REFLECTION//it's a little early to be saying this, but another year is about to go by before we know it

Last weekend, I went with a few friends from church on a retreat as part of a seminar called "The Course of your Life" As with most retreats, I did a lot of thinking, and as you can probably gather from the name of the book, I did a lot of thinking about... the course of my life.   I'm still trying to process a lot of the things we discussed, and it also reminded me of my new year's resolutions for 2012. 

I'm not sure when I started this, but somewhere down the road, I started to form the habit of writing big prayers at the beginning of the year, and then coming back at the end of the year and seeing what happened.  Granted, a lot of them are "goody two-shoes" prayers, like "Lord please help me to thirst for Your Word and desire it with all my heart" (although as safe as that sounds, it's actually probably one of the most dangerous prayers you can pray) or "God, help me to love my neighbors with Christ-like love this year".  But you know, I also put some of the shallow-est most outlandish requests in there too.  Don't get me wrong, God is in no way by any stretch of the imagination some sort of genie that we just shoot out requests to.  However, I do keep a habit of recording my prayer requests, because the crazy thing is that God answers them and is totally faithful to them.  A lot of times, when I look back to what I wrote, I'm so amazed that He answers prayers that I already forgot I prayed.  Imagine that! Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes the answer is no, but what remains the same is He is more faithful to my prayers than I even am to my own.  

I am reminded of this, when I look back on one of the things I prayed about for this year.  I prayed that I'd learn that I could fight for things that I believed in and be able to take more risks. To not be afraid to rest more, pray more and not be afraid to pursue things even if it felt like I was starting from zero again.  I think I wrote these things as an ambiguous ideal that sounded nice, but I feel like I'm actually approaching a crossroads in which I am grappling with these things, and I wonder what is going to happen.  A little scary, but kind of exciting too.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Thought I'd share a picture of my lovely grandmother on this day to celebrate women. When my brothers and I were little, we'd go to her house everyday after school, and she'd prepare us Chinese treats and make sure we finished our homework before watching TV.  As my brothers and I got older, we gradually learned more and more about her life, and how complex and courageous it was. 

I thought of her and the many women who pioneered a better life for our generation as I was listening to this interview about the Miss Representation documentary that premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival. I don't really identity myself as a feminist, or at least not in the strictest sense (as defined by Betty Friedan in her book the Feminine Mystique).  However, it doesn't really take a feminist to acknowledge the negative affect that the over-sexualization of  women in media has on our dignity and self respect as human beings; and it does make me wonder what sort of legacy we will leave behind for our children.

Caroline Heldman talks about how our system has been set up so that women compete against other women in order to gain male attention. In the interview, she states that the amount of time women spend on thinking about their bodies and habitual body monitoring over a lifetime is the same amount of time it would take to pursue 3 PhDs. That's not to say that all of us without 3 PhDs under our belt should feel bad about ourselves either- a woman's worth is no more defined by her academic achievement than her physical appearance; but it should be alarming that the amount of time we spend looking in the mirror and hating ourselves is not only an incredible amount of time wasted but is also actually causing us to backtrack.

As we allow ourselves to determine our worth (or the worth of our moms, grandmas, teachers, friends coworkers, strangers we see on the street) by our physical appeal to men much set by unrealistic portrayals of women on covers of magazines- we should be none too surprised to live in a society that  has erased and degraded our middle aged and older women, women who are often the people who can have the most profound affect on our lives and society. 

I definitely know that I am not immune to this in the way I value myself and others, and it's sobering to think what a shame that is.  I'm not saying that I'm going to burn all my magazines tonight and throw all my make up down the drain, but it does remind me that I don't need to let these things have power over me, and reminds me to stop and open my eyes to images of real women with true worth.  Women like my grandmother, or aunts and mom and teachers who have poured our their lives and sacrificed their time and energy to love me.