armstrong’s constant doping charges, mom asking, “What do you think is the. most. boring. sport to watch on TV.? My parents will even graciously (and occasionally and with comprehension) listen to me rhapsodize about the Spanish national team (seriously: did we all watch that performance in the Euro final? Dominance).

We’re also very focused on weather, for some reason. I know that sounds banal, and it sort of is—as if we’re a family with nothing to talk about. I’d rather blame it on dad’s farming background and our position in the weather-wise mercurial Midwest.

That was my attempt at making this blog post interesting, because I really just wanted to talk about weather, and no one besides my family (and Indiana farmers—shout out!) seem to find it as innately fascinating as we do. So: for all of you on different continents or, Hilary, in the supposed desert of AZ which actually has gotten more rain than us in the past month, we in the Midwest have been having a bit of a dry spell. The grass is brown as dirt this summer and the crops are having a bit of trouble.

But today in the mid-afternoon, the clouds began to muster in the southwest, all dark and grumbly. We’ve been waiting far too long and there wasn’t nearly enough, but at last: rain. When it came, I indulged in a brief deluge dance, gymnastic exhibition, and did some juggling (soccer, not clown) before Gracie, the prissy beagle, begged me back under the porch’s awning. And here we now sit, the rain long-since passed, but the cloud pattern still beautiful.

What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,

or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,

and a path for the thunderstorm,

to water a land where no man lives

a desert with no one in it,

to satisfy a desolate wasteland

and to make it sprout with grass.

Does the rain have a father?

Who fathers the drops of dew?

From whose womb comes the ice?

Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens,

when the waters become hard as stone,

when the surface of the deep is frozen?

Job 38:25-30 

Unapologetic Quotes Dump

Here are the results of my aforementioned quotes search. I do love me some Byron, but this Camus one is nice, too:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. 

Albert Camus

Aaaand the Byron...

Nothing is so amiable as discernment.

All farewells should be sudden, when forever.

Self love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

Sincerity may be humble, but she cannot be servile.

Romances I ne'er read like those I have seen.

A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.

Summer in the Suburbs

Because I am garbage at descriptions, I googled “famous quotes about summer.” This was a mistake as I now have a full page of mostly Byron quotes that I want to somehow incorporate into a single blog post about how I’m feeling, which is sentimental. And no one needs that. I am currently reading a book by Leon Someone Podles whose sentimentality regarding a masculinity that involves obligatory bloodshed and initiation rites, I renounce all writing to the odious tune of sentiment.

But, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge says, “Summer has set in with its usual severity” and I couldn’t be more joyful about it. I am living The Summer of George (so to speak), which goes something like this:

       ·         Waking up before 7 (I’m the lazy one of the family; Gracie and my mom are up by five) to do my morning Bible study which includes prayers written by Karl Barth and memorizing Job 38. (33 verses down, 9 to go!)

       ·        Working out twice a day—once in the morning for cardio (running) and once in the evening for strength (yoga). My body is both delighted and displeased to be taxed this way again.

       ·        Going to a drawing class from 3-5. Because either the adult class requires an AARP card or because I still look like a fifteen-year-old, I was signed up for the kids class. It is way too much fun and a great reminder to sign up for the random things that pop into your life. More on this one later.

       ·        Reading, writing and studying.

Maybe the vast majority of you don’t rhapsodize about unlimited time to sit quietly on the porch in the shade surrounded by trees and grass with a nice cup of cool-aid in front of you, but for me, it is the essence of idyllic. About an hour on Greek, an hour-ish on an academic book, two hours or so of writing, and whatever rabbit trails pop up (did you know that the Biblical canon was not formally decided upon until the sixteenth century? After the Protestant Reformation! According to Wikipedia. I’ve got more research to do).

 Occasionally I’ll take a break and watch The Big Bang Theory with mom. Dad and I watched Band of Brothers earlier and I’ve indulged in way too much X-Men to be healthy. Sometimes, when Gracie feels like it, we snuggle. Most days I eat a McDonald’s ice cream cone. Summer in the suburbs is marvelous.

On This July Fourth: Embrace Your Love Handles, America!

For the past few years, if I had gotten to choose my country of birth and childhood I would have chosen Australia or maybe Italy. Frankly, I would’ve chosen pretty much anywhere except America. Perhaps it started when I was obligated to say the pledge of allegiance every day before elementary school, but ever since I’ve smirked at America, hating it for being fat, and loud—for being wasteful, culturally insensitive and more than occasionally ignorant of the world outside its boundaries, and for its embarrassing politics. And perhaps the worst thing about America is that its people are incurably cynical. Like me.

I won’t lose my cynicism anytime soon, nor do I have much hope for American politics, but on this July fourth, I have something to say, America:

Stop hating on yourself.

Yes, you are fat but you make fantastic food. Your pizza’s unbelievable, your sandwiches delicious, and your cookies are worth every single pound. Love handles are the products of calories well spent on the best dinners and desserts worldwide.

We all hate your wastefulness, but it’s a byproduct born of your most amazing asset: space. Russia and Canada are hella big—but you are big and hospitable. Grasslands and hills and mountains and backyards—space to move, air to breathe, and room to relax. It takes a lot of cars and a lot of gas to cover that space.

You are also an obnoxious country in many ways and maybe I’ll never get used to it. However, I consider the loud ridiculousness yet another byproduct of a vibrant individualism. Sure it churns out a lot of crap (I could list a whole lot of bands and movies and Kim Kardashian here, but I’ll let you fill in the blanks). I admit it, though: you make many fine movies, occasionally t.v. shows, and Adam Levine. Good work.

There’s no getting around how embarrassing our politics are which is why I have to praise American senses of humor. Thank you, Colbert and Stewart, and everyone else that knows how to laugh at our vice president actually shot someone while in office and so on.

Nothing makes you appreciate home quite so much as leaving it. So this July Fourth, I say “Rock on America” and I’m happy to be home.

Would You Rather...?

“Since this is our first time together,” Joe said, clapping his hands together soundlessly once and smiling behind his beard, “Let’s share our names, where we come from, maybe ages—that sort of thing—and whether you’d rather be trapped in a room with a rhinoceros or a room of water with a shark.”

If I remember correctly, most people chose the rhino (or at least I did), but not before many questions were asked (“What kind of shark?” “How old is the rhino?” “Are we bleeding?” “How big is the room?” “How long are we trapped?”) and strategies were bandied about (“I’d get on the rhino’s back and take a nap!” “Sharks are easier—you just punch‘em in the gills.”). And so, a great tradition was born. For the next several weeks we still gave our names before answer The Question and pretended it was a get to know you game, until there was no pretending that we didn’t know Theresa would refuse to answer the question because of its sheer stupidity or that Joe and Jay would chose the unpopular option to even things out.

But it’s always been a get to know each other game, because there are always surprises. When Rob offered 6 inches of hair all over your body against the life of a deaf mute, all the men—with enthusiasm—declared they’d chose the Wookie option, while the women unanimously rejected it. From rocket shoes to Siberian imprisonments and from there to talking hair follicles—we’ve covered a great deal of life and learned a lot about each other’s more bizarre preferences. Even though Theresa hates it and I suspect the others are somewhat ambivalent, The Question is one of my favorites parts of the week.

This week’s Question: “You’ve been forced to spend five years of your life on a new reality t.v. show and you get to choose: would you rather be beaten up once a month or have no friends? For five years.”

There is a spontaneous moment of appreciation in which an inaudible “hmmmm” whirs through everyone’s brain. Then Alison cocks her head to side and says, “So it’s really asking if we prefer mental or physical punishment.” Everyone agrees but as the questions begin and strategies are bandied, the group responds not with the grimaces of Siberian banishment, but with the same excited anticipation as the guys had about becoming mini Yetis a few weeks back.

“Do we still work with people?” Alison asks thoughtfully.

“Can we have enemies?” Brett adds, with a sneaky grin.

His wife, Courtney: “Yeah, what about family?”

Joe (Alison’s husband): “Spouses?”

Jay: “How badly do we get beaten up?”

Me: “Can we fight back?”

Dave: “Do we know when it’s coming?”

Rob fields the questions with humor and aplomb, and when the curiosity has died away to pondering, the answers are given usually in a counter-clockwise fashion.

“No friends option. Definitely. Think how much you could get done in five years, because you have to keep busy. I’d probably have a doctorate finished...”

“I’d join a monastery. So all the stupid people who watch reality t.v. would get bored or be forced to listen to me praying for five years.”

Aside from Courtney who declared she couldn’t stand either and chose the getting beaten up option as the barely lesser of two evils, most people eagerly chose the no-friends option (many of the group’s members are introverts, like me). You can bet I loved hearing my thoughts echoed by the others—all that time to study and read!—but the other option sounded fun too. According to Rob, your bones were never broken and you never suffered permanent injury. You wouldn’t know when the attack was coming, but you could always fight back. Of course, after growing up reading YA novels about kickass heroines that option is embarrassingly appealing to me and thus my inevitable choice.

But some options aren’t really options, and I don’t think I could never chose the no friends one—even if it was between that and 6 inches of Wookie hair without rocket shoes confined to Siberia with only processed food to eat and hair follicles that couldn’t talk. But I really hope it doesn’t come to that.[1]

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[1] After all, who could like me without my rocket shoes?!?

It's All Relative

I was worried I’d come to a place called “home” that wasn’t actually. I was scared I’d spend the whole summer halfway between America and Korea, thinking of both of them as vacation spots, equally exotic. I thought maybe I’d come back to Indiana and feel lonely in all this space or harried by the flood of suddenly understandable language. Maybe I’d come back to Chesterton and Valpo and find everyone gone or changed, disinterested or, worse, dis-interesting. I thought I might spend the ride home from the airport begging to get back on the plane to my safe cheese-box of an apartment where even if it didn’t feel like home, it felt like a fortress.

I was steeling myself to relive the realization that words like “home” are meaningless. Words like that wander around your brain when you’re on the road so that any little pocket of comfortability feels like “home.” I believed it, too, that home would disappear simply because the idea of it was no longer clear to me after months of hopping from here to there.

I’m home. Undeniably. There’s grass everywhere and clean, fresh air. My mom’s garden is flowering beautifully and the elephant tree stands in the front yard with a new haircut.[1] My beagle patters about like always and there are exactly as many steps up from the first floor to the second and they are still hazardously carpeted so that I’m liable to fall down when in a rush. My room still has the ugly green walls my parents allowed me to paint despite the pink carpeting.

As nice as the grass feels and as comfortable as it is to sleep on a bed that’s actually comfortable, those things are nothing compared to seeing my mom and dad drive up at the airport in the red Prius and give me big, long hugs. Dad’s smiling and telling everyone we see—mostly ourselves—how good it feels to have the little one back home. He pats his heart a little bit when he says it and I know that “home” isn't meaningless or mysterious.

Children’s children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children. (Proverbs 17:6)

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[1] Mom hates the elephant tree and vows it will be terminated. Dad has put it on his summer to-do list. I will lobby for its safety as long as it stands elephant-like in our front garden.

Dear Students:

This is what I would say to you, my students—if I weren’t too embarrassed, if the nuances in English meant anything to you, if we had more than five minutes of rushed conversation about beauty, if you were one of the students who answered, “On a scale of 1 to 10 beauty is of course worth ten, and no, I don’t think I’m beautiful and plastic surgery is a necessary evil if I want to be beautiful” and think it’s okay for Christians to want to be more beautiful, to plaster themselves with make-up and cut up their skin for a double-eyelid, to be ashamed of their height, their eyes, their hair, and skin, and to cry every time they look in the mirror. To all of you, I would say this:

You. Are. Free.

You don’t have to worry about those things. You don’t have to hate yourself or your skin or your hair. You don’t have to place your value in how many kilograms show up on the scale or what people think of your style. You don’t have to wear make-up and you don’t have to get surgery. You don’t have to think that if you don’t you won’t be hired, you won’t get married, no one will love you because

You are free—you are in Christ Jesus.

Or don’t you know that our God is the One who created the world, redeemed it through His Son’s sacrifice, and holds every single one of your worries in the palms of his hands? Our God moves mountains, parts seas, and never ever makes a mistake, oversight, or has an iota of malice toward you His child. Do you really think he will abandon you to scorn, mockery, and depression? Do you really think He, who is the arbiter of all blessings, will withhold any good thing from you because of the body He gave you?

Do you really think God prefers you to hate the face He has given you so much that you think you aren’t worth as much as the woman beside you with perfect skin? Do you think rejecting God’s gift—your body, face, and hair—is a smaller sin than smoking a cigarette or drinking a glass of beer? If God cares about your smoking and drinking and studying doesn’t he also care about you cutting into the skin above your eyes for the sake of a scar that might someday gain you a job? Do you think God can’t get you that job through His power?

He created the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and all that swim the paths of the sea and it is good. You are good—you even bear a resemblance to God Himself. Why do you worry not only about what you wear but about every aspect of your appearance? Don’t you know that God knit you together and, like all of His works, you are wonderful. Why change that? Why worry about that? I say it again:

You are free.

You are free to be beautiful without trying.

You are free from doubt.

You are free to love others without being distracted by needing to love yourself.

You are free from self-hatred.

You are free to not care about what you wear and whether someone laughs at your small eyes, big face, or your low nose.

You are free to be healthy, to honor God, to put your energies into something that does not disappoint.

So smile when I ask you if you’re beautiful! Smile and know that the Lord, your God and Father, made you to be wonderful, free, and blessed.

Not Enough Parkour

The awful white highlighting is back and I know why now and it's so completely nonsensical that I refuse to spend time trying to fix it. So while you're reading this, give it a good glare from me. That's it. Thanks.

“Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement.”

This comes from Charles Warnke’s “Don’t Date a Girl Who Reads.” I love it—as does, I imagine, every girl who reads—despite the last line in which Warnke’s asserts to the girls who read, “I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.” We love it because it’s very true that those of us who read with a passion tend to see life as a book.[1]

Life is episodic, it ebbs and flows like chapters, has paragraphs where life slows down and speeds up. A summer day when the sun shines just right and the wind has that perfect smell in the air, your body is reading, writing, and living a descriptive paragraph, if only for a moment. Books are made to be lifelike and they succeed so completely that sometimes life begins to be book-like.

Seeing life as a book has its downsides. Perhaps most obviously, it makes us expect a happy ending—or even an ending at all—before we’ve run out of life to live. Seeing life as a story also teaches us to view ourselves as the main character and if that’s not the most selfish thing in the world (not to mention unbiblical), I’m not sure what is. Life fails as a story in many ways. The dialogue is absolute crap, the tempo—too often tedious—erratic, and there aren’t nearly enough parkour scenes.

But the good thing is, a girl who reads “knows the importance of plot.” She knows that conflict is necessary for happiness, but also that it ebbs and flows just like happiness. Books teach us to see the beauty and ugliness of the world, to recognize each for what it is—inevitable, but part of a larger plan. All things shall pass, but they will not pass without significance.

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[1] For me, I’ll forever be stuck in a coming-of-age novel. Maybe that’s embarrassing—I’m honestly not sure.