Guess What Today Is...

 Today is my Grandmother’s 72^nd birthday. In honor of that, I am going to share some things I am grateful for today that relate to my Mam-maw.

1.     Mam-maw is more pop-culture savvy than my beautiful mother. Thus, when I referenced the hump day camel to her, she laughed with me :)

2.     Both of my grandmothers had children ridiculously young (by today’s standards). Why am I grateful for this? Because I have had the blessing of knowing all of my grandparents and several of my great-grandparents. Mam-maw was a decade younger than my mother was when each had their first child, and as a result, Mam-maw was spry enough to play with me when I was growing up.

3.     Every time I think my Mam-maw is ready to depart from this life, she doesn’t. She has had medical issues since before I was born, and yet, here she is. When she lost her right leg to arterial disease the summer after my freshman year of college, I really thought she wasn’t going to live long. Two year later, she went on a trip to Israel and walked up mountains on her prosthetic leg because she had always wanted to visit the places where Jesus walked. Like a boss. 

4.     She and my Pap are farmers. Not only did I get to run around all over a farm when I was a kid, but do you have any idea how many cats they've had? Their excuse is that the cats keep down the rodents around the barn, but I know that deep down, they just like cats, too. And I have gotten to play with and name so so so many kittens. (Also, they consistently conspire with me to convince Mom to let me bring home kittens. I got two cats this way).

According to the caption under this picture I found, I named the white cat
Precisoca. But I didn't bring cats home until my debating skills became as creative
as my naming skills... Mam-maw and I just played with them at her house.

(gratuitous kitten shot)

5.     There are brave men and women who fight to protect us, and keep fighting when they come home. I am grateful for their sacrifice and courage. (How is this related? Shortly before losing her second leg, Mam-maw confided in me that they had shown her a Wounded Warrior video that showed how the double amputees put on their prostheses, and that she was pretty sure she couldn’t do it. Until she explained it to me, I didn’t realize how much harder it was to put on two prostheses instead of one, or just how much strength was required. Somehow knowing that makes me appreciate our service-men and -women even more.) 

(more gratuitous kitten shots)

6.     Mam-maw is generous, hardworking, and cares for others in her life sacrificially. I have learned from her example to value life, even if the life in question isn’t given much value in our society, like my mentally and physically handicapped aunt. My Mam-maw loves people in her life for who they are, not for what they can do, and I am exceedingly grateful for her example. 

Ready to Mingle? NO.

There are, occasionally, times when I wish that I weren’t single. I am not going to enumerate all of those here, but one such time is during my weekly (or sometimes more frequent) efforts to settle in to my new church[i]. This is not because I feel uncomfortable as a single person at my new church, or that all of the young married couples make me wish for what I don’t have (although there are many cute young couples... some of them with even cuter babies). The main reason is actually that I wish I had a companion and a teammate in all of this 'being the new person' business.

In my mind (in some part that I apparently don’t pay much conscious attention to, since I only just noticed this recently), I feel like it would be easier to reach out and get to know people if I had a base to reach out from instead of feeling adrift in a sea of 300 people I don’t really know yet.  This is true from both (1) an emotional energy perspective as well as (2) a behavioral perspective.

(1) I don’t know about you, but I find it emotionally draining to socialize with a ton of people that I don’t know well. The reverse is true of my close friends; spending time with them is relaxing and rejuvenating. I also find that it’s less draining to socialize and meet new people when I am with someone I am already comfortable with. I suspect that this is partially due to acceptance/approval and having a base of support. When you are meeting people and making new friends, you want them to like you (that piece of genius comes to you thanks to an expensive college education. You're welcome). Thus, when you are around new people, you are monitoring acceptance/rejection cues with more sensitivity, and I believe it makes a difference emotionally to have someone with you who is a solid base of acceptance. It's comforting and refreshing to know there’s already someone in the room who definitely likes you :)

(2) When you are around your friends, you act like yourself. When you are making friends, you want to do this, because if they don’t like who you are when you're comfortable, the friendship isn’t going to go far. However, you don’t act like yourself completely when you first meet people, because you want to make a good impression and, lets face it, deep down you are a weird, quirky, socially awkward person and you don’t want to overwhelm people the first time they meet you ;) I think that having a good friend with you when meeting new people acts as a behavioral buffer... you end up acting more like yourself because you are more comfortable, and people get to know you more easily.

Basically, going in pairs to a place where you are the only new people probably makes life easier.

Need more reasons why two are better than one? Ecclesiastes 4:9-12. And my cats.

So am I here to whine about how I don’t have a partner?  Nope. Been there, done that. I realized this week that I had been subconsciously resentful at God for sending me to church on my own, and then I reasoned out why (see above). And after allowing me my five-minute pity party, God shifted my perspective:

I have loved you with an everlasting love… (Jeremiah 31:3)

…I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Joshua 1:5)

Accept one another then, just as Christ accepted you… (Romans 15:7)

How easily I forget that I already have a base of support.  

Then, God reminded me that he uses seasons of life for a reason, and I realized that it is probably really good for me to learn to be myself around people that don’t know me without the benefit (or perhaps in my case sometimes... crutch?) of having a friend around. That seems like a good skill to learn, even if I find the alternative to be more comfortable. And even in this desire, it's not as if God has never blessed me with companionship. I went to college with my best friend, for goodness' sake, and half of the reason I know why it’s easier being new with a friend is because I can analyze my freshman year and the way we got involved in things together. 

So yes, I am getting involved by myself this time. And I am going to trust God’s timing and that he knows what he is doing with this. I don’t feel particularly more keen to go mingle, but maybe when I do it anyway, I will be a bit more like myself and less like that nice, shy girl that recently started going to Sovereign Grace. 

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[i] I found one, isn’t that great?!?! I am attending Sovereign Grace Church of Frederick, and I love the people, and the doctrine, and the worship style, and the preaching style, and the pastors, and the vision… basically, I am as happy as my friend Allison’s cat, Lilly, who got ALL the attention and cuddles she wanted when I visited last week.

 

Book Nerds and People Lovers Unite

This post brought to you by: Research I am not being paid to do

Hopefully someday I will tell you about my current unpaid research. But as I can’t do that right now, I wanted to tell you about some exciting research, which is tangentially relevant to my work, and was just published in Science by Kidd and Castano.

We read social cues all the time, pretty much without being deliberate or being taught to do so. Basically, humans have built in tools to help us get along in a social environment (and I think that is super cool, since we happen to live in a social environment). One of the major skills we have is inferring what people are thinking or feeling from their facial expressions. Now, there are a lot of ways that we do this (I’m not even going to start on how much I enjoy the show Lie To Me, which is loosely based on the life and work of psychologist Paul Eckman[i]) but a main source of information is the eyes.

Practicing reading Lilly from her eyes. In case
 you were curious, I scored a 30, so I'm
average. I think Lilly would have done better
than me, but she had trouble with the
trackpad on my laptop ;) 

“Reading the Mind in the Eyes” is a psychological task designed by Simon Baren-Cohen that is used to determine how well an individual can read other people’s emotions. How good are you at this? You can take a modified version of the test here. Some people really struggle with recognizing facial expressions; a marked inability to read facial expressions is common in disorders such as autism[ii], asperger’s, social anxiety disorder, PWS, etc. But even among people who can read facial expressions, there is a range of ability... in the task adaptation above, people with “average” ability fall between 22-30 correct out of 36.

“Yes, this is all very logical,” you are thinking to yourself. “I know some people who are more sensitive to the emotions of others around them than others. It makes sense that some people are better at this reading the eyes thing than others. But what’s the big deal?” 

Well, other than the fact that I think this is intrinsically cool, Kidd and Castano found out that you can manipulate this by reading. In their study, they had participants read literary fiction (think Jane Austen, Mark Twain, etc), popular fiction (think Hunger Games, Harry Potter, etc), serious nonfiction, or nothing for five minutes and then complete several tasks, including Reading the Mind in the Eyes. They found that people who read literary fiction performed better compared to all other groups. Reading for only 5 minutes improved recognition of facial expressions! The researchers suggested this might be because literary fiction, with its rich descriptions and complexity, leaves more to the imagination and causes the reader to make their own assumptions about characters’ emotional states.

Basically, reading well-written books is a good work out for the part of your brain that interprets people in real life. And it never hurts to be better at that. :) 

---

[i] I am going to ramble about Lie to Me a bit, though. It is a very interesting show (which, alas, only ran for three seasons) about a man who is an expert in the science of facial expressions and body language. Not only is the show’s lead charachter, Cal Lightman, based off of the professional and personal life of Dr Eckman, but Eckman actually critiqued each episode on his blog, which I find both fascinating and hilarious.

[ii] There is some interesting speculation about a lack of theory of mind/inability to read other's emotions and an absence of eye contact in people with autism. They haven't established a causal relationship yet, but there are early intervention strategies that involve training kids with autism/aspergers to make eye contact or look at people's faces. 

True Confessions: I Might Be A Terrible Driver

I fear that there mayyy be something about driving that makes me a terrible driver. 

This realization was totally unexpected. I actually enjoy driving just for the fun of it. I think I am, generally, a calm and alert driver. My driving record is so clean you could eat off it. Mothers can trust their children to my car. But I am beginning to think that I may have a previously unnoticed driving flaw.

I made this discovery while making a phone call on my way home the other day. Yes, I know that talking on the phone isn’t something you should do while driving. I am perfectly acquainted with the studies demonstrating increased distractibility and likelihood of accidents when talking on the phone, as well as the fact that talking on the phone while driving is mildly illegal in Maryland (secondary offense=mildly illegal?). Basically, I know it’s not a good idea. But even as I recognized my unavoidable distractibility, I found myself compensating by hyper-focusing on the road. And it was super fun. I took all the sharp turns easily one-handed, deftly avoided hitting a raccoon crossing the road, kept an eye on the runner on the other side of the road and found so much more joy in my daily drive than I usually did. I felt like a champion.

And therein lies the problem. Driving is so much more fun when it is a challenge.

As I made this realization, data started to fall into place. This explains why I love driving manual transmission cars… it’s just difficult enough that it feels like a challenge. This is why, if I wasn’t such a natural rule-follower or there were no speed limits, I would totally go at maximum speed anytime I drove alone.  This explains why I like driving trucks while pulling ATVs in ridiculously big trailers (well, also because there are going to be ATVs wherever the destination is…). I like driving when it is fully engaging and I have to work to get wherever I am going; on the flip side, I get bored and driving is considerably less pleasant when everything is easy and normal.

I’m not entirely sure why this is the case… if it’s an extrovert thing* or if I am just weird. I’m also not entirely sure what to do about it. I obviously can’t just make driving harder all the time… talking on the phone really is unsafe, if I bought a manual transmission car, driving it would eventually become easy, and listening to CS Lewis or Mark Driscoll while I drive uses a totally different part of the brain (I enjoy listening to both of them, but I don’t think it improves my driving… it just pulls my focus away from the road and eventually makes my brain hurt from exertion). 

The faint glimmer of hope I have is that I don’t have this problem at all when there are other people in the car. For some reason, when other people are with me the goal of driving seems to switch from enjoying the mechanics of driving itself to getting to our destination safely. So perhaps I can retrain myself to prioritize safety all the time (although that sounds soo boring). Or just learn how to ride a motorcycle.

P.S. At least I don't let my cat drive my car. Just sayin'.

---

* I am not referring here to the “do you like to be around people?” delineation that most people use for introversion/extraversion categorization, but Eysenck's arousal theory of extraversion. According to this theory, the level of stimuli needed to reach an arousal threshold is higher for extraverts than it is for introverts, which explains their different preferences for activities. While an introvert could find an evening alone reading a book to be perfectly stimulating, this falls below the extrovert’s threshold, who needs to be doing something fun with a big noisy group of people to reach the same level of arousal. Similarly, since the introvert’s threshold is much lower, s/he would likely find the big noisy group’s activities to be over-stimulating, and therefore overwhelming after a short period of time. This also explains differences between introverts and extroverts that aren’t related to being around people. The extrovert may find extreme sports, like sky driving and bungee jumping, to be extremely fun because of the high level of arousal, while an introvert would be entirely over-stimulated and finds the same activities stupid and dangerous. This theory changed how I think about extraversion/introversion and all the weird people in my life :) 

The In-Between Life

Last night, I watched the movie Julie & Julia. Besides making me want to cook and eat everything that has butter in the recipe (isn’t everything better with butter?) it reminded me of how long it had been since I had worked on my blog and posted real updates about my real life. But the thing is, I don’t want to update you about my real life.  I feel like my life is frustrating, inconsequential, and not going as planned. As I consider updating you, I feel quite a bit like Julie did while having lunch with her friends. 

(Except that I love cob salad. And I am not 30.)

Like Julie, I don’t feel particularly keen to tell you about my life. I can give the peppy, chirpy, 5 second sound bite I give people either to convey that I am quite happy with the way life is going or to make my life seem as impressive as possible (and imply that I am succeeding more than I am failing). But it’s more propaganda than news. Talking about my real life causes that squirmy, shame-y feeling.

The truth is, I haven’t found the job I have been looking for. I am past the deadline I set myself, and its time for me to look for more ‘in-between’ jobs to pay the bills and those approaching student loans. I don’t want to give you that update, because I don’t like it one bit. Truthfully, I want to be in grad school, and the research job I need to get me there was already supposed to be my in-between job. I don’t want an in-between-in-between job. So I feel frustrated and edgy, and I’m probably not very nice to the people around me most of the time. It feels as if I am a rough chunk of rock (maybe sandstone?), and whatever layers of fabric I normally have wrapped around to make me look all pretty and cuddly have mostly disappeared, so now anyone who gets close ends up with scrapes. Its not a very pretty picture, is it? Life isn’t going the way I would like, and I am not responding in the way I would like.

So yes, I don’t like telling you about my life when its not going smoothly the way I want towards clear success at an appropriate pace (according to my assessment). However, no one else likes talking about their life when it’s like that, either, so we all just feel alone and isolated when actually we’re not. I have found that when I talk about how things really are and how I really feel, people often encourage me by talking about a time when the same thing happened to them, or they open up and actually tell me about the current struggles in their lives that leave them with feelings similar to mine. This may come as a shock (I feel like it shocks me over and over), but frustration and shame are not uniquely mine. Who knew?

So take heart. Things aren’t amazing and awesome in my life at the moment. My unsuccessful job search leaves me fighting frequent feelings of guilt, shame, and failure. My grandma is really sick—she had to have her second leg amputated a few weeks ago, and her recovery is slow—leaving us (particularly Mom) worried about Mam-maw’s health and care.

Catnip mice. Absolutely hilarious.

Most of my friends are far away and I miss Gettysburg. But there are good things, too. I am knitting a sweater and its going really well. I gave my cats toy mice rolled in catnip yesterday, and it was hilarious. My car has been getting an extra mpg every time I check it, which means my gas is going further (yay!).

Most of life is lived in-between the highs and lows. And that’s where I am. It’s okay to be there. 

Dear Freshman,

This is not an open letter. I find myself irritated when people write 'open letters' that aren't really to the person they addressed it to, but are actually to the rest of the world about the person they addressed it to. To be fair, I frequently write letters to inanimate objects that serve the same purpose as open letters, but the following is not a letter to springtime or my laptop. This is a draft of a letter to my little cousin (he's a foot taller than me, but whatever) that I am giving him when he leaves for college this week. Most of my readers don't need this advice, but I figured I would submit it to you all (1) for revising in case I missed anything glaringly important or (2) if you have freshmen in your life. Of course I have omitted things, but that is because there is a big gap between the length of advice I could give to freshmen and the length I can expect my particular freshman to read :) These are just the things I realized that I wanted him to know while I was attempting to sleep one night... 

Dear [Freshman],

Congrats on going to school… I’ll admit it, college has been some of the best years of my life (although I expect there will be more fun to come after this) so I know you are in for an adventure. I figured since I was basically just there, I should tell you some things I learned along the way or had kind upperclassmen tell me when I first got to campus. 

1.     College is a time to do stupid, fun things (I have done many of those). It is not, however, a time to do stupid, dangerous things or stupid, illegal things. Don’t forget the difference.

…On a related note, freshman in a herd tend to do lots of stupid, dangerous, illegal things at the very beginning of school… the upperclassmen and staff at Gettysburg used to call the first few weeks that freshman were on campus 'the red zone' because freshmen were being dumb either to impress everyone else or because their parents weren't there and they had more freedom than they knew what to do with. Just keep your head.

…On another related note, I think I have already talked to you about the alcoholism that runs in our family? It’s worth mentioning again. I won’t bore you with all of the genetics and psychology (I could!), but I will tell you that alcohol affects me differently than most of my friends. Just watch out for that.

2.     Your honor is something that is both valuable and difficult to keep. Its worth it be an honorable guy.

…Watch out for the people around you, both the guys and the girls. Fun fact: 67% of men in college DON’T rape anyone! It goes without saying that you better be in that 67%. But a ton of rapes and sexual assaults happen on college campuses, and I know way too many girls this has happened to (you do too, although you probably don’t realize it). This means that people around you—or at least physically near you on campus—are going to be assaulted. If every college guy who didn’t rape anyone also prevented sexual assault when it was in danger of happening near them, you and I would know less people who have been assaulted. As much as our society likes to focus on how equal guys and girls are, there are some instances in which guys, in general, have more power than girls. Frankly, you have a greater ability to prevent rape than I do. With power comes responsibility, and all that. Be honorable regardless of how the people around you are behaving.

3.     Make friends with the kind of people you actually want to be friends with. I promise that those people are there, but it might take awhile to find them.

…I met some of my best friends in college in the first week or so of school. But that’s not the case with most of my friends, and I am not friends with most of the people I met in the first few weeks of school. In fact, I didn’t really begin to be friends with one girl until the end of my sophomore year, and I am going to be in her wedding in December. I didn’t meet some good friends until I was a senior. So don’t worry about finding the people who will become your closest friends... you will eventually. Just when you do find them, become friends :) 

…On a related note, get involved in a Christian fellowship on campus! I’m not going to pester you about this one because you are a big boy and your faith is up to you, but getting involved with the fellowship at Gettysburg literally changed my life. And my relationship with God. And who I became friends with. It was the best decision ever, and I had no idea when I got to campus that I should even look for a Christian fellowship.

4.     There will always be one or two huge things that mark you as a freshman. At my school, it was people actually using the lanyard and ID card holder the college gives at move-in for their keys and ID card. I would recommend not doing whatever that particular thing at your school is. Honestly though, don’t work too hard not to look like a freshman, because you are going to clearly look like a freshman to everyone else for the first month or two anyway. Just chill out about it and don’t use the lanyard they give you for your key :)

You are going to be totally fine. I have faith in you. College is awesome. If you ever need anything, you have my number. I love you!

-Christiana

Have I forgotten anything? Made any terrible errors? Let me know :)

Of course cats don't get to go to college. But the policy on pets visiting for a weekend was a littleeeee unclear my sophomore year, and this picture mayyyy have been taken in Tudor House. Possibly. (And the fire alarm might possibly have gone off while Lady M was visiting, causing my roommate to run around our room trying to find my cat in a building that she feared was on fire. Luckily my roommate liked cats... and the building did not, in fact, burn down) 

Real Talk: Homesickness

Last Sunday was the first day that I have felt homesick. Confusing, I know, since I live at home. What I mean is, I really missed my church family at Gettysburg… both my fellowship on campus and the church I attended while at school. I have been “church shopping” for over a month now, and I have been missing the community in Gettysburg for awhile before that, but last Sunday was the first time that I visited a new church and felt homesick for my church in Gettysburg. Perhaps it was because the other churches that I had visited in the past few weeks were so different from my experience at Gettysburg that they didn’t remind me of it while I was visiting. I couldn't tell you what it was exactly, but something about the church Sunday—the size, the way people sang, the way people interacted—made me miss Gettysburg.

This isn’t a new feeling for me. When I was studying abroad, I missed my campus fellowship almost every time I went to church. In fact, there was only one time there that I worshiped at my church in South Africa without missing them… it was so unusual that I can still remember it clearly. It seems almost normal for me when where I worship reminds me of another place I love to worship, or people I love to worship with. 

My homesickness didn't tell me that the church I went to last Sunday is ‘the one’ or that it isn't. What it did do was give God an opportunity to instruct me. The person who spoke before communion read from Philippians 3, where Paul talks about pressing onward toward the goal (of knowing and becoming like Christ). In verse 13-14, it says “But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Now obviously, when Paul talks about forgetting what is behind, he does not mean his super awesome college fellowship. But God still used this verse to convict me that I can’t hold on so tightly to the huge blessing that was my church community over the past four years that I let it distract me from the blessings of where he has me now, and where he wants me to be in the future. In the same way that God did not want missing my church in the States to distract from or impede my relationship with him while I was in South Africa, he doesn't want my church for the past four years to distract or impede my relationship with him now. So how do I learn from the past and do things better this time?

I can't say for sure, but I think that part of it is finding the root of the problem. See, whenever I have a really good thing in my life, I struggle with believing the lie that this is the best life is ever going to get, or this is the happiest I will ever be. Part of this comes from not trusting that God is good and his plan is good, and part of this comes from desiring the gift more than the giver. Both lead to feeling dissatisfied and anxious rather than loving life (whether gifts or struggles seem to be abundant). So I am trying to refute these lies with the truth.*

I don’t know where I will end up going to church, or when I will find one here. I don’t know how long it will take until I feel connected and not just like a visitor. I do know that God has a plan, and I won’t be disappointed (he is wiser than me, so his plan is better than anything I could come up with). I might settle into a new church only to move again… and that might happen over and over in my life. But I know that my desire for permanency and the feeling of being at home will one day be completely met. And when I am there, I will get to worship with my church family in Gettysburg, and my church family in South Africa, and my church family from childhood, and the church families I don’t know yet. So I think it is okay for me to be homesick… as long as I am homesick for my true home.

I could never figure out exactly where this cat came from, as she was allowed to roam wherever she wanted. But she must have lived near where I went to church in South Africa, so she is tangentially relevant ;)

*My go-to verses when I am struggling with this are:
1 Peter 5:6-7 "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you."
Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."