Decisions, Decisions

I have a really hard time making decisions in general. I'm generally afraid of making the wrong decision, particularly leading people into bad situations. And by bad situations I generally mean bad restaurants. Recently, I haven't been able to make a decision about anything: are we going to move? where? or stay?; sell the car?; what to do about my job....?; should I get another part time job? haven't you been thinking about that for the last five months?; where should we go for the 4th of July?; what should I do with my vacation time?; where should we go/when should we go for vacation?; what color to paint my new window project?. These are literally the questions that plague me everyday. Yuck.

Until today. A friend is trying to convince me to take seminary classes. I've been a hard sell on everything else in my life right now, but all of a sudden after just a few minutes of telling me why I should do it, I found words coming out of my mouth whose origin I was unsure of. They were decisive words. Action words. I found my fingers typing in the website and looking up information. I'm pretty sure the decision had already been made and I just stumbled upon it.

So I went home to start thinking about this idea of taking classes and to begin the reading list I'd been given, and I found myself unwinding by working on my window project. Musing on our conversation and future plans I hardly noticed that I was sitting in my living room with my window project, which had sat there for three weeks while I made up my mind, and I was painting it gray.

As I mentioned in my last post, I don't know exactly what the purpose of this blog is. I don't have sarcastic and witty life commentaries. I could post recipes and pictures but there are people out there who do a far better job. I don't have a cute kid whose pictures I post for grandparents far away (yet). My life itself does not pass its time in glorious fashion with incredible and unique experiences. However, I think I may have found it. Let's just say, for argument's sake, that I push forward with these seminary classes. Well, maybe I can blog about what I learn. Practice writing about it, thinking about it, describing things in laymen's terms. Ways I might apply theology to my life, where I am now. Probably equally as uninteresting, but it doesn't get any worse than a readership of zero :)

Just a thought.

Handwriting and Blogging

Every year the non-profit that I work for has a staff appreciation party right before the teachers go on vacation for the summer. It's supposed to be a big appreciation for all the staff but the administration inevitably ends up helping in the end, plus, given that we stay for the summer and the rest of the staff has summer vacation, the teachers seem to get a bigger kick out of it than we do. But who doesn't love a good party, away from your desk and emails?

So this year's party was Mardi Gras themed. It's much easier to plan themes, etc., when out of 79 staff there are only 3 men. The Mardi Gras shindig included caricature artists, lots of beads, a fortune teller, masks, flip book maker and a handwriting analyst. I love handwriting. Sometimes, I confess, when I'm journaling, I pay far more attention to how I write than what I write. Despite copious amounts of skepticism (her business card had shooting stars on it and she wore a magnifying glass as a necklace), I was anxious to have my handwriting analyzed. I mean, her sign said she was a Ph.D., so I figured she must be trustworthy.

I heard a couple people who went before me say that she really nailed them, but I felt sure that was wish-fulfillment or whatever the appropriate psychological jargon is. I sat down at the table and copied the lines, extra careful to be unstudied and natural. She picked up the paper and started scribbling a bunch of things at the bottom. She started saying things that were just so ridiculously true that I was very disarmed--I like perfection. Not a perfectionist but always see a better way to do things, always want to improve. Very busy, not just in schedule but in my mind. Stressed. A lot of open ended questions about the future--Was it maybe my job? (yes) housing? (yes) car? (yes). She mentioned a few more inane things that were true and started to hand the paper back to me. "Oh," she said, "and you're very creative. I see a lot of creative writing ability here. Do you keep a journal? Well you should hang on to them--they would be a good basis for your book."

So maybe this is my book-in-making. Thus the reason that I don't blog about what goes on in my daily life. It would never generate readership of any internet or print form. Not that I'm exactly pursuing either of those things with my current blog... Whenever I figure out what the purpose of this blog is, I promise to be much more intentional about my posts. For now, here are the thoughts bouncing around my head.

A New Name

What is it about my name that is hard for people? I personally think my name is a great name. I would name a daughter Caroline if that wasn't weird--unfortunately, I have a feeling that it would be a little strange to have two Carolines running around one household, which means one of us would have to give it up and be called something else. But who would want to be called something else when their name is Caroline?

Despite the virtues of my name, it doesn't seem to work for anyone else. In school people always thought it was Carolyn. Even when I clarify that it is CaroLINE, people still spell it wrong. Please-- Carolyn is so 1970s. And when I think Carolyn, I think blonde. Which I am not. Now, my good friends don't have any trouble knowing the correct pronunciation of my name, though there seem to be issues with the execution, as no one in my life has called me "Caroline" for more than approximately the first two times we met. Caroline has turned into Care, C-line, Lina, Carolina, Caro [Kay-Roh], Caro [Kah-ro (Spanish)], Carol, and multitude of other nicknames with only loose connections to my actual name. In college, the nickname that stuck skipped my first name altogether and derived itself from my last name: "Coop", short for Cooper. I believe it may have had some connection with a character on the tv show "The O.C." Because my life has so much in common with Marissa Cooper, played by Mischa Barton... I won't lie, I really liked the nickname Coop. I even miss it. All I'm asking is, why never Caroline? Is it just too long? Do people not like the three syllables?

There is this crazy phenomenon that occurs in the life of a woman. At some point, most women grow up and get married. And when they get married, most women take their husband's last name as their last name. I've heard plenty of people say that it is an outdated and anti-feminist tradition and that women should have the freedom to be named whatever they want. I understand that sentiment because I was kind of sad to change my name. I really liked being Caroline Farlow Cooper. I liked being called Coop. I liked being a part of the Coopers. But the reason we change our names goes beyond tradition or women's rights--we change our names because it is a part of the way marriage is a picture of God's love for His people. Part of becoming one flesh is the husband taking cues from Christ and the wife taking cues from the Church. As a bride, I change my name to show that I am adopted into a new family. I suppose here on earth you could spend your whole life arguing which family is better, but in the meta-story from which this human tradition takes its inheritance the new family is indisputably the better place to be. We leave the old family of sin and despair, and cleave to the new family of redemption and reconciliation whose Head is Christ, and with that transformation, we leave behind our old family name.

People still don't know what to do with my name. People who hang around Brian long enough start to call me Carol, because that's what he calls me. However, the people that I spend time with who don't get to see much of Brian and never knew me as Caroline Cooper have taken to calling me "Smiley". Hearing that nickname is so strange for me--the whole time Brian and I have been together, I've heard people call him Smiley, and so to hear that nickname that is ingrained in my head as being his applied to me is strange.A voice in my head whispers--Wait, that's not me. That's Brian!

And to think, this earthly tradition is just a shadow of the reality of the Kingdom of God... Could I really be called good and righteous because I am a part of His good and righteous family? Could I really now be an heir with Christ? If He calls me blessed because of Christ, then will others call me blessed as well? Not because of anything I've done, but because I've been adopted into the people of God.

It doesn't make me quite so frustrated to be called Smiley anymore..