Some bad news but then some good news

I am no longer going to be writing this blog.  Why?  It's kind of a long story.

I didn't go into my Gospels class that morning thinking my life was going to change.  But here I sit four years later, realizing how it has.

On this particular day, our assignment was to get into groups and to read Mark's 10th chapter, in which an authoritative, wealthy young man approaches Jesus and asks Him how to receive eternal life.

After performing His classic riddling routine, Jesus finally tells the guy, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."

Now in the past, when I have read this story, there have been countless explanations of exactly what was going on here and exactly what Jesus might have meant.  "Well, He didn't actually mean for the ruler to sell all of his possessions - just the expensive and excessive things."  Or "Yes, Jesus said that and He meant it, but this was one of those times when Jesus was speaking specifically to this man, and He didn't mean for it to be a universal truth for all rich people."

In the past, I have always accepted these explanations, and I have made up my own explanations.  I have read Mark 10 and gone on unchanged.

But on this specific day, in my little class at Greenville College, the Lord gave me fresh eyes with which to read.  I finished the last sentence, and asked myself, "Wait.  What if Jesus really meant that?"

What if He wasn't speaking in hyperbole?  What if He was sharing a universal truth?  What if there is something inherent in wealth that acts as a block to experiencing the kingdom of heaven and the eternal life that is offered there?

{Let me pause my story for a moment to tell you that I am not talking about salvation here.  Jesus took care of that on the cross and there is no amount of pruning and do-good-ing and learning and adjusting to His ways that I can do that will earn me more than He earned in His death.  I am talking about experiencing the abundant life that He has for me now that I am His - the power to heal, the unending joy, the all-surpassing peace.  His very kingdom on earth.}

I began exploring this idea more and more, discovering how wealthy I truly am, and facing the fact that I am very much like the rich young man who encountered Jesus.  My wealth has for so long been staring me in the face as I go through the banquet table of my mind, dismissing unwanted guests like fear, anxiety, and jealousy; honoring others like joy and servanthood.  My wealth has been asking for a seat, and I have tried to fit her somewhere.  But every time I find her a seat, I look into the eyes of the Head of my table.  I see the oppressed widows and the lost children and the sex slaves gathered around Him, and I cannot allow my wealth to stay.

The weeks and years between that particular class session and today are filled with more epiphanies and discoveries and stories about me facing my wealth than you would ever care to read here.  So I will not tell you about my trip to a real, live leper colony in the Dominican.  I will not tell you how I came home to my government subsidized "poor people" housing and marveled at the way my walls and ceilings are actually adjoined, which is more than most Dominicans I encountered can say.  I will not share with you how I feel about the fact that just because I have money in the bank, in my purse, and also in a spare change dish, I am more wealthy than 92% of the world.  I will not tell you how the movie Taken was the first I had ever heard about sex trafficking and how I couldn't sleep for days afterward and that the way things came together allowed me to work hand-in-hand for over a year with an organization that has rescued and rehabilitated more sex slaves than I have ever heard of.  I will not tell you how I found a list of goods imported to America and how now, most days, I just can't bring myself to buy something that I know was made in a country that uses child labor or slave labor, no matter how much I want it.

Instead, I will tell you this.  I am rich.  Financially, intellectually, spiritually.  I have power and authority to change a lot of things.  And the Lord has been asking me to change this.  Truth be told, as wealthy as I am, there are not very many of my possessions that I could sell with the intent to raise money for the poor that you would want to buy.  But I am good with my hands, and I am creative and artistic.  So I have been purging my closets, setting aside some possessions that I know I could actually sell for money, and scouring the Internet for ways to upcycle everything else.  I now know how to make beautiful Christmas decorations from old CDs.  I know how to make about a dozen different kinds of scarfs out of old t-shirts.  I can string pop-can tabs together into a bracelet that you would want to wear.  I have made paintings and book sculptures and Bible verse art and coffee filter flowers, and I can bend wire into words that look simply beautiful hanging on the wall.  I have ways to sell my possessions and to give to the poor, and the Lord is asking me to do that.

Here's where you come in.  This blog is closing, but www.considergrace.com is launching.  Today.  Not only does it look completely different than this blog, but the contents have changed.  I still have my writings, but now I also have my music, my art, and (most importantly) a store where you can buy new things that I make out of old things.  Each purchase you make will be used to help the poor.

For our first project, we will raise $600 to pay for vocational training for one year for one girl that has been rescued from sex trafficking.  After that, we will choose a different goal.  It may be providing a clean water well to a village.  Or it might have something to do with the lepers I met.  Or maybe feeding hungry babies.

Either way, I will be getting rid of junk, you will be getting pretty things for your home, and we will both be joining together to bring light into the dark places on earth.

I have been writing at Consider Grace for quite some time, and I am thrilled to finally have a mission and a purpose in my writing.  To continue to "pause for a moment and consider Grace" and in that considering, to see Him in greater light.  To pursue His kingdom with all of me, and to encourage you to do the same.  I have full confidence that in doing so, this new website will be filled with more and more stories of Jesus' eternal life crashing into mine, but I cannot do it alone.

I invite you to join me in this endeavor.  To help me sell my possessions and give to the poor.  Please visit www.considergrace.com.  Please tell your friends about my site.  Please consider giving to this cause.  I'll see you soon.

New Things

In case anyone has noticed my lack of posting, it's because I'm working on a whole new thing.  Announcement to come later this month.

You're gonna love this.

Please stay tuned!

Treasure Hunting

I did something a little nuts tonight.  I went out with the girl I mentor, her best friend, and a friend of mine (the same friend who finds angel feathers in her kitchen) and we "treasure hunted."  Except the clues were from the Lord and the treasures were people.

Intrigued?

Me too.

There is a prayer team at our church that does stuff like this frequently, so this time, thanks to the girl I mentor, I went along.  A bunch of us met together, prayed for the Lord to show us "clues", and then just spent about 10 minutes writing down every thing that came into our mind.

Here's my list (in the order it came to me):
Frog
Peppermint
Red Bricks
Planet Fitness
Brooke
Curtain Rod
Esophagus Problems
Ocean Wave
Dizzy
Elijah
Snowflakes
Purple Leopard Print
Stone-washed Jeans
White Tennis Shoes
Mary Beth
Knee Pain
Piano
Stoplight
Ham Sandwich
Hotel
Birth Control
Lesbian

Crazy, huh?  So then we broke off into groups of four, shared our lists with each other to see if anything matched, and then picked a place to go.  Someone in my group had Cumin, Sugar & Spice, which kind of matched my Peppermint.  Someone had Tie-Back, which matched my Curtain Rod.  Someone had Knee Pain, which matched my Knee Pain.  And almost all of us had something about a Purple piece of clothing.  One girl had Wal-mart and 9th street, so that's where we went.

I've never been so nervous walking into Wal-mart.  I sweated through the armpits of my t-shirt AND my sweater.

We started with the spice section.  Nothing.  Then we moved to the pickle aisle (someone had Olives on her list).  Down at the end of that aisle, there was a man with a little boy (Child was on the same list as Olives).  We hesitated and half-followed him all the way to the check-out line before finally getting up the nerve to approach him.  The name Carl was on the same list as Olives and Child, so the holder of that list said, "Is your name Carl, by any chance?"

"Uh, no."

"Okay, sorry.  Bye!"

And that was that.  Not a hugely spiritual encounter, you might think, but hey.  It was a baby step in the right direction.

We then made our way toward the curtains and candles, since those things were on three of our lists.  A woman was turning into the candle aisle who walked with a very serious limp - like the lower half of her legs were turned the wrong way or something.  We tried matching her to a name, with the same approach as we had with Carl.

"Excuse me, but is your name Tonya?"

"No, it's Deanne."

(Watch our boldness here.)

"Oh, well, this might sound weird, but we are on a treasure hunt.  We asked the Lord to give us clues and we thought He might be pointing us to you, so could you look at our list and see if anything sticks out to you?"

She looked at it and said, "Yeah 'Chair'.  I wish I could sit in one!  I've been shopping all night."  We then asked if we could say a quick prayer to bless her, she said sure, and we did.  Then, since she didn't bring up her legs or knees, we did what those friends of that paralyzed man in Scripture did - we took her to Jesus on our own, and we prayed for God to heal her after she left us.

Voila.  Treasure found.  Candles.  Knee/Leg Pain.  Chair.

Coincidence, you think?  There was also Kathy, who wore a Purple Sweater, a Leopard Print jacket, was near the Curtain aisle, played the Piano, and attended the same church as one of the girls in my group.  And there was Darielle who had Coffee & Cream in her cart, had Dark Hair, was wearing a Jacket, Purple Shirt, and the very same Tennis Shoes I had seen in my mind, and her sister was pregnant and having lots of Knee Pain.

My favorite, though, was the most random of all.  Someone had Tickle-Me-Elmo on the list.  In the Elmo aisle, we struck up a conversation with a woman about her grandkids, for whom she was shopping.  We told her about the treasure hunt thing and showed her our list.  She was extremely skeptical.  Like.  Giving us slanty-eyed, weird looks.  She read the list for a few seconds and then said, "What am I supposed to do?"

"Just see if anything on the list sticks out to you."

"Oh......yeah, Pain.  I have arthritis, and I'm in pain all over my body.  Also, Octopus."  We asked her why.  She laughed and said, "I can't tell you...you're church people!"  We laughed too.  Then we were gathering to pray for her arthritis, and we asked her name.

"Angie."

"My name's Angie, too!" said our Angie.

That really sent Tickle-Me-Elmo's Angie on some kind of trip.  She literally bolted to the other end of the aisle and said, "This is too weird.  Y'all are freaking me out.  Is your name really Angie...like, you're Christian, birth certificate name?  You're going to make me cry!  This has been a really weird, holy week.  You can pray for me from over there, but you are freaking me out."  Our Angie just said, "Well, I bless you with healing from the top of your head to the tips of your toes."  And Elmo's Angie said, "The same to you...in a good way!"  And we left, musing about how Tickle-Me-Elmo and Octopus were two of the strangest clues and how cool it was that they went together.

So that was it.  There lots of things on our lists that didn't get mentioned, but it was such a fun experience.  And once we got past the initial awkwardness of conjuring up a conversation out of thin air, it wasn't bad at all.

And I'm going to do it again on Saturday.

What is it about facebook statuses?

Confession: I just spent the last 15 minutes looking for a good, sad, and juicy song lyric to post on my facebook wall.  Something intriguing and provocative.  Something to perfectly match my mood.

Then I stopped and asked myself, "Why?"

What is it about stringing a dozen words together and putting it up there for all of my "friends" to see?  What is the purpose of that?

Don't get me wrong.  I appreciate and even "like" interesting, funny, or thoughtful posts that other people put up.  But there is definitely something satisfying and almost relieving in writing a good status update.  There is something about it that enhances your feelings of goodness and suppresses your feelings of badness.

But what is it?

I may have an answer.

It's the same answer that a classmate gave in my Writing Fiction and Poetry class nearly 5 years ago when the professor asked, "Why do we write?"  His answer came after a few others.  "To inform people."  "To invoke emotion."  "To change ideas."

He said, "To make sure we're not alone."

We write to make sure we're not alone.  To see if anyone else out there feels the same way we do.  And I would venture to say that, whether you are talking about a newspaper article, a science paper, a blog, or a facebook post...most of them are written to make sure we're not alone.

There is a thrill with getting "like"d.  And even more-so with getting comments.  The thrill says, "Yes!  Someone gets me.  Someone has felt this way too."

Feathers

Two nights ago, we were having dinner with some new friends.  After dinner, their just-turned-one-year-old baby boy kept reaching out toward the center of the dining room table, like he wanted something.  There was a bottle there, so I handed it to him.  No interest, but he kept reaching.  I started handing him other things, but he just kept reaching.

I asked his mom, "What is he reaching for?"  And I was surprised at her answer.  And at the nonchalance of it.

"Oh, I think there's an angel in our kitchen.  He reaches out like that a lot, and sometimes I see feathers falling while I'm doing dishes."

She went on to tell us how feathers can often be a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.  How when she first heard about this phenomenon, she asked the Lord about it, and He reminded her of Psalm 91:4.

"He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge."

She said that, for her, the small feathers are a reminder that God is seeing her, and that He is present.
I don't know if it's my childhood, my church background, my education, my chemical makeup, or just my personality.  But when I hear things like this, my initial reactions are ones of skepticism.  My tendency is to rationalize.  To reason.  To come up with a good, logical explanation.

But in the past month or so, that has begun to change.  Our boss (who is our pastor) has been pushing us (the church staff) to stretch our faith a bit more, to look into things that are unfamiliar for us, and to ask the Lord if He wants to teach us anything new.

Well.  If you've ever asked the Lord to teach you something new, you know the answer.  It's always yes.

So on my way home from this friend's house, I prayed.

"Lord, I want to have strong faith, and I want to walk in spiritual ways.  I don't want to test You, but I also don't want to just believe everything I hear.  If I have faith in something, I want it to be from You.  If making feathers appear is really something You do, will You do it for me?"

And here's what happened.

Yesterday afternoon, I was in my kitchen talking to a friend who is in the midst of a big, messy relational situation.  She is battling hopelessness, faithlessness, bitterness, and so many other things, and we were discussing it all.  And while we were talking, guess what just appeared in mid-air. 

{Insert Dora the Explorer awkward pause while we all wait for the kids to shout out the obvious answer here.}


You guessed it!  It was a tiny feather, and it just sort of floated out between us.  I caught a hold of it and it was small and brown and about the size of a fingernail clipping.

Now.  Here's what I could do.  I could fall on my face trembling and weeping before the Lord, thanking Him for His goodness and faithfulness and presence.  I could carry the feather around with me forever.  I could end up praying to the feather and I could trap it in a tiny glass case and charge my neighbors $5 to catch a glimpse of the relic.  You see where I'm going with this.

Or I could explain it away.  "Well, she probably sleeps on a feather pillow, so this feather was trapped in her shirt and when she gestured just now, the wind picked it up and shot it out toward me.  What a funny coincidence."

Or I could do this.  I could silently thank the Lord for reminding me that He is watching my friend.  That He continues to hold onto hope.  That He is working things out and keeping us safe under His wings in the meantime.  Then I could let the feather go.

Because, do you know what?  It doesn't matter to me whether the feather appeared out of thin air from an invisible wing in my kitchen or from a feather pillow.  The point is that I asked God for a feather and He gave it to me.  He knew it would remind me of Him.  That it would strengthen my faith.  That it would get my attention.  And after all that's really what our days are about anyway, aren't they?  Remembering God and pointing our attention to Him.

And do you know what else?  I've seen two more feathers today.

Something Very Personal

I am not pregnant.  However, a lot of my friends are pregnant and having babies, so lately, I have been thinking about it a lot....a LOT.

As of late, I have spent at least a little time every day imagining what it will be like when I am pregnant.  Will I be sick?  (This is almost always my first wondering.)  Will I look cute?  (This is almost always my second wondering.)  Will I glow?  (My goodness, how self-consumed can I be?)  Will I have an easy pregnancy?  How weird will it be to feel a person inside me?  Where will I be living?  How will I make all of those decisions?  (Names, home birth or hospital birth, which car seat is safest, what color high-chair to get, and so on.)

But my favorite thing to imagine and to think about is that for 40 weeks, I will have a tiny person inside of me and for those 40 weeks, I will literally never be by myself.  Every morning when I come out to sit on the couch, someone will be with me.  Every time Rod and I go on a date, there will actually be three of us.  I imagine that I will almost constantly be aware of the fact that I am pregnant.  (You moms can speak into this one...is it true?)  And, I hope, because I am continually aware of it, I will continually be praying for that little tiny one.

Right now, Rod and I enjoy praying for our future kids.  We pray that they will grow up to know the Lord.  We pray for the people who are going to be their mentors, their best friends, their spouses.  We pray that my body will produce healthy children.  We pray for the Lord's blessing and favor over their lives.  We pray that we will have world-changing kids.

But over the last month or more, Jesus has really been bringing something to light for me.

It started in December, when a friend told me about a mother of three that she had met.  This mother was abusive to her three sons and she knew it, so this mother asked my friend to help her find a family to adopt her kids.  She said it had to happen soon or else she would bring her three boys to DCFS and give them up.

My friend asked if we would pray about adopting one or two or all of them.

It only lasted about a week before the mom changed her mind and the whole thing sort of flew out the window.  But in that short period of time, my instincts must have kicked in, because I saw a picture of those boys and I really, truly began thinking of them as my own.  I prayed for their protection and for their healing.  I prayed for this woman to stop hurting them.  I prayed Jesus would bring them to us safely if they were meant to be ours.

And for some reason, in the last maybe 3 weeks, those feelings have come up again.  Not for those boys specifically, but I wake up in the morning thinking, "My baby might be out there with someone else."  "My baby might be born today."  Or, "My baby might be three years old today."  And I pray even more for that baby's blessing, health, and most of all protection.

In all of these thoughts and these prayers, I am reminded again of how little control I have.  How the fact that I can go to the doctor and take pre-natal vitamins and read about all of the best exercises to do and the best foods to eat while pregnanct really is just an illusion of control.  That ultimately, I have to live with open hands and trust the Lord to carry out His perfect will.

Maybe His will is for us to only have children come through my body.  But more and more, I don't believe that's true.  More and more, I believe some (or all) of our babies are out "there" somewhere.  It makes me sick to think that someone else could be abusing my child right now, but that just drives me ever and ever closer to the Lord, because if that is the case, my only choice is to trust in His promises and believe that He will work all things out for good. 

The truth is, we are never in control.  We can do our best to make good decisions and to educate ourselves.  But HE is the one Who is holding it all.  That is a very scary thing to think about - having to trust Someone else to take care of things for you.  But when you look around at the pain and the evil that you are capable of (I can be so mean to my husband.  I can be so selfish when I want something.) doesn't it make you glad that you don't have the final say?  That there is Someone bigger and wiser and more loving than you Who is taking care of things and making beauty out of your ashes?

We serve such a good God.

Album of the Month - January, "Shorter Days"

I have a few Resolutions this year...

Number One. Fast from pop.  (Especially hard when you're at the movie theater and you're eating handfuls of salty popcorn...it's just not the same with water.)

Number Two. Memorize two Scripture passages each month.  For this, I am joining together with a dozen lovely women from my church, and I am learning a lot.

Number Three (and the one I am sharing with you now).  Create an Album of the Month.  I first heard about this idea from my friend, Emily.  So I adapted it and made it my own.

Remember getting/making mix tapes for road trips or for special events or for friends' birthdays?  This is like that.

This year, as a way to broaden my musical horizons, I am spending time each month discovering new music, and I am putting the best of what I find on the Album of the Month and then I will be sharing it here with you.  I find myself stuck in the same music for years at a time, only adopting new music when someone tells me to check it out.  So the whole point of this is to give me a tangible, measurable goal to work toward, which will force me to be proactive. 

It really is quite a narcissistic project, because the only requirement for a song to make it onto the album is that I like it.  I can bet that the vast majority of the songs will be low-key, acoustic, folksy stuff, but you never know when I will whip out a surprise (particularly if Justin Bieber releases any new stuff this year...I've admittedly got a little fever). 

My goal is for 80-90% of the album to be music that I have newly discovered (because there are just so many great songs that I already know, and I will want to share those too), and my other goal is to at least have one of my own originals on there each month, too.  The recordings won't be great, but again, it will force me each month to make an effort to write (or record, if it's already written) at least one song that I'm proud of.


For the sake of accountability and feedback, I have several friends who are helping me in this by being my "audience".  They are people who have agreed to give my album a listen each month, let me know what they think of it, and suggest new music to me as they come across it.

I would like the same from you.  If you ever hear of music you think I would like (based on the songs I list each month), please feel free to share it with me!  This project has been fun so far, and I'm looking forward to the new discoveries I will make.  Hope you like it too!  (And as soon as I figure out how to use Spotify, I will create a playlist on there, which should make this album much easier to share.)

January - "Shorter Days"
1. "1957" by Milo Greene
2. "When the City Comes" by Chuck E. Costa
3. "All My Days" by Alexi Murdoch
4. "In the Garden (Live)" by Susan Tedeschi
5. "Grand Central Station" by Mary Chapin Carpenter
6. "So Within" by Seryn
7. "Mario Kart Love Song" by Sam Hart"
8. "Ready to Leave" by Anna Joy
9. "Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop" by Landon Pigg
10. "Making Pies" by Patty Grifin
11. "Ever Could" by William Fitzsimmons
12. "Much Farther to Go" by Rosie Thomas
13. "Songbird" by Jillian Edwards
14. "Hazy" by Rosi Golan (featuring William Fitzsimmons)
15. "Hawthorne" by Mat Kearney
16. "On My Knees" by Seryn
17. "We Will Follow" by Jars of Clay (featuring Gungor)

Liturgy

I can still remember the awful, burning anger I felt toward my professor, the tension in my guts between wanting to respect him and have an open mind and wanting to argue his logic until the sun went down and came back up again.  Our class on Liberal Arts, Christian thought, and learning how to live in community had been meeting for several weeks when one student asked if we could take prayer requests and in praying for each other build stronger relationships.  As always in a room full of new students who don't know each other or the school, argument broke out, tempers rose, opinions flew around and bounced off the walls unheard.  

Here was the issue: at the mention of taking prayer requests, which is usually a pretty insignificant, quickly accepted and easy thing to do and get done in a Christian school, our professor in a way hemmed and hawed, started bringing up the fact that who-are-we-to-tell-God-what-to-do, and laid out all these rules about how we would speak the need - "For my mother who has cancer" or "For families who have unreconciled hearts" - and the rest of the class would respond with, "Lord, have mercy", and that would be the end of it.  There would be no, “Please God do this” or “Dearlordthankyouforthisday” and “Father, Father, Father, God, God, God, just, just, just”.

I was confused and infuriated.  He was being ridiculous.  Of course we’re not telling God what to do.  We’re presenting our requests to Him and explaining to Him what we would prefer, yes.  But we are trusting Him to make the best decision.  What could possibly be wrong with that?  And how can there be any meaning in anything if we’re just repeating a script?  How is the Spirit moving if we’re just responding in unison like some mundane robots?  And why is he spending this entire three-hour class talking about this and trying to get his way when we have other things to get to?

Now, if this instance had occurred later in my time at college, after I learned to trust this professor and believe in his intention and consider his ideas and admit that he loved me, I might have responded a little more audaciously and a little less like a scared porcupine.  I might have listened.

He was teaching us about liturgy.  He was introducing us to the notion that maybe just maybe there is power in speaking something in unison.  That if we use a form of prayer that has been used for centuries, we are not boring God or acting like robots but we are joining with a larger community than just these thirty students in this class who can physically hear us.  And we are training ourselves to trust the millennia of Christians who have gone before us and hashed a lot of this stuff out already.

I did not want to accept any of this.  I had come to this college from a mega church where everything was about being on the cutting-edge and finding fresh ways to worship and doing church differently.  But because it was college and because God gave me some magical extra dose of grace to challenge myself and to run cannon-balling into new situations, I began attending the church where this professor was a pastor.  A liturgical, traditional church, where we sang out of hymnals and the pastors wore long, dark robes (a fact that one of my mega church friends literally threw her head back and laughed about on one of my first visits home), and we spoke the same exact words before communion every Sunday.  “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love You, and worthily magnify Your holy name, through Christ the Lord. Amen.” 

I attended this church until I had memorized all of these words and until I could speak them joyfully into the air because I didn’t have to read them anymore.  And then I kept attending until the words became rote and boring and I could have used a change.  And then I kept attending until I didn’t mean any of these words anymore and I recited them with my mouth while falling asleep in my brain or thinking about the hair color of the person in front of me or trying to count how many times throughout the service people coughed.  And then I kept attending until I hated these words.

And then do you know what?  After several months of being bored out of my skull at church, these words began to mean something again.  As though repeating them again and again had slowly and softly drilled a hole through my chest and all of the sudden the hole reached my very heart.  It was like looking at one of those illusion paintings that first looks like a bunch of specks and then turns into a picture of dolphins or clowns or reindeer and then it was as if I looked deeper still and saw my own face reflected in the glossy paper of the painting and then I looked even harder and saw my own features and habits painted into each little orange and red and brown speck. 

These words, “The Collect”, had become some of my best friends.  I found out that these words pretty much cover it.  That in saying these words, I am saying so much more; I am saying that I trust in God’s best and that really all I want is to worship Him anyway and that He knows all of my deepest wonderings and questions and wounds and desires, and He loves me anyway.

So it turns out my professor actually knew what he was talking about.  Go figure.  And now I regularly use liturgical prayers before meals and while falling asleep and when I am so desperately needy and lost that I don’t know what else to pray.  Because now I recognize the depth, the meaning, the tradition and the community behind these prayers, and I truly believe that I am saying more than just these words.  That I am using these words as the safety net to fall into when my own tightrope of made up prayers is no longer sturdy enough to stand on.

The Beautiful Exchange

Some time ago, a close friend of mine was in desperate need of some physical healing.  Her friends were praying for it.  Her family.  Her church elders.  Even people who didn't know her were agreeing in prayer that she would be healed.

And she wasn't.

I have frequently heard stories of sick people being made well.  Addictions being broken.  Relationships restored.  I have even experienced healing in myself.  In my own body.  In my own family.  A man at my church once had a tumor the size of a softball in his stomach.  The biopsy showed that the tumor was cancerous, so before he went in for surgery, a bunch of us laid our hands on him and prayed in Jesus' name that he would be healed.  Doctors removed the tumor, and when they opened it up for further testing, they found it was hollow.  A shell.  Emptiness where the cancer had been.  And (as the story usually goes with healings), there was no medical explanation for it.

But this is not always the case.  Sometimes people don't get better.  Sometimes people die.  Or worse, sometimes they live the rest of their days in extreme discomfort and suffering.  And the question that never seems to go away arises once again - why?

I have a dear friend who loves the Lord very much, who desires to please Him, and who walks with Him daily.  She believes that God always ALWAYS desires to heal and that He always can heal.  So the reason we are not healed when we ask for it has nothing to do with God.  He would if He "could", but either we are doing something wrong, there is a spiritual attack happening, or something else is not right.  This friend argues that if God is not healing the problem, it is not God's fault.

Many people disagree with her, pointing out that God may be withholding His power from His sick children to teach them about patience, to give them experiences that will help someone else in the future, to strengthen their faith.  But this friend of mine, she doesn't like that.  She says, "That would be like me breaking my son's arm just to teach him a lesson.  Or giving my daughter food poisoning just to make my other kids thankful that they have healthy bodies.  No, God would not do that.  If I, a wicked human, know how to give good things to my children, how much more would a perfect God know how to do that?  If someone is not receiving healing, God is not the one making that happen.  He would not do that."  Makes sense, huh?

But the thing I always go back to when talking to this friend is, but isn't that exactly what God did?

Didn't God take His perfect Son, who lived in eternal bliss, and send Him to earth?  To a place of selfishness, destruction, disease, pain.  Just so we could experience Emmanuel - God with us?

And didn't God allow His Son to be beat up, mocked, and killed by a bunch of evil, misguided men?  Just so those very men could experience salvation and forgiveness?

Didn't God Himself reject His own Son for the sin that was piled on top of Him on the cross?  Just so the rest of us could be accepted with open arms into the Kingdom of God?

Jesus was the perfect child - He obeyed and respected His family, He listened to directions and followed the rules, He cared for others, He shared, He put Himself last.

And I was the dirty little neighbor girl, who pulled other kids' hair, who stole toys, who shoved, who peed in other people's lawns.

And I find myself shocked anew that God would exchange that perfect child.  For me.  The nasty little reject.  He took His Only Son and said, "No, Jesus.  I don't want you right now.  I want her."

Oh, His ways are not our ways.  His thoughts are not our thoughts.  May I be always willing to accept God's "unfairness" - both the bad and the good.  May I accept His, "No, I'm not going to heal you right now," just as easily as I accept His, "Yes, child, I want you."


May we all.

Pinned

Have you heard of Pinterest?  It's basically on online ideas folder where you can keep track of all of the beautiful images you find online - whether they involve fashion, crafts, books, home decor, wedding plans, whatever!  It keeps all your images in one place and (best of all), attached to each image is a link to the original source, so you never have to go back and figure out where you found the website that showed how to make those adorable light bulb vases, or who sells those fun fall boots!  You can also browse other people's Pinboards and find millions (literally!) of things to add to your own Pinboard.  So maybe it's a waste of time, but hey.  For people like me who love crafts, learning new things, and collecting information, this is going to be a very useful tool.

I'm talking as if I already use it.  But I don't...not yet anyway.  I went online to start my own Pinboard today, but it turns out you have to request an invitation from Pinterest to join their community.  So, while I'm waiting for my invitation to grace (pun) my inbox, I have already found several deliciously fun things that I want to "pin"...so here they are.

http://www.suzyssitcom.com/2010/12/feature-friday-faux-metal-wall-art.html - pretty wall hangings made out of toilet paper rolls!  Talk about redemption...

http://www.lifeinmotionphotography.com/photoblog/?p=1230 - footprint reindeer.  The first Christmas after Rod and I have a baby, I WILL use this as a Christmas card.

http://pinterest.com/pin/213544406/ - I knew my love for empty frames would come in handy someday.

http://pinterest.com/pin/213719001/ - I knew as soon as my baby niece was born in April that I would be going broke for her...this is why.

Then there are things that I would probably never actually make, but they are just beautiful and inspiring...
http://pinterest.com/pin/213760389/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213766464/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213762817/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213765619/

Enjoy!

Reading Through the Bible in 93 Days

Some of you have been asking about this project that I'm doing for the next few months.  It all started with a comment my friend Crystal made about how much she had been wanting this beautiful new wallpaper for her entryway.  In short, she was frustrated with herself for desiring such a frivolous, material thing more than she was desiring God's Word.  She said, "Why do I want to spend so much money on this stupid paper when I should literally just write Bible verses all over my walls and cover them with Truth?"

So I decided to do just that.  I thought through a few different ways to do it, and I settled on covering the walls with pages from an old hymnal (thanks for the idea, Emily!) and then writing verses over the pages.  I started covering the walls last week - I'm realizing now I should take pictures for you - and when it came time to start writing the verses, I didn't know where to start.

As Fraulein Maria would say, "Start at the very beginning...a very good place to start."  So I rifled through some old emails and found this plan, written by my friend Jenna Battleson.  I began on July 2nd, so hopefully I should be done by the beginning of October.  Although it's a lot each day, ultimately I feel less intimidated doing it this way than if I were to try the more popular reading-through-the-Bible-in-one-year.  One year seems to provide a much greater margin for procrastination.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I pray that this inspires you to dig deeper into His Words, and wallpaper your life with His Truth.

Reading Through the Bible in 93 Days - Chronological Order.

:::UPDATE - September 19, 2011:::
Trying to do an intense Bible reading challenge along with a daily Beth Moore study?  Bad idea.  I have 5 days left in my study, then I intend to try the 93-day challenge again.  In the meantime, I am deleting the table that includes the "schedule" of readings, because it was messing with my blog layout.  Will repost when I try again :)

New Apartment - a virtual tour {Part Two}

I'm finally getting around to posting Part Two of the apartment tour.  Hope you enjoy!

Bedroom Two -

 

This room looks different now than when I first took these photos last month.  And it will look different again in a few weeks.  Right now, a friend of ours is staying here while she works her hardest on graduating high school.  Just a week and a half to go!  The furniture that we have for her is pretty much what's shown here (though I found homes for most of the junk against the wall), but in a couple of weeks, another friend of ours is lending us her daughters' bed, dresser, and vanity, because she is getting bunk beds for her little girl.  I'm super excited to make this now catch-all room into a real guest room.

 This right now is my storage system for my crafty stuff.  I'm looking for a sturdier/more organized way of keeping all of these things together, so maybe if you have an idea, you could share it!

This photo is meant to show how HUGE our closets are, but I just don't think it looks right.  You'll have to take my word for it.  They are gigantic.

Bathroom Two -

To me, a bathroom is a bathroom.  However, if I do decide to do any painting, I think this is the first room I'll start with.  Or maybe the dining room.  Or both!

Dining Room -

 Have I already mentioned?  Almost all of the furniture in our house has been given to us by parents, friends, and neighbors.  And I am so thankful!  A lot of people find themselves newly married and in a pretty big hole of debt because of all the things you need to get when you move out to your own place.  Granted, this would not be the table and chairs that I picked out, but hey.  Mimi's not using them anymore, and the chairs are spinny.   Fun!

 This chandelier is my favorite built-in part of the whole apartment... except maybe the dishwasher.

A couple of close-ups of my little collage wall.  This wall is covered both with things that are extremely meaningful and memorable to me (fountain painting from my trip to the Dominican; pumpkin painting from an artist we met on our honeymoon; dried butterflies from Bolivia [I'll have to tell you about the significance of butterflies later]; the key to remember that the "key" to life is trusting God to give me what I need today and not to worry about the strength, money, grace, or whatever I'll need any time in the future) and things that have almost no meaning but are just pretty (the little gold mirror, the ceramic "love" heart, the upside-down butter dish filled with beads).  Again, if I decide to paint, I want to paint the walls adjacent to this wall in a sort of gold-ish brown to match the mirrors, the paintings, and the goose.

Kitchen - 

 Isn't that mirror by the sink cool?  It was there when we moved in.  Love it (except on days when I'm not feeling exactly thrilled with standing in front of a mirror, if you know what I mean).

 Yay!  Dishwasher!!

 We got this cabinet as a gift from Rod's sister.  In our first apartment, we used it for our TV.  But since we bought Kelly and Jay's old entertainment center, this now houses our microwave, snack foods, and random stuff that has no other home (like the blender, crockpot, and coffee maker).  I love having the extra cabinet space, plus it fills up that weird empty corner of the kitchen.  Flower painting by me, painted scarf by Picasso ($1 at the Greenville Thrift Store - oh, how I miss you thrift store).


So that's it!  I hope you've enjoyed the little tour.  And if I'm lucky, maybe someday I can give some of you a REAL tour!

New Apartment - a virtual tour {Part One}

I've been reading a lot (and I mean a lot) of design blogs lately ~ some of my faves are here, here, and here.  They have provided me with much inspiration and some really great, cheap ideas for our new little place, which I've been wanting to post photos of for a long time.  The downside of spending so much time looking at all of these gorgeous, magazine-caliber homes is that I feel a little less than boldly confident about letting you take a peek into my own home.  However, I decorate my home (and I hope you do yours) based on things I like, things I have, and things that are important to me - even if it doesn't always match the "rules" of design.

Also, for the sake of fighting against my own struggle-for-perfect-image, for the sake of honesty, and for the sake of (hopefully) living a life that breeds confidence and you're-good-enough-ness in others, I decided to post photos of our apartment both in it's messy state and in it's picked-up state.  No excuses, no apologies, and no explanations.  Enjoy!

Okay, first the messy ones.

Yikes.

 You get the point.

Now on to the descriptions:

Our bedroom and bathroom ~

 His and Hers closets!

May I draw your attention to a few things?

First, the chalkboard behind the bed - I wanted to paint the whole wall a chalkboard like Emily did.  But it turns out, you need pretty smooth walls in order to do that.  Maybe someday in a different home.

 I made that picture frame jewelry hanger thing inspired by something I saw in my friend Lindsay's room a few years ago.  Fun and practical!  (but not for those short little stud earrings - too hard to get your hand behind the thing without knocking half the earrings off)

I can't remember when I painted this, but it was before I got my puppy, Daisy, during my first year of college (note the chew marks in the upper right-hand corner).

This is the only art project I've ever gotten a 100% A+ on, and it wasn't even for an art class.  I did it for a Song of Solomon project in my Wisdom and Poetic lit class.  The beautiful Susanna Schultz helped me frame it on our first-ever friend date (Hi, Susanna!).

Living room...

 We were going to get a different couch, but decided instead to have grateful hearts and just liven it up a little with some fun cushions (I LOVE the whole unmatching pillow thing that Julie's got in the Julie & Julia movie - I consider these three pillows as step one of the process).

A few details...

I painted these to try and tie in the purple/red couch pillow and purple curtain thingy.  I don't love them, but they work.

Isn't this great!  It's my "creation corner" where I can write music and be an artist.  It, too has changed, since we bought a new keyboard for my birthday - it now sits against the wall under that painting.  Which, by the way, is called "Genesis".

I painted a tiny version of this for my Hymnology class, where I was helping write a hymnal (and create some writings and art to go in it too).  My professor said he loved it so much that I gave it to him and painted a larger one for myself.  Rod framed it for me as a moving-in gift.

Another gift from Rod and a little reminder not to be scared, because "Everything worth doing is worth doing poorly."

This is the top of the bookshelf - filled with important things.  The elephant was the first in a series of gifts Rod gave me when we started dating - gifts that he bought for me, his future wife, before he knew me.  After the elephant (which he gave to me on the day he asked if he could pursue me) came a glass ring (on my birthday), his first piece of cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, that little orange spice container (which held my ring when he proposed), and a string of pearls (which he gave to me on our wedding day).  The penguin and turtle symbolize a story he wrote about us (which I should really post here - turtle for trust, penguin for patience).  The crystal globe was a gift from Pat & Sue at ICA (because "we are helping the world, and we mean the world to them").  And the vase is just pretty.



I have decided to do this post in two installments, because this is insanely long and it's taking FOREVER.  And there's still so much to show you!  Watch for Part 2 on Thursday.

Also, if I may.  I've been thinking about setting up an Etsy shop online, so I can sell my artwork.  I'm just not sure that anyone will be interested in buying.  Your thoughts?

My Opinion On The Book: Love Wins (Rob Bell)

https://www.robbell.com/lovewins/

Like so many other people, I first heard about this new book through the promo video that swarmed through every corner of the Internet earlier this year.  Needless to say, I was intrigued by the seemingly controversial nature of the “book about heaven, hell and the fate of every person who ever lived.”  People were claiming Rob Bell to be some form of Christian Universalist, and according to Mars Hill church, their lead pastor had (almost overnight) become more popular on Twitter than both Justin Bieber and Lady GaGa.  This book became a best seller even before it was released, so my hubby and I, being somewhat consistent followers of Bell’s works, ordered our copy at Barnes and Noble and finished reading it yesterday.  So there’s the history.  Onto the review.

To someone who reads a lot of books and reads them fairly quickly, I recommend this one to you if for no other reason than to join the discussion and to form your own opinion.  However, if you’re choosy about what you read, my advice: choose something else.  The ideas presented here are interesting and emotionally gripping, but they sadly lack the research, thoughtfulness, and academic responsibility that I feel are an absolute must for a book that wants to perform such an overhaul on orthodox Christian doctrine.  My two most frequent thoughts while reading this book were, “Where did he get that information?” and “Oh, I just wish someone else would have written this book.”

If you have had the pleasure of flipping through Drops Like Stars or watching any number of the Nooma videos, you will know that Rob Bell is a master when it comes to crafting stories, drawing connections, and really just making you feel.  But to me, with a subject as serious as “the fate of every person who ever lived”, you’ve got to have a little less fluff and a little more meat.  This book tends to blaze some new trails when it comes to ideas such as the eternity (or lack thereof) of hell, the concept that heaven and hell are actual places, the people who are “in” and the people who are “out”.  Yet as soon as the bridge starts to get a little rickety and the logic starts to falter, rather than arduously sticking with it and carrying it through for us to prove a point and take a stance, Bell just seems to conveniently change the subject or at some points, end the chapter.

He continuously and dismissively mentions what “the people in those days” or “those hearing the message of Jesus” would think; yet he never provides a footnote, an annotation, or even a hint as to where he got his information.  The closest thing we get is a section in the back called “Further Reading,” which feels more like a friend’s blog and less like a thoroughly compiled bibliography. 

My concerns were heightened when I looked up a few things he did reference only to find that he seemed to be stretching the words to make them fit his claims or leaving out some extremely vital information.  An example of the former was in talking about the Biblical story of the rich man and Lazarus, who both die and the rich man is taken to Hades while Lazarus is taken to “Abraham’s side.”  If you know the story, the rich man asks Lazarus for a drink of water to quench his thirst and sooth his burning mouth.  The answer?  “…between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.” {Luke 16:26}  Rob Bell explains that even in hell, the rich man is still asking Lazarus to serve him, meaning he hasn’t truly died to himself yet and admitted humility.  Supposedly then, the chasm that cannot be crossed is only in the rich man’s heart.  Does that seem like a stretch to you, too?  An example of the latter is in explaining that the word used for “eternal” (as in “eternal punishment”) can be taken more as the intensity of the experience and less as the actual amount of time it takes.  From this premise, Bell seems to suggest that maybe hell doesn’t last forever; maybe it’s just so intense for awhile that it feels like forever, but then it’s over.  I like this idea and I want it to be true.  However, what is left out is that the same word used in “eternal punishment” is also used in John 3:16 when referring to those who believe in Jesus and will therefore receive eternal life.  That seems like an important point to mention.  (Both of my examples are from Chapter 3 – “Hell”.  For a review of Love Wins that deals more with the actual content of the book, I recommend reading this one or this one.)

I deeply care about Rob Bell’s ideas, and I believe he longs for truth and God’s Word more than a lot of people are giving him credit for right now.  But I just wish someone would have instilled in him the importance of citing sources, backing up claims, and writing responsibly.  Especially on so crucial a topic.  I would love to believe some of what he’s saying, but it is so hard without the evidence to support it.

Unfortunately, because of this, I ended almost every chapter with a feeling of frustration and a desire for a deeper treatment of the topic at hand.  I, like so many others, have questions about heaven, hell, what the Word of God says about them, what the character of God says about them, and what it all means. 

Of course, I realize many of these questions will remain unanswered, but I sincerely yearn for a book to be written (or a book to be recommended to me if it already has been written) that will deal more reliably and thoroughly with this eternally (pun intended) important and crucial subject.  If you know of one, do tell.  And if you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.

A Death and a Birth

In the past two weeks, I have witnessed both the death of someone I have known my entire life and the birth of someone I will know for the remainder of my life.  One occasion brings extreme sadness and moments of despair and one brings extreme joy and moments of wonder; yet I am struck by the similarities of these two starkly contrasting events.

The first parallel that I notice, and the one that made me detect the others, is that both of these instances make people involuntarily speak in hushed tones when entering a room.  There is a loud silence that accompanies both the end and the beginning of a life – in one instance, an empty silence and in one a very full one.  There are no signs hung that say “please be quiet”, yet there is a holiness there that makes us do it anyway.

People drop all of their plans, calendar pages stop turning, and loved ones travel for hours and hours in order to be together.  It doesn’t matter what plans we had – we will drop them and celebrate this life.

My mind is filled with thoughts and pictures of those closest to the celebrity – the bereaved spouse, the new parents.  I feel intense amounts of emotion, of grief, of joy, of worry, of astonishment.  I wonder to myself, “What will their life be like now?”  I am sleepless with wondering.

In both cases, the leading lady is amazingly unaware of the commotion she has just caused.  She might experience a similar disruption at certain times in her life, when another dies or another is born.  And in that way she can understand a little better about her own death or birth.  But she is not really there to witness it for herself.

A great number of hugs, photographs, and casseroles are shared.  And an even greater number of prayers.

I am amazed every time I think about the humanness of it all.  The life-ness.  We have all faced birth – in a variety of ways, of places, of hands.  And we will all face death.  There is mystery involved.  And hope and curiosity and fragility. 

If you think about it too hard, your eyesight will start to change, and it feels like you’re floating just outside of your head.  I have no conclusions to be drawn here.  Simply commentary.

Fighting the Boogey Man

Whenever Rod and I rent a movie, we always watch the previews - makes us feel more like we're at the movies.  Last night, we saw a preview for Black Swan, some creepy suspense movie about a ballet dancer who's out to get another ballet dancer or seduce her or something like that.  Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night from a scary-feeling dream, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the images from that preview out of my head.  I kept seeing Natalie Portman with red eyes, staring down at a shrivel-y black feather that she had just pulled from her own skin.  And it took FOREVER to get back to sleep.

This afternoon, though, I was driving home from work, and I had just the opposite problem - I tried to remember what about my dream was so scary-feeling, and I tried to imagine the same Natalie Portman face.  But I couldn't.  Or maybe I could, but it didn't seem half as disturbing as it did at 2:30 this morning.

Does that ever happen to you?  Something seems one way in the middle of the night, and then the opposite seems true once you're fully awake?  Whether it's a frightening image you can't get out of your head or a song lyric that sounds really poetic or an idea for a new cooking show that would just be wonderful - sometimes you just cling to an idea all night, and then the sun rises and you realize your once-wonderful idea makes no sense at all.

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about heaven, hell, what happens after people die.  And I can't help but wonder if I am living in the middle of the night right now.  If the ideas that seem so clear, or the fears that seem so real will just sort of fade away when I finally wake up - when I die.  C.S. Lewis writes about heaven not as some spirt-y, dream-like place, but as a place where we will be more aware, more real, more us than we are right now.  He says the questions that we have, like "Does God know the future" and "Why does praying for healing sometimes work and sometimes not", will not be answered - they will just make no sense.  Like asking, "How heavy is yellow?" 

I like that. 

I like thinking that the doctrinal disagreements we might have or the confusions we might be stuck in are just a symptom of our not-fully-awake-ness.  And that when we are bathing in the glory of God, when His Spirit surrounds us like morning sunshine, all of the scary shapes and shadows will go away, and we will finally be able to see.

"For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully,
even as I have been fully known."
{1 Corinthians 13:12}

Fortune Cookies

I've been thinking a lot lately about certain tidbits of wisdom that have "gotten me through" in the last few years.  Some are profound, intellectual, and complicated.  Some you'd expect to see written on the bumper sticker of a 17-year-old high schooler's Oldsmobile station wagon.  But all of them have been important to me at one time or another.

So I give you...my Fortune Cookie Collection of Words of Wisdom from the Century's Collection of Wise Words from Fortune Cookies!!! (Or something like that).

#1 - "Everything worth doing is worth doing poorly." 
This was told to me by a dear professor, Rick McPeak, and this sentiment is single-handedly responsible for multiple pieces of artwork, difficult research papers, original songs, life-changing letters, and most importantly, my ITEP proposal (basically, the crux of my college career and the reason I was able to graduate in 4 years with a major I love instead of in 5 years with a major I hate).  Simply, these words give me courage.  I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to art, music, academics, and anything that has to do with creating something out of nothing.  More times than I am proud to mention, I simply decide not to do something because I fear not being able to do it perfectly.  What if I paint a picture and I mess it up?  What if I compose a song and it's not honest?  What if I write something and no one can resonate with it?  Rick would say, it's better to give it a try and make it 80% of the way than never to try at all.  And when I obey his words, I am usually surprised by how well things go. 

#2 - Fill in the blanks: "This _____ won't ______ itself." 
This laundry won't wash itself.  This paper won't write itself.  These dishes won't wash themselves.  This dinner won't cook itself.  I'm not sure where I first heard it, but this phrase helps me reconcile the things I have to do with the age old problem of pure procrastination.  If there is something I'm not looking forward to doing, I can put it off and put it off as long as I want.  But the ultimate truth is, at some point, I'm going to have to sit down and do the thing.  So wouldn't I rather do it now and get it over with than have it hanging over my head for the next three days, and then still not enjoy doing it any more or less than if I would have done it right away?

#3 - "The raft is not the shore." 
An old Buddhist proverb.  Strangely enough, even though this advice was first given by Buddha, it has helped me overcome more Christian theological humps than almost any Christian proverb out there.  Religion classes in college got me into a (sometimes bad) habit of questioning elements of my faith and asking myself, "Why do I believe this" and "Should I even believe this?"  Unfortunately, I am very much a throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water kind of girl, so the moment I realized there was a discrepency between one verse in Matthew and the corresponding verse in the three other gospels, my immediate reaction was to completely discredit Matthew's entire book.  However, when I remember the words of Buddha, I can satisfy the ugly urge I have to immediately run to the nearest shelter of logical common sense, abandoning all faith and mystery.  Instead, I can take a deep breath, remember that it's okay to not know all of the answers, and be happy just floating on the faith of my childhood until I can come to an adequately satisfying resting place of an "answer".  In the same way, when I do finally settle on an "answer" to whatever theological question I am wrestling with at the moment, this phrase helps me remember that what I think might be the safest conclusion may be only the raft that gets me to the shore of truth.

#4 - "Who of you by worrying can add a single moment to your life?"
Jesus said this during His sermon on the mount, right around the time he talked about the birds not being afraid of starving and the flowers not being afraid of going naked, because God knows their needs, and He provides for them.  Whenever I find myself in a downward mental spiral of worst case scenarios and what if's, I try to remind myself of these precious words from One I love.  Some time ago, I was thinking about having a child and how awful it would be if someday my son or daughter were climbing a tree and they fell and broke a leg or an arm.  My mind flashed through all of these terrible images of a screaming, scared, 7-year old in the emergency room, of a really bad fracture that would require surgery, of a doctor messing up during surgery, damaging a nerve, cutting a critical artery, handicapping my child for the rest of his or her life, having to have all of this weird medical equipment crowding our home, enduring curious stares from passers-by, and so on and so forth.  When I realized what a terrible fantasy I was putting myself through, I paused and thought of these words - how can worrying about something and imagining all of this help anything?  Part of my mind wants to justify worry and tell myself that if I think through every possible scenario, then I will be more prepared for something if it ever does actually happen.  But the truth is, bad things could happen.  And no matter how "prepared" I think I am, those bad things are still going to be really hard.  So is the answer to never let my children climb trees?  No.  The answer is to pray protection and safety over my family, to practice common sense, and to leave it all up to God's will.  To believe that He will take care of me and work everything, EVERYTHING, out for the best just as He always has done.

Those are just a few of the many life proverbs that have been helpful to me.  I would love to hear some of yours!

Scenes from a happily married couple.

There were several reasons that we decided not to get a television once we got married.  The obvious benefit of having one less bill to pay.  The disgusting nature of so many shows, images, and messages that are invited into your home when you do have a television.  And the biggest reason was that we wanted to spend this first year of marriage getting to know each other...not vegging out in front of the tube.  It is this third reason that has caused us to fall into such intellectually stimulating conversations as the one below.

Scene: 9pm Sunday night.  We were eating dinner.

Usually, I am pretty strict when it comes to meal time.  Lunch by 1, dinner by 7:30 or 8 at the VERY latest.  But yesterday, we were going to be at church at 5:15pm, and I felt like that was an awkward time to eat.  I thought it would be kind of a late dinner, but it would be okay.  Well.  We didn't end up getting home until about 9.

I was sitting on the floor of our living room eating a bowl of spaghetti and talking about how much I hate the feeling of hunger.  My stomach feels like it's turning inside out, my hands get shaky, and I really just feel awful.

Rod, however, is the opposite.  He's one of those people who "forgets to eat."  How is that even possible?  I told him I thought he was crazy.

"How can you forget to eat?!  I don't think my body would allow me to forget."

"I don't know," he shrugs, "I just don't think about it."

"You mean, you don't start feeling like you're going to die?  Because that's kind of how I felt tonight."

"I've just never needed to eat a lot...maybe that's why I'm so good at fasting."

I agree.  He is good at fasting.  For instance, he can go several days, and only feel mildly upset in his stomach.  I'm not exaggerating.

He says, "That's probably not good.  Maybe I should fast from something I use more."

"Something you use more than food?" 

"Yeah."

"You could fast from bending your knees."

"Or maybe I could fast from moving my lips."

"Or breathing through your nose."


And so forth.   I love not having TV. :)

Patience is a Virtue

So here I am.  Still.

Or rather, here WE are.  Rod and I have been practicing our waiting skills.  Last December, he finished student teaching and began job hunting.  We figured by the end of May and the end of the school year that he would have found something.  Then when that didn't happen, we figured for sure we would have something by the end of the summer.  Nope.

For the last month or two, we have been living in this limbo, wondering if we will have a new life next week or if we will have to keep waiting until next year.  Everyone has been unbelievably supportive and encouraging, reminding us that we are in a good place and offering to take us out to dinner or to take us in for a weekend.  My dad said that we've basically already taken any advice he would give us.
1. Don't try to make tons of money
2. Live your life to help people
3. Be open to whatever God wants for you.

Still, in spite of all that, I find myself waking up every morning with my fingers already crossed and my breath already held.  Is this the day?  Are we finally going to know?  I have scriptures plastered all over the walls reminding myself to trust in the Lord with all my heart and that God acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.  I run around telling people that we are listening to God, being patient, trusting in His will and provision, pausing only to straighten my perfect-angel-believer-halo.

But on the inside, I am Veruca Salt, twirling around Willy Wonka's factory, breaking golden eggs and singing "Don't care how, I want it nooooowwwww."  Every day feels like the last straw, and I don't know if I will last through another.  And every day, God gives me what feels like the minimal daily requirement of grace, patience, strength, and hope.

I am reminded of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, when God provided bread from heaven and told them to gather it from the ground and eat it.  "So the people of Israel did as they were told.  Some gathered a lot, some only a little.  But when they measured it out, everyone had just enough.  Those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered only a little had enough.  Each family had just what it needed." (Exodus 16)


That promise is what I have been clinging to recently.  Whether I need a dixie cup full of grace or a grand canyon full, I trust that God will provide what I need for each day.  Why else would He tell me not to worry about the future?  Easier said than done.