"I Care for Myself"

The first time I read Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, I was greatly moved by it. It was many years ago now, but at the time I had felt greatly betrayed by someone in my life, so when I read about how Jane had also been lied to by someone close to her, I felt a great connection with her.

That book honestly got me through a rough patch. And there was a certain line that I remember underlining with my pencil, because it struck a chord with me.

Recently I've taken the book up again, and I have to say, reading this book through totally different eyes has entirely changed my perspective. I still enjoy the book very much, but things that meant a lot to me in the past don’t mean much to me now, and I relate to Jane in a totally different way than I did several years ago.

But that one line still struck me the same as it did back then.

There is a scene where Jane (spoilers!) has just found out that although Mr. Rochester was intending on marrying her, he keeps his mad wife locked up in his attic. In the scene he is begging and imploring Jane to stay with him, to marry him anyway. His argument is that his wife is crazy, beast-like, and is no wife to him. He merely keeps her out of obligation and because he doesn't want the public to know about his disgrace.

He tries to coax Jane into staying with him by saying, “You have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me.”

Jane thinks about it and considers that this is true. She’s an orphan. No one would ever know that she’s committing technical bigamy. And in her head, she says to herself, “Who in the world cares for you? Or who would be injured by what you do?”

And then came the line that has stuck with me my entire adulthood: Jane says, “I care for myself.”

Well, I care for myself too, Jane. No matter what happens in my life, at the end of the day, I am the only person responsible for my actions. I may not always have relatives close by to care about what I do or what I say. But I care. I might not have anyone to answer to. But I answer to myself. And there may be no one around to care about my morals or my choices. But at the end of the day, I care.

So in this world of agendas and political correctness, where the concept of feminism has been so misconstrued and blown out of proportion, a woman named Charlotte said in 1847 that it was okay for a woman to care for herself. She showed the world that it was okay for a woman to pick herself up, make her own choices, and live her own life—even when it meant losing everything, just so long as at the end of the day she kept her self-respect.

And for me, that means a lot.

And That Makes Me Mad.

“There never was a love like ours,” we used to say to each other. It was a whirlwind romance that ended as quickly as it began, and for him, was extinguished as painlessly as blowing out the short flame of a candle. But for me, the extinguishing still goes on as I try desperately to pour water on the embers of a love I thought would last for the rest of my life.

After it ended, I scoffed at the line we used to say to each other, remembering how important it had made us feel, as if we were in some sort of Shakespearean romance, you know, a good one, not one ending in mass death. It seemed so silly to think back on, to imagine in our deluded minds (or at least, in my deluded mind) that we had anything special, that our love was in any way distinct or better than any one that had ever come before us.

But I had to admit, at the time, it sure felt like it. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before, or anything I've experienced since.

Lately, I've come to realize that we were right. There never was a love like ours, and there never will be again. No two loves are the same. No one ever experiences the same thoughts, feelings, yearnings, sacrifices, dedication, attention, devotion that anyone else ever does. Every relationship is different, and you’ll never have the same love twice.

I’ll never feel that way again. It’ll be good again. It’ll be different. But it won’t be the same.

And that makes me mad.

What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up?

Recently, a girl a few years younger than me asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” She was being partially facetious, and partly serious, mostly asking what I wanted to do with my life.

The question caught me off guard. I guess it wasn't something I had really thought about in a while, so I stopped and I thought…

•  As a child I wanted to be a ballerina. My parents paid thousands of dollars for years to put me in ballet at one of the best local schools. I even reached the point where I did point work. When I got older, I started paying for my own classes, I've been in some ballet productions, and even just a couple of weeks ago I performed onstage at my most recent ballet recital.
•  When I was a pre-teen my mother carted me around to chorus and acting lessons, giving me a taste of theatrical performing. And when I was seventeen, Mom took me to my very first audition. After that show, I was constantly in theatre for years. Even now, on my own, I’m back on the stage. The love has never left me.
•   As a young teenager I decided that I wanted to be a writer. I wrote six full-length novels (we are talking around or over 300 pages apiece here) between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Now, I’m not saying they were good or well-written, but they were good practice. Now here I am, years later, with a Creative Writing degree under my belt, and a wonderful job in that same field, writing magazine articles with many of my own works published.

…And I answered my friend and said, “I've already become everything I ever wanted to be.”

Prejudice: What My Mother Never Taught Me

Living on your own for the first couple of years really opens your eyes to what you did and didn't learn as a child. For example, I've come to realize that I never really saw prejudice growing up.

I remember a few years back, before I moved, I heard someone use a racial slur for Jews. I had to ask what the word meant, because I had never heard it before. A good friend of mine told me how glad he was that I had been unexposed to it.

I had grown up being taught that the Jewish people are an important group, that in Biblical times they were chosen by God to be His people (See Deuteronomy 7:6-8). So I had never heard any slurs directed against them, and I never had a negative thought about them.

That was just one example. But the type of prejudice that I was really unaware of was religious. Now, I’m not talking about Christian against Buddhism or Islam, or anything like that. I’m talking about prejudice within Christianity, against other Christians only.

When I first moved to the area and started attending a Christian college, I was amazed at how there was a church on every corner. On Sundays there are always cops outside several of the larger churches to direct traffic because so many people attend these places of worship. I would go to Panera Bread in the mornings and see people reading their Bible, or I’d hear people praying. I was amazed! What a wonderful, God-loving place this is!

But then I began to hear it: snide remarks meant as jokes, “Oh, well, he’s a Presbyterian, so you know what that means.” 

No. Really, I don’t. What does it mean? 

Or, people might say, “So, you believe in _____­­­____? You must be one of those Calvinists then.” Once my friends here found out that I had attended a Baptist church for a short period of time with my family, it spread like wildfire that I was “one of those ‘Baptists.’” Which of course must mean that I don’t dance, that I like to sit quietly in the back row of the church and say “amen” at appropriate times, must never raise my hands in the service, and that I really like to eat potluck dinners.

I. Hate. This.

I grew up in non-denominational churches (save for a short time at the Baptist one). These were Bible-believing churches where you were saved if you believed that Christ died for your sins and arose again. We take the Bible as God’s word to us, something to live by and believe. And that’s about it. No back-biting, no bickering, no running down denominations.

My mother had always told me that denominations are simply because people have different comfort levels of how to worship. You pick your comfort level. If you like a quieter, more conservative service, you might choose Presbyterian or Methodist. If you like more singing and dancing, you might be closer to something Pentecostal. Granted, some of these had bigger differences, but still, it really comes down to the worship style.

But here, but now, I find myself surrounded by Christians hating other Christians. Usually they play off their prejudices as jokes. But these jokes aren't funny. How are we ever going to spread the Gospel to those who haven’t heard it if we can’t stop fighting amongst ourselves and pointing out our differences? It leaves me with a nasty taste in my mouth and disappointment of those who are supposed to be showing the love of Christ to others.

And every time I think about this, all I can think to say is, “You know, there won’t be denominations in heaven.”