Messiness

I gave a small part of my testimony Thursday at InterVarsity. We have this thing each week at our chapter meeting called "Word From The Heard." Basically, one person in our group gets up and talks about something that God's been teaching them or shares something with the rest of the chapter. I've never done it before, but recently, I've really felt God lay it on my heart to speak.

Let me back up. I'm often saying that I wish people in InterVarsity were more "real" with each other; I have felt like we're really safe, as a whole, especially recently, and I desired for that to change.

So, what God's been teaching me recently is how to love who He created me to be, in all my messiness, struggles, emotions, etc. That's hard to learn, in fact He's clearly been trying to teach me this for a while. I wrote a poem in the last year called "Shattered but Satisfied" about the struggle to embrace your brokenness and grow and learn to love who you are, rather than putting on a facade and pretending to be someone you're not. I'm very guilty of pretending to have it together because I think everyone else has it together, so I need to too.

Anyway, I got up at IV and said that God had been teaching me that messiness is beautiful, that we are broken and that although we need His healing, His grace, His love, we also need to realize that our goal ought not to be to walk around pretending we've got it all figured out, but rather our goal ought to be to get comfortable enough with ourselves that we can wade into each other's messiness. That's the beauty of God's love flowing through us: we get to love others and jump down into the hole that they've fallen into-- not because we have the answers, but because we've been down there before. As Greg puts it, "I'm just a beggar showing another beggar where to find the food."

So, I got real. I shared very blatantly some of the messiness I've experienced and am still dealing with.

Would it set me free,
If I dared to let you see
The truth behind the person
That you imagine me to be?
Would your arms be open?
Or would you walk away?
Would the love of Jesus
Be enough to make you stay?

It was a really big leap, especially for me. I wanted people to see that I'm not the person I often appear to be-- I have some deep hurt in my life and some serious struggles. But that's beautiful. And the fact that there are people in my life already who are wading into that with me is a testiment to God''s love in them and the power of Christian community. But it was a big risk. It wasn't safe, so to speak.

But regardless, I felt freer than ever and I have continued to feel free-- free to not have it together, to not be super-human all the time.

Grace

Romans 5:20 "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more."

Nailed to the Cross

In small group on Wednesday night, we talked about love. We looked at a lot of verses, but the one that struck me the most was from Luke 6:

‘But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.' -Luke 6:27-31

We talked some about how revolutionary it would be if for example, we were robbed, and knowing who robbed us, we took something that they didn't steal and offered it to them in addition the things they had already stolen, rather than condemning them.

For me, though, the material possessions thing didn't really get to me all that much. It was the verse that says "Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." As I wrote in an earlier post, I have been struggling to understand forgiveness and maybe this goes along with it. So, I was talking through this with the girls in our small group and I said that it's hard for me to earnestly and honestly pray for someone who has truly wronged me, hurt me, etc. Laura Jo talked about that being a good time for Christian community to help pray for the wrong-doer as well as the wronged. And then I had this moment of understanding: not a standard to which we are held but a standard to which we are called.

I asked my small group what Jesus said on the cross and they thought of the moment when He says "My God, why have you forsaken me?" But I was thinking of the other moment (Luke 23:34) when He is literally being crucified. As Jesus is being nailed to the cross and people are casting lots for his clothing and sneering at him, mocking him, He says: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

So, too, are we called to pray for others, even when they are nailing us to a cross, so to speak. That's really hard for me to understand and harded to live out, but I have the perfect example in front of me that I can look to.

And I wonder, if instead of harboring anger, resentment, bitterness and despair, we were called to pray and stemming from that, to love and forgive... how different might the world begin to look?

Proud

I got the privilege of having coffee with Greg yesterday and it was something I'll never forget. Greg is one of the most compassionate, maybe the most compassionate, people I've ever met. For an hour I told him my "life story." He teared up and showed compassion the entire way through. I've never had someone get that emotional over my story and I am quite possibly the least emotional person when I tell my story. It is as though I am reading from a text book.

My story. That's what it is. God made me and everything that I have been through, am going through, or will go through is part of His bigger purpose. And when I look around me, I feel like I see so many people that I perceive as "lucky" or as "having it together." But maybe the truth is that I am lucky. I have seen a lot of stuff in my twenty years and I've got a million stories I could tell, but as Greg put it, "there are only two ways to come out of a story like that: bitter and angry or compassionate and big-hearted." He quickly defined me as the second one. But in being either of those, it means accepting what I've been through and allowing it to shape who I am. That's hard sometimes, because more than anything I want to be "normal." I somehow have confused normal with unblemished. They're not the same. We're all broken in some way, some more than others, but God's not going to not use us.

I feel like I've been living the Stained Glass Masquerade song, by Casting Crowns:

'Cause when I take a look around,
Everybody seems so strong.
I know they'll soon discover
That I don't belong.
So I tuck it all away,
Like everything's okay.
If I make them all believe it,
Maybe I'll believe it too.

But I don't believe it. I know who I am and where I come from. The journey is learning to love who God made me to be, broken and beautiful. I want to know that "who I am is who I want to be."

Greg said, "At the risk of sounding condescending, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for not rolling over and giving up in the midst of everything and for being vulnerable enough to share your story." And I realized that that's something I've never heard or felt... being proud of myself or feeling like someone was proud of me, just for making it through. And for sure, I didn't fully understand the definition or what he meant by that. But I like the feeling.

Anyways, all of that is to say that one of the big things God is teaching me, quite possibly the biggest right now, is how to love who I am and how to love where I came from, because it has shaped me and although it may not be clear now, God's plan is perfect. Always.

Incomparable

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength...
-Ephesians 1:18-19

A Thousand Voices

I was listening to my iPod today (I know it makes me antisocial, blah blah) as I walked around campus, and I was looking at the people walking around me and like so many other days I felt my heart surge as this song started:

We have raised a thousand voices,
Just to life Your holy name
And we will raise thousands more
To sing of Your beauty in this place.

First, I was taken back to Urbana, where twenty thousand students from colleges all over the world came together to worship God, and then just like the third line, I realized that UNCG and other campuses are not places where we should find despair at the darkness that seems so prevalent, but places of promise. They are places where God's goodness will be revealed and places where we can see God's beauty if we are willing to open our eyes.

All? All.

I hear the Savior say,
“Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all.”

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim;
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.

And now complete in Him,
My robe, His righteousness,
Close sheltered ’neath His side,
I am divinely blest.

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.

When from my dying bed
My ransomed soul shall rise,
“Jesus died my soul to save,”
Shall rend the vaulted skies.

And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
I’ll lay my trophies down,
All down at Jesus’ feet.

Jesus paid it all
All to Him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

-"Jesus Paid It All"

ALL. PAID IN FULL.

Uh...I missed something

I.don't.understand.forgiveness.

At some point in my Walk, I missed the lecture, demonstration, sermon, explanation, heart-to-heart, and entire conceptualization of human forgiveness. I can barely begin to wrap my head around God's divine grace and the forgiveness we receive because of Christ's sacrifice. But I truly don't understand forgiveness.

What I have called "forgiving" people all my life isn't really forgiving them. I just don't get it. Sorry if that sounds elementary, but I just don't understand what it looks like, what it feels like, how to do it "right" or even where to begin.

I'm super-frustrated. I've defined it with the dictionary and the Bible... I just can't figure it out. K, I'm done now.

The Bed Is In The Bathroom

I've lived under an assumption for three and a half years now, an assumption that I eventually "claimed" as truth, simply because I honestly thought it was truth. And now, here I am, further down the road, seemingly removed from the situation and I find out that the assumption is completely backwards. What do you do with that? I cannot even begin to wrap my head around it.

I can only describe it like this: Imagine you've lived in a house for three or four years and you've always had the furniture the same exact way. You've never even moved a lamp. And suddenly, after four long years, you come home and unexpectedly, your bed is in the bathroom, your couches are turned upside down, and everything is not like it was when you left for work that morning. Where do you sleep? You could maybe move the furniture back to the way it was, but there is other furniture in its place now. Maybe you just have to adapt and change your way of doing things. That's so hard.

I've been wrestling with this all week. What do I do now? My world feels like it's been turned on its head and I can't even figure out when it happened, much less how to deal with it. Needless to say, with a new semester of classes, leadership, CA-ing, and two surgeries in the near future, this ought to go on the back burner. Problem is, I don't think that's possible. I'm frustrated and confused, angry and reeling from the shock of it all.

Today, on leadership retreat, during quiet time, I was reading 2 Corinthians. I read parts of a few Psalms yesterday, but today I jumped to the NT.



Paul writes: For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. (2 Cor. 1:8-10)

and later...

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Cor. 4:8-9)



Somewhere deep down, I know that God has delivered me and will do so, just like Paul says. But it's hard to feel that when you've journeyed so far in three years, only to have it all unravel so quickly and unexpectedly. But God is good and I know that with time I will look back on this period and be able to see God's redemptive power at work. And that right now, I have to both surrender this to God and trust that He will see it through. David Mallard talked about how those two (SURRENDER and TRUST) go together, and one without the other is worthless. Surrender without trust leads to depression, confusion. Trust without surrender is self-trust and a reliance on self, which will ultimately fail. God will see this through. God will see me through.

i have decided i'm going to set out to lobby to change a north carolina statute. in other words, i'm going to set out to change a law that is in place, because i think that a particular part of the nc statute is completely arbitrary (and that statement could apply to most, if not all, laws) and could easily be changed to allow for more justice.

and that is, what the laws, court system and larger society ought to be about, after all, right?

and so today, january 15, 2008, i'm setting out to change something, do something seemingly meaningful, even if it might be three years and four months late.

Somewhere in the middle...

I've spent most of break in the residence hall, working for HRL. They needed a CA over break and I willingly volunteered. It's been a fairly lonely way to exist, simply because most people go home for break, so those left in the 'boro are few and far between. It did, however, give me some good quality time with a handful of people and some serious rest time, which I realize now I needed badly. I've gotten to read, go for walks (shhh... don't tell my doctor), listen to music and enjoy the peace and quiet, without stress or to-do lists. My birthday (yay! I'm no longer a teenager. Why I am so ready to get on with growing up, I don't know, because most of the time I wish time could just stop momentarily so I could thoroughly soak up everything that is going on.), Christmas and New Years were all wonderful.

Tomorrow morning, I'm leaving for Pennsylvania. I'm going to visit Laura Jo and her family for a few days. I'm very excited and I've been looking forward to this trip for almost a month. I'm sure there will be many a post about the trip once I return. However, once I return to the 'boro, I will spend four or five days in CA Spring Training, and then I will have surgery on Friday, January 11, and classes resume on January 14. Nothing like hitting the ground running, huh? Anyway, so I just thought I'd give you that update.

Casting Crowns' new CD is wonderful, by the way. I really am enjoying it more each time I listen to it. But one song in particular has really touched me: Somewhere in the Middle. Here's the chorus:

Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender
Without losing all control?
Fearless warriors in a picket fence,
Wreckless abandon wrapped in common sense.
Deep-water faith in the shallow end,
And we are caught in the middle.
With eyes wide open to the differences,
The God we want and the God who is.
But will we trade our dreams for His,
Or are we caught in the middle?

I think that there's a certain despair and frustration with feeling like there's a standard that I haven't reached yet... but it's mixed, certainly, with a complacency that comes from our society today and from my own brokenness.

Revelation 2:4-5
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.

Isaiah 6

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

Verse 5. That's how I feel. I know that if you keep reading the seraph comes and touches a coal to Isaiah's lips and it removes all of his guilt and atones for his sin, in the same way that Jesus' sacrifice atones for our sin. But for some reason, I feel stuck on verse five. I wake up in the morning feeling as though I am unable to be in the presence of God because I am so overcome with the weight of my sin.
It's a feeling unlike any I've ever experienced. Sometimes I question the sufficiency of God's grace, but I go back to the word and I know that it is sufficient. But for some reason, this is different. I don't feel like my sin is too big for God to erase; I just feel so overwhelmed by the thought of it. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I guess the best way that I can articulate this feeling is that I am stuck on verse 5. I know in my heart that verse 6 comes next, and the verses after it... but for some reason, I feel like I'm in the "verse 5 rut."

Immeasurably More...

Laura Jo and I were talking after church today, and we always have the best conversations. Really. We talk about hard stuff, deep stuff, whatever. It's wonderful to have someone like that in my life, who I trust and love and enjoy discussing stuff with.

Today, we talked about InterVarsity some. I talked about how I see so much hurt and pain and brokenness in our chapter right now. And she acknowledged that she sees all of that too, but she reminded me not to discount all the ways in which God is moving in and growing our chapter, and the individuals in it. I've seen amazing growth in individuals this year, and a maturation of the community that exists within our chapter. It's really wonderful. God moves in ways I never thought possible.

I am not discounting the hurt that exists and the need for the body of Christ to surround and care for those who are hurting. But I do not want to ever again lose sight of the amazing ways God is working in our each of our lives, in our chapter, on our campus and in the community.

"Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!" -Ephesians 3: 20-21

Immeasurably more than I can imagine! Wow. He is at work within us, around us, through us. How awesome is that?!

To Write Love On Her Arms

So, Facebook has these things called "Causes." You can support a "cause," recruit people for your "cause," give money, etc etc etc blah blah blah. I resisted supporting a "causes" on facebook because I didn't want to support everything that people kept asking me to support. It's not that I am not worried about breast cancer (in fact, it's affected a lot of people in my life), it's not that I don't support the Deaf Community and Deaf Awareness (I do), but for some reason I felt it would look like I was kind of "halfway" supporting a bunch of different things. I wanted to make sure that if I said I supported something, then I truly did. And that it was something I felt passionate about.
So, when I got an invitation today to support a cause called "To Write Love On Her Arms," I looked at the facebook page, and then at the website, and I realized that this may not be a traditional "cause" but it is something I support and truly want to be a part of.

Here is something from the website:

I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly. We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love.
Take a broken girl...tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true. We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

God has taught me a lot recently about two things: about what it looks like to both be the Body of Christ, but not think you can solve people's problems, and also just what the redemptive power of Christ can do in our lives. As Laura Jo constantly reminds me, we're all beggars showing other hungry people where to find the food. A huge part of being the body of Christ, I'm beginning to realize, isn't solving problems, it's getting messy and being willing to be broken hearted for people. God shows up all the time and He is constantly exceeding my expectations (which is good, because a lot of times I think I have pretty small expectations of such a BIG God... but that's another subject for another post). Anyway, I just really feel like we all go through times in our lives where we feel distant, alone, hopeless and unsure. And we are called to lead those people back, carrying them if necessary and to love them through it all. Because not one of us is worthy of the sacrifice on Calvary, but we are all worth a lot, because we are the precious children of the King.
So, check out the website if you feel so inclined. It's good.

"You Shall Take Delight In The Lord."

“Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them.” –Ezekiel 20:12

Funny how you can be so sure of something and yet it wasn't and isn't true. C-Team introduced to InterVarsity's leadership team the idea of "sabbath week." Basically, for a week, leadership team members are supposed to remove themselves from InterVarsity and the stress that can result from helping shepherd the body. For a week, we were supposed to not read/answer IV emails, not plan events, not attend Oasis or small group, but spend time enjoying God and being in His presence and renew our love for serving on leadership. That's my non-eloquent way of explaining it.
I am a go-go-go person. Like a lot of people nowadays, I want everything to get done, even if the volume of things to do should take me 27 hours, rather than the 24 we get each day. And I like to do everything myself. I don't like to allow people to help me, whether that's because of my inability to humble myself enough to admit that I cannot do it alone, or whether it is simply because I'm afraid to ask for help, or a combination. Being a student requires a lot of work. Being a CA requires a lot of work, but the harder thing is that I have to be "on" 24 hours a day. When that resident comes knocking on my door at 2am because she needs to talk, or when someone pulls the fire alarm and we are once again evacuated and then asked to do crowd-control, or when there's an incident on the floor at midnight and I have a major exam the next day, I have to be ready to deal with it.
When the idea of a sabbath week was first presented, it wasn't that I thought it was a bad idea. The problem for me was that, up until that point, I had been to one Oasis meeting in the two months we had been in school. And I had only gone to two small group meetings. Not for lack of wanting to be at either, but simply because I often ended up on-duty on those nights. (Which has been a blessing, because my focus has shifted from the ministry and the ministry only, to my relationship with God) But my first reaction was that it wasn't "fair." I didn't want to blindly sign up for a week when I didn't know what Mondays and Thursdays I would be on-duty. As luck (er... as God) would have it, the week I signed up for ended up being the week that I wasn't on duty either night. Boo. I kept telling people that IV didn't cause me stress. That IV brought me joy, helped challenge and grow me. That I loved IV.
My other frustration with the Sabbath week was that I couldn't take a sabbath from my job, though I've mentioned it to my supervisor... I don't think she totally understood. In the end, the stress in my life, I thought came from my job, not from IV. That my joy in serving with IV had not been lost in the stress or the hustle and bustle of planning events.

And so this week, I went reluctantly into my sabbath week. But I realized tonight, after being told in no uncertain terms, (but I am grateful for this) that I am denying God the opportunity to bless my richly with rest. To give me a week with one less thing on my calendar, with one less thing to have to attend, to have to be "on" for. And IV does cause me stress. And God loves me and us enough that He created an entire day for rest, so that we could be in His presence.

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. –Genesis 2:3

That verse. It stuck out to me. I am super-arrogant if I think that I do not need or cannot rest on the Sabbath. At some point I got it into my head that I was above needing the sabbath or that things would fall apart if I let everything go for a week. Funny, though, that the God of the universe, the Creator and Sanctifier could rest on the seventh day from all His work, and I believe that I cannot...

If you honor [the Sabbath], not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord.
–Isaiah 58:13,14

My prayer this week is that I would humble myself enough to enter God's rest and to delight in Him. To do nothing more occassionally, not only this week, but in my life, than sit at His feet and just "be." The world isn't going to fall apart. Things are not going to fall to pieces. God's got it and it's okay for me to rest. My prayer is that God would teach me, show me, and break me so that I can rest fully in Him, knowing that rest is not an obligation. It is a blessing. And that I would take joy in this.

He restores my soul. –Psalm 23:3a

Distributing the Loaves and Fish

I was looking at the passage in Luke where Jesus feeds the five thousand. And something different about the passage struck me tonight. In Luke 9:16, it says that Jesus blesses the five loaves and two fish and then He gives "them to the disciples to set before the crowd." Here's my thing. This is Jesus we're talking about. You know, God's son. If He had wanted bread to rain down from Heaven for all the people to eat, that could have happened. He could have done many things to get the food to all the people, but He chose to use the disciples to distribute the food to the hungry masses.
I wonder if this task seemed overwhelming and yet mundane to the disciples... It doesn't say how it felt to them, but I think it would feel a little mundane or a little...I can't think of the word... Here's the thing, the miracle of making five loaves and two fish into enough for five thousand people has been done. The distributing is all that's left. And maybe to the disciples it seemed like it would be easier if God just "snapped his fingers" and put the bread in front of the hungry people. But He didn't. He chose to use the disciples to glorify Himself.
I think so often I get frustrated because I don't see how the little things are a part of furthering God's kingdom, but if God is trying to use me today to "distribute five loaves and two fishes" then maybe I ought to be honored to be used, instead of frustrated that what I am called to do doesn't seem important or "big" enough.
But at the same time, I think it's also imporant to remember that had it not been for Jesus' miracle, the disciples would not have had any food to pass out to the people. We are wholly and completely dependent on God but not vice versa. In other words, God doesn't have to use us. He chooses to. And without His perfect plan, without His help, without His guidance we would be unable to do the things we do. Casting Crowns has a song that says:
If You ask me to leap out of my boat onto crashing waves,
And if You ask me to go preach to a lost world that Jesus saves,
Well I'll go but I cannot go alone,
'Cause I know I'm nothing on my own,
But the power of Christ in me makes me strong. Makes me strong...
How refreshing to know You don't need me,
How amazing to find that You want me.
So I'll stand on Your truth and I'll fight with Your strength
Until You bring the victory, by the power of Christ in me.

This song exemplifies a few things.
1) A willingness to serve, follow and obey.
2) An acknowledgement that without Jesus we are incapable, inadequate
3) An acknowledgement that with Jesus, we are strong, capable, etc.
4) A reiteration of the fact that God does not need us for His will to be done, but He chooses to use us
5) A declaration of the fact that even with willingness, we must rely on God in everything we do.

So even in the mundane, God is at work. God can and will use me if I am willing and I humble myself enough to realize that the little things I do are important and that God is moving in and through me. I like that, even if it's hard to live out sometimes.

Macaroni Soup

It's hard for me sometimes to not get bogged down in the mundane. Life just feels kind of empty, and yet I run myself ragged on a daily basis. Don't get me wrong. I'm happy. I'm just... devoid of something.

I look around my room tonight and wonder...
-Why it's midnight and I still haven't eaten dinner...
-When I'll have time to do laundry
-When my room got to be such a mess
-Why I still have homework to do
-Why I don't see my friends as often as I'd like
-Why I feel so... empty.

And I realize that today was a busy day. I went to both services at church and then spent an hour after the second service talking to people and waiting to chat with the pastor and ask him the hundred burning questions I had. And then a few of us went to lunch. And that was nice. And then Laura Jo and I sat in the grass on-campus and talked... about everything... about nothing. And that was WONDERFUL. And then I took a forty-five minute nap... a much-needed nap. And then there was the CA mandatory meeting (it's called an in-service). And then I did do homework, I did, but by this time it was 7:15pm. And at 8:30 I had a leadership meeting for InterVarsity. And then I had stuff come up on my hall that needed to be dealt with. Maybe I need a 28 hour day... but probably, I would fill that up too. Probably, there would still be things that went unaddressed.

And yet for all the running around I do, for all the work that I am able to complete in a day, a week, a month, I still feel like I'm not doing anything significant. I guess I want to make a difference. I want to do something. I want to affect change. I want to fulfill my purpose in life. I want to be able to look back on my life and be happy with who I was, what I tried to accomplish.
So tonight, I made "macaroni soup" (easy mac with a little too much water); I worked on homework, talked to friends online, and realized (again) that God is in the mundane. He works in us and through us regardless of what we are doing in life, whether it's being a CA or being a friend, whether it's when we're having a cup of coffee with someone or whether we're babysitting; whatever we do, we do unto Him. And I guess I need to be more willing to be used even in the places I don't feel like God can use me.

What if...?

-What if, just one night, I could come back to my room in the wee hours of the morning and have someone there waiting for me, willing to talk or to listen, or to just sit with me while I try to decompress?
-What if feeling overly busy and useful went hand in hand? That is to say, what if whenever I feel busy beyond belief (which is all the time), it meant that I also felt useful, needed?
-What if the world could stop so I could catch my breath and readjust before continuing onto whatever is waiting to be done?
-What if you automatically felt appreciated?
-What if 24 hours was enough to hang out with your friends, work, go to school, have alone time, and sleep? Oh wait, I forgot about meals... and homework... and cleaning... and showering... and laundry... and other miscellaneous items that demand attention...
-What if when you tried your best to hold all the pieces of yours and everyone else's life together, you could succeed?
-What if the best you could do at the time was always good enough?

It's hard to like the fact that those things aren't guaranteed or don't happen, because it means I'm fallible. It means I'm human. It means I am dependent on someone other than myself to make things happen. It reminds me that I need God. Need Him. So when it feels hard, or impossible, that's when I'm so sure that I cannot do this alone, that's when I feel Him pulling me closer.

Immeasurable

I've been reading a book called The Cost of Committment. Sammie Jo wanted me to give it a try, so we could discuss it during our discipleship meetings. I gave it a try and I'll be honest, I couldn't put it down.

At first I was a little skeptical, mostly, I think, because of the title. I guess I've heard over and over again that in order to follow Jesus, we pay a price. It is a price that is more than worth it; the price of rejection, ridicule, pain, or whatever else is worth it, in the end... because, in reality, the greatest price was paid on the cross two thousand years ago.

But beyond all that, the title harkened back to the two parables in the Bible... the one about the Treasure in the field and the one about the Pearl of Great Price. The treasure in the field story is where a man finds buried treasure in a field. Overcome with excitement at this discovery, he buries the treasure again in a field, and sells everything he owns in order to buy the field. I was always kind of awe-struck by this. I value many things in my life, sure, but I guess the only way I ever saw this story as being applicable was to give up everything I have in life to follow Jesus. But, the author of The Cost of Committment writes that it's not so much about renouncing everything you have but rather, re-evaluating everything you have, and understanding what you think your priorities are and what they ought to be.

I liked that. I liked that following Jesus didn't necessarily have to be about renouncing all my worldly possessions, but it's about committing everything to Him and taking up my cross daily.

I guess that's what I've been thinking about lately... what it truly means to follow. The other thing that stuck out to me, although I'm only half way through the book, so I'm sure there will be more later, is when he talked about a Muslim man's conversion to Christianity, how he is shunned and rejected and almost hated by his family. But, the author says, this man's heart still breaks and he still weeps everytime he leaves his family. He is not angry or bitter or frustrated, but heartbroken because they do not know the joy that comes from the freedom we have in Jesus Christ. I have come to the realization that my heart may never stop breaking for my family and friends who do not know Jesus. That I am much less angry. I am just sad. Because Jesus has brought me unspeakable joy and incredible peace, even in the midst of suffering. And I cannot tell you what I wouldn't give so that those I love and even those I don't know could know the immeasurable joy and love that I experience with Christ. I think that's how God feels about each of His children... He desires a relationship with each of them, so to ever think that we should cease to feel heartbroken seems inconsistent with a personable, loving God who pursues us even when we don't deserve it.

Objects of mercy, who should have known wrath.
We're filled with unspeakable joy
Riches of wisdom, unsearchable wealth
And the wonder of knowing Your voice
You are our treasure and our great reward,
Our hope and our glorious King.

I-House Staff

Here we are... matching shirts and all.

Left to right: Jess, Deryle, Amanda, Me and Anna

We're quite the crazy staff...