Friday, July 31, 2009

Who(se) Am I?


An old friend reconnected with me on Facebook and told me she had looked at my blog. She had such words of encouragement that I thought I would start this up again.

Everything has changed since my last post.

I am now the mother of the exquisite Josiah Rippee Germer and nothing else matters.

That's not true, entirely.

What is true, though, is how I see everything through the Parent lens now. I feel the weight and glory of God's analogy of the Father-Child relationship so much more poignantly than I ever thought I could.

I would die for this little boy.

I've never really been able to say that with confidence, but I would in fact hand over my life if it would mean that his would be spared.

My love for him is fiercely protective, fluidly in rhythm with my heartbeat and my blood pumping. We are inextricably connected for all of our lives and I have never been happier about the loss of independence.

This new chapter, though, has had me thinking about my life as a follower of Jesus in a new old way. I have found a refreshing newness with the advent of a C-group of my own. I have had only two meetings with three particular 15-year-old girls, but those few hours have been so precious to me and have influenced me in ways I did not anticipate.

Teaching them has helped me see how far off track I had gotten in my attempt at assimilating to Central Texas culture. With the forced loss of my nose ring last fall, I felt a forced loss of much more of my identity as a consumer of goods and services, and a follower of Jesus' Way.

I feel that I was swept up in things simply because they were branded a certain way, falling prey to greenwashing and doing and purchasing things that made me feel superior to others who lacked information or "didn't care".

In my quest to save, I think I alienated myself and others.

Yes, eating real and healthy food is important, but what good does it do to eat alone instead of joyously, entertaining angels? Pregancy does weird things to our bodies, and a craving for meat did me in as a vegetarian. And honestly, I feel better about it. I feel less snooty and more open to sharing meals with people at the top of a holy list of sinners. Being a vegetarian, for me, in Texas, became more of a class and economic issue and less of a healthy "shalom" of restoring God's people to abundance again. Perhaps it will get there for me (again? for the first time?) in the future. For now, though, I am okay with the chicken breast in my fridge and sharing barbeque in the sweaty local joints with joyful Jesus lovers and those starting to catch the Good News.

To tie this back in to the title, I have begun thinking about who or what I belong to.

In some ways, it used to be food and Jesus, maybe in that order.

I guess I am rethinking who I am and whose I am.