Brave, Anyway

Tag: hope

  • Embers of Hope

    And we still don’t know, just as I suspected. And yet just as I dreaded. We may not know the outcome of the presidential election for quite some time, but we do know this: many of our neighbors and friends that we have categorized as good people because they are nice to us have in them the ability to support racism and the mistreatment of women and children. I will never understand how someone can say they are a Christian and support someone who so blatantly is not.

    My heart is heavy.

    I did not expect a landslide and yet my heart had this hope I was afraid to ever voice. It hoped that there was goodness in more people than I believed. That their goodness would rise up and stand for their neighbor. That their faith would rise up and say this behavior is not right and not what Jesus would do.

    It still matters to me who wins. But my faith in the goodness of people took another huge hit in the last 24 hours.

    Election day 2020 in my RBG sweatshirt. Not pictured: oldest jeans I own and furry pink slippers.
  • Old Testament Lessons

    Old Testament Lessons

    I recently watched Unorthodox on Netflix and am fascinated by some of the Jewish traditions shown in it. As I’ve been reading up on a couple, I realized that Passover begins tonight – in the middle of the Christian Holy Week.

    I’m not Jewish and I’ve not draped it correctly, but my heart is in the right place. I really love the idea of red on our entryway as a reminder that God delivered His people from destruction.

    It seems like the perfect visual to accompany a verse I’ve been focused on recently, from Job 11 (Good News Translation): You will live secure and full of hope; God will protect you and give you rest.

  • Corona and Communion

    Corona and Communion

    Everything is different, and yet everything is the same. The most important people are still the most important people. The most important things are still the most important things. And yet, everything seems different somehow.

    I guess it’s not actually that things are different so much as that things have been even more revealed. What was there and true all along is simply no longer as hidden. How drug companies profit. How the poor have less access to health care and technology and education. How the selfish hoard, and are incapable of considering and unwilling to consider the community and the greater good. How little some people respect and value and care for our nation’s aging citizens and family members.

    I guess it’s true that adversity brings out the best and worst of humanity, and I am just done with the coverage of and from the worst of humanity. I am done with the fear mongering and the finger-pointing and the projections.

    Translate: I am now rationing my news intake. I want to know what’s closed and what steps the CDC says I need to take, but I am *done* with pictures of empty grocery shelves and listening to pundits say the president mishandled this virus situation (is that actually news?) or that kids should or should not be in school. I need to be informed, but I need to balance information with stories and news about the best of humanity. For my own sanity.

    You know what hasn’t changed, ever? What was true 6 months ago and 6 years ago and 6 decades ago, and is still true today? People are mostly good. Most people are good. We tend to focus on the small percentage that is bad, and it’s gotten so out of hand that it can seem like the bad outweighs the good – and that’s just not truth.

    I believe in science and I believe in God. It doesn’t have to be one or the other; it can be both. I can pray and I can take vitamins and vaccines. And I may even knock on wood. Because I can be a faith person who’s also a little superstitious and who believes that it’s my job to do what I can while letting God worry about the rest. And that’s not awful. I think it’s probably actually pretty normal. And people just won’t admit it because faith people want you to be all faith all the time and science people want you to be all science all the time, and the two are not supposed to mix. But I am faith and science both, and I’d like to say all the time but the truth is sometimes my faith in science and my faith in God can be shaken a little.

    Such as when I watch too much news.

    I am a person who prepares and also a person of faith. I have a stocked pantry and a stocked bible. I have my doctor and my pastor in my contacts. And this morning I balanced yesterday’s worry about a potential lack of things – the result of too much news intake – with communion, taken with a few dozen strangers, before the sun lit the sky.

    And it felt awesome. Awesome to have quiet moments. Awesome to be part of a community of people focusing on the same thing. Awesome to focus on good things at the start of the day. Awesome to throw out old and unhealthy thoughts and fill those parts of my brain with goodness and quiet. Awesome to, for just a few moments, be the child instead of the parent. Awesome to worry about nothing. Awesome to be imperfect and loved anyway. Awesome to be a contradiction and loved anyway.

    1 Corinthians 11:28 says, “Everyone should look into his own heart before he eats the bread and drinks the cup.” International Children’s Bible

  • Behavior and Faith

    There’s a word for someone who claims to be a Christian but who hurts others on purpose and then acts like things will be ok.

    There’s a word for someone who claims to be a Christian but who hurts others and then says they are praying for them.

    There’s a word for someone who claims to be a Christian but who hurts others and then attempts to encourage others not to lose hope.

    The word is abuser. A person who does this is an abuser. A person who has the ability to stop hurting you but doesn’t is an abuser. And someone who behaves this way and claims to be a person of faith is a liar. People of faith do not purposely hurt others and then pray for them and then hurt them more.

    Abuse is not always physical. Sometimes it’s a selfish and insecure adult making choices that hurt others emotionally.

    People of faith fall short, they recognize it, they apologize, and then they do everything they can to behave differently. They do not willfully sin day in and day out thinking they can seek forgiveness or expecting to rely on grace.

    None of us is ever beyond forgiveness. But there’s a difference between someone who chooses to hurt and someone who accidentally hurts. There’s a difference between sorry spoken with words and sorry spoken with action. There’s a difference between someone who claims faith and someone who lives faith.

    Sometimes I think the thing that most makes people reject Christianity is the perversion of “Christianity” that “Christians” show the world. We can’t live in a way incongruous with the tenets of Christ and think our faith is believable. Much more than we realize, people see all of us for who and what we are, and they do one or more of three things: laugh at the obvious showmanship, feel sorry for someone so pathetically misguided, or get angry or disgusted with the misrepresentation of faith.

    People of faith aren’t perfect. They aren’t people who never fail. In fact, they fail a lot. The distinction is that they are people who are constantly and earnestly trying to do better.

  • Here’s Your Proof, Brave Girl

    Yesterday, I signed the name Beth Ranee Dembitz for the last time. And I had this crazy thought that the person with that name is a stranger to me. I am no longer her. She is no longer me.

    I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year thinking about the fact that the person I married is not at all who I thought, but it didn’t occur to me until today that I may be different than who I thought. And I recalled this gem from Iain Thomas: “Everything has changed and yet, I am more me than I have ever been.”

    I read it a few months ago, couldn’t wrap my head around it at the time, and dismissed it. I recalled it yesterday and realized that it does speak to me.

    My experiences in the last 12 months have changed how I think about some things, but they haven’t changed who I actually am. I think we all often think of ourselves in relation to other people – as the wife or husband of someone, as the mom or dad of someone, as the child of someone. For 20+ years I’ve thought of myself, in part, as in connection with someone. Recently, I’ve been purposely thinking of myself more and more as just me. I’m a Mom, and that role is the most important one in my life – but it’s still only a part of who I am. What’s actually true is that I am the kind of Mom I am, and the kind of friend and daughter and sister I am, because of me and who I am. Because of who I am on my own.

    Everything has changed and yet, in every period of my life I have always relied on faith.

    Everything has changed and yet, in every period of my life my immediate response to challenge is to circle the wagons and prepare for a fight.

    Everything has changed and yet, in every period of my life I have always project-managed whatever is happening.

    Everything has changed and yet, in every period of my life I have always been able to find the funny.

    Everything has changed and yet, in every period of my life that’s been filled with adversity I have always had to figure out the why and be angry as I overthought all the possible reasons.

    Everything has changed and yet, in every period of my life I have always made my way back to hope. Hope in something bigger than this seemingly broken world. Hope that most people are fundamentally good. Hope that things will all work out OK in the end. Hope that everything can somehow work out for our good.

    Everything has changed and yet, in every period of my life I have always been a difficult child who demanded that God show me signs that He’s really there and that I’m on the right path and that I’m doing the right things.

    Everything has changed and yet, I always end up light-hearted and hopeful and happy again. That’s not entirely happened for me yet in this period of my life, but I am on my way.

    Everything has changed and yet, I am more me than I have ever been.

    Yesterday I signed papers that will, in just a couple of weeks, formally change my name back to Beth Fite. And you know what? She’s me. Beth Dembitz is also Beth Fite, and she always has been. Beth at 3 and Beth at 10 and Beth at 20 and Beth at 30 and Beth at 45 all have the same core characteristics – prank-playing, over-sharing, organized, somewhat superstitious while faith-filled, demanding, impatient, controlled chaotic. The only difference is that the Beth of other ages always got back to hope, and the Beth at 45 is not quite there yet.

    Hope requires bravery. Hope means I trust that my daughters will grow up to be strong women who believe in love and marriage despite how their parents’ marriage worked out. Hope is expectation that my daughters will persist and have happy lives filled with people who only want the best for them. Hope is belief beyond a shadow of a doubt that those things will absolutely happen. So I guess you’d say my hope is still a work in progress.

    And yet there’s absolutely no reason for my hope to still be at the work-in-progress stage. The proof that God has a sense of humor and He wants me to find the funny in all things and He is still willing to entertain my constant petulant demand for signs that I’m on the right path, is that my papers arrived for signature this week on the day of Halloween. On a day I was dressed in a costume chosen by Ella many, many weeks ago.

    I signed the papers to restore my name and to formally and legally change my life while dressed as Merida, from the movie Brave.

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