Forgiveness, Pt. 1

I was inspired recently to write about forgiveness. So this post will contain at least two parts. I have a feeling that this first part is not going to be easy to read, and at first, it may not sound much like forgiveness. It may even make some of you angry. I'm cool with that. Comment if you feel so inclined, but before you get completely enraged at me or at anyone else, let the second part get posted...and maybe even the third part.

David Holthouse, a victim of child sex abuse, was once a man plotting murder, planning revenge. “I arrived at a point in my mind,” he says, “where it seemed to me that murder was entirely rational, justifiable, and even a morally responsible course of action.” That, my friends, is sanity. I should take a moment to clear up that what is right is not necessarily what is sane. What is legally acceptable is not necessarily the same as what is rational. We like to think that morality and legality are both synonymous with rationality and justifiability.

Let’s think for a moment about battered wives. Many of the women serving long-term or life sentences in the prison system were abused by their husbands until one day they couldn’t take it anymore, and whether in self-defense or out of the helpless feeling of being trapped in a dangerous situation, they killed their husbands. That’s rational. That’s almost justifiable in my mind. And it’s certainly sane. Insanity is staying in an abusive situation. Granted, that was not the best example, because for battered women there are safe houses and other programs available, though the women do not always see those as viable options.

But let’s get back to Mr. Holthouse. He was sexually victimized by an eighteen-year-old, when he was just seven. The perpetrator? The son of his (Holthouse’s) parents’ best friends. Holthouse never told a soul. He spent the rest of his childhood avoiding the guy.

Fast forward about twenty five years. He became a journalist and moved all around the country. While he was living in Denver, Colorado, his father called to tell him that the same guy, the one who abused him as a child, was living in Denver too. And he had a wife and kids. And so, quietly, and without leaving a trail, Holthouse began to make plans to have this guy murdered. There would be no motive to link it to him, because no one knew about the abuse. It seemed to be the perfect crime.

But, as fate—or whatever you’d like to call it—would have it, his mother found his childhood journal and figured out what happened. His plan was thwarted. Now, though, Holthouse was forced to confront the man he calls “The Bogey Man” instead of just doing away with him.

Let’s stop right here. It seems to me that when you do something wrong, you ought to feel some guilt, some remorse, some negative emotion as the smallest of consequences for your actions. Perpetrators have a conscience too, right? Why is it that while a victim is racked with guilt, shame and emotional trauma for years on end, the perpetrator goes on to have a family, lead a productive life? Or worse, offend again?

Being a child and being victimized instantly makes the crime unlike any other. Child victims are different from other victims for multiple reasons. First of all, the adults around them do not always believe them, so the child quickly feels isolated. Second, if the case even gets to court, the child is often considered an unreliable witness, prone to mixing up facts or getting easily confused by the cross-examiner. Third, and most importantly, the child will likely never come forward because the perpetrator is in some position of power or authority: a parent, an older relative, a teacher, a coach, etc. The perpetrator’s abuse the trust and authority they hold with the child/teenager, and not only is that ability to trust any other person altered, but there is fear of what sort of “retaliation” could come as a result of telling someone about what happened. There are, as with most other victims, also negative emotions involved, such as guilt, fear, and shame, and often those are so burdensome that the child may feel at fault for what happened and be unable to see the truth and do something about it.

Holthouse often tells other victims of child sex abuse: “Not only do you have the right, but arguably, you have the obligation to exact some form of revenge on the person who sexually assaulted you when you were a kid.” Why? Because you know a predator. Although I still do not condone murder or any other form of revenge, I can certainly sympathize with this. There were many days when I was sure that the only way I could ever move forward with my life was to see the permanent incapacitation of my abuser. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to regret what he had done. I wanted him to spend time in jail or feel remorse… Something, anything, to even partially compare to the trauma I had experienced at his hands.

I was sixteen when I was sexually abused for a series of days by a man. Until I had become a victim, I didn’t understand the power of hate. I didn’t understand how passionate rage could drive you to feel so out of control. I didn’t know what it felt like to want deeply to see someone else’s pain come full-force and want to witness their suffering.

Again, I’m not in any way excusing people who kill. But I am also not about to say I haven’t been in a place where I was sure that the only way I could move forward in life was to hurt the person who hurt me. That’s sanity. And sure, what is sane is not actually “right,” but it makes perfect sense if you follow basic human reasoning. The best way to ensure the hurt never happens again is to eliminate the source... the source of so much pain, physically and emotionally in my life, the source that has forever affected who I am and who I will become.

Natalie Grant

I have been the wayward child
I have acted out
I have questioned Sovereignty
And had my share of doubt
And though sometimes my prayers feel like
They're bouncing off the sky
The hand I hold won't let me go
And is the reason why...

[Chorus:]
I will stumble
I will fall down
But I will not be moved
I will make mistakes
I will face heartache
But I will not be moved
On Christ the Solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
I will not be moved

Bitterness has plagued my heart
Many times before
My life has been like broken glass
And I have kept the score
Of all my shattered dreams
And though it seemed
That I was far too gone
My brokenness helped me to see
It's grace I'm standing on

[Chorus:]
I will stumble
I will fall down
But I will not be moved
I will make mistakes
I will face heartache
But I will not be moved
On Christ the Solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand
I will not be moved

And the chaos in my life
Has been a badge I've worn
Though I have been torn
I will not be moved

Surrender

Surrender don’t come natural to me
I’d rather fight You for something I don’t really want
Than take what You give that I need.
And I’ve beat my head against so many walls,
Now I’m falling down. I’m falling on my knees.

I have always struggled with surrender. I don’t want to lose control, even if I know that God being in control is far better than me. It’s like that line in the Casting Crowns song: “Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control?” I would begin to give God control over small aspects of my life that I felt like were “destined” to go well, but when He would demand control over the more scary things, like my future, or a relationship, I would fight Him for it.
Last Sunday, after Laura Jo and I had hung out, and said goodbye, I was heading back to Raleigh with a heavy heart. I wanted desperately to be in Greensboro because I associate Raleigh with negative emotions, with hurt, etc. I wanted to stay. I didn’t want to go home, and I admitted that aloud. As I was driving home it started to rain. And then I started crying. And then I started praying out loud. I looked up and I heard God ask once more for control. I knew that giving control wouldn’t make everything happy and wouldn’t solve my problems, but it would simplify them. Not because they would become fewer in number but because my desire to “fix” everything and everyone, including myself, would lessen. I relinquished control on I-40 and something has changed this week. I am freer than I ever imagined possible. I think I understand now that verse that says: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Somehow I’ve always viewed the idea of giving up control as becoming apathetic. It’s quite the opposite, though. I haven’t stopped caring about the things or people in my life, in fact I care so much about them that I know I must release my desire to control them in order to love them well. When I live under the assumption, or when other people believe, that me being in control is healthy and ultimately good, we’re fooling ourselves.
I also realize now that I was my own false infinite. You know how people are always saying, “He alone is God?” I always think of that in terms of idols, like a golden calf, but I was my own God in a lot of ways, and my own false infinite. Although surrender isn’t natural for me, I truly have traveled down enough other roads and seen the ultimate destruction they lead to. And I know where true life is found.
And the surrender thing? It’s a daily prayer. I didn’t just pray it once on the interstate last Sunday. I pray it daily, because daily I am tempted to take back control over things when they seem hard.
And my guess is that that innate reaction is born out of a lack of trust in God. But that’s a whole other post.

Long overdue...

for not only a blog post, but a reality check. Last night, I was unhappily reminded again of the reality of college life. I'm going to make relationships and inevitably, people are going to move away. I've simply never been okay with this. It's a serious flaw. I get easily and comfortably attached to people and I often find that they leave, with sincere promises to keep in touch, but the reality is that more often than not, I lose a very close friend as distance and time and experience separate us.

I don't know if it's a general inability to handle change, loss and abandonment, or a result of experience, or just a genetic, inherent character flaw, but I deal horribly when people decide to "leave." In fact, I often will unconsciously distance myself emotionally from people if I forsee that they will leave. And my freshman year of college, when I began to form close friendships, (when my intention was to keep my distance so that, at the risk of being lonely, I couldn't be hurt), I would make my friends promise that they wouldn't "leave" until I got to see them again.

So I've been reminded again that the unfortunate reality of college is that people are all in different stages of life-- whether they're just older than I am and graduate and get real jobs sooner, or whether they transfer out, or whether I work with/for them and they find another job somewhere else-- and I will have to choose in the next two years to continue to form relationships and be real with people, even though I may end up feeling hurt when those relationships change or end, through no fault of anyone.

After tears and long conversations last night, I'm feeling at least a little better about people leaving. But with each person, the sadness is reopened and revisited, although I couldn't be happier for these people as they discover passions and pursue dreams; I guess that's part of love too. Being so happy for someone because that's what they want and so sad that you have to say goodbye.

It's How I Know We're Best Friends

Laura Jo and I are sitting in her room-- or the one she's renting for the summer-- the night before her birthday. Nick (her boyfriend of five and a half years) calls her. He apparently asked her what her favorite type of candy is. 

Laura Jo looks at me and says, "Hey, Linds, what's my favorite kind of candy?" It wasn't a joke. She was asking me. 'Cause she knew I'd know, almost better than she would. 

The Shack

I'm currently reading The Shack, by William P. Young. If you haven't read this book, READ IT. I'm not completely finished with it yet, but I can't put it down. Here is what part of the back of the book says: In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant, The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers [the main character] gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him.

Even if you're not in a place where you're struggling with where God is in the middle of the pain we see all around us, you should still read this book. It's not written in a sermon or intellectual-type style. It's a story about one man's struggle to reconnect with God after he has been wounded by unspeakable pain and heartache. It's the story of his encounter and subsequent dialogue with God.

I'm telling you, read this book. You won't regret it. In fact, you'll be recommending it to everyone you know.

So about my story...

One of the things that I've been sort of praying about, as late as today even, and for at least the past few weeks, is that I would be shown how/where to tell my story. 

Well, today one of the elders from our church called my cell phone and said that someone had recommended that I share my story on Sunday at church. He asked if I would be willing to. What could I do, honestly, other than say yes? I didn't think I could have been more sure of what God wanted me to do in that situation. 

I got off the phone, and started realizing the magnitude of what I had just agreed to do. I had agreed to be "messy" in front of a church body, twice (at both services). I had been willing to show my scars to a group of people that I don't know all that well, but that I'd like to know better. I had chosen to be vulnerable in front of people I babysit for, people I serve alongside, etc. What was I thinking? I'm not even sure I can fully articulate on paper or in my heart what God has done in my life, much less make it coherent for three hundred people. 

I turned the ignition in my car, all the while chastising myself for not just declining. And this (no joke) is what I heard when the radio came on: ...It's knowing You and what You've done in me. 

Okay, God. I get it. Thanks for hammering the message home. 

story within the STORY

I've been challenged to think about my story lately. I guess it's also my testimony. And, as it is with everyone's story, mine is constantly evolving into something and the ways I grow and change become a part of it and the ways I see God work become a part of it. I've come to a few realizations, that may not be all that earth-shattering for anyone else... but they are for me. 

My little "s" story is just a part of the greater big "S" story. That does not mean that my story is not important or significant, and it especially should be for me, but it is just a small part of the Story. 

Often we cannot even tell parts of our own story, whether for shame or fear or brokenness, and our closest friends sometimes have to tell us our own stories. I've seen this recently in my life as some of the people closest to me spell out for me what I am currently going through, both because I cannot see the light at the end and because I cannot fully grasp from the inside what is happening to me. This is a crucial part of Christian community. It is also important to be reminded that our individual stories are just parts of the great and good Story. 

God calls us to own our stories and to embrace who we are and what we've been through. Jacob, in the OT, is a great example. He first tricks his father into giving him the birthright, by pretending to be his brother Esau. Then, years later, he wrestles with something that is often portrayed to be like an angel. (Okay, serious paraphrasing is about to happen...) The angel says to Jacob, "Let me go." And Jacob says, "First, bless me." And the angel says, "Who are you?" And Jacob says, "I am Jacob." Jacob has owned up to the sins he committed when he tricked his father, and has embraced who he is--- an imperfect, deceitful person. And God makes Jacob into someone new: Israel, the father of many nations. I can hear God saying something like: "Are you finally ready to be you? Good. We've got a lot of work to do." When we embrace who God made us to be, He can begin to use us fully for what He created us for. 

There's a second part to the whole "own your story," thing. I've realized that I have only told my entire story once in my life: to my current pastor. I've realized something else: regardless of what part of my story I tell or who I tell it to, I talk about it like I'm reading a text book of information. There is no emotion connected to what I've been through and who I am. That's not owning my story or my emotion. Removing myself emotionally from all that's happened doesn't make it okay and it doesn't allow me to truly embrace who I am. 

Freedom

I've realized after moving home for the summer that I don't live in the freedom offered by Christ. I allow myself to get mangled in the traps of worldliness; I care far too much what everyone around me thinks; I take people's criticism, tirades and screaming far too seriously; and I beat myself up for stupid things. 

There is freedom in the grace of Jesus Christ, an offering that I am called to live under. And until I can live in the knowledge that who I am depends not on my mistakes and failings, nor on the way other people see me, but on who I am in Christ. 

I heard these song lyrics the other day: 

I'm the one with big mistakes,

Big regrets, and bigger breaks

Than I'd ever care to confess.

Oh, but You're the one who looks at me

And sees what I was meant to be,

More than just a beautiful mess.

The more I try desperately to find satisfaction in the things the world can offer, the more I find disappointment. And the more evident the void in my heart becomes evident. The more I try to fill myself up with the emptiness around me, the more I am frustrated, and the farther I feel from God. 

I feel like this all stems from the fact that I don't understand the character of God nor the concept of perfect grace enough to live in the freedom He so willingly gives. 

I truly feel like I am living a life of quiet desperation as I try to earn the approval of those around me, and please everyone, and be everything. And I think now's the time to stop. And let God be my focal point, instead. (You'd think I'd have figured all of this out once... about eight years ago)

Worship

On Sunday, I was at church, and during musical worship, I was singing and this lady that I don't know, though I recognize her face, came up behind me, and hugged me (awkward #1) and then said, "I just love watching you worship. It's beautiful." Call me self-conscious. Call me radically self-consumed. Call me neurotic. I'm probably all of those things, but suddenly worship felt different to me. I've never felt like people watched me worship... there's a difference (to me, at least) between people seeing me worship and people watching me worship. 

So I've spent the past few days trying to take her comment as a means of encouragement, not as something to make me that much more neurotic. I've been praying about how worship for me can still be only about me and God and not about the hundred or so people around me. It's hard.  

Max

So, when mom moved in with Jennie when I was eight and a half or so, I was afraid (and I'm talking terrified, won't go anywhere near...) dogs. And Jennie had two-- an English setter, which is a medium sized dog, named Finney and a Yorkie (a small, yappy dog) named Max. Max and I quickly became inseparable. He followed me around, slept in my bed, lay with me while I did homework, etc. 

I loved Max... he was small and he couldn't jump up on me. By the time we moved out when I was fifteen, Max was what I finally understood to be my "childhood dog." All my friends talked about their childhood pets, pets that had endured their many life stages with them. Max had seen me off to prom my freshman year of high school, had licked away my tears (sorry if that grosses you out), had been a faithful companion who never chose anyone over me, so when we moved out, it was especially hard because Max, who was originally Jennie's dog, stayed with Jennie. Granted, I now have three dogs that live at my mom's house, but I always go visit Max. 

We put Max to sleep today. I've dealt with the deaths of three cats and a hamster, but it is both helpful and heartbreaking to make a conscious choice that the animal's suffering is just too much. I've never put an animal to sleep before, and today was really hard and strangel

y comforting too-- because I knew that Max had been a wonderful pet and friend, but that I didn't want to remember him in the condition he is in. The final decision to put him down was made while I was in Greensboro this afternoon, and the time frame wasn't going to make it possible for  me to be there. Granted, that made my decision about whether or not I wanted to be present an easy one-- in that 

it was made for me. And I am still getting through the emotions of not having said goodbye or having been truly given the option to. 

Sorry if this post was more sad than anything. I promise to have something of substance or something uplifting next time. 

"Don't pray for an easy life. Pray to be a strong person." -Unknown 

Daisy

Daisy is the new addition to our house. She has been living with us for about 3 months or so. There's also Riley, our black lab and Jenna, our golden retriever, and Hope, our cat. Daisy is hyper and a mix of a million breeds. I've heard everything from german shepherd to pit bull to yellow/white lab to chihuahua to chow-chow. Whatever. 

Anyway, I discovered something the other day: Daisy is AFRAID (yes, fearful) of nothing in the world, except the WORD: Alpha. No matter what tone of voice you say this word in, she cowers, and crawls away, and sort of hides. It's sad really because we can't figure out what makes her do that. 

This ought to entertain you: I tried out the rest of the Greek alphabet on her tonight, and she can stand any other Greek letter (e.g. chi, omega, delta, zeta, beta, gamma, pi, phi, mu, sigma, epsilon, omicron, kappa, lambda, etc etc etc) but after all the other letters rattled off, she still cowers at Alpha... Yes, friends, I did in fact recite the Greek alphabet for my dog, mixing up the letters so Alpha came at random times... Oh well. 

And yes, I am very aware of the fact that her ears are not the least bit proportional to her head/body. She's kind of self conscious about it, really. 

Taking Care of Business...

I started my summer internship at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction yesterday. Let me tell you how I feel about my job:

Top 10 things I love about my job:

10. It involves task-oriented work... there are goals to be achieved. I like that.

9. It allows me to be a perfectionist and an organization freak... this is good-- I can be myself.

8. I get to go to the legislature and see how the state government works...

7. NETWORKING... I've met everyone from the state superintendent to the gubernatorial candidate

6. I am the only intern still in undergrad, which makes me pretty special

5. People care about what I think-- they ask my opinion about bills being sent through the legislature and whether or not DPI should support them

4. I get an ID tag on a lanyard that allows me access to the buildings

3. My office is in a cube maze... and those are super fun 

2. My office is not a cubical, though. In fact, my office is: a) big enough to hold meetings in; b) all my own; and c) bigger than my dorm room (is that sad?)

1. I get to wear cute skirts and suits to work every day... and though my girly-side rarely shows itself, I've (for the past two days at least) enjoyed looking cute and professional at the same time. 

My office is a mess of red file folders, each folder is a different case of a teacher doing something they're not allowed to do in the classroom and any accompanying documents like hearing materials, evidence, news stories, etc. It's disheartening to think there are so many teachers like that in the state, but it's also encouraging that people spend their time trying to rectify these situations... whether that's license revocation or something else. It's good work. 

Holiness

"We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of. God's holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable... Holy is the way God is. To be holy He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard." -A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy 

I've been thinking about holiness of late. I guess I've always thought of it as some characteristic of God that inevitably and rightfully separated me from God. I imagined this chasm between the Creator of the Universe and me. I felt like I couldn't be very intimate with God because He was so holy, and I was so... not. 

But as I started studying holiness and reading about how people in the Bible acted when they encountered God's holiness, my perspective changed. No one ever sees God's holiness and walks away the same. 

Take Isaiah (the prophet and the OT book). In Chapter 6, he encounters God and is immediately undone, crying "Woe to me! 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." Even being in God's presence undoes Isaiah. He's freaking out. Once he is cleansed by the seraph, though, he doesn't just walk away, but he also doesn't just sit and bask in God's holiness. He responds to the encounter. My (very limited, mind you) understanding of holiness seems to be that holiness necessitates, if not demands, a response. Isaiah willingly offers to be sent by God after his encounter with God's holiness. Moses reacts in much the same way. 

Holiness is less about creating a massive gap between God and me, and more about me acknowledging (as Isaiah did, e.g.) the extent of God's holiness and just how short I fall of that standard, and then responding to His holiness with a willingness to be used. 

Sugar-coated Platitudes

Christians drive me nuts sometimes. (Wow, I never thought I would start a blog post off that way... haha) But really, it has started to make me down-right angry when people try to curb my emotions regarding a situation with phrases like "Don't worry, God will take care of it" or "Just pray about it." Okay, don't get me wrong, I do believe in the power and importance of prayer. And I also believe that in the midst of the struggles of life, we can cling to the promise that God is good and that He will work all things for the good of those who believe in Him. In fact, a few of my friends and I have a saying that we toss back and forth: "God's not off His throne," to remind ourselves that God is constantly in control. Those disclaimers having been set forth, it irks me to no end that people want to just sugar-coat or tie up with a bow my (and other people's) problems.
Emotion is a God-given gift. And I think it's so important to validate people's feelings in situations, because it helps them feel understood and ... well... (for lack of a new and different word) validated.
Recently, I've been going through something that's thrown me for a loop, to be cliche and put it gently. I'm frustrated, I'm confused, I'm scared (I'm using commas instead of periods or semi-colons), and I'm angry. Someone asked me the other day how God and I were doing in all of this... mess... so to speak. My response was: "There's a country artist that put it best: I can't seem to talk to God without yelling anymore." This person was taken aback that I would even dream of yelling at God. Here's the thing, if God's not big enough to handle my emotion in the midst of a really trying time, He's not a very big God.
This person just kept telling me that it was all going to be okay. And that I shouldn't worry. Here's the thing. One, I'm worried. Too bad. And two, yes, it will be okay, but the only time we can be certain it will be okay is when we get to Heaven. There aren't guarantees of anything being "okay" on earth.
Okay, once again, don't get me wrong. I know that people mean well, and are probably trying to encourage me, but what I guess what I feel would be more appropriate is love and validation, understand that me feeling like I need to yell at God because I'm angry doesn't make me a heathen, a bad Christian, or even all that far from normal. I'm pretty sure that makes me human-- someone struggling with the messiness of the world. Rather than offering trite solutions to my problems or tsk-ing because I'm frustrated with God and the situation, maybe love me, meet me where I am, and try to understand what I'm feeling. I can quote the Bible just as well as anyone else, and I can offer up scripture for many situations, but sometimes I think people just want to be listened, not told that they shouldn't feel that way or that if they had more faith they would feel differently.

Okay. Rant's over.

A World of Love

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." - C.S.Lewis

Greg talked today about LOVE. This wasn't a big surprise, since the sermon series right now is on 1 Corinthians 13. It was a really good sermon. He talked a lot about unconditional love, and how it's odd that we desire, crave, long for, and need it since we've never experienced it here on earth. Why, then, do we want so badly to find it? Because, he said, God hard-wired our DNA to crave unconditional love. We're like beached whales, he explained, because we were made to be surrounded constantly with unconditional love, like whales are made to swim in water. But, when whales are beached, and as we often find ourselves here on earth, we continue to make the same motions we do when we're in "water," but it just looks awkward and it ends up leading to our demise instead. That's the way I feel a lot, like there is something I will never fully attain here on earth and I'm just waiting for the day that it is fully realized, like Paul talks about.
Greg talked about how we often look for other things-- be they relationships, work, success, money, looks, etc-- to fill the void we feel because we long for unconditional love. He said it's like being in an airplane and seeing the pretty, fluffy clouds and jumping out of the airplane to see if the clouds are heavenly trampolines. They're not. They're just water vapor and we'll fall right through. That's the way it is when we try to fulfill the needs we have with earthly things, with "false infinites." They're unsatisfying, in the end. But there is hope in the promise of Heaven, and the goodness of God.

I also really liked (and this is a sidenote), Greg's explanation for the verse that says, "And these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." I've always wondered what about love made it greater than the other two, and Greg explained that faith and hope are things that we only need for our temporary time here on earth. We won't need faith when we're face to face with Jesus and we won't need hope because all of the perfection of God and the beauty of eternity will be laid out before us. But love, we will be drowning in love. A perfect love. Jonathan Edwards, Great Awakening author of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," wrote that "Heaven is a world of love." Simply put. Wow.

"All the suffering in the world is as one bad night in a hotel from the perspective of heaven."

All I Can Say

Lord I'm tired
So tired from walking
And Lord I'm so alone
And Lord the dark
Is creeping in
Creeping up
To swallow me
I think I'll stop
Rest here a while

And didn't You see me cry'n?
And didn't You hear me call Your name?
Wasn't it You I gave my heart to?
I wish You'd remember
Where you sat it down

And this is all that I can say right now
And this is all that I can give

I didn't notice You were standing here
I didn't know that
That was You holding me
I didn't notice You were cry'n too
I didn't know that
That was You washing my feet

-David Crowder Band, "All I Can Say"

If

Laura Jo's dad sent me a book of 101 famous poems, mostly because there was one poem that I absolutely loved in the book. I'm going to share it with you, because right now I'm feeling empty and without anything to say.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies
Or being hated, don't give way to hating
And yet don't look too good, nor talk to wise

If you can dream-- and not make dreams your master
If you can think-- and not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on."

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with kings-- nor lose the common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you, but none too much

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
And-- what is more-- you'll be a man, my son.

-Rudyard Kipling

Coffee

I wasn't going to write about this, but it's weighing too much on my heart not to. I'm struggling being in Intervarsity right now. I feel like I have to be this upstanding, amazing Christian in order to be considered "okay." I don't know exactly how to explain this.

About a month ago, I went to Greene Street, a club. I didn't drink and I don't plan to before I am twenty-one. I didn't do anything that I ought to feel guilty about, but people in IV have let me know how "displeased" they are that I was even there in the first place... I get that I'm not suppoesd to be "of this world," but it's not the same thing.

We talked in our small group about coffee (I promise this relates) the other day, about how if someone's never tried coffee before and you invite them to try it, you'll either give them an iced coffee or some hot rich blend. You don't give them lukewarm, room temperature coffee. Right? Right. We all know that iced coffee is good. Hot coffee is good, but the stuff in the middle is terrible, and we don't wnat someone to be completely turned off to coffee just because of one bad experience, so we want their first experience to be good. It's the same way with Christianity, we discussed. We need to be passionate about what we believe, because the completely worldly side looks pretty good too. It's the people in the middle, who call themselves Christians but hurt others so deeply that turn people off to it. The hypocrites, the liars, etc who say they are Christians make it difficult for people to give Christianity a second thought.

But, I argued, because the whole issue with IV is still fresh in my mind, we can't be scalding hot. We'll just burn people that way. We have to admit that we are weak, sinful and self-consumed. We have to admit we are broken, and in need of a savior. I think that's my frustration. That people around me talk to me, and probably to people not in IV, like they have it together, and don't commit "big sins."

Let me give one more example, and then I can be done. My friend (non-Christian) has been asking me questions about God and earnestly seeking answers. Then she made a bad decision with some serious consequences. And you know what? In both instances she talked to me. And I started thinking while she was talking to me about the choice she made... if I had made the same type of mistake with the same types of reprocussions, who would I turn to? And I wasn't sure if it would be a Christian or not... and that made me deeply sad.

Yes, we need to be passionate about God and our faith and stand firm in what we believe. BUT we cannot make our lives a long list of rules and regulations because we think that makes us a good person--- because we're all hypocrites if we believe that... the ones who think they're healthy don't ever go see the doctor. I want to be hot coffee, but not hot enough to burn the people around me.