Well, Pooh

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

-Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne

(I think Winne the Pooh would have been a good blogger.)

I've been thinking about independence lately. It's good for an adult woman to be independent. I pay my own bills, make my own decisions and have my own life. But sometimes I take that too far and start thinking that maybe I don't really need people. Which I suppose is technically true, God is enough. Jesus is my only hope. But I like the way our pastors put it. "Yes, Jesus is your only hope, but living in community teaches you to love and know Jesus in a way that you'll never learn by yourself." I tend to push people away. I'm happy to serve them and love on them and let them talk about their problems and their joys and their hearts, but my gosh, you'd have to hire a team of wild horses to drag it out of me. So independence goes too far. Does that mean being independent is bad? How does it line up with Scripture, if at all? My brain hurts.

Also, I wonder sometimes, do I love Jesus or do I love being Reformed? You Reformies will know what I mean (also, let's make "Reformies" happen). Do I filter Piper, Driscoll and Chandler through Scripture? Or do I filter Scripture through Reformed tradition and theology? I am guilty of doing more of the latter. Which is ironic, really, because one of the foundations of Reformed theology is that Scripture is our final authority. I am just one big ball of irony today, I know.

Switching gears, I am getting more and more interested in learning about hearing loss, how to educate people on it, how to advocate. All sorts of fun times. Anyway, I am really big on educating people about hearing loss because I realized that a lot of the frustrations that I experience daily are rooted in the fact that people just don't know how to communicate with me. It's not that they don't want to help - they just don't know what to do. So instead of getting mad, I have been trying to do better about explaining (calmly) what I need instead of assuming that people can read my mind. Which has been a grand thing for me, eye-opening and freeing and all that. But I forget that I need to learn, too. I don't have all the answers. I don't want to turn into this person who demands this service or that action. Balance is hard. Teaching and learning. Standing up and letting things slide. Phew. (That was the sound of me blowing the bangs out of my eyes in confusion.)

But I am thankful for brains. For reasoning and thinking and pondering and meditating and considering.



Even if it seems a bother sometimes, as our Pooh bear friend would say.