Dear Fourteen-Year-Old Me

I’ve been reading through my old journals, and I want to tell myself a few things:

Dear fourteen-year-old me,

You don't know me yet, since I won't exist for ten more years. To me, those ten years feel like a lifetime. 

You might not recognize me right away; I've changed considerably. In fact, you’re probably horrified by the person I’ve become. You probably see me as shockingly liberal, though perhaps moderate-conservative would be a better descriptor. You no doubt think I'll be a bad influence on you, but rest assured - I don't think I've permanently damaged anybody by influencing them.

The truth is that as I’ve grown up, I’ve opened my heart and my mind to the Bible and closed them to the extra stuff that’s so important to you. You're still so very young, and you know nothing more than the small, narrow world around you.

Oh, I’ve offended you; that wasn’t my intention. I still haven’t outgrown my bluntness, I’m afraid.

However, my point still stands: you don’t know as much as you think you know. It's true that you're a compulsive researcher; and it’s good that you're willing to seek out opposite viewpoints to the ones you hold. That will challenge your mind like very little else will. You just don't realize that there are opinions and facts out there that never come up in your little world of rigid, two-dimensional morality.

In your view, everything is sure and certain; everything has a moral edge so sharp you could cut your finger on it. That’s not how it works. There isn’t a dichotomy of good and evil; good is still good and evil is still evil, but there are myriads of ways they can overlap. Just because something isn't wrong doesn't make it right. Just because something isn't ideal doesn't make it bad. The right thing with faulty justification might still cause heartache. The right argument with the wrong motive will still push people away. The wrong belief for a good reason doesn't make it right. The decision you honestly thought was right turning out to be wrong because you didn’t have all the facts doesn't mean you sinned. There is more to righteousness than rules.

Your opinions on some things will change entirely. That’s a good thing, too. Time has a curious way of uncovering different facets of an issue. For instance, your insistence on never owning an iPod because it is inherently sinful will age rather badly in the future. Your belief that the King James Bible is the only one that’s not part of some demonic agenda will fare badly, too, as you do your research. So will your conviction that any music other than hymns is of the Devil. 

Your judgment of morality based on appearances will transform as well, as you find out that Godliness has more to do with the heart than with unyielding behavioral rules, and modesty has more to do with an attitude than clothes. You’ll meet people who are more modest in short shorts than others are in those dreadful things you call culottes*.

These are some superficial examples. The main thing that I want to say to you, dear little fourteen-year-old me, is that changing doesn’t mean you’re falling away from the faith. Oh, no! You’re finding your faith, faith in a God who loves this broken world like he loves you – with all he is. Find a different translation of the Bible, and read through it. Let God be God, and don’t try to explain away the uncomfortable facets of his nature. Find comfort in an uncomfortable God, who doesn’t have to conform to your ideas of what a god should be to still be God.

Read through the Mosaic Law and get a firmer understanding of the love and care underlying every interaction God has with his people - better than you’ve ever gotten from your narrow reading of the Gospels - and start from there. Throw out the old, legalistic teaching (as much as you can) and find what the text says. Get the historical background for it all. It will help.

You will not lose your faith, I promise you. Instead, you will rediscover the God you have faith in. And he is a good God, never fear. He is a far greater God than you ever realized. He is a more loving God than you ever knew. He is terrible in his goodness, wise in his anger, and right in his love. He is an active God, not withholding his love from those you see as unlikely and unlovely candidates, for you were – and I am still – unlikely and unlovely as well. He is an unrelenting, unstoppable God. He is the God who the world desperately needs.

The God you think you know resembles him, to be sure, but He is infinitely better.

This is what I want to tell you, little me.

That you’re wrong, about so many things, and only time can show you that. 

That you're right, about so many things, but you lack the compassion and gentleness to make a difference with it.

That the world is less scary than you know, and far more broken than you can ever guess. That it's your part to go out into it and do something about that.

That tolerance doesn't have to mean acceptance and approbation. It can mean the knowledge that with that person's background and circumstances, your life and choices would be no different, because you are no different from them without the mercy of Christ.

That the 'goodness of God leads to repentance' not because, as you think, it might guilt people into acknowledging him, but because thankfulness and gratitude to a good God might lead to wanting to know him.

That you’ll keep on changing, that you’ll keep on stumbling forward the best you can, that life is good outside your bubble. 

That you, and I, have so much more to learn, and good people to learn it with.


Sincerely,


Your future self

*Also, if a reader has managed to avoid experience with the specific type of culottes I mean, here's a photo:

(Also, think about it, Little Me: if you’re climbing a tree, are culottes - long, flowing, to the ground, and VERY wide at the bottom - or pants more modest? “Culottes!” you say, and I don’t say anything, because I have the benefit of knowing that someday you will change your mind. It will take years, and traveling to a different country, but it will happen.)

120 km/hour

I don’t know whether it was stupid or dumb, but it was a good decision. I rented a car to travel from Madrid to Granada, Córdoba, Mérida, and Sevilla. I bought a GPS before I left home because it would be cheaper and smarter in the long run, but I would be driving solo, so it promised to be stressful.

I walked to the train station to get my car (remember how I said after London that you should always get the car at an airport? Yeah, I ignored my own advice. Don’t do that.).

And then I spent the better part of an hour making sure I knew how the car worked and what buttons to push and if I knew where my GPS charger was and why did I think it would be a good idea to not remember where that went?

But, after asking for help because the car wouldn’t start and finding out that I just wasn’t pushing the brake hard enough, I was good to go.

Did you know that Madrileños use their indicators? It’s easier to drive in Madrid, not knowing a thing about where you are, than to drive in Chicago. Of course, one of the first things my GPS said was, and I quote, “Turn right at rtrtrtrtrplmbsrtsmz”. Well, it was easier to just change it to Spanish after that.

I didn’t get lost. I missed one turn, thankfully in a part of the city that followed a grid pattern, but the GPS just kept right on “recalculando”, giving usted commands and using the present subjunctive. I now know usted commands very well.

I was out of Madrid’s city center before I could do anything other than pay attention to the GPS. 

Then, once I got the hang of highway driving in Spain, I looped my camera strap around my wrist and turned up a Spanish radio station that finished a Spanish song and then played the theme from “Salvando a soldado Ryan”. 

Cruise control set to 120 km/hr, camera on and snapping here and there, air conditioning up so high I was actually starting to feel something other than hot – it was great.

A couple hours later, I was cruising along a country road at 90 km/hr. And then! I saw my first ruined castle. It was high on a hill since obviously no one with sense puts their fortifications in a valley, even if it did ultimately work out for George Washington.

About half an hour later, I saw my first Don Quijote windmill. 

I stuck my CD of the El Cid soundtrack in the player and turned it up. There was a reason for this: I was going to the castle that was used for the fortress of Calahorra in the 1961 El Cid movie. (The fortress of Calahorra itself is distinctly less castle-y looking, and besides, it's historically inaccurate to say that Doña Urraca ruled Calahorra, but it was the 1960s and I don't think they were too worried about it.)

Castillo de Belmonte is located in Cuenca, Spain. It’s been around for ages and will be around for ages more, since it was restored in the last 50 years. I had the run of the castle, pretty much, from the dungeons (probably a cellar, but a girl can dream) to the battlements. Isn’t it great?

The entrance to the keep

Notice the lowered drawbridge.

Entering the castle

Layers of walls and battlements

A full armor chamber!

The passages were cool and echoing.

The servants' quarters.

Either creepy dungeons or a cellar.

The gate looking toward the walls.

What a view! From the highest battlements accessible to visitors, I could see for what felt like miles.

Leaving Belmonte Castle by a small, little-used road.

On the road again - this time for 3.5 hours. I was tired - five hours of sleep the night before, four the night before that, little to no sleep on the airplane, everything seven hours off. So I stopped mid-way and got myself a sandwich at a little gas station. The locals (by which I mean the check-out lady) were busy fanning themselves with receipts and complaining about how hot it was.

Having finished the El Cid soundtrack, I started listening to other, more Spanish, music. And Bolero. Since it’s 15 minutes long, it was long enough to get me through about 7 tunnels and 30 bazillion miles of innards-squeezingly high bridges.

The most stressful part of the day came in the evening when I was trying to find my Airbnb. My GPS still doesn't know where it is, and my directions were very unclear, so Yvalis and Andrés (the hosts) came out to show me where to go. I took a shower while they were at the pool because I was practically manufacturing gallons of sweat by that point. Afterwards, I tried to sit on my bed to put in the wifi (pronounced wee-fee) password, fell over, and woke up an hour later, when I removed my laptop from my lap and went to sleep for another hour.

In one day I had traveled over 500 km, from Madrid in the center of Spain, to a point less then 100 kilometers from Africa. The terrain had changed; the culture had, too. Arabic and Spanish now shared road signs. Buildings had taken on a distinctly Moorish look.

So much of Spain is history, whether violent or peaceful. So much of it spanned centuries, a man's life come and gone between major occurrences. I never quite feel history at home, but here it's part of the air. It's sobering and exciting all at once.

Late

On Tuesday morning, we woke up to bright sunlight and a messy hotel room. Having got in late, we had pretty much fallen into bed, still aching from London, drained from our travels, and grateful to have a room for the night.


Joy still wouldn't say she wasn't mad at me for making her drive, though a restful night in a quiet country inn, surrounded by thatched roofs and chirping birds, seemed to lift her spirits.


We gathered up the laundry that had accumulated over the course of our trip, and my mom took £5 with her to do our laundry. Apparently, laundry is free. While she was doing the laundry, my mom told the owner a condensed version of something Joy had mentioned.


Joy said, referencing Pilgrim's Progress,


It doesn't matter what time you get to the Celestial City, or how long and hard the road is, or how much difficulty you had getting there. As long as you have a roll, a confirmed reservation, if you will, signed and sealed by Christ, the owner of the Celestial city, you will be welcomed and greeted. This reminded me of it.


It is true that we were not greeted by a detachment of angels, and that the comparison really did stop right there, but it was a great thought, nonetheless.


While our laundry was getting clean, we had breakfast - a welcome sight since we had had nothing to eat but apples and cheese sandwiches on Monday. The food was served in a low room supported by old oak beams.


We'd had a couple full English breakfasts by this point, but they were both in London. The addition of a teapot, milk, and sugar lumps, served in the country, made a wonderful meal even better.


After breakfast, I took off to take pictures around the area while waiting for the laundry to dry. Then we packed and checked out. I was sorry to leave. It was such a homey little cozy place.

We were still behind schedule, but we determined to do everything we could to get where we wanted to go. We still hadn't had our afternoon tea, but we figured we could do that somewhere between Anne Hathaway's cottage and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool.


It took us a while to get to Anne Hathaway's cottage. It seemed that everything took longer, especially since we were still getting used to the fact that right was our left and left was our right. But the car no longer told us to take tea breaks, and people no longer honked at us, and traffic circles were no longer so much of a problem, and we didn't get turned around at all. (That last in itself was lovely.)





Anne Hathaway's Cottage was absolutely lovely. The grounds were delightful, and the house itself was beautiful and well-preserved. To be sure, Anne Hathaway did not live in any rooms but the kitchen and dining room (the rest were added later). This, however, did nothing to detract from the pure charm of a wattle-and-daub thatched cottage.




We set off toward Liverpool next, realizing that we would not, in fact, have time for tea this day. Traveling took longer than we anticipated - Joy was not exactly ready to fly through the countryside at a staggering 70 mph around curves on two-lane roads with no shoulders. So we arrived at the tunnel that ran under the Mersey River not long before the International Slavery Museum closed.


This was, incidentally, our only toll for the entire trip. Fun fact: at £1.70 both directions, we paid the same fare as a motorcycle with a sidecar or a three-wheeled vehicle.


Liverpool is an interesting old place, an odd mixture of history and trendiness. We stuck mainly by the Albert Docks, since we were there to see the International Slavery Museum, which had closed by that time.


It was still interesting to see all the ships in the docks, many of which were restored. One is used to teach the troubled youth of Liverpool a trade, as well as important characteristics such as respect, promptness, and initiative.



We left Liverpool behind, went back through the tunnel, and tried to get to the little place where I'd planned to have dinner. It's a darling little country pub, and I really wanted to get there.


But our directions were wrong. I don't know how, but we had to get lost in order to find it. I finally said, "Well, let's just go down this wrong turn and see where we end up." (Joy thought this a really bad idea, especially as it was getting dark, but she still went with it. This is how tired she was.)




And there it was: the Stamford Bridge Inn. I was looking forward to bangers and mash, or just a bit of nice, warm comfort food. This was not to be: it was Italian night at the English country pub.




We were greeted at the door by a charming and somewhat bashful centurion, who told us that we were welcome to stay but that it wouldn't be traditional English fare.

I hadn't realized until that moment how much I had wanted an evening like this. Never are the English more English than when they are pretending to be something else; finally I would get to see what that meant.

The fare was nothing like what Americans think is Italian. It was probably nothing like what Italians think is Italian, either.

What made the evening spectacular indeed was the music. Someone we had never heard of, Jon Christos, sang Italian songs, old love songs, and a wonderful rendition of "To Dream the Impossible Dream". We had not expected to find opera-quality talent in a small country pub. The patrons were encouraged to dance, but the only ones who did were two of the waitresses (both of whom were convinced it was the other who couldn't dance) and a very determined lady who danced by herself because her husband refused. Being the type of person who knocks paintings off walls just by standing up, I didn't try.

Jon Christos was apparently in town to perform with the Liverpool Philharmonic. How we managed to miss that small detail when planning our trip to the Stamford Bridge Inn I will never know, but at the time, we were only delighted that the evening had turned out so well, especially after our disappointment at Liverpool.

Since the Inn is not, in fact, an inn but a pub, we ventured forth into the dark once more to find our hotel for the night. It was a Day's Inn, thankfully not too far from the roadway, with three beds and an electric tea kettle. Having shared a bed with Joy since our trip began, I was glad to have my own again!

Of Tea Breaks and Driving

A while back, I had made the decision to get our car close to our hotel, because "it would save us an hour of travel to Heathrow to pick it up, and I have detailed directions to get out of London."

Yeah, right. Never do that.

When we actually got to London, we decided that it would be awesome to leave our luggage at the hotel, pick up the car, drive back to our hotel, have breakfast, check out, get our stuff in the car, and then leave London.

Again, never do that.

All went well until we left the parking garage to return to our hotel. It would have been fine, even then, had the way back to our hotel not been one-way streets all pointing in the wrong direction. But they were one-way streets, and so we had to go round the other way. This also would have been fine, had we not somehow ended up in the other direction of where we wanted to go.

And if the check-engine light had not gone on.

So, there we were, at the mercy of traffic lights and one-way streets, still getting used to the fact that right was our left and left was our right. An hour later, after much effort and several arguments, we arrived back at the car hire place, explained the situation, and exchanged our Ford Focus - which Joy was terrified of hurting or crashing - for a Mercedes Benz. Oh, if that isn't irony, I don't know what is.

At this point, I called our hotel using Budget's phone, explained the situation, and begged about half an hour's leniency on checking out. Silly me, I figured that an hour and a half would be plenty of time to return to our hotel (which was still only three blocks away), especially since the nice lady at the desk had given me directions and marked it on our map.

Well, it wasn't enough time. We tried our hardest to get out of that awful city, but nothing would work. Finally we just turned down a little street and parked in the "you will be towed if you do not have a permit" area. Then I got out, looked around, spotted two men in a doorway, and went to ask for directions.

They were deep in conversation, but as I approached (saying, of course, how terribly sorry I was to trouble them, but might I bother them for a bit of directions?), they stopped talking and the one left in his car. How I envied the easy way he drove off! But the other looked at my map, turned it every which way until he figured out where we were, and said,

"You just need to go straight from here. Straight, straight, straight. You don't turn left; you don't turn right. Just straight, straight, straight." (Sounds like the Christian life!) While I was processing this startling bit of information, he said, "I'm going that way anyway. You follow me."

What were the odds? Well, our doors locked, and we could always just gun the engine and get out of whatever trap he led us into. So, with not a whole lot of trepidation - we were far too tired for that - we followed him. He brought us very close to the hotel, waved us on - "Straight, straight, straight!" - and we never saw him or his van again.

We parked a little ways from our hotel - Joy absolutely refused to go any farther, which made me unreasonably miffed. My mom and I went to collect our bags and check out. The guy at the front desk was glad to hear that we no longer had car trouble, but he was horrified to hear that we were still actually driving.

Well, what else could we do? We didn't want to rely on trains, especially with the threat of a national railway strike.

It took a bit for us to actually leave London. The roads were dreadfully narrow, and absolutely everyone drove like maniacs. Motorcycles especially tended to think that no rules applied to them. But we didn't get horribly turned around anymore, and we successfully left London behind us. We left our schedule two hours behind us, too, but it didn't really matter at this point.

After Joy had been driving for about four hours straight, almost ending up at Heathrow due to a confusing construction configuration, our car told us to take a tea break.

That's right; our car had a screen pop up. It even had a little picture of a steaming cup of tea.

Our car was a bit more commanding than this one.

At that point, we knew full well that we were in England.

We stopped by Stonehenge on the way to Bath. By this, of course, I mean that we were in stop-and-go traffic by Stonehenge on the way to Bath, and had an excellent view of an overappreciated tourist attraction. (By the way, I understand and support the need for conservation. But so many people know about Stonehenge, and I prefer to support conservation on a less-known place. Compare the amount of people at Stonehenge with the amount of people at Castlerigg Stone Circle, and you'll see why we went to the one and not to the other.)


We had to skip Nether Wallop, a little town we'd planned on seeing, but that didn't matter. After all, we were driving through some of the prettiest little towns I've ever seen. Joy, it is true, didn't like the sharp turns or the steep hills or any of the myriads of roundabouts (traffic circles) that we encountered on our way to Bath, but even she was able to see and enjoy some of the towns.

 

We arrived at Bath at about 4:00, thinking that everything closed at 5. Lo and behold, they were open until 9 pm. So we didn't have to worry about taking too long. I still wanted to get to Oxford, but we managed to enjoy Bath plenty. When my mom went to England, technology was non-existent and all the various interactive displays were not there. So she really enjoyed seeing all the reconstructions. I, myself, just enjoyed all the history. I had already read everything I could about Rome in sixth grade, I think, so I knew well how the baths worked.


We tasted the water, of course, and were just as unimpressed as I thought we would be, but in the opposite direction. It was not even nasty; it just tasted like lukewarm Chicago tap water. (Maybe we could set up a spa in our back yard and convince everyone that it's the fountain of youth...)



We peeked into the famed Pump Room of Jane Austen and Amazing Grace.

 

 And then we left for Oxford. Regrettably, we did get a bit turned around and lost about 45 minutes, but we still arrived in Oxford only a couple blocks from where I meant to be: the Martyrs' Memorial. We parked right across the street from the Eagle and Child, the pub which the Inklings, including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien called "the Bird and Baby." We threaded our way through the bar crowd to take a look at the Rabbit Room, where the Inklings met.

Martyr's Memorial looks much like a sunken church spire - the stuff of Oxford legend, in fact. It honors Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, martyrs of the Inquisition. These three men were burnt to death in 1555 for refusing to believe and practice "the errors of the church of Rome." They were put to death near the spot of Martyrs' Memorial by Bloody Mary.



All in all, we saw everything we really wanted to see in Oxford, though we didn't get all the time we would have wanted to spend.


And then we got to find our way to our hotel for the night. It was a little country place, called the Brasenose Arms, located in Cropredy, a small town near Banbury. We had thought we'd be able to see the statue of the fine lady upon the white horse that's mentioned in the child's nursery rhyme, but we weren't able to.

Ride a cock horse to Banbury cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse.
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
She shall have music wherever she goes.

A strange thing to put on an itinerary, to be sure, but we thought that since we were in the area anyway, we might as well try.

We arrived at the Brasenose Arms 13 minutes past check-in time. I had asked for late check-in, in the event that anything happened and we needed to use it. But the place was dark and no one was up. We knocked on the door in vain. No one seemed to be there.

I broke down crying. It had been a very long day, and I had been looking forward to staying at one of the six rooms in the little country inn for quite some time. I had paid for it, planned for it, and set my heart on it. Joy suggested that we sleep in the car, which I did not want to do. But there was nothing for it, and after knocking once again, we turned toward the car.

Unbeknownst to me, my mom was reminding God that anything that happened must be for our good and His glory. Joy was reminding Him that He had always come through for us before, and she didn't see why He wasn't now. But I was struggling with trusting Him at all, and finally I just told God that I trusted Him to make a way for us before I got to the car. I then walked toward it.

"Hello?" we heard from the back of the hotel. It was the owners, key in hand, ready to let us in. They gave us our room, ensured that we were fine with it, and left us to settle in.

I broke down crying yet again. Mercy isn't always seen in such a short amount of time, but this time it was, and I was very grateful.