Confession: I have actually had a hangover. Once. And before you judge me, read the whole story. Here's the backdrop. I was in a cute little pub in Western Ireland and completely (COMPLETELY) naive. I'd turned 21 in March, several months before I'd entered that pub, so if I'd wanted to get legally drunk prior to that night, I'd already had ample opportunity to do it. I thought the apple cider on the chalkboard menu over the bar (where you also order your pub food) was the same kind of apple cider I'd had at many Southern Baptist fall festivals back in Texas. About six pints in (I guess I was thirsty.), my Botany professor bought me a cup of coffee. I still remember what he said. "You're a little more lively and uninhibited than usual tonight." 😂 Then he explained about the alcohol content in hard cider. Only, the word "hard" wasn't on the menu, so I didn't even have that information before ordering something completely foreign to me. In fact, I was so naive, I'd never even heard the phrase hard cider. And I was in a foreign country after all, so I assumed things would taste a bit, well, foreign. Having never tasted anything with any alcohol content other than some prescription cough syrup here and there in my childhood, I had zero context... nothing to compare to my first experience with hard apple cider. When I finally started to feel the full effects of six pints of hard cider, I laid my head down on the table, and he bought me another cup of coffee. I weighed all of about 100 pounds, so you can imagine. The really fun part of that whole story is that we had to board a ferry the very next day to cross an incredibly choppy part of the Atlantic in a thunderstorm. 😳
I sat with Dr. Vertrees (my Botany professor) on the boat the next morning. Much older than me and considerably well-versed in the immaturity of the average college student, he was intrigued by the fact that, at 21, I had never experienced a hangover before that morning. I'm not saying I wasn't immature. I'm immature now. I'm just saying I didn't partake of alcoholic beverages in college. As a college student, I worked full time and carried a full class load. I didn't have time to party. So, in the midst of the tossing of the boat and the churning of my stomach, we had our first conversation about God. In all honesty, I think he was just trying to help me keep my mind off my aching head. He was an introvert too and probably would have welcomed a quiet morning on the boat. But his empathy won out.
In the eight weeks or so that we spent in the UK, Dr. Vertrees and I talked about God a lot, and I did not have any more hangovers of the alcoholic kind. 😊
Botany completely fascinated me. Even on holiday in the UK, I was a good student. And I think that Dr. Vertrees was thankful to have someone in his class that wasn't just trying to fulfill a requirement for a science credit. Someone was actually eager to learn about something that he was passionate about.
He was also an atheist.
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| One of the few photos of me from that summer in the UK. I spent a good deal of time sightseeing alone or with my professors and their wives. I didn't have a lot in common with the kids around my age on the trip. The lovely lady in the photo with me is Catherine, wife of my political science professor, Walter Toxey. We were just about to see Romeo & Juliet together at the Globe Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England. |
There was never any evidence that any of our conversations made a dent with Dr. Vertrees, except that he usually brought up the topic of God with me at pubs and on our travels from points a to b, as if he were genuinely intrigued and wanted to know more. I believe we both enjoyed our talks together, and I still pray that those conversations at least planted a seed that ultimately grew into a genuine faith for him. I took two more classes with Dr. Vertrees back in Texas, but we had no more opportunities to talk of God. We still got to talk a lot about trees and wildflowers though, and I hope those chats brought back to his memory my utter conviction that a loving God made them on purpose, for His personal pleasure and for our physical well-being and enjoyment... that He gave us eyes, minds, and hearts to enjoy their beauty and complexity.
I passed up lots of social opportunities (not all that hard for me as it turns out), wore old clothes, tried to conserve gas, and worked lots of overtime to save the money I needed to make that trip. I tried hard to be a good worker at my job so that I could take a leave of absence that summer from what I considered a desirable position in the commercial branch of a bank that handled large cash deposits. I wanted/needed them to save my position so that I could return to it, and they did. Maybe that incubation period set me up with the social energy to take a trip like that. I spent a lot of time alone in those days just hanging out with a piano in a campus practice room, studying, reading, writing, and working. I'm still kind of amazed that I summoned the courage to go. I didn't even try to drum up any close friends to go with me. I'm convinced that on some subconscious level, I really wanted to be mostly alone and anonymous there.
Those conversations with Dr. V. didn't drain me. Those conversations inspired me. They sent me to my knees in prayer and to my Bible for coherent answers to his questions. They were deep conversations full of personal stories. He spent time instructing me outside of the classroom environment on the finer elements of his favorite subject. He told me all about his wife and their home and how he came to love the study of plants... stories about his time as a student and his early days as a professor. After a day all alone on a rented bicycle by a wind-swept Irish shore, I returned to dinner with the group full of life and conversation. I was able to completely ignore the gals that were upset with me for disappearing at the shops downtown and revel in the fact that I'd biked a 21-mile coastline in just a few hours, stopping off for a stroll through the ruins of a fort dating back several thousand years.
What drained me were conversations about how others on my trip were planning to get their purchases from Harrod's home (I put myself on a bus and spent another day in the British Museum while everyone else went shopping.). One evening, I spent almost an entire night singing with a group of Irishmen in a pub. No problem. But put me on the incredibly noisy Tube with a bunch of folks that have nothing to talk about but the cute waiters and waitresses at Hard Rock Cafe, and I come away completely deflated.
It's not that I took myself that seriously. It's not that there was never a time to talk about the cute waiter. It's just that right about that time in my life, I couldn't find the will to care about those things. When you've just lost a close friend and you've gone away for a while to deal with it, you suddenly face up to the fact that your time with the people you care about might be a lot shorter that you thought. Everything comes into laser focus around those events... and it's impossible to ever go back to being the person you were before. I'd learned that a person can be simultaneously naive about hard cider, and a little too well-schooled in the finality of death. Suddenly, time became way too precious for mindless blather. Suddenly, the eternal destination of your atheist Botany professor is just about the most important thing there is.
I was an introvert before I went to the UK. But right about that time, I'd begun to embrace my introversion in a big way. Nobody I knew then had already found and lost a potential soul mate. Lots of close friends found that they couldn't handle my grief, so they slowly drifted out of my life. My time overseas was convenient for everyone, including me.
But the same character quality that distanced me from some people in my life also allowed me to seek out and learn from people who'd actually lived long enough to have some wisdom for what I was experiencing. I don't think I told a single person about what I was going through on that trip, but I still felt some relief in the presence of those teachers... some of whom were traveling with their wives. They actually seemed to want me around and to discuss important things with me. Something in my personality allowed me to be taken seriously by an aged, atheist professor.
And I know exactly what I'm doing here. I'm making excuses, because I've never been completely comfortable with this aspect of my personality. It makes me weird to some people. And honest to goodness, even people who perpetually feel weird never get completely used to feeling that way. It's so much easier to just fit.
But I try. Even now, in my mid-40s, I try to be normal and chatter and have lots of surface-level conversations. I say "yes" over and over again while my mind and body resist. I bring a book with me everywhere so I can sit nonchalantly in a corner, minding my own business, hiding out behind its covers. Then I hit a wall and I can hardly function for weeks. The covers of the books aren't nearly big enough to hide me adequately. I can't feel comfortable anywhere.
I was helping out at a curriculum sale the other day and thinking to myself, "You're such a fake." Everyone can see right through you. I could hear myself talking as if I were listening from outside myself. "Oh, look! I LOVE Elisabeth Elliot! I didn't see this one!" Gush, gush. Pretend like you're what you've always wanted to be, and maybe you'll convince someone. I can hear myself telling a friend who is sharing some real heartache and suffering intensely, "You be you. Don't change to make someone else happy. Don't turn yourself inside out to please people. Be the best version of the person God made you to be so that you can please Him and Him only. The important people will love you for you." And when I put myself in the car to go home, tears immediately drop into my lap. I'm so good at giving that advice and so incapable of taking it. I kept the facade up long enough to convince her, I think, but I come away feeling like a complete idiot.
It's nausea and head aches and soul ache after soul ache. It's just like that hangover followed by a trip over a storm-tossed sea. It's all these loose ends all knotted up and tangled together. But I can't get away long enough to put them all right again except late at night or early in the morning. In fact, this morning, I woke up under the extreme extrovert I'm mothering at about 6 a.m. Trying to extricate my arms and legs as quietly as possible from that uncomfortable position while partially hanging off the edge of a king-sized bed, I naturally woke him. Tired as he was, he would not stay asleep because that would mean being alone in that part of the house. Many mornings I hear him wake with my husband who ushers him into bed with me and I want to scream bloody murder. "He's almost nine! He can finish the morning in his own bed." But I don't. My extroverted husband instinctively understands that our extroverted son desperately needs to be with someone after he leaves for work. And my empathy wins over my need. I don't know how to feed my own need except to fall into this same "hangover" every few weeks, to pray to the only One who can possibly meet my needs, and to wait impatiently for my head to clear.
I'm reading to my daughter a book that I read only a few months ago to my son. George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind is an allegorical story that I'm still struggling to completely understand. But if I were asked to explain what I think it means, this is what I would tell someone. I think it's an allegory for the character and nature of God. I think George MacDonald is trying to get to the heart of our misunderstanding of God and instruct us on His inability to be anything but good, even when all we can see is all bad and all hard.
Here are a few of the words I read tonight.
"Diamond, dear," she said, "be a man. What is fearful to you is not the least fearful to me."
"But it can't hurt you," murmured Diamond, "for you're it."
"Then if I'm it, and I have you in my arms, how can it hurt you?"
So often I feel so frustrated with Him for making me so awkward and backward and anxious and introverted. I want to be angry that despite the fact that I need to be alone... I really need people and relationships. And aside from all that I need, I have a husband and two kiddos that need me to at least appear balanced and whole. And that's the lie I tell myself. Because I know I'll never be able to be everything to them... not in the way I want to be. If I were able to be that for them or for me, we'd never experience the Everything that is Jesus.
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