Lola

Photo by Melissa Rose  

  There are a lot of famous Lolas out there, but the Lola of my title is the name of a song first released in 1970 by a Beatles-era band called The Kinks. I don’t actually remember hearing Lola for the first time until I was in high school – a good ten years after it was originally released in the UK. A survey of most of my peers reveals similar memories. I think the timeline went something like this: The Kinks were kind of the progenitors of punk rock, and the late ‘70s and ‘80s were when punk went pop. So all the people who wanted to be cool, but weren’t really, were into punk. Of course, that led to lots of Kinks retrospectives in places like MTV and a big Kinks concert tour in the ‘80s, and I guess the rest is history.

  For a certain segment of the population, which I happen to belong to, when Lola comes on the radio, we magically lose our inhibitions and start to sing “Luh, luh, luh, luh, Lola!” at the top of our lungs. It causes a sort of spontaneous flash mob where people stop what they’re doing, sing Lola together, and when the song ends, go calmly about their business. In my experience, this phenomenon can cross a lot of age, cultural, and religious boundaries – despite the fact that the song is about, as Wikipedia so primly puts it, “a confused romantic encounter with a transvestite.”

  It has been argued that The Kinks were the bridge from the rock ‘n roll of the ‘50s to the rock, punk, and New Wave of the ’70s and ‘80s. So I guess it is no surprise that they recorded some music that still makes people sit up and take notice. But my interest in this song goes beyond the academic. To put it simply, Lola rocks. While I would like to say it is the guitar riffs that I love and I don’t really listen to the lyrics, this wouldn’t be true. Of course, I wish the subject matter was different, but the lyrics are extremely clever. As a writer, I can’t help but smile and mentally applaud every time I hear them.

  Then I feel guilty as a Pharisee at a pork festival.  I can rationalize with the best of them, but it’s pretty hard to reconcile my love of Lola with “Whatever things are pure…” I feel similarly conflicted about other aspects of pop culture that I participate in on a regular basis. Being in the world but not of the world. Easier said than done – or is it? Jesus and I have been walking the road together for thirty-seven years, and I still find it difficult to walk this particular line. It affects everything in my life, from my relationships to my writing. So what’s a girl to do? I’ll think about this some more in my next post, but in the meantime, I am interested in your thoughts. Sing it with me now, “Luh, luh, luh, luh, Lola!” 

(Hear the song: Lola )

Father Knows Best

  I’m on vacation this week, visiting family.  Someone pulled out the old home movies and there we are, in all our childish, mid-century modern glory.  Grainy-filmed, year-after-year of tow-headed exclamations, smiles, and laughter as we pull dolls, robots, skates, out of brightly papered boxes.  Birthdays and Christmases, adults and children dressed in our very best, Grandparents clapping and exulting with us at each gift, Uncle mugging for the camera, older cousins helping us put together new toys, pushing us on shiny trikes, buffet tables covered with food and treats.

  Yes, we had a Leave It To Beaver childhood. Mom was June, Dad was Father, and while it wasn’t perfect, neither was it fake, as many in today’s world would want you to believe. It was real, and it was very good. Reflecting on those films and those years with my other three siblings, though, reveals some interesting differences in how we think about our childhoods. Each of us had a unique response to the way we were raised as we started to grow up.

  One of us found the world my parents created for us constricting, dutifully played the expected role, and as soon as possible left to create a very different life for their self and their family. One of us loved, and another enjoyed, the life in which we were raised, and both remember it in an idyllic, star filtered kind of way. These two have spent years attempting to recreate their childhoods with their own spouses and children, with varied levels of success. One of us just found it all somewhat puzzling, and increasingly touched down for only brief visits in between spending as much time as possible with friends.

  I can’t help but think about my own children and how they will remember the life Sean and I have given them. Parents can drive themselves crazy thinking about this sort of thing.  My sibs and I are prime examples of the truth that each of our personalities impacts our perceptions and reactions in a way that no parent can predict or plan for. We parents try to do our best, with the understanding that what is good for one child may not be what is right for the next. It could be that good parenting also means the realization that what was best for us, may not be what is best for our children – that the world they live in calls for a different approach.

  This is my question – can we, blinded by our past, see each of our children as the unique, God-works of art they are becoming? Parenting is an impossible privilege. God does not need us to help Him fashion our children – yet, He gives us the honor to do so.

  Participating in each other’s development – in the lives of our children, siblings, friends, other believers – is referred to in the Bible as a mystery, and it is. The wisdom to accomplish it is beyond us…but with God, all things are possible. That’s how we do it, with God. He in us, us in Him. Father knows best.

Become Beautiful

“Look at your mother,” my dad said, “she’s so beautiful.”

My mother was adorable, but she was going through a particularly rough patch of life when Dad made this statement. After spending the better part of two decades raising four children, she'd gone back to work and she was tired enough from a full-time job and still bearing a mother’s share of housework and child rearing. As if that wasn’t enough, her readjusting hormones were less than kind to her skin, and she had frequent debilitating headaches. She was carrying extra pounds and retaining water – you get the idea.

Mom rewarded Dad with a grateful smile. I thought, isn’t it sweet how he comforts her, makes her feel better. Then I looked at my Dad, and then at the two of them gazing at each other, and I realized I had it all wrong.

The look on his face was one of total adoration, admiration, and love. When she looked at him, she reflected all that love back at him. My dad wasn’t just trying to make my mom feel better. It wasn’t even that he truly believed what he was saying. What he was saying was absolutely true. Because he loved her like that and saw her as beautiful, she was made beautiful. “Yeah Dad,” I said, awestruck, “she is.”

Flash forward thirty years. “You’re so beautiful,” my husband of twenty-four years tells me. I scoff. “Well,” I say, “I’m glad you think so.” He slowly shakes his head, a wry smile on his lips. “You really don’t get it – you don’t believe me.”

I’ll tell you something I haven’t told him, though. I am starting to believe it. Seriously, I know I’m not the homeliest woman on the planet, but neither am I a vision of classic beauty, and I have always been okay with that. Yet, when my husband looks at me, I’m starting to see that same look on his face that I saw on my dad’s when he looked at Mom. It’s not the lusty, gusty, love-is-blind look of our early years. Some of that is still there, thank God, but more and more, I see that look in his eyes that sees all of me, knows all of me, and finds it breathtakingly beautiful.

This is a crazy kind of love, magical. The words materialize in my head, what kind of love is this? Then of course, it hits me.

What kind of love has the Father bestowed on us...?

What kind of love is this? It is unconditional love for even the most undeserving, and it transforms the beloved. This love is different from the world’s love like a hug is different from a push. This kind of love is sacrificial – it is an action – I have always believed that. I am coming to understand that it is also a way of being beheld, and it’s how God sees us.

I am very thankful for my father, and my husband. It doesn’t matter, though, who you are or what your situation – young or old, male or female, single, married, widowed, orphaned – if you are His child, you are being gazed upon by the God of the Universe through amazing, transforming eyes of love.

God looks at you and He doesn’t see your flaws, your wrinkles, your screw-ups. It isn’t that He is just overlooking your imperfections. He looks at you and He sees what you will be, finally – His beloved, perfect, in Christ.

What kind of love is this? It’s the power to transform. Believe it. Become beautiful.

Facebook's Greatest Hits: Sing A New Song

 Photo by Melissa Rose 

Welcome to our final week of the Facebook Friend Challenge. Thank you for joining me on this four-week journey. This last one may be the most challenging for many of us, so if you are ready, skip to the next paragraph. If you’re just joining us, we have been thinking about social networking practices. We’ve noticed that how we operate confirms recent research, which says we get out of social networking what we bring to it. This research has also found, however, that what many people bring to social media is a growing feeling of disconnectedness. We have thought about how we, who call ourselves Christ’s, are also called to bring light and hope to the world. We have asked the question, “What do we bring to something like Facebook?” We’re looking to make a difference, even on Facebook, and using Jesus’ example to guide us.

Jesus spent time alone. He had hundreds of needy people, nearly 24-hours-a-day, clamoring for His attention and care. Do you think He wasn’t tempted to spend every moment with them? The Bible says He was tempted with everything we are, yet He still regularly went off on his own to pray, rest, and recharge. If He could do it, we can, too. 

For the last few weeks, I've been thinking about how we can more intentionally connect with our friends on Facebook. In this last week, I'm writing about something a little different. I think this last, though, is crucial to enabling us to have the love and energy we need to really be there for our friends.

In my experience, and I’m not the first writer or researcher to suggest this, one of the most striking results of the social networking phenomenon is that solitude has become nearly non-existent. Thanks to social media, there is a world of people out there who are lonely, but never alone.

Human beings need solitude. We need to have thoughts and feelings that we don’t share with anyone but God. We have to have those times when we see only Him and listen for His voice and the truth it brings to our lives. Without that voice, we start to believe our own press, seldom a positive thing. In addition, the Bible frequently recommends that most of the thoughts that go through our heads should never come out of our mouths and certainly, they shouldn’t appear on our Facebook pages. We need to unplug for our own good, and for the good of our friends.

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, the Smart Phone – they will all be there when we come back. We will miss a few things. God is the only one who can keep track of everything, all the time, and He does, so rest easy. When you come back to the social media universe, resist moving to the world’s beat. Sing a new song!

Facebook Challenge, Week Four: Disconnect for 24 hours. Bonus points for avoiding screens of any kind. Double bonus if you can get your family or a friend to join you.