What if I had known?

In his most recent online message, our pastor said something about how it's somehow December, but he feels like he's still waiting for the spring break that never arrived back in March. Yes, I get that. I feel displaced in time, like we've been in a holding pattern for nine months, and how can we possibly be putting up the Christmas lights?

Every year when I haul out the Christmas decorations, I can't help but think back on what things were like the last time I saw them, when I boxed them up on that melancholy day somewhere around January 2 or 3. This year, of course, the whole world has changed. It's hard to think of much of anything that's the same as it was in January. My kids went to school. We went to basketball games and friends' houses and restaurants and church. That was just life as we knew it; it wasn't anything we gave thought to. I don't remember ever thanking God that I could walk into a Chick-fil-A and sit down and eat. I've had a lot of emotions while waiting in my kids' carpool line, but gratitude for a completed, uneventful school day was never one of them. Life is so different now.  

So, I wonder, what would I have told myself last January 2 if I had known what 2020 would hold? What would I have said to that sappy mama who was boxing up the nativity animals, wishing for just a little more time with all the kids home? How would I tell her to prepare for the year that had just arrived with so much hopeful expectation? 

Of course there are dozens of practical things. Make hair appointments for everyone and get the dog groomed. Stock up on meat and toilet paper. Make sure that home gym is ready to go. (Thankfully, my husband had that one covered.) 

I would tell her to let go of the little things that seemed so big at the time--spring break plans, graduation plans, family visit plans, kids' summer internship plans, or basically any plans at all. 

I would say to her, "You know all those times you felt overwhelmed and just wanted to stop the merry-go-round, get off, recenter, and rest a bit? Take heart, because it's comin'." 

I would advise her to put down the frivolous fiction book she was reading and instead ready her mind for the mental battles and faith challenges that were about to land like a hurricane. I would tell her to worship and fellowship at every opportunity, to say yes to every invitation to be with people. I would encourage her to be creative in finding ways to worship on her own. 

I'd tell her never to pray lightly for her kids to grow in resilience. And to watch them, and all the teenagers she knows, when she wonders how to respond when the world is pulled out from underneath you. 

I would try to convince her that days spent in a misty-eyed funk, days in which there is no trace of productivity or accomplishment (except maybe getting the dishwasher loaded for the third time), can still be very good days. Those are the kinds of days where you learn who you are. The days when if you really listen hard, you can hear the still, small voice of God. 

I would tell her that the cancellations and disappointments soon to be punching her in the gut would be met with the equally fierce grace of God. Grace that made what would have seemed inconceivably sad on January 2 or 3 some of our best memories of the year. Like 75 visitors to our driveway to wish a brand new teenager a happy birthday. Or a backyard graduation where every attendee is a speaker and the graduate performs her own Pomp and Circumstance. 

I'd say to her, "No matter how bizarre the day was, watch the sun set over Pikes Peak and remember that God is still on the throne."

Secretly, I would laugh to myself that she thought she was doing pretty well with patience and endurance, humility and surrender. Bless her heart. Let her live in ignorant bliss for a few more months until she learns the truth the hard way. 

Maybe the most amusing thing would be to talk with her about her word for the year: Release.  

This all makes me wonder what December 2021 Me would say to the current me. I guess she's already started speaking. By faith, I just placed an online order for hairspray and mascara. I'm looking at my church clothes with high hopes. I think what she may be saying is this: "Let yourself look forward to the year ahead. Just don't for a second forget what you learned from 2020."

And now it's November

As we begin this month, our ninth month living with the coronavirus and the climactic month of this contentious political season, here are three things I'm pondering:

1. What motivates us to fight so hard for our rights? It could be argued that Americans value their individual rights above anything else. Why is this? Why are rights so meaningful to us that we're quick to do battle with coworkers, neighbors, and strangers over them? Why are they so important to us that we're willing to break relationship with friends and family members just to preserve them? The Constitution guarantees us certain rights, but do we stop to think about what those rights are for? Just so I can be free to do whatever I think is right or will make me happy? Or is there more to it? How should we be using our rights? How do we balance our rights with our responsibilities to others? 

2. We all wish things would just get better already. But I wonder, why do we think that's going to happen? And what if "better" isn't what's best? I'm as fed up with 2020 as the next person. I look back longingly at how things were in the past. But in this bubbling stew of emotions I feel, one of them is excitement. I am excited to see God work. I don't relish the hardship of it, but I long for God to purify His church, His people, and do a mighty work in us. If this is what that looks like, then I'm all in. 

Like most everyone else I know, I am praying for God to heal our land. But I'm open to the possibility that that could look different from what I'm hoping for. Maybe things won't get better. Maybe they'll get worse. What if worse is what we need? The church changes, focuses, and grows under pressure. We have plenty of examples (hello, China) of how God's kingdom advances in times of persecution. We can probably all look back in our lives and see how suffering brought greater devotion. As much as I love the words "easy" and "comfortable," I love "sanctification" and "righteousness" even more. With a big, deep gulp I pray, God, make us holy, by whatever means necessary. 

3. My favorite passage of Scripture recently has been Psalm 103:13-14.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed; he remembers that we are dust."

Psalm 103 is worth reading every day. All of it is uplifting. But, oh, am I thankful that God included verses 13 and 14. I need Him to remind me that He knows how I'm formed. He knows I'm dust. No one has lofty expectations for dust. The messaging of my day tells me that I am strong, powerful, capable, ready to take on the world, and sometimes, on my best days, I might feel that way. But usually, I feel like dust, very aware of my weaknesses and shortcomings. God knows that. He reminds me that even though I am dust, I'm "a piece of earth breathing holy breath" as Twila Paris said it, and He has compassion on me. 

He sees us, He knows how we are formed, and He has compassion on us. That's reason for rejoicing, even this November. 

Inspiring Marriage in a "Not-So-Interested" Culture

Marriage is getting rarer. I read this in a well-researched article published by sociologist Mark Regnerus in Christianity Today. The author interviewed 200 churchgoing young adult Christians in seven countries and concluded that the institution of marriage, even within the Church, is "under severe strain." 

This was not an article about divorce. It's about people who don't even get married in the first place. The concept of marriage as a positive life choice is getting rarer. 

It makes sense, doesn't it? We are a people with unending options, terrified of making a wrong choice. We don't want to tether ourselves to anything, especially not for life, without the ability to change our minds. We want to try before we buy, and our world doesn't bat an eye at cohabitation anymore. (What a change from my Three's Company childhood!) We are a people raised on Disney princesses and Meg Ryan movies, indoctrinated with the belief that there is a soul mate out there for every one of us and that romance is the pinnacle experience of life. We are a people afraid to fail, surrounded on all sides by examples of failed marriages. (I recently watched Marriage Story, a 2019 Best Picture nominee. The movie's title says so much about how our culture views marriage. It was actually Divorce Story, portraying the nasty, soul-crushing process of ending a marriage and battling over custody of a child. Parts of it should be required viewing for any married parents considering the dissolution of their family.) 

Perhaps the most interesting finding in Regnerus's study was that marriage has gone from being perceived as a foundational event to being seen as a capstone event. My parents and grandparents and the generations preceding them got married shortly after graduating from high school. It was the logical next step for young adults who were leaving their parents' homes and transitioning to independent lives of their own. Being newly married usually meant being poor, scraping by, and making sacrifices to build a new life together. 

A capstone event, on the other hand, means you've already arrived. On your own. You've gotten an education, a good job, a house; you've seen the world and sewn your wild oats. The capstone of your self-achievement is to find your soul mate, the person who will finally complete you. 

It's no wonder  that author Russell Moore has called marriage today "a vehicle of self-actualization rather than a setting for self-sacrifice." 

My husband and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last month. As exotic travel is not really a thing in 2020, we traveled as far as a restaurant on the west side of town, taking with us our two kids still at home. (It's a beautiful season of life when you actually want your kids with you on your anniversary, versus being willing to invest any amount of money and logistical inconvenience trying to get away from them . . . but that's a story for another day.) When I prodded our girls into asking marriage advice from a couple of veterans like us, Kevin and I both found ourselves saying similar things. 

We married by blind, dumb luck. That is not to discount the grace of God, but on the surface, it looks like a lot of luck. We were in the same place at the same time. We were approximately the same age. We had similar values and similar goals. We had strong faith in God. We were ready for the next stage of life. We were attracted to each other. So we said, "Let's do this," and got engaged 10 months to the day after our first date. We had no idea what we were getting into, but we knew it was for life, and we trusted God to help us make it work. And He has.

Are we living a fairy tale? Um, no. Have we mastered self-sacrifice? Are you kidding, it's only been 25 years. We've got miles to go. Did we make the right decision? Yes! Are we better together than we'd be apart? Absolutely. At 24 and 26, we made a half-baked decision and committed our lives to each other in the eyes of God, and we meant it. Til death do us part. Twenty-five years later, I wouldn't trade our life together for anything in the world. 

And that's one thing the researcher noticed. When marriage is viewed in spiritual terms, as a covenant between two people and God, it is more desirable and more successful. This is good news, and it presents Christians with an opportunity. We in the Church are much more likely to characterize marriage in sacred terms. We see marriage first and foremost as a commitment to God, then to our spouse. We see marriage as an instrument of God's sanctification, believing that He is not just asking us to do hard, sacrificial work, but that He's making us more holy in the process. Marriage is also a huge way that He blesses us, as anyone who has ever laid in a dark room laughing hysterically next to their spouse can attest. Being married is actually fun.

Where bad marriages serve as "a sort of vaccine against marriage," according to one participant in the study, good marriages inspire. Younger people don't need the message of Marriage Story, that marriage is ultimately unsatisfying and murders your personal dreams, or the message of Disney movies, that marriage leads to "happily-ever-after" eternal bliss. The next generation needs examples of people who are unwavering in their commitment to God and one another, who have found joy and peace in both the hard work and many rewards of marriage. They need to see what faithful love looks like over the long haul, to desire that even more than a temporary enraptured state of romance. 

Let's be sure to show them. 

Another Christian Scandal and Where It Leads My Thoughts

One of the songs providing fuel for my run a few days ago was DC Talk's "What If I Stumble?" It starts with this quote from Brennan Manning:

"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and then walk out the door and deny them by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." 

In light of what's been happening at my son's college, Liberty University, the words hit me hard. I can't control the craziness in the world. I can't control what other people do and say. But I can listen and lean in when God says, "Let's work on you." 

Here are two things He has invited me this week to meditate on with Him. 

First, my own testimony. Do my behaviors match my doctrine? Do I practice what I preach? I am doing a thorough examination to be sure I'm not denying Christ by my lifestyle. I don't have any pool boys hiding in my closet, but what about the way I talk about other people? How do I respond when things don't go my way? Do I live like I trust Jesus?

I've also been thinking about why my testimony matters at all. Are there really people watching me to decide if they'll follow Christ or not? Hard to imagine who that might be. But when I think of the kind of testimony I want to have and why it's important, four sets of watching blue eyes immediately come to mind. My kids have received a lifetime of teaching and preaching from me, and there's nothing more horrifying than to think that I would give them reason to doubt the truthfulness of my message. 

If I were to fall into some hidden, unconfessed sin, I would be embarrassed and ashamed for my friends to find out. I would feel sick at the thought of dishonoring my husband and disappointing my mom. But my children? I would be torn to shreds, done in, for my children to see me as a phony and my testimony as a joke. Lord, give me grace, strength, and conviction every day to not betray my witness to my children. 

The second thing I'm thinking about this week is related to judgment. I can grab hold of Brennan Manning's words, hop up on my high horse, and scream down to the Christians caught in scandalous sin, "What on earth were you people thinking? Do you have no fear of the Lord?!" Righteous anger is legitimate, but for me, it's just a stone's throw away from violating Jesus's command, "Do not judge lest you be judged." 

I am not tempted by drugs or alcohol or elicit sex. I am tempted hourly by self-righteousness, which is just as much a slavemaster as the sins that get more coverage. 

I have recently returned to an article that I read this spring on the prophet Daniel's prayer for repentance in Daniel 9. Without any known moral lapses of his own, Daniel prayed, "We have been wicked." "We have sinned and done wrong." "We are covered with shame." "We have turned away." 

The author of the article, Jeff Peabody, says this:

"I find myself desperately wanting non-Christians to know what I am not. And that seems to be the trend. We decry the despicable brokenness of other believers and encourage the world to turn away from them and look at us instead for a more palatable, truer depiction of faith. But adopting a wholesale separatist approach feeds the lie that we are intrinsically different sheep from the rest of the flock. It deludes us into believing that our proper theology, superior morality, or enhanced sense of justice make us the keepers of God's full perspective. We lean further and further into our own self-righteousness. 

This is where Daniel's prayer is so jarring. Instead of recoiling from the wickedness he sees around him, he places himself squarely in the middle of other people's sin in addition to his own. There is no daylight between his personal failings and those of the larger community."  

This is sobering. It pulls me off my high horse into a place of repentance--for my "me sins" and my "we sins." I am not intrinsically different than the other sheep in the flock.

Another Miracle of Maturity

 I can count on two hands, maybe even a hand and a half, the number of times in my adult life that I've cried so hard I couldn't function. I tear up pretty easily, mostly when I am made aware of the presence of God in my life, but I am very rarely brought to the kind of gut-wrenching sobs that leave you temporarily incapable of participating in the world. The most inopportune incident of this kind came when I was in a movie theater by myself with six young children, including a toddler on my lap, watching the movie Up and crying so loudly that I scared everyone in the room, including myself. 

But the profound weeping incident I'm remembering this week was one from September 2015. I had just dropped my oldest daughter off at Mountain Lab, a somewhat mandatory "team-building" overnight camp for her eighth-grade class. She had been to camp once before, and it had not been a huge success. There are kids who love camp and kids who don't, and she definitely fell into the latter category. She had also been struggling with friendships the past three years. She didn't feel like she had any reliable, go-to friends at the time. She dreaded being with 200 classmates day and night for two days, trying to find a place to sit in a rowdy dining hall, and being forced to do trust-building activities with people she knew she didn't trust. The thought of Mountain Lab had haunted her all summer, and now it was time to drop her off to face her worst fears. 

As I pulled away from the campground, the tears started rolling. By the time I got to the highway entrance, I was in the full-blown emotional upheaval that's usually reserved for sudden deaths. I had to pull off the road. There I sat for several long minutes, weeping from the core of my being. I trusted that God was with her and would use this for her good, but I hurt for how I knew she must feel. I had always felt like this child in particular, out of all my kids, took my heart with her wherever she went. She was my sensitive kid. Her pain was my pain in a way I didn't experience with my others. I remember wondering, as I sat on the shoulder of the highway desperately trying to find something on which to blow my nose, how I would ever be able to send this girl to college. 

That question lingered in my mind the past five years, until it was answered on Monday. That's when we left her 800 miles from home for the next three months. As I hugged her goodbye, the tears, sweet and subdued, came for a couple of minutes. Honestly, they were tears of joy every bit as much as they were tears of sadness. This girl is going to be just fine. My hunch is that she's going to be great. 

My parenting mantra that I've said at least a hundred times: Maturity is a parent's best friend. Those problems you're having with your kid today? Those chronic irritations you notice again and again in your child? Maturity will take care of nearly all of them. Our job is to pray, be consistent, stay engaged and available, love and love some more, trust God, and let His gift of maturity do its good work. 

If you are the parent of younger kids, take heart! Have hope! Right under your nose, maturity is doing its work in those kids of yours. It won't always be pretty, but on the other side, it will be worth every sob session you've ever had. 

And if you have kids nearing high school graduation whose maturity is starting to cast a nice, warm glow in your house, and if you're starting to mourn their imminent departure, be encouraged by this: In my experience, the buildup to the goodbye is much worse than the actual goodbye. We spend their whole senior year dreading what turns out to be a pretty beautiful thing. The two times I've dropped kids off at far-away colleges, my sense of excitement for them has outweighed the sense of loss for myself. 

If I ever wonder about the goodness of God, all I have to do is think of the work He's done in my kids. A shy, scared 13-year-old somehow becomes an 18-year-old who is eager and equipped to live 800 miles from home with 20,000 strangers. That makes me cry. In the best possible way. 

Learning, Thinking, and Praying

Last time I wrote, I talked about how I've sensed God saying, "Let's work on you" in response to the conversation about race happening in our country. In the month since I wrote that, I have certainly seen Him work in me. And, wow, am I praying. I'm praying as I sit down to write this. God, please help me communicate what you want me to say, and let me write from a place of humility.

In the past month, I have read articles, watched movies, documentaries, and YouTube videos, listened to podcasts, and read White Fragility. Because God had still more to teach me, I ended up spontaneously housing a 17-year-old Black girl for the night and getting a peek into her world and then seeing my daughter's mostly Black basketball team called "dirty" by a group of white moms. My learning moved outside of just the academic/intellectual realm and into the practical. God is answering my prayers to open my eyes to new things.

So what have I learned so far?

For starters, a lot about Critical Race Theory, and its parent, Critical Theory. If these terms are unfamiliar to you, as they were to me, I encourage you to study up. CRT is the foundation of much of the response we're hearing today. It's the perspective from which White Fragility and many of today's "must-read" books come from. It provides a ready answer to the heartbreak we feel when we watch the George Floyd video and the yearning Christians have to seek after justice as the Bible commands. It's giving us terms like "whiteness" and "intersectionality" and "privilege" and "antiracism" and "fragility." It is the tidal wave sweeping over our country right now, and it's making us think.

Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, is one of the key spokespersons of CRT. As a white woman, she does a very skillful job speaking to other white people. She knows what she's saying is hard. She doesn't hold back, but she presents her message in a way that shows she knows how hard it is to accept what she's saying. After all, that's what white fragility is--the discomfort whites feel when confronted about racial inequality and injustice. In a mostly tolerable way, she points out that whites are all racist, every single one of us, because we were born into and benefit from a racist system that keeps white people on top and pushes Black people down. She strategically separates morality from racism. In other words, you can be a good person and still be a racist. The CRT definition of racist is different from anything I've heard before. It's not a white person making mean jokes at a Black person's expense or using the "n" word or refusing to use the same bathroom as a Black person. It's everyone who's white, everyone who benefits from the structures that keep whites on the top and Blacks on the bottom, whether they know they're benefitting or not. A white person married to a Black spouse raising Black children is still a racist. The white people protesting as part of Black Lives Matter are racist. DiAngelo argues that it's not a moral term, but simply a reflection of reality.

Her book, filled with stories and examples, brought me new insight. It made me think. It, along with several of the other things I've read and watched, helped me see how my perspective of the world has been narrow. I've seen how I've made quick judgments about people my whole life, how I've believed stereotypes and responded accordingly. One of the most insightful things I heard came from Emmanual Acho in one of his Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man videos. In trying to explain white privilege to whites, he said it's not that we haven't had hardship in our lives; it's that our hardships have not come as a result of our skin color.

So what I'm reading and hearing has made a lot of sense. I have spent good time talking to God about my own biases and repenting of my partiality and prejudice, apathy and ignorance. But something in all this CRT messaging just feels off. It's uncomfortable, yes, but it's more than that. So I kept pressing in and asking God to give me discernment. That's when I discovered Monique Duson and Dr. Neil Shenvi, who brought clarity by holding up CRT to the light of Scripture. At its core, CRT is a worldview. Worldviews answer essential questions like these:

Why are we here and what is our purpose?
What does it mean to be human?
What is our Big Problem?
What is the solution?

My worldview is a biblical one. We are here because we were created by a loving God who wants relationship with us. Our purpose is to know Him, be in relationship with Him, and help others do the same. To be human is to be made in the image of God and deeply loved by Him, so much so that He sent His Son to die for us. To be human is to find our identity in Him. Our Big Problem is sin, and the only solution is Jesus.

I am definitely not an expert on CRT, but my understanding is that it would answer those essential questions this way: To be human is to be made up of several different identities, consisting of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and physical ability, in addition to other things. What you identify with is what you are. Our Big Problem is oppression. We are all either oppressors or the oppressed. We can be both at the same time. For instance, a white man is an oppressor, but if he is gay or in a wheelchair, he is at the same time oppressed (this is what intersectionality means). At the core of this oppression is whiteness. All whites are oppressors; all people of color are oppressed. Racism equals prejudice plus power, so only whites can be racist. The solution is for whites to sanctify themselves by repenting, becoming woke by educating themselves of the problem, divesting themselves of their whiteness, and repenting of the sin of whiteness. That is our purpose.

CRT is a works-based solution. It has no consideration for grace or the power and necessity of the Holy Spirit. It brings us to repentance before human beings, not before God, when both are necessary and the latter is essential to the former. It does not recognize that partiality is a sin shared by everyone. It forces sides, saying, "There is one way for this to look, and if you're not doing it the right way, you will be silenced and disgraced." Critical Race Theory divides: oppressed against oppressor, us versus them. The Bible unites: "He himself [Jesus] is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2:14).

I'm not ready to say CRT is evil or completely without merit, though I might get there with more study. But at the very least, a viewpoint that allows no room for white-initiated dialogue between races and forbids tears of repentance (there's actually a chapter in DiAngelo's book called "White Women's Tears") is missing the mark. But its proponents have brought a very important issue to the forefront of our national conscience.

It's bringing racial injustice to the forefront of the church, where it needs to be. Malachi Vincent (see resources below) says that before we can talk about unity in the church, and before we can talk about the world being transformed by the unity of the church, we have to talk about sins that the church needs to repent of. We in the church need to care about this as much as God does. And we need leaders who know they are accountable to God and to Scripture and who recognize that if they're not abiding in Christ, they are capable of nothing. More than anything else, we need leaders with deep humility who will call the rest of the church to humble ourselves and seek racial justice from the God who invented justice. Otherwise, as Monique Duson says, we're going to look to the culture and get swept up in its misguided attempts at reconciliation.

Do we in the church have learning to do? Yes. Repenting? Being agents of change? YES. But let's do it with a biblical worldview. "We are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12, NLT). Help us, Jesus, the one who reconciled us to God the Father and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Resources

5 Ways Christians Are Getting Swept Into a Secular Worldview in This Cultural Moment

Alisa Childers interview with Monique Duson

What Do We Do with Critical Theory? from the Colson Center for Worldview

A Conversation About Race and Reconciliation with Francis Chan (three-part series, but I particularly learned from the first of the three videos and from Malachi Vincent, who starts at 7:00 in)

In light of the past 10 weeks

I don't presume to know what to say right now. My heart, heavy since March, just took on an extra ton of weighty sadness in the past few weeks. What a year 2020 has turned out to be.

I don't know what to say, but this blog has never been about giving advice or telling people what they should or shouldn't do. I write about the things God is teaching me, and if someone else gets something out of it, great.

I can't say I've been struck by major revelation in the past 10 weeks, but if I were to highlight one message I feel like God's been giving me between the pandemic and the protests, I think it's this: "Let's work on you."

The older I get, the more I realize that I have control over just about nothing. I can't control the world's leaders, my neighbors, my husband, or my kids. I can't even control my dog with a collar and a leash. Until recently, I thought I had some control over my schedule, but in the face of endless cancellations, I've realized that even that was a myth.

I can only control me. I've heard this for years, but I've never been so personally aware of it. So I sense God saying to me, "Let's work on the one thing you can control. You."

If I'm being honest, I do a pretty bad job of controlling me. The stay-at-home orders have shown me in new ways that I am quick to judge, I am impatient, and I find a lot of misplaced identity and joy in the things I do and the relationships I have with people. I get restless easily, and I'm looking for the next fun fix to get me through the monotony of life. God is showing me these things about myself, saying, "Let's work on you."

When I turn on the news at night, He is showing me that some of the realities I've known my whole life are matters of perspective and privilege. Through books and articles and documentaries, He is showing me what injustice looks like and how it's so ingrained in our world that I don't even recognize it. He is pointing out my own prejudices, biases, and partialities, and I am having good, hard, repentant conversations with Him about it. He is showing me how some of the quick judgments I've made in the past, the quick defenses and rationalizations I've made in order to uphold my own paradigm of what is good and what is bad, who is good and who is bad, grieve His heart. He wants something different for me. So He says, "Let's work on you."

He's changing the way I pray. I pray more for humility than direction these days. I want to be wise, but even more than that, I want to be teachable and correctable. I'm asking Him less to change the people and circumstances around me and focusing more on how He wants to change me.

Some would say there's a lot more I could and should be doing. I would have a hard time arguing with them. Despite what Michael Jackson said ("If you wanna make the world a better place take a look at yourself and then make the change"), working on me feels difficult, slow, and not terribly productive. But maybe in the long run, it's the most useful thing I could ever do?