a musing ames

As a little girl, I believe my mom clearly saw one of my biggest character flaws. Often times, friends would come home with me after school to play. Their parents would come to pick them up, their sudden disappearance leaving toys scattered all over the place. I would complain that I didn’t want to clean up the clutter on my own, and my mom would tell me that the next time they came over, I should demand that they help me clean things up before they go. I resisted, insisting that it wasn’t fair for them, secretly knowing they would dislike me for making such a request. But my mom gave me authorization, which I sometimes wish were still acceptable to use at my current age, “Tell them your Mami told  you to have them help you.” Genius! I would no longer be the bad guy, she gave me permission to make her the target of their unhappiness.

As an adult, I have too have realized that people pleasing is my weakness. I also realized, though, that it has served as a strength at times, in showing hospitality or empathy towards others. I think I started valuing the positive side of the people-pleasing coin to the point that I forgot what types of compromises I can make in the name of the comfort of others.

Until this last week. After seeking some counsel in a situation I thought I may have dealt with poorly, a friend pointed out that I was “sensitive” and “cared a lot about what other people thought,” implying that I probably cared too much (a fair, and probably accurate assessment). People pleaser, rang in my ears.

At another point, I contemplated a decision I had to make for next year and realized that my motive wasn’t faithfulness to God (because faithfulness in this instances would not require me to take the particular action I was contemplating), but rather worrying about what a person at my local church may think. When that realization struck me, again I heard people pleaser ringing in my ears. I stopped and prayed for forgiveness. When I stop and examine my motives for many of the things that I do, I cringe at realizing how many of them are motivated at least in part by a desire to preserve my image and keep those around me happy.

For the last half of this semester, I’ve been reading through John in my devotions. One morning last week, I came to John 12:42-43:

Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

I began to tear up. There, in the Word of God, I saw myself. One who believes in Jesus, but often doesn’t behave (or misbehave) in the way that I should because I love the glory that comes from man more than that comes from God. The conviction came to a sharper point as I contemplated my current circumstances: as it is finals time (why I only blog during finals, I don’t know), I have began to worry about what my professors will think about my performance in their class more than I worry about God’s perception of my work.

This realization of course reminds of David Asscherick’s message from GYC 2006 in Balitmore, “Because of Those Who Sat.” But I guess what’s striking me more now, is not that I’m always failing to do what’s right because people are watching, but that I find myself doing what’s right because people are watching rather than the fact that God is watching.

I come before the throne of grace as a penitent people pleaser. My only prayer is that I may be able to speak as Jesus did when His family, disappointed in Him for not sticking close by, finally found Him after His first visit to Jerusalem. He talked about His Father. “And He said to them, ‘Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?’” Luke 2:49. He was acting out of fidelity to His Father, and cared only about what He thought.

Maybe my Mami was on to something after all…

My academic interests have taken an unexpected turn: into the realm of law and history that deals specifically with women. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. I am, after all, a woman. But more importantly, over the last two and a half years I have really been seeking God’s guidance in what that means. After reading Genesis 1:27 in a new light, I couldn’t keep saying that the differences between men and women were minimal and insignificant. I embarked on understanding what unique way God may have for me, as a woman, to reflect His image.

But I didn’t think this spiritual, and even social, pursuit would bleed into my intellectual sphere. This semester, it did. For my masters degree (and my law degree, I guess), I took two different constitutional history classes, one on the history of the constitution during the 20th century, and the other specifically on the first forty years of the 20th century. And in both classes, the cases and readings that were most interesting to me were those that had to do with women. (Granted, we didn’t do very much reading on religion and the constitution. I suppose that will have to wait for another semester or independent study.)

Illustrative story: To kill some time before one of these classes, I started doing reading for the other one for the next day. As I read an account of women’s struggle to gain the right to vote in the early part of the past century, when I reached the part where the last state needed finally approved the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, I teared up. I quickly cleared my eyes before the rest of my classmates entered the room, seeing as I was only one of two women in the whole class and such displays of emotion are not looked upon well in the legal academy.

Now, all though my exams are over, I still have a paper to write. And I’m writing it on the way that the law regulated women between 1924 and 1937. I won’t get into the details (no one wants to read about them on a blog, trust me). But as I am pouring through the secondary sources, searching for evidence to support my thesis, I’m finding myself utterly confused.

As I read about these laws that were “protective” in nature, some women academics are complaining that these laws were sneaky ways for men to keep women down. Other women authors acknowledge that they ended up having a discriminatory effect, but that it was accidental. The latter tends to be the view I side with. But what gets me is that the former gets so bent out of shape about these laws forgetting one thing: it was women who lobbied for them to be passed! Men (business owners and the like) were actually opposed to the protective legislation because it was too expensive to implement.

Dealing with how the law treats women in different circumstances is still a controversial question in society and constitutional law. There are many who are in support of a doctrine that would say that men and women must be treated equally. Some don’t want formal equality because they think that women will lose their privileged status in society.

Where I stand, I’m still not quite sure. But it brings me back to that day God revealed to me something I’d never seen before in Genesis 1:27. Yes, men and women were created equal, created in the image of God. But, we were created different. The differences are important. How secular law should reflect this fundamental reality, I still don’t know. But I have a feeling that figuring that out might be one reason that I’m in law school.

Yesterday I made the most amazing discovery of my law school career (which is, by the way, only a week and a half shy of being halfway over): horn books.

Now, I had heard of horn books before. My first semester, the lady at the law bookstore encouraged me to buy one for my criminal law class. When she said I wouldn’t have any assignments out of it, I wondered, “why would I buy a book I don’t have to read?” and kindly declined the offer.

As that first semester wore on, I heard more about horn books. They were good for finding black letter law. In fact, in judicial opinions, if the judge thinks the law is clear, she will often write, “it is horn book law that…” But they seemed to have a bad reputation with my professors. They may help you understand the basics, but not the analysis of the case. If we were studying the way we were supposed to, most of our professors said, we would have no need for horn books. So I smuggly patted myself on the back for not buying the crim horn book.

At the end of that semester, turns out I did alright (the lowest grade being the crim class), but, I dismissed horn books as something I would never use in my law school experience because they were a needless crutch.

Fast-forward to today. I have a Civil Rights Litigation Exam an hour the time I am writing this post. I’ve gone to all of the classes, and have found the material interesting. But I knew there were somethings from early in the semester that I didn’t have a firm grasp on. In addition to the fact that 50% of my class is on Law Review, I was worried my lack of familiarity with the subject matter would have a negative impact on my grade. Remember, law school exams are often 100% of your final grade, and graded on a mandatory curve.

The last day, I noticed that there were a number of people in the class with a horn book. I went to the bookstore to check it out for myself, but when I saw that it was over $60 and I really only needed a couple of chapters from it, I again thought it would be a useless crutch. But after four days of study from my book and notes, I knew that I needed something to fill in the gaps. I went to the library, got the horn book out of the reserve room and made the necessary copies.

As I went through the materials, I wondered, why haven’t I ever used one of these before? Everything is spelled out clearly, no obscurity that law textbooks love to include. And it says what happened in each case, the holding, what’s good about it, what’s wrong with it. My whole class was in this book. It was so much better than my textbook for learning the material. I spoke with some friends about it, and they said they had had similar epiphanies about the use of horn books, and thought the professors should just use them instead of textbooks.

As I was contemplating this last night, I thought about how legal studies parallel studying the Bible. Both are exercises in hermeneutics. And the thought comparison gave me pause about the horn book. I would never, never, never tell someone to read a book about the Bible over reading the Bible itself. Yes, they might be helpful to orient yourself with a particular passage or topic of Scripture, but ultimately, you can’t throughout the Bible and just read books about it. You have to keep reading the original source.

As much as we may complain about reading cases, they are the original source–why should I be happy reading a book about the source rather than the source itself? As an historian, this makes sense, you have to read the original. But then again, there is not a divine spirit of legal illumination whispering in my ear the proper case law interpretation that judge will hold me to when I argue a case in court.

So it’s not a perfect parallel. But it has reaffirmed my understanding of the need to feast on the Bible first and foremost, returning to it as the ultimate source. As for horn books, I may still never buy one.  will after all be held accountable for what was in the casebook, not the horn book. But they are quite helpful, and now I know where they are in the library…

Either way, ready or not, I need to get going, and take this exam!

One of my roommates was laughing at me earlier today. I couldn’t find my cell phone. For the second time this week. Or maybe third.

I lose things. All the time. My phone, my wallet, my keys, watches, hair clasps, purses. But I usually find what I’ve lost. It may take a couple minutes (I’ve been late to class because of lost keys more often than I’d like to admit), days, or even weeks, but stuff usually shows up.

So, no doubt that the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son are among my favorites in the Bible. Studying them out, and reading EGW’s commentary in Christ’s Object Lessons in conjunction with the Bible have greatly impacted my understanding of God’s love for us as well as for our responsibility to others in the church and to God as our Father.

But the normal applications are not on my mind right now. It’s something regarding my most recent lost item.

For Thanksgiving I drove up to Princeton to visit Jo, my roommate from CAMPUS. We did our best to try and get some work done, but also spent time relaxing (which was much needed). After a weekend full of eating, shopping, eating, Jane Austen, eating, and a little work, it was time to go. As I got in my car on Sunday morning, I reached in my purse to pull out my iPod to plug into the car to listen to music on the long journey back down to Virginia. To my shock, it was not there. Jo and I looked through my whole car, my bags, her apartment, and it was no where to be found.

“How sad!” she exclaimed. But I kind of shrugged it off. “Yeah, that stinks, but oh well, what can I do?” I asked myself. But as I sat in traffic that day, limited to the radio or the few CDs in my car, I started getting bored and kept thinking, “I’ll listen to a new podcast” only to remember no iPod. But again, I’d dismiss it and say it was alright, it’s just an electronic gadget after all.

But by the middle of the week, I couldn’t deny it. I missed my iPod! No music to listen to on my walk to school. No calendar reminder. No easy way to check email without lugging around my computer. Why was I bothering with keeping a stiff upper lip? It was something I had invested in, and I valued, I used, but then I’d lost.

What I realized was this: how stupid is it to pretend like losing something that means something to you means nothing to you at all?

Jesus gave us the “lost” parables to learn about how much He values us and how He pursues us. But this experience made me realize something. Even though we were created in His image, God didn’t have to show that He valued us so much. He could have just let us keep on being lost forever. Acted like He didn’t care. But that’s not what He did. He wasn’t afraid to show the His how invested He was in us.

Not that I’m saying I need to be that invested in my iPod. But if anything, I’ve learned, let’s be real about what we value. If the value is wrongly placed, then that’s another issue to address. Not being honest about a bad value, though, won’t fix the problem, it’ll probably make it worse.

Oh, and the end of the story. Jo called me right before the end of the Sabbath. One of the elders found it in the Sabbath School room we were in last week. Turns out it must have fallen out of my bag in there somehow. I told you, things always show up. But let that be another lesson: if you are going to lose something, lose it in the church (see “This Man Receiveth Sinners” in Christ’s Object Lessons, the section about the lost piece of silver).

This semester I have been having Bible studies with one of the Adventist undergrads here at UVa. She wants to learn more about what Adventists believe so she better knows how to answer her friends when they ask. Last week, after we talked about prophecies concerning Jesus, she opened up about the fact that she didn’t know what God wanted her to do with her life.

So this week’s study was dedicated to practical steps to determining God’s Will, especially in the area of choosing a major/profession. I am not wise enough, nor have enough life experience to share authoritatively on the matter. But I do have notes from a wise counselor that helped me think through this process, and which ultimately led me to law school, so I brought them along and we did a Bible study on it and spent some time in the SOP.

As I was preparing, I was reminded again why it is so important to mentor others in the church: through teaching them, God reminds us of lessons that we need to (re)learn. As I was flipping through the chapter “Lifework” in the book Education, I came across this quote that I have underlined, with notes scrawled on the side. The first part that caught my eye said, “Many a man whose talents are adapted for some other calling, is ambitious to enter a profession; and he who might have been successful as a farmer, an artisan, or a nurse, fills inadequately the position of a minister, a lawyer, or a physician” (emphasis added).

I sighed as I read that. I have been wondering a lot whether or not I was seeking a place that was beyond what God had intended for me in coming to law school, and the quote seemed to speak right towards that. But it was the part that was underlined that made me repent: “There are others, again, who might have filled a responsible calling, but who, for want of energy, application, or perseverance, content themselves with an easier place” Education, 267. Scribbled underneath I have written “summary of compenents need for success,” indicating that I had noticed elsewhere in the book that the elements that are necessary for success are energy, application and perseverance.

You see, while I was “successful” in high school and college, it didn’t take much work. I mean I worked, but it didn’t take a lot of perseverance or application to achieve my desired results. There were a couple challenging classes, but I would usually just be satisfied with what I could get in them rather than try to work hard for something better. I knew I had high enough grades in other areas to insulate me from one or two less then excellent grades.

But then I came to law school. And I have to work. Hard. Just to be average. And because I don’t have the same natural talent here that I did in college, it has often caused me to question whether this is where I’m supposed to be. But after reading the quotes, I realize, at heart, I’m lazy. I’d prefer the easy route. Maybe God called me to law school so that I would learn to use my energy not just to apply myself, but also to persevere. I think those are two things that I have lacked in my work ethic up until this point. If it wasn’t natural, I’d just drop it. He’s developing in me a better work ethic.

So I’m thankful for the student asking for help, because her questions have really caused me to evaluate my own life, the path that I’m going down, whether it’s the one God has intended for me, and if I am doing my part in cooperating with divine power.

With finals less than four weeks away, for God’s sake (Isaiah 43:7), I’m praying for energy. I’m praying for application. I’m praying for perseverance.

So help me, God.