Signs of Health

This post can serve as a "state of the dissertation" update of sorts. When I last updated, things were pretty unsettled with my topic and proposal draft. Realizing that was less than six weeks ago, I am thankful to be able to report that the proposal is coming along much better. In fact, the proposal is essentially written. Right now, I'm basically revising.

My defense date is still up in the air. Even though I've received some excellent feedback from my colleagues at school, there's still quite a bit of work to be done, and plenty of consultation with my advisor that will need to happen, before I can meet with my full committee. Because it's so perilously close to the end of the semester, that's a lot to ask for at this point; I'm not 100% sure the defense will happen within the timeframe that's technically required. But, given where I was a couple of months ago, I'm relieved to be where I am.

The other great thing, and this is more the intended focus of this post, is that my attitude is markedly improved. I feel more confidence in what I'm doing and more hopeful that it's worth doing and can be done. It's still very difficult; I've become painfully aware of the weaknesses in my work ethic and ability to self-structure. There are days like today, when I find it next to impossible to make headway. But I think my mindset and morale on most days reflects an undeniable improvement. That's a definite answer to prayer, so thank you to everyone who's been following along.

I'll have more to write about this later, but I think one of the toughest things about this phase is that all your academic insecurities have a way of surfacing. If that starts to get the better of you, to the point that you've all but ceased believing in your project, then motivation dies. Too often, self-regard and sense of direction go with it. No matter how well you know that your self-worth isn't supposed to be determined by your academic success or failure. When you've sunk years into academia as your main area of gifting, and then you lose both your edge and your will to fight for it, it is devastating. It also starts to feel as if everyone in the world is more "useful" and is doing something more worthwhile than you. It's a terrible cycle.

However, I have been encouraged lately to see what I am interpreting as signs of health, personally and vocationally, in a few areas. The first is simply the fact that I can envision a future for my current project. A lot of the credit for this goes to my colleagues who've hung in there with me through several different drafts and offered genuinely helpful feedback. When people you respect are excited about your work, it's harder to dismiss it, no matter how much you might want to!

Second: Since I started my doctoral program, on the recommendation of a professor, I've been keeping a list of ideas for future research and possible books and articles. I have no idea how soon I will have the opportunity to pursue any of them, much less how many of them will prove viable and interesting. But the encouraging thing is that I have been adding things to the list again. For a while, I felt so burdened by the mere idea of a future in academia that I wanted to pretend that the list didn't exist.

The last thing is that, recently -- I forget which day it was, maybe it was Monday, maybe last week -- I found myself thinking, sincerely, "I am thankful to be in graduate school." I can promise you I don't say that every day. But the fact that I was able to say it and mean it, after the troubled months I've had, is a huge deal.

My feelings about where I am in my life right now remain pretty complicated. But I am glad I didn't quit.

Book Review: John Newton by John Crotts

John Newton (Bitesize Biographies series) by John Crotts
EP Books (2013); 141 pp.
Cross Focused Reviews Blog Tour

I had the opportunity to review a Bitesize Biography a couple of months ago and enjoyed it, so when I learned that a volume on John Newton -- author of one of my favorite hymn texts -- was available for review, I couldn't pass it up.

One thing I appreciate about this series, at least in the couple of examples I have read, is the various styles of the authors. Simonetta Carr's Renée of France has a historian's touch. While that style is more to my taste, John Crotts' lively storytelling would probably appeal to readers who aren't typically drawn to biographies. His book also struck me as being just as well-researched.

Crotts has an infectious love for his subject that leads the reader to give thanks for God's gracious work in sinners, including themselves, as they move through Newton's story. It wasn't hard to share his enthusiasm for Newton: I immediately started learning new things about this remarkable pastor. Many people have heard about Newton's involvement in the slave trade, his eventual repentance, and his authorship of "Amazing Grace." There's so much more to his story, however.

I appreciated Crotts' emphasis on the slowness of Newton's conversion. I find it comforting to read accounts like this -- not everyone can pinpoint the moment when the Holy Spirit regenerated them, or they may be led to doubt the genuineness of their conversion because of later failings. It took awhile for spiritual fruit to become evident in Newton's life, but he was able to look back on his prodigal youth with gratitude for the Lord's patience and mercy.

Probably my favorite part of the book, though, was the story of Newton's friendship with the gifted poet William Cowper, who suffered terribly from depression. Even though I was familiar with the basic outline, I couldn't read this section without tears.

This book could be especially encouraging for ministers or seminarians; I was quite impressed as I read about Newton's sheer energy and creativity for sharing the gospel and caring for his flock. He personally catechized children, hosted (beside his wife) teas and prayer-meetings in his home, became an adoptive father at an advanced age, and seemed to have an equal love for preaching God's Word in rural and urban settings. Of course, he is best remembered for his prolific hymn- and letter-writing ministries, which Crotts sums up very nicely in the book's final chapters.

It's a quick read, it's engagingly written, and I recommend it. If you're anything like me, you'll be inspired to track down a copy of Newton's published letters as soon as you can. At the very least, you'll be moved to celebrate God's gracious work in sinners like Newton and yourself.

The publisher provided me with a review copy of this book, and I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.

State of the Dissertation update (March)

The last time I posted an update about my dissertation, things were a lot less settled than I had hoped they would be by that stage. Truth be told, they still are . . . hence the lack of updates. There have been several frustrating ups and downs even since the beginning of this semester. And now we're approaching the end of the semester with alarming speed.

The upshot is, I have about a month to finish writing my proposal draft. There's really no wiggle room on that. I have to complete it before the end of my third year. And after the draft is complete, I have to submit it and defend it before a committee of about five faculty members. This is frightening, because it's hard for me to imagine that I will be prepared to pass a rigorous oral defense in six weeks' time.

The good news is that I seem to have a better developed thesis than I did a few months ago. Also, one of my professors helped me break down the parts of my draft and assign due dates over the next several weeks, so that I have a path for getting the entire thing written and critiqued in an organized way.

I think it can be done. It does mean that I will have to work harder than I have done all year, basically. Because, truthfully, my brainpower, energy, and engagement with this project has been effectively halved since last summer; I've been aware all along that I am operating at half my capacity, at best. I'm not really able to account for that. I have some inklings about what's at the root of some of it, but I can't really explain it. Not that there would be an excuse, even if I could explain it. It doesn't change the fact that I have to get this done.

I'm praying that I will gain the physical energy to concentrate on this project, as well as the renewed sense of investment I need to really own it and have confidence in what I'm doing. Also faith that the Holy Spirit is supplying what I need through this process. Any piece of that would feel like a miracle at this point. I just want to do what I need to do in order to pass my defense, advance to candidacy, and begin actual writing. Less than two months, now, in which to pull that off.

Thoughts on turning 30

Today my pastor quoted from this 1889 sermon by Charles Spurgeon. I found this excerpt particularly resonant:

I would suggest to everyone here to cry to the Lord to make us conscious of our natural barrenness. Gracious ones, may the Lord make us mourn our comparative barrenness, even if we do bear some fruit. To feel quite satisfied with yourself is perilous: to feel that you are holy, and indeed that you are perfect, is to be on the brink of the pit of pride. If you hold your head so high, I am afraid you will strike it against the top of the doorway. If you walk on stilts, I fear you will fall. It is a safer thing to feel, "Lord, I do serve thee, and I am no deceiver. I do love thee; thou hast wrought the works of the Spirit in me. But alas! I am not what I want to be, I am not what I ought to be. I aspire to holiness: help me to attain it. Lord, I would lie in the very dust before thee to think that after being digged about and dunged, as I have been, I should bear such little fruit. I feel myself less than nothing. My cry is, "God be merciful to me."

I didn't have too many expectations of what turning 30 would be like. I don't think I expected the last bit of my 20s to feel so empty; so low on hope and direction. I can't pretend to understand what God might be doing in all of that. It does seem that He has been removing things that I have looked to for security and self-definition, and using that process to expose my sin and great need of Him. I know that is a gracious and grateful thing for Him to do. It isn't always easy to feel and acknowledge it as such.

My twenties were turbulent in some ways -- I guess that's not unusual -- and I'm experiencing something I might describe as introspection fatigue. The "who am I and what am I doing?" questions might be healthy for a time, but even though the answers seem far less resolved than I had hoped they would be at this age, I am weary of focusing on myself. I long to pour myself out, but at the same time, I'm becoming painfully aware of how empty I truly am. I don't know what's there for me to give.

The only cure for that I can think of, and the only goal I would dare to venture for the coming decade, is for Jesus to become greater before my sight, greater than my own troubled spirit. I hope and pray that as I become more fixed on Christ, His love would become so much more real to me that the identity questions, the insecurities and fears, would echo less and less insistently. Maybe then I can start to be freed up to love His people more and grow in the desire to serve His church. Would you pray this for me? I can't think of a better birthday gift.

I don't know what to expect in the coming years, except that I am certain there will be challenges; on my best days, I'm dazed by their number and scope. At those times, I can only pour out my anxiety and vexation to the Lord and ask Him to remember me. At such times, He mercifully reminds me of what He has done in the past. Today, for example, I spent my birthday going to church and hanging out with my husband. It hit me just how shocking those two things would have been to my twenty-year-old self, when I couldn't have wanted less to do with the church, and couldn't have fathomed that in a little more than five years, I'd have a husband. The Holy Spirit has been at work in me, in ways that have always been beyond my prediction and my petitions -- and He still is! Fed by that promise, I can go my way with a glad heart.
 

Book Review: Renée of France by Simonetta Carr

Renée of France (Bitesize Biographies series) by Simonetta Carr
EP Books (2013); 128 pp.
Cross Focused Reviews Blog Tour

I have been intrigued by Simonetta Carr ever since I heard about her Christian Biographies for Young Readers series, so when I had the opportunity to review a biography she has written for a general audience, I was quite excited! The book, introducing French princess and Italian duchess Renée of France
(1510—1575), didn't disappoint.


What I love about this book is the choice of subject. Not only is Renée a less familiar figure (I knew very little about the Italian Reformation when I started reading), but she provides a window into the complexities of her era -- theological, pastoral, and political. As Carr points out from the very first page, our perception of events as monumental as the Reformation tends toward the simplistic. The story of a layperson like Renée, who was caught up in those changes with all the doubts and challenges they provoked, can help us understand what was at stake -- truths and freedoms we take largely for granted in our context.

I won't detail Renée's biography here, except to note that she struggled to stand for her newly Reformed convictions in the midst of many pressures: a religiously unsympathetic husband; the sometimes questionable theology of fugitives to whom she offered hospitality; witnessing the horrors of the religious wars seizing Europe. At one point, isolated from her family and under pressure from an inquisitor sent by the king of France, Renée renounced her Protestant faith and agreed to receive the Catholic Eucharist. We know little about what was in Renée's heart at this time, but we know that, after her husband's death, Renée eagerly provided refuge and education to many persecuted Huguenots. Carr does not attempt to settle the scholarly debate as to whether Renée is better viewed as a Protestant heroine or a vacillating Roman Catholic. While Renée's apparent fluctuations can be frustrating to us, as they were to her contemporaries, her will indicates that she died with a humble confession of God's sovereign mercy.

Carr brings out a number of questions posed to us by Renée's story -- questions that we often avoid in today's church. Is it okay to participate in religious behaviors that conflict with our beliefs, especially to avoid offense to others? What does it look like for Christians to love their enemies? The differences between the Mass and the Lord's Supper were life and death matters in Renée's time, and her stumbles appear to have been due in part to poor pastoral oversight. Do we still see these matters as crucial today?

This book also provides a wonderful glimpse of John Calvin's pastoral character, as much of the narrative is based on Renée and Calvin's correspondence lasting from 1537 until his death in 1564.

While this book assumes some knowledge of Reformation history, it is certainly not just for historians. Anyone interested in the impact of Reformation events on individual lives will find it a fascinating read. There is an excellent annotated bibliography for those who would like to venture into more scholarly territory. Simonetta Carr is a keen interpreter of history, and I can't wait to see which personalities she will acquaint us with in her future projects!

If you are interested in hearing an interview with Simonetta Carr, please click here.

The publisher provided me with a review copy of this book, and I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.

Book Review: Suffering Well by Paul Grimmond

Suffering Well: The Predictable Surprise of Christian Suffering by Paul Grimmond
Publisher: Matthias Media (2011); 166 pp.

I was glad for the opportunity to review Paul Grimmond's book Suffering Well: The Predictable Surprise of Christian Suffering, part of the Guidebooks for Life series published by Matthias Media. This book challenged me, and not in the way I was expecting.

The author makes it clear from the beginning that this book isn't a study of theodicy (an attempt to explain why suffering exists in light of God's goodness), but an exploration of how the Bible calls Christians to suffer well. In other words, as he puts it, the book is "more of an inoculation than a remedy."

Grimmond sketches the increasingly dominant cultural myths which have begun to color our reading of the Bible instead of vice versa. This "modern anti-suffering grid" inhibits us from thinking biblically about the nature of suffering and skews the questions we ask about it. We demand that God explain Himself to us, instead of remembering His sovereignty over us, His creatures.

The hinge-point of the book is chapter 5, "The Surprisingly Predictable Surprise." Here Grimmond makes the argument that, unlike the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, the New Testament is not primarily concerned about the suffering which is the result of the fallenness of our world (terminal disease, natural disaster).  Rather, it repeatedly makes the claim that suffering at the hands of an unbelieving world is guaranteed for those who follow a suffering Lord. Belonging to Christ is a death sentence for every believer, because it's only through the suffering that comes of living for Jesus that we will also be glorified with Him.

Most Western Christians don't think in these terms anymore. In this respect, there is a tremendous distance between us and our earliest counterparts. Grimmond argues that, while we tend to think of this form of suffering in terms of physical persecution, the New Testament actually uses much broader language to describe it. We've forgotten how strongly Scripture exhorts believers to be ready to be reviled, spoken against, and maligned for their obedience to Christ.

Grimmond sums it up this way on p. 97:

The great danger for Christians living in the West is not physical death at the hands of persecutors, but the slow, spiritual death of a thousand tiny compromises crouched at our door, waiting to devour our hearts. And one of the saddest predicaments of our age is that at the moment we need it most, we have let go of a robust theology of belonging to Christ and suffering for him.

He goes on to say that, while it is right for relatively privileged Christians to remember their brothers and sisters who are subject to physical persecution in other parts of the world, we don't serve each other by denying that we suffer at all. When we downplay other forms of suffering, "we fail to teach each other to live without shame in the face of the more subtle pressures in our culture." Or, we become preoccupied with defending a God who lets cancer and tsunamis happen, forgetting that the Bible's focus is to call us to live such godly lives that the world will hate us for it.

In summary, I think what Grimmond's arguing is that we will make any excuse for our disobedience, hiding from the fact that our Christian lives should be marked by discomfort in this world. We will even use the distant reality of persecuted Christians, and our sophisticated arguments about theodicy, as screens for our unwillingness to live in a way that marks us as belonging to Jesus, not to the world. This wasn't quite the direction I'd been expecting the book to go, and I have certainly been convicted by it.

The book doesn't ignore the issue of "general" suffering. In fact, it is linked to the suffering caused by outward persecution in that every earthly struggle is used by God to conform us to the image of His Son. This teaching on the Father's discipline of His children is deeply comforting to me. Honestly, I don't know how I would begin to cope with pain in my life if I didn't believe that the Lord was using it in some way (though I may not understand how or why) for my good and His glory.

Suffering Well has a lot more excellent content. It includes advice on how to praise God with integrity and to do good in the midst of suffering, and, most importantly, it closes with the precious reminder of believers' union with Christ. The latter truth is what affords us genuine hope in suffering: "If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." (Rom. 6:5) Only as we learn to savor this truth will we be free to suffer well.

This book is meant to equip believers with biblical nuts and bolts, not to be theologically exhaustive. I'm sure that someone with greater exegetical skills than mine could critique Grimmond's claims in this area. But I can say that this book led me to repentance and made me want to spend more time in God's Word, dwelling on His promises. I'm so glad I read it, and I hope it will prompt both new and seasoned Christians to a renewed discussion of suffering in Christ.

To listen to an interview with the author, check out this link.

The publisher provided me with a review copy of this book, and I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.

Odds & ends in January

Traditionally, January has been one of my least favorite times of year. The transition from rest and family to the prospect of unbroken weeks of stressful obligations is wrenching. At least that's how it has usually felt. But even though coming back to St. Louis after Christmas was pretty painful, this January hasn't been quite so bad. I wouldn't say it's categorically wonderful, either. It's just been odd.

For one thing, it has continued to feel as if God's been gently shaking loose my attachments to some things...my expectations and daydreams of how I think my short-term future would best unfold. As if, just when I imagined myself comfortable, God started shaking up some of the lesser things as if to steel me for bigger ones.

To give an innocuous example, we will likely need to search for a new apartment in the next few months. Wasn't expecting that. I had pictured us staying put for as long as we could, perhaps even for the duration of our time in St. Louis. But now I'm not sure where we're going to be living. The odd thing is how comparatively little I've been stressing over that. It hasn't been sitting heavily on my chest like these things often do. I can't say I'm excited by the possibility of moving further into the city, if indeed that turns out to be necessary. But whatever we end up needing to do, I feel mostly at peace about it...at least for now.

For another thing, my husband is starting to pursue the process toward ordination in earnest, which is actually a wonderful development and an answer to prayer. I'm very proud of his perseverance in the process, and as I think about him beginning to work on internship requirements, I feel confident that God is going to be bringing about great things for His purposes. But that's the thing...I hadn't pictured myself being included in those purposes. Ministry has always been something that other people do; that category of "other people" has expanded enough in my mind to include my husband, but I have only the blurriest concept of how it would include me. I have enjoyed picturing myself as the wife of a professor and myself a professor, and all that would mean for our life together. I just can't picture myself in the role of a pastor's wife. This is not to say I'm resistant, exactly; it's simply beyond my imagining. I was telling a friend today that I still feel puzzled sometimes by my personality and what God could be doing with it; I suppose I tend to think of it in terms of limitation rather than gift. But I know that God didn't haphazardly assign me to a family and church I would be unable to serve; and my temperament, the things I love and the ways I encounter the world are not accidents either. This is another area where I have to walk by faith on a daily basis.

In summary, a lot of things feel open-ended right now. There's this waiting feeling. Even more than before, I'm being asked to trust without being able to see far ahead. (Or while my imagined scenarios are being lovingly papered over with something real.) Surrounded by the love of Christ's people, I certainly don't feel alone or without hope. It's unsettling, though. And just odd.