“Young ‘outsiders’ and Christians alike do not want a cheap, ordinary or insignificant life but their vision of present-day Christianity is just that - superficial, antagonistic, depressing. … [They] deserve better than the unChristian faith and won’t put up with anything less. And, unlike any previous generation, they will not give us time to get our act together. If we do not deal with unChristian faith, we will have missed our chance to bring spiritual awakening to a new generation.”

~Dave Kinnaman, President of Barna Institute and author of unChristian

unChristian (whose author, Dave Kinnaman, is an alum of my alma mater, Biola University) focuses primarily on the perceptions of “Christianity” from those outside the faith but also spends a fair amount of time in the first couple chapters discussing reactions from young people within The Church as well. The bottom line? These perceptions and reactions are pretty similar. Whether from inside or outside, it’s clear The Church is failing miserably in being relevant to the “conversation generation.”

This is no surprise. But what makes this book and its conclusions so powerful is that they’re based on three years of extensive study conducted by one of the most prestigious and respected research institutions. Based on these years of study, Kinnaman points to six major skepticisms and objections to Christianity in America in the 21st century that come from young people both within and outside of the church:

1. Hypocritical

2. Too focused on getting converts

3. Anti-homosexual

4. Sheltered

5. Too political

6. Judgmental

I could’ve written this list myself (and have, in many more words, over the course of my blogging career). If I - as a member of The Church (for better or worse) - have experienced pain and frustration from these above objections, how much more so would it affect someone outside of this religion? A lot of people, churches and faith communities are starting to understand what a big deal this is - but a lot aren’t, thinking that the answer to the preferences of Gen X / Gen Y / The Millenials et al is to buckle down, yell louder and point the finger harder.

While much of this blog is about my struggle with the Christianity of modern America, and while this book is written with data I could’ve given myself, I am by no means exempt from the issues. I think those who yell louder and point fingers in an effort to build a dam around the necessary evolution of faith are wrong. But I know I don’t always handle my opinions in the best way possible, often focusing on division and anger rather than unification and love.

There is, perhaps, nothing I want more than to be part of a faith that’s relevant and active in my community on a fundamental, actionable, day-to-day level. I hope the people within my religion who disagree with my implementation can at least see my motives. And I hope the people outside my religion can see beyond the unChristianity that often surrounds it.

(As for the book, HIGHLY recommended, especially if you’d like to crawl inside the head of someone who struggles with The Church.)

-Brian McLaren

Finding our Way Again

And yet in the last few months I’ve been thinking a lot about how I just expect that one day I’ll wake up and be someone different - someone more adult, more mature. I still look at my friends who are a few years older than me and think - when I get to that point, I’ll totally have it all together. But I’ve been thinking that for years now and I have not managed to accumulate any sense of said “togetherness.” At lest I don’t feel like I have.

On the flip side I have sensed a change in myself over the last few years. I’m much more confident in my own skin, less insecure, willing to claim for myself what I want out of life. And those are good feelings - but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m pretty sure my 23-year-old self sold me out when she agreed to have The Baby Talk at 28. Then, 28 seemed like a lifetime away and I was sure - given my theory on togetherness mentioned above - that I would have it all figured out by then. Surely, as I rapidly approached my thirties, I would be a different person.

I’d like to bitch-slap my 23-year-old self for making that deal.

Ok, not entirely because truth be told I have grown up since then - I can tell because having a hypothetical talk about possibly one day having a family doesn’t reduce me to nausea, tears and screams as it used to (hence, why I made The Deal). Still, I guess at 23 I expected to feel differently about things by now, to be ready to at least talk about an impending family.

For me, the idea of having a family - however that looks for us (I’m SOOOO not sold on the idea of pregnancy and biological kids) - has been a series of logical rationales: I know in the future that I want to have a family, I want to have that life experience, so at some point a decision needs to be made about kids. (Unless, as we joke about, we decide to adopt a 17-year-old and just put them through college :-)). Lest I be one of those old Pac Heights “i-can’t-tell-if-you’re-a-mom-or-grandma” parents, our early-to-mid 30’s seemed like an ok time to start a family. So giving ourselves a couple years to make decisions and come up with a plan made 28 the magic year to have The Baby Talk. Or so we thought when we were 23.

Ryan turns 28 this month. And I’m pretty sure I’m not going to become a different person in the next few weeks. There’s a good chance we’ll postpone The Talk but it’s still given me pause to think about how I regard the future and I’m grasping more and more that I’m living my future NOW. Sure, I’m a different person than I was at 23 but a). it didn’t happen over night and b). the fundamentals of my personality are still the same. When I made The Deal, it was based on the hope that I’d wake up one day suddenly wanting kids.

I still have that hope - and it could still happen - but what I think is more likely (as I get older and yet not more maternal) is that we’ll make whatever decision we make based not on emotion and a burning desire for kids, but based on a factual timeline we lay out. That’s different than what I expected based on the way all this is perceived in our culture, but based on each of our personalities I should’ve expected as much. And since my future is now, I should probably just embrace it.

I’ve hesitated about blogging on all this because it’s kind of a touchy subject for me, but I’ve so appreciated the honesty of my friend as she’s gone through this process (and just became a mom!) with similar sentiments that I decided to go for it - who knows how many more of us are lurking out there …

I find myself admonishing people not to do a lot of the things we’ve done - get married so young, move to a new city with no jobs and no place to live, get two dogs at the same time - and this is no exception. Quitting our stable, relatively well-paying jobs for no “good” reason, within days of eachother has been one of our bolder, crazier decisions. Yet as with most of these types of decisions we’ve made, it continues to work out in ways I don’t expect, ways that are happily surprising (and not-so-happily surprising, to be fair).  I’m not sure I’d do anything differently. … Well, other than give ourselves a bit of a safety net by staggering our timing by more than a few days.

So what the hell were we thinking?

Ryan had long wanted to go into business for himself and saw consulting as a stepping stone. I think it was when he realized that he was making almost as much from consulting gigs on the side as he was from his day job that he decided to go that route. You’d have to ask him about the specifics.

As for me, I NEVER imagined that self-employment would be a part of my journey. When I started out in TV, I planned to end up producing a talk show - something I still wouldn’t be opposed to - but the path I was on didn’t appear to be leading in that direction. There are a lot of concrete reasons why I ended up giving my office job the axe when I did - many of which have to do with impatience, and not all were wise or rational - but I remember the exact, distinct moment when I made my decision. I had flown out to my parents (who were then on the east coast) for the weekend. I was taking a red eye back on a Monday morning to be back in time for work and it hit me - I was rushing back to a job I didn’t love (had I loved it, I bet things would’ve been different), away from a family I DID love, who I wanted to spend more time with.

Although the road of self-employment has been rocky at times, even disheartening and confusing, I have to say I’ve never lost sight of that epiphany. It’s why I purposely schedule mid-day lunches with friends, why I try to travel as much as I can, why I walk the dogs with Ryan in the afternoon (well, sometimes), why I work in the backyard when it’s sunny, why I spend the day at the beach with my mom.

I’ll be honest: for all the “pros” of the lifestyle I’ve chosen, I’m still not sure I want to do this forever. I have mixed emotions about my work a lot of the time. I enjoy it, but I’m not sure it’s my life’s work, my purpose. Until I find it, though, I’m happy with being able to structure life on my terms, in a way that fits my priorities. When I had my most recent “what to be when I grow up” meltdown, Ryan pointed out that a lot of people spend a lot of their lives trying to get to where I am - the fact that I’ve already gotten there and decided I want more out of life shouldn’t be a bad thing. He’s right I suppose, and echoes the sentiments of one of his business heroes Paul Graham:

Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it’s rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you’ll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you’re in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you’re practically there.

I guess I’m in the home stretch.

Most people probably don’t know this because I never really talk about it: I want to work at JPL someday and I have for a really, really long time. I think it’s due to my space brat upbringing and the knowledge that this is a place where, although I’m not aeronautically or scientifically or mathematically inclined, I could still contribute and - as an added bonus - let my uber space dorkiness run free.

So how come someone like me - who splatters her personal, intimate, mundane life all over the internet via a myriad of social channels - has never let this be known? I was afraid. Superstitious. Unsure.

Afraid that if I said it and couldn’t achieve it, people would know about it and see that I’d failed.

Superstitious, well, for no good reason, obviously - that’s why it’s a superstition.

Unsure that this was a path I wanted to go down.

And you know what? I’m still all of these things, to a certain extent. You don’t have to know me five minutes to figure out I’ve got my hands in about a million different projects and actually closing my fist and grasping on to just one isn’t always my specialty. And I’m still afraid that tomorrow I’ll change my mind - or, worse yet, I’ll still want it but won’t be able to make it happen. But to hell with that. I’m boldly stating that this is something I want out of life.

Because - since my parents named me “zoomie” as a fetus in honor of my dad’s aero background; since I literally cut my first teeth during drives between LA and Houston where my dad was training to be an astronaut; since grasping on to my first dollar that flew in space; since watching the shuttle launch from front row seats (although I didn’t appreciate it then); since depleting the library of its supply of NOVA videos; since I obsessively followed the tweets of Spirit and Opportunity; since putting on my 3D glasses for IMAX Space Station - I’ve always been a space geek. And I want to be involved.

So why is this all just now coming out in a rush of teenager-like angst? My dad (not surprisingly) has friends at JPL who put me in touch with people in the media division years ago - nothing ever came of it for whatever reason, but recently I got back in touch with them. They encouraged me to make my mark on JPL from the outside - to contribute content, join discussions, spread the gospel of space - and see what happened. And so that’s what I’m going to start out by doing.

I don’t know where it’ll lead, but if nothing else I hope it re-ignites my genes that want to eat, live and breathe space … well, without literally eating, living and breathing space.

So, JPL, it’s game on!