I jump on bandwagons & 25 other little-known facts
1. I have publically chastised individuals who have done these 25 things. But then when I do something quirky, I find myself making my own list in my head.
2. I am a hypocrite. And kind of a jerk.
3. I really like to be funny, but often the things I say that make people laugh are actually mean (though usually true), and when I think about them later, I don’t like the person I tend to be. I want to be different tomorrow than I am today.
4. I think I’m going to take Tae Kwon Do. My gym is right next to a Tae Kwon Do gym and every night (yeah right, I don’t work out every night) when I walk by, I see people through the windows kicking and making HI-YAAAA noises, and I want to do it too.
5. When I set my alarm, regardless of the hour, I almost always set the minutes on :03, :07, :12, :28, :33, or :47. There is no specific reason that I do this. Sometimes :52, but not as much as those others.
6. When I was a very little girl, I thought I could read because I memorized poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” To do this day I can still recite most of them.
7. In third grade, I wrote Dean Smith a letter and invited the 1993 National Championship basketball team to my birthday party. He wrote me back and said he was very sorry, but they had a game that day (and of course, a few of the players had graduated), but he included an autographed team photo and for the next several years I received a team poster in the mail from his office each season. I also kept writing him, and have three letters that he wrote to me—in Carolina blue ink.
8. Random people ask me all the time if I am or was a dancer because I naturally stand with my feet turned out in first position. It’s not really that exciting; it’s hereditary.
9. I write a lot and my words are usually based on things that happen any given day, so I have a little notebook I carry around everywhere to jot down ideas. Sometimes in airports or bookstores, I write down entire conversations that I overhear. You learn a lot about people that way.
10. I don’t play an instrument or sing really, but music has the power to affect me more deeply than almost anything else. This is actually true of most art forms.
11. I have a very great aversion to religion that is based mostly in the fact that I spent twelve years in Southern Baptist school. I talk a lot of junk about Southern Baptists & Christian fundamentalists, but I also learned some of the most valuable lessons about life in Christ from the teachers and staff of Calvary Baptist Day School. I don’t agree with a lot of the rules they taught tried to teach me, but I most certainly agree with the love.
12. I truly enjoy change.
13. I like my job now and I really want to grow in my abilities and be really successful, but if I’m honest? I just want to get married and have kids. Those are deepest desires in my heart & I’m pretty sure the most important things God’s calling me to do.
14. I am FASCINATED by words—the way they can fit together and create whole moods based on their cadence, the way they can inspire, hurt, encourage, change, and recreate.
15. For a costume party recently, I dressed up like Annie Oakley and my main reason for doing so was because it was a good excuse to wear a hand-tooled leather holster and carry around a cap gun. Freakin’ SWWWEEEEET!
16. As a kid I was just as likely to be found playing Zorro or Cowboys & Indians as I was to be playing with Barbies or American Girl dolls.
17. Sunset Beach, NC is my sanctuary.
18. I have a strange affinity for clocks & watches. But I rarely wear a watch.
19. There is nothing that annoys me more than “Christian” music/books/paintings etc that are half-ass attempts at art. I believe God is the ultimate Creative, therefore art is one of the highest forms of praise. It should be relevant in a broken world & pointing to something greater, not separating itself into its own category that has become known for lack of creativity. I’m grateful to see this changing. (And yes I used the term “half-ass” in reference to Christianity & God. I cuss. Often. God knows it. He still loves me. Deal with it.)
20. Though the previous is very true, I’m not gonna lie, I still totally rock out to Twila Paris singing “God is in Control”
21. I like the South a lot more now that I’ve lived away for a year and then come back again.
22. There are days that I miss the West so much I feel it in my chest. This has to do both with the land and the people.
23. Until about 8th grade, the only music I consistently listened to was oldies from the 50s and 60s. My first concert was The Beach Boys and I cried when my dad surprised me with the tickets.
24. My favorite paintings are of couples dancing.
25. I have a blog. I write very honestly there. About 7 people know about it because I don’t ever want to write based on what other people will think about me after they read my words. Also it’s being redesigned and right now it is very plain Jane & I don’t like that much. But now you know about it.
I completed the list above on my Facebook account. “25 Random Facts” has become kind of a phenomenon on Facebook—at least among my friends. The idea is for each person to write 25 supposedly random or little-known facts about him or herself and post them as a Facebook Note. They then “tag” 25 people who are supposed to do the same and keep the trend going. Like me, I’m sure many of the people who are tagged at first have the thought that something like that is stupid and self-centered. I most certainly had those thoughts. But as I mentioned in number one, after I had been tagged in a few lists, I found myself making my own list in my head. And then I actually typed it all out and posted it one day.
I rationalized this to myself:
It’s not selfish if someone has asked you to do it. The ones you’ve read so far have been really interesting and you’ve learned a lot about other people. It’s true, I was intrigued by the facts other people had shared. I know that many people are nosey and will read the list I posted whether they know me well or not. Actually if they don’t know me well they’re probably more likely to read it. This is somewhat interesting, that people want to know random and, more often than not, insignificant details about someone else.
But what has been fascinating to me is the number of people who have actually completed their own list. It is as though we are each proclaiming: “I WANT TO BE KNOWN!” So we list small facts for even strangers to read and so allow small glimpses into our hearts. As you can see, my own list is peppered with some deeper ideas that truly come from my heart, but many of the facts mean nothing in my day-to-day—I like clocks. So what? If I really get down to it, I like clocks because I find them romantic. The fact of time is compelling because we don’t know the limits of our own lives. We have no control over time or the pace with which it passes; I find this unnerving and somehow calming. But my point is, these lists of twenty-five simple facts each point to the deep desire in each of our hearts to be known by others, to be appreciated and called “interesting.”
Most of the lists I’ve read give facts that do point to deeper truths, asking to be known. But some of them are woefully boring. And by this I mean, they read like bad high school essays; “I wrecked my car the day I got my license.” I’m serious this time when I say
who the hell cares? All that really tells me about you is that, like most of us, you weren’t a good driver at first. Snoooooooze. Give me the good stuff! Okay, but honestly? Those people are putting up walls. Yes, I want to be known, but I’m afraid for you to know me. I’m afraid that if you know me, you won’t like me anymore—I’ll scare you off. I’m afraid if you find out that the reason I love paintings of couples dancing is because I have longed every day that I can remember to really have that feeling of intimacy that is invoked by
Anne Magill’s “The First Dance.” But you know, I’ve found it. And I didn’t find it by keeping my walls up.
I think life is often a paradox. These lists are a prime example—I want to be known, but I’m scared. But I want you to seek me. I want you to look into my eyes, see my frailty and failure and love me anyway. But what a risk that is—to show you my brokenness. I watch
Grey’s Anatomy pretty regularly. Last week I cried when one of the male characters looked at the woman he is falling for and said “See me. See me. See me.” But what he meant was “Know me. Know me. Know me.”
We are a people who hide. When our hearts are wounded, we immediately draw back and lay the foundation for our own personal wall. If we lose our capacity to take the risk of being known, we will become hard. C.S. Lewis wrote:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
Impenetrable, Irredeemable. Oh, how important that risk to love! But you know, sometimes, the risk will fail. Sometimes when we show a person our deep heart, they will reject it. And oh yes, how painful that is—I know. But there will one day, come a person who will catch a glimpse of your heart and ask for a little more. And bit by bit, the wall will begin to crumble. For me, a large chunk fell to the ground when Erik said, “Hope, you don’t have to have it all together all the time.” He has repeated that to me more times than I can count, and I still need to hear it. I still need to be told that it’s okay to be vulnerable. But every time, in every situation, his words mean to me that it’s okay if I screw up. It’s okay if everything isn’t perfect. Each time, his words mean grace.
And how much more full of grace & love is our God? It is risky to trust that God has a plan for our lives. It’s risky to trust that he has created other broken people in this world who will understand our brokenness and share in it and want to grow with us. In my experience, God works on our hearts through relationship, and not only our relationship with him. To know that redemption & grace is to know something altogether inhuman, against our nature—but completely and totally within the nature of our God.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
