When We Take More Than We Give . . .

 . . . sometimes it is just called giving.

The other night my friend texted me asking if I could help her fix her thesis for a religion paper. I laced up my sea-foam green running shoes, donned my neon-green jacket, tucked my phone into the back pocket of my running shorts, and went out into the steady, cold drizzle. The run was exhilarating, and I was thankful for the excuse to take it. 

It's a short run to her place and her thesis didn't take long to fix, but I was there for almost two hours. Just talking. Much of it was a talk I'd been needing to have. 

As I was leaving, my friend made the comment that she felt like she, in most relationships, takes more than she gives. 

"What do you mean?" I asked her, utterly bewildered at the audacity of such a statement. In my mind, I would forever be in her debt for all that she had given me. 

True, I often read over and corrected her papers, I walk her to classes, and I try to be a listening ear. 

But with each of these, I realized, she had not been taking, but giving. And what she had given me was the the chance to give back. 

The truth is, when we talk about our struggles, we are not taking time from someone, but giving them perspective for their own trials as well as the chance to commiserate with their own. 

When we ask a friend for help, we are not just taking time from their busy schedules; we are giving them the validation that they are needed and that they have something to offer us. 

When we accept a gift or an offering, we are not just taking of what we are given; we are giving to others a way for them to display their love for us.

When we take, we are giving others the opportunity to grow, to serve, to love, and, ultimately, to give. 

And so, in a sense, we can really never take more than we give: when we take we are really just giving to someone else the opportunity to give back--an opportunity which they take whole-heartedly, happily, gratefully, knowing that they can never truly repay the wonderful gift that is given them in return. The gift of perspective, love, and friendship. 

So to answer my friend, you cannot take more than you give. Because that is just called giving. 

Candidly,

Cookie

A New Conviction

If success is to accomplish such a task
That once you thought to be impossible
To at first believe you can't but prove at last
Despite the limits, you are capable
Then if this is success in rawest form
I hope to say I never did succeed
If failure takes the opposite in form
I hope this horrid term applies to me
I hope there never comes a time I doubt
That I can say I always did believe
When beneath the worldly limits flesh gives out
My heart in faith's still striving to achieve
I'd rather say I failed, yet I believed
Than say despite my doubts I did succeed

Limtiless

When I came to college, I was a writer. I was a musician. I was a runner. And that was pretty much it. It took me less than a day to realize I was far from the best writer on campus. I quickly realized that telling music majors that I could play the French Horn was a lot like boasting about my role in my high school play to the actresses and actors and Broadway. And though I was a runner, I struggled finding time to run. While I was running my little 5ks, a girl down the hall was preparing for the Boston Marathon.

Suddenly everything I was--everything I had defined myself as--wasn't enough.
Suddenly, the question of "who am I?"carried much more weight.

This year I have my first advanced writing class. For our first writing assignment we were asked to trade our essays with one of the other students in the class and mark up their essay with comments and suggestions. I traded with a wonderfully kind girl named Bethany. I took her essay home, read it, and immediately stuck it back in my plastic red folder, behind an assortment of papers for various other classes, where it stayed for the rest of the week. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Well, such has never been my fortune. As the days dragged on and the due date loomed nearer, I still couldn't stop thinking about her paper. It was flawless, beautiful writing. How was I supposed to critique an essay that was already better than anything I had ever written? (or so I thought).

I began, once again, to doubt myself as a writer, and even doubt that I was worthy to call myself such. I began to see the page as a minefield of potential errors which I was to laboriously navigate on nervous tip-toe. I was so terrified to make a mistake because I believed that being less of a writer made me, almost, less of a person.

When I confided this in my friend she told me that there's a huge difference between making a mistake and being a mistake. It all comes down to how you define yourself. "Your reality," she told me, "is defined by your perception of it. Want to change your reality? Change your perception. So who are you?" she asked me. "And who do you want to be?"

It was then that I realized something profoundly important: I am not a writer; I am not a musician; I am not a runner. These are things I do, but they are not and do not have to be who I am.

Wow, that's hard to say. And yet, it leaves a sugary-sweet residue on my lips. It's incredibly liberating to rid oneself of these titles. But then, who am I now?

I am Brooke Ellen Anderson. I am a noble daughter of God. I am one of his beautiful creations. I have been blessed with incredible talents for writing, playing the french horn, running, and many other things—but these are not who I am.

I've found, having rid myself of these titles, I'm okay not being the best at something, at messing up and making mistakes, because these mistakes—these mess-ups—don't lessen who I am; rather, they provide me the incredible opportunity for growth that comes only when I am willing to be stretched and make those mistakes.

I am not perfect. I make mistakes. But that's okay, because I am not a mistake. I am not a runner. I am not a musician. I am not a writer. I am not my GPA, my awards, my talents, or my honors. Nor am I my mistakes, shortcomings, blunders, or failures.
I am a daughter of God. I am beautiful. I am loved. And I am absolutely limitless.

Candidly,
Cookie

Of Courage

Every Thanksgiving my family goes around the table, each person saying one thing that he or she is grateful for. Some years ago, I decided that each year I would name a quality or an ideal—something that I wanted to develop more or understand greater. It slowly took the place of a New Year's resolution as each year I would focus on that one thing. Last year was relationships. This year is courage.
As the New Year rolled around, I found myself still attempting to define the kind of courage I want to develop. Then, just yesterday, I was having lunch with a friend, and the answers fell together all at once. She, like me, has an interest in linguistics, and so I was telling her about some of the Mandarin characters and how their meaning can sometimes be derived from their components. I told her two of my favorites are the characters for busy and forget. The character for busy is made up of the components loose and heart. Forget is composed of heart and flee. So to be busy is to loose heart and to forget is to have something flee your heart.
"What does the heart symbolize?" my friend asked.
I hadn't really thought about that. I'd assumed that the heart means the same to those in China as it does to us, but I had to tell her I wasn't sure.
"I ask," she said, "because I once read something about the various meanings of heart. At one time it meant courage. So to learn with the heart was to learn with courage."
I had to really think about that. What does it mean to learn with courage?
For me it seemed to hint at a passion, perseverance, and ambition.
So often I have talked with people who say that they do not know what they want to do or study. But then they mention something—or I may suggest it to them—and their eyes light up. "Oh that would be so fun!" they say.
"So what's keeping you?" I ask.
"Well," they often reply, "what if I'm not good enough or smart enough, or what if it's too hard, or what if I get so far and then decide I don't like it after all?"
Courage is putting those fears and doubts aside.
But there's another aspect of courage that is perhaps deeper.
Yesterday morning I was listening to a talk given by one of the general authorities of our church. The talk was entitled "Therefore They Hushed Their Fears." I found in it a paradoxical definition of courage which definition is, I believe, the best I have found. That is, courage is fear.
Now allow me to explain.
I do not mean the kind of distressing fear that arrises due to impending danger, uncertainty, or pain, or through experiences that are unexpected, sometimes sudden, and likely to result in an undesired outcome. I do not mean the kind of fear that strikes when you go to take a test you aren't ready for, walk down a dark ally alone, or that sizzles constantly, slowly heating the waters of indecision and doubt.
There is a different kind of fear, and it is to this fear that I am referring when I say that courage is fear. The fear to which I refer is what is referred to in scripture as "fear of the Lord" or "Godly fear." Unlike worldly fear that creates alarm and anxiety, Godly fear is a source of peace, assurance, and confidence. It encompasses a deep feeling of reverence, respect, and awe for the Lord. Godly fear dispels mortal fear. And is not the absence of mortal fear the very substance of courage?
As we fear God, reverence, and trust Him, we love him more completely, and "perfect love casteth out all fear."
And so our fear of God results in love, and love brings courage, which brings us back to what my friend had so wisely alluded to: courage comes from the heart.

As I focus this year on courage, I realize that the foundation of courage is to love more deeply, to serve others, to pursue hard things, and, ultimately, to trust in the Lord.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart  . . . and He will direct your paths." (Psalms 3:5-6)

May your year, too, be one that is filled with courage. 

Candidly,
Cookie

As Luck Would Have It

Four out of the past five times I have flown, I have been stopped by security.
The first time was when my hands were checked for chemicals. A security guard swiped my hand with a toilette, for lack of a better word, and fed it into the reader. Now here's the crazy part: I had just washed my hands. Somehow in the short period between the bathroom and security, I had managed to pick up a strange chemical. So, as would naturally follow, my luggage was checked and I got the full pat-down.
The second time, I washed my hands extra well, and I still managed to get stopped. This time it was because they had found a suspicious object in the bottom of my backpack. Now let me back up a minute. I am going to assume that everyone is very familiar with the fifty-pound weight limit requirement. I had weighed my suitcase again and again and again, and it somehow still managed to be about three or four pounds over the limit. This meant that anything heavy we could find was placed in my already-stuffed backpack, which was serving as my carry-on. By the end of it my backpack was so full we couldn't have stuffed in another sock, and carrying it around the airport hurt my back so much that I carried it in my arms, which ached horribly until they went numb.
Now back to the story: the "suspicious object" they had found was at the bottom of my backpack. It turned out to be my i-home, which, when I could prove that it told time and played music, they let through. But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst part was figuring out how to repack my backpack to make everything fit. One of the security guards had commented that my backpack was like Mary Poppin's bag. I found the difference was that with Mary Poppin's bag, things could go back in as easily as they came out. It took me well over fifteen minutes to stuff everything back in.
My third time flying I made it through security without being stopped. Thank goodness!
My fourth time flying, though, was definitely the most eventful, which is something you do not ever want to hear, or say, about a flight. Just two weeks ago, I was flying home from Salt Lake to Atlanta with a layover in Chicago. Once again, I was stopped by security. This time, you'll never guess what it was. Apparently, they had found metal in my stomach. Seriously. It's my abbs of steel.
By now the full pat-down seemed almost routine. That's not to say I like it though.
I made it to my gate with plenty of time to spare, but, as luck would have it, our plane was to be arriving late, which was eating away at my layover time in Chicago. By the time we had boarded, I had about thirty minutes between the time we would land in Chicago and the time that my plane would begin to board, which I thought would be plenty enough.
The plane was about to begin taxying out onto the runway when it came to the attention of the stewardess that someone in the back of the plane was quite ill. A little over half an hour later, we were finally taxying out, and I was beginning to get just a little apprehensive about my connection in Chicago.
The moment we had come to a stop in Chicago, I bolted to my next flight, which, as luck would have it, would be at an A gate. We had come in at F. I managed to sprint across the airport in roughly six minutes, and I made it just in time to board.
Once again, we are about to begin taxying out when the intercom comes on. We are informed that the power source to start the engines has gone out, and so we get to wait for ground crew to find an external power source and start our engines. As you can imagine, this was all very reassuring, and I was not at all fearful about the flight.
The flight went smoothly enough, and we landed in Atlanta some time after midnight, only to be informed that the train system was down, and so we would be shuttled back on the tar mac.
It was odd walking into baggage claim through the front doors of the airport, but I wasn't about to complain, because I knew, with my luck, things could have been worse, and I wasn't about to jinx it.
My flight home proved much smoother. I had lost my abbs of steel over the break, I had washed my hands thoroughly, and I was certain there was nothing that security could find suspicious. As luck would have it, I still managed to set off the alarm.
"Don't worry ma'am," the security guard informed me, "you didn't actually set off the alarm. You have been randomly selected for additional screening."


Candidly,
Cookie