..thoughts

It has been about a month since the last entry and here is the course of my life in brief detail:

> ended the quarter with a 3.3 (two A-'s and two B's)
> got my wisdom teeth removed
> went a week without power due to the windstorm
> Urbana is in 3 days

All of that with a lot of emotion and other things filling in the massive cracks of time. But I think I just want to reflect on some of the thought I have been thinking over the last month of my life and confess the state of mind I am in, just for the personal record of it all.

I have been really blessed this year with amazing relationships. The people that God has brought me into relationship with excite my heart and make me love living and I am so thankful for them. They are people that I have met randomly over the beginning of this year and have fallen into deep, meaningful, Christ centered friendships with. I realize through them that this community that I have been blessed with being a part of is truly from God and is such a gift. The amount of joy and heart exploding I get when I am with them is a testament to God's incredible love for me that found in others. Its also a glimspe of how much of Jesus is truly visible in others.

God has also caused me to realize that I need to just be okay with things sometimes. I often get in these crazy modes where I want to substantially grow in my faith and believe that disciple is the only way to achieve that goal. I was blessed with the realization at about the end of my discipleship class that sometimes is alright to just be okay. I am learning to embrace the place that I am at and live that out to its maximum potential. I believe that Jesus sincerely wants me to be a person of discipline and one who studies and grows but I also think that I need to live out my knowledge to really understand it. This has been a great discovery in my journey and I feel more alive because of it. I am able to face my days with excitement, knowing that I can live out my faith, rather than simply seeing the daunting task of learning another thing.

I came into Seattle for two days over my break to get a little air and flap my independent wings around a little bit. I was riding the metro back downtown after having coffee with a friend and saw a woman with a stack of lotto tickets sitting on the bus, scratching them slowly. Her attire was modest and I took the rest of the bus ride to think about the implications of her situation. I came to the conclusion that humans ultimate commit every act for an elicited emotional response. I believe that she wanted to scratch the tickets because she wanted hope for a better life. If she was content with her current situation why else would she need to purchase a chance at a million dollars. This mentality slips into most everyday action and whether you want to look at it from a funtionalist, conflict, or exchange theory perspective the release of emotion after and action is often the reason that most things are done.

This thought or philosophy or whatever it is spilled over into an after dinner conversation with Ben Kaspar and Josh Miles that led to some other conclusions that I really like. I like and am terrified about at the same time. Skipping the molting conversation elements and jumping straight to the conclusion, we decided that there is incredible power within each individual human being. That every person has the potential inside of them to cause chaotic terror and destruction or to change things for the better and love deeply and profoundly alter the course of someone else's life. Think about the power of parents on their children. The power of what a single sentence can do in a person's life. There is a richness and deepness to this power that is felt only when life is truly being lived and the boundaries of that depth are being pushed in your own life and you see glimpses of heaven or hell on earth. Both realities of heaven and hell are at the ends of extremes and earth is often thought of as the neutral middle ground.

This ideal of extremes flows over into life and the way we choose to live. Jesus told his friend, "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14.12) That means that there is amazing potential within humanity and that reality is often explored in the killing field of Cambodia, the blood stained deserts of Africa, and the loving care factuality on the free land near the railroad tracks in Calcutta. On judgment day this will be decreed to the church of Ladoicea, "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm— neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3.15-16) We are called to live in this margin of extreme. Jesus walked in it every day. Hiexistencece was counter cultural and extreme in ever aspect of it. He was homeless, from a single mother family, he wasn't born in a hotel but in some one else's house because his parent couldn't afford anything else, couldn't pay his taxes without a random fish, and was murdered although he was entirely innocent. We are called to exist in this uncomfortable reality of growing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and selfcontrol.

The reason we avoid it is because its ultimately very lonely. It is the land ouncertaintieses. But I honestly believe that the land of the lukewarm is the land of regret. Where your look back on your life and wonder what it would have felt like if you would have loved more deeply and embraced life more fully and laughed until you cried on a regular basis. The comfortable place is often the place of regret because risk becomes the biggest danger. Regret is a mourning of the risks left untaken, of the dreams left unexplored. In an environment devoid of risk there is a lack of trust, for how can trust bexerciseded if it is never needed in practice, but only in theory. Without the need for trust, faith cannot exist, simply because faith and trust and risk and regret are all intimately entangled in the same equation of life.

I read Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller, over the break and on pain medications and really liked it. It fits the place I am at in my journey right now and I liked being able to hear his thought process. What I walked away with that hit me hardest was the notion that you must be able treceiveve love if you want to give it to other people. I think that the ramifications of this reality are huge in my life and I don't really know how they are going to play out yet.

Being back with my family has been good but italwaysay challengege. I think the I have realized the best place for me to engage them is when I am on my own and I need to capitalize oopportunitieses where I can sit over coffee and peer into their souls, rather that be their daughter again. I feel like I am slightly pretending my role here right now and I would like to just acknowledge the place that we are in our relationships and move forward from there.

I watched In Pursuit of Happyness today and it's amazing. I feel like the emotional story that was told was very human and very accurate. I cried and my dad cried and I felt hope in that moment for us.

Looking forward over the next week... Christmas is coming, but not with high expectations this year, its just kinda rolled on in without an after thought. Tomorrow will most likely be my last Sunday a Mount View which is pretty epic. I will reflect on that subject some other time.

I am going to be traveling to Denver and then to St. Louis for Urbana and very excited for it. I am going to simply pray that I will stay focused on Jesus and that what I need to learn I will learn and the rest will be counted as reserved resources. I am ready to embrace what it has to offer.

I am ready for a new year I think and I am wondering what adventures it will have instore for me...

here are somethings I am thinking about and we will see if they ever become reality...

> spending my summer in India with SPRINT and then staying longer independently
> aintentional community for the 07-08 school year
> volunteering at Street Youth
> a boyfriend... haha

but really I just want Jesus. I really do.

..consistancy

I think that I am discovering the beauty in consistency. Thinking of our modern culture, it is not a character trait that I feel is admired in people. To be consistent is to be seen as stagnant, boring, or unintelligent. The consistent person is the one that is most often abused and neglected, because they can be and when the abuser comes back, they will be there like they always are. Seeing as how it is a trait of God (he tells us that he will never leave or forsake us) it must mean that it is perfect and divine, and therefore an attribute of my own life that I need to begin to strengthen. The amazing thing about it is that I feel as though it is already a part of who I am. I am a creature of habit, a human being with a desire for order and structure and they are at the very nature of who I am. Perhaps this is because I am made in the image of God, I don't know, but I count it a blessing none the less. I see the beauty of this reality in relationship where things might be distant at the time but consistency will allow them to be resolved without bitterness or anger. Consistency in my relationship with Christ is key to my spiritual development. As a friend said today, "I might not know exactly how I am doing at the moment but I am keeping practices alive because I know that my efforts and prayers will be rewarded." God has chosen me and given me new life and bought me back from a life of death, the least I owe him (as blasphemous this is to say) is a regular devotional and chunk of my life. Consistency is the direct parent of integrity and without it there can not really be trust. I think that this is a trait that I often condemn as bringing me to a place of boredom. I don't see the flashy lights or the excitement of spontaneity in it but I think that its an amazing virtue and something that I need to practice into my character.

..thanksgiving

I think that I had my heart Thanksgiving today. Yesterday was nice with the representative motions, but today I actually feel thankful. I guess I am just sitting here realizing how much in my life I have done nothing to obtain, yet have been amazingly blessed with. I had no control over where I was born, to what family, or in what social status. None of these crutal elements of my life were within my power to control and I thank God for the things that he has decided to place in my life. I stand in awe of the fact that I could sleep in a very warm house, wake up and eat a huge breakfast, and then go to the store and purchase items that I 'need'. These blessings in my life are things that I usually take for granted and often times I have the audacity to complain about them because they are not quite living up to my personal desires.

One of these blessing that I have chosen to complain about is my parents. As you can see [haha, like anyone actually reads these] from my earlier post, I was complaining yesterday about my dad. But I realized something today. I have been thinking about the definition of poverty that my Economic Geography teacher posed to our class on Wednesday. She defined poverty as "living without choices". When I look into the lives of my parents right now I can see tension in so many areas and I can also see that there is no choice in many of those areas. This realization made my heart break for them. I take for granted so quickly the incredible blessing of my choices. I have a blank canvas that defines the rest of my life. I rest so assuredly that God has a beautiful plan for my eternity and that it will start here on this earth. I don't really know where my parents are to be completely honest and I am not going to sit here and pretend like I have so much of everything all understood. I guess I am just really thankful for the place in life I am in right now.

..turkey

Today was Thanksgiving. That brings up certain, distinct images of turkey and pie smothered in whipped cream and a million dishes to wash. My Thanksgiving did not really contain any of those stereotypical things in it this year. I ate an acorn squash, peas, a salad and some chocolate cake. I watched Scrubs, Oprah, Joe Dirt, and Blue Collar Comedy. I had a really good converstation with Marilyn and have a stronger desire than ever to have a mentor. But the difference in what I experienced and what is desired as normal flowed over from just the food to the realization of my family situation. I love my parents and brother immensely. They have been so consistent and supportive in my life but there are areas where the tension mounts and I don't know exactly how to release it. I longed to dive in to deep CONVERSATION over the salmon and squash but casual niceties were exchanged and thoughts were taken and given, but hearts were not opened and touched. I desire more than anything to sit down and have an openminded discussion with my father and not have it lead to a point where a soap box is mounted and jumped upon for twenty minutes, with the words of conviction just floating around in the room, never entering any psychies. I want our differences in opinion to be expressed, heard, and understood. That never requires agreeing with the other person. Civil discussion is obtainable. Perhaps a reverse soap box mounting must occur on my part. I want to strongly and accurately declare the person that God is making me into to my parents and I think that a forced soap box experience might be the only way to achieve that. I am done listening to one sided battles about capitalism, evolution, Mountain View, liberals, and my brother. I don't want to be talked at anymore. It is an insult to my intelligence and personhood and does not bring me into a loving, give-take relationship with my father. I want to have balanced and healthy conversation. I don't have any idea how to achieve that though so I suppose I will continue to use my current methods of communication which just leave me pissed off.

..disparity

Oh dear. The reason that I am writing again is the reason I opened up this thing in the first place, because in a meager way I feel like I can organize my thoughts and let them flow out into my fingertips much better than letting them sit in my mind. Maybe this process will clarify the spiderweb of thoughts in my brain but I think I will just need to see at the end of this post.

My subconscious brain dialogue has been very conflicted over the last two weeks or so. My heart is struggling immensely in the tension of the role of discipline in my life, the structured things that I must do or feel propelled to do (i.e. Bible reading, praying, church attendance, tithing, Sabbath, memorization). I manifested this struggle verbally to my small group to keep me accountable for these things and handed out paper check lists, in organized rows with boxes to make marks in. My discipleship class has harped on the disciplines of life and the things that really make up the core of our being that we can control. I have been in a perpetual cycle of thought, conviction, action, and then tension as I stumble my way through that class.

The essence of my heart is struggling right now though. I don't really know my pure self, because its me and I can only see myself in a reflection, not in a reality, and because the LORD says that, "The heart is deceitful above all things. Who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind..." But I think I understand the emotions that I am experiencing because of it.

I am falling into this little dilemma, or disparity if you will, between the world and heaven. My flesh and my being a child of the King. My fallen human nature and God. The tension is growing slowly and it is gaining momentum. I am growing in knowledge about the awesomeness of God, his holy and divinely perfect nature, that never changes, loves without selfish motive or condition, and pursues me until the ends of the earth even though I usually I am running away. The more I discover and uncover in the scriptures and through other people, the more I stand in awe of the amazing God who calls me his own. This being absolutely true, the opposite reality of life is true as well. I know the extent of sin on earth, well actually I know a slice and that's enough to overwhelm me. I see the brokenness in everything I do and attempt to do. My false motives and pride can shine through everything in my being and I am so troubled at my core with who I am. That concern is also manifested throughout the earth and the propensity of the world to fall into life without God is such a reality that I experience more and more every day.

This leaves me in a hard place, both internally and externally. Paul could not have said it better than in Romans 7:14 through 25: "We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I have I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do- this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is the sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. WHAT A WRETCHED MAN I AM! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God- through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

The internal struggle is that what it is explained above; its this tension in my soul about having desires for something amazing in Christ and then looking at the flawed human being that I am supposed to accomplish it with and then just becoming so frustrated by it. I see all of the lists of things that I need to do, or think that I need to do to please God, have an effective Christian witness, and to be of value in the kingdom of God. I see my good intentions and then see myself and my lack of follow through and my brokenness and feel trapped in a the paradox of divine humanity.

The external is my life and the way that I live it. I have a tension in my living situation and the way that I operate throughout the entirety of my life and I don't know what to do with it.

I think that I have come to the realization that for me, my Christian journey isn't necessarily going to be this one way street to spiritual maturity, and heaven will just be the next stepping stone of life, but much more like widening canyon. The realities of both my humanity and the world are on one side and God is on the other and they slowly drift apart, the more I become aware of both of them. I am being stretched and pulled because I exist in both worlds, I have a foot on both shores and my body is being pulled to the tearing point. I am a child of God, created in his image, yet I am stuck in a body throbbing with sin and decay.

This makes me think that when I get to a point where heaven is right around the corner, that it will be the ultimate release of my soul. That is won't just be this slipping of me into the next phase of existence, but will be the release of an endless build up of incredible life tension. Heaven, meeting Jesus, and being whole will be the ultimate reward to a life of struggle and homelessness.

There is something that gives me a glimmer of hope and it started in a little paperback with cardboard and duct tape on the front of it. An introduction to an irresistable revolution of love for God and others captured my heart and gave me resources for a future hope. I think that if I closed my eyes really tight and looked into the cravasses of my soul, I would find these dreams: I want a house, two story with a wheel chair accessible ramp next to the flight of rock stairs. In two bed rooms, 6 of us would sleep, eat, pray, struggle, scream, laugh, cry, and worship together. We would have meals with exuberant guests of all sorts and our guest bedroom would always house a random array of visitors. Lives would be shared and love would flow endlessly and there would be a humble but powerful light illuminating it continuously. The freedom felt within the walls of this community would allow us to enter back into the world of Seattle Pacific and life, the clay vessels that we are, but with more faith and more excitement because Jesus' calling and our lives would be coinciding. There would be incredible communion of souls, as we all run toward Jesus for life, bringing us to the same place, through the same experience in Him.

I don't really know what to tell myself as I sit here and type this all out. Maybe I don't have to say anything though because I think that it might be Jesus' part. Maybe this tension is being built so that if I ever get lucky by experiencing a little bit of heaven on earth, I will have felt that hunger in the depth of my soul and "just as I have recieved Christ as Lord, I would continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in faith as I was taught, and overflowing with thankfulness." [Colossian 2.6-7]

..blood

I sit in the room in a cold, steel chair, thinking through intricate complexity within the depths of my brain. I think and then think about thinking, plunging me, fully submerged into the mess of all of it. The steel is cool against my bones and marrow, chilling me to the core of my being. My eyes turn from the neurons inside my brain and scan the landscape of the room that I find myself in, noticing that it is washed apathetically in the greyness of an emotionless existence. The bare floor provides no warmth and my eyes peel back the layers of this reality to find nothing desirable underneath it. As my eyes probe the space, I see it out of the corner of my eye and pretend like it's not there. After turning away, my heart looks for it in the greyness, not finding it, I admit failure, and my eyes return to the empty space on the wall, tensely embracing the deafening solitude. After a few moments it flickers and I summon up the courage to turn and take a glance. In the fframe of the door window, I see a backlit man standing with the brightness of all light fighting to take him over. His body shifts as our eyes fall in line and his ears raise with an exuberant smile. After the joy of the moment has fully matured, his hand rises from his side, up to the door and faintly knocks on the cold steel. I sit and watch, wondering exactly what he is doing. Doesn't he have other doors to knock on right now? But due to my lack of movement generated from the knock he starts to pound harder. I don't know exactly what to do with myself and I feel as though he was attempting to invade my greyness. But the pound, pound, pound grows in my ears, pulsing the hammer, anvil, and stirrups, leaving me with the only option of closing my eyes, hoping the noise will disappear and take the light along with it. But the sounds don't go away, they get lounder and explode all over the walls of greyness into a bloody mess. And the passionate bleeding of unanswered sound streams down the walls, beginning to spread thinly over the conrete floor. Once the red is consuming the entirety of the room, I start to think that something must be done. The tenseness of action tingles in my feet and the blood red has soaked through my All-Stars making movement madatory. Slapping my knees in resolution, I rise from my chair, and head towards the door. The pounding has all but ceased and the light is now filtered through a veil of redness. I stop in front of the rosey illuminicity and touch the cold steel of the door handle on the cold steel door, summoning the courage to twist the knob, my heart leaps and skips approximately three thousand beats. The intensity of not knowing what is on the otherside breaks my bones and I felt so foolish when all that I saw was an emptiness of light, with no man to be seen. But then a faint whisper to my right catches the corner of my ear and I realize that he is collasped on the ground, laying in a small pool of his own blood. He whispers softly that he was playing the flute for me but he never saw me dance, and then he tried to play a dirge and I sat there, emotionless in my lonely room. And then he pounded and pounded and pounded but movement never entered into my bones and I just sat there, motionless. I don't really know what to say to this man that wanted to be with me enough to kill himself, to take himself the end of his life to simply be in my room with me. So I sit down, once again deep in thought, but of a different kind, where I am not the center but the orbiting mass around this man. Who is he that he would want to know me enough to die for me? Who am I that I ignored him until this point?

..alone

I believe that there is a distinct difference between being lonely and being alone. Right now I feel very alone. I feel like that there are people in my life that I love incredibly and experiencing the depth and breath of friendship this year has been incredible. I feel like there are so many more people in my life to pour into and my heart is overwhelmed with joy thinking about these possibilities. I love nothing more than to sit down with someone and peer into their soul, digging to the point where they know someone actually cares. It makes me slightly gitty. I am very grateful for these feelings and thank God for them daily, except I think that he is bringing along another longing. I have been faced with this idea of not being known this year. I have experienced it shallowly in my small group, but I have not dumped my load yet so I don't feel like there is much intimacy. I have become exceedingly frustrated with my parents and their apathy when it comes to developing an authentic relationship with me. I want to badly for someone to know who I really am, at the marrow of my soul and I have come to the realization that the only person who will ever be able to do that is Jesus. I am so thankful to him for making needs and passionate longings that only he can fill. Divine comedy. I however feel very alone in this time of my life. Perhaps God is revealing that I am alone to prepare me to not be in that state. I feel like the gradual exposure to marriage begins with an uneasiness about one's current situation. I don't know if that is actually the reason for this feeling and I feel very trite and cliche when I mention that concept. That said, I do want someone to walk through life with more than anything else right now. Someone who is willing to ask me how my day is without me asking first. Someone who will see pain on my face and ask me how I am doing, never thinking about when I will reciprocate the same question. I want someone who will care enough to take two hours out of their day, walk to gelato and experience a slice of life with me. I want someone who is willing to risk a little, trust a little, and have faith in the person I am, with all of my wounds and oddities. I long for someone to accept me how I am but push me into who I need to become, not a leader on a project site but as a co-laborer on this journey of life. The aloneness I feel can be tasted in large groups of people, hallow conversations, mock deep conversations, and empty phone calls. I want to loose this grip on a life of mediocrity and allow the passions of my heart and my longing for so much more take me higher and higher into the presence of Jesus. I want to experience this with someone else who is just a little bit crazy. I will be waiting...

..homeless

Two days from now it will be a month since my last post. What has the last month of my existence been like? Oh dear... I don't think that there is one singlular word to sum it up. It has been a delicate and strenuous balance of conviction, realization, frustration, elation, joy, peace, unsettledness, hurt, longing, desire, tension, and a deep longing for heaven. God has been bringing me to the end of myself, again and again. It is so easy for words of God to slip from my lips, heavy with the fire of conviction and passion, but seldom to I let them soak into the soil of my being, to make substantial changes in my life. I have been treading forward, diligently with my banner thrust in the air. My lofty ideals give me comfort. My knowledge of things I view as important let me sleep peacefully at night. And then there are those time where God quietly knocks on my heart and I let him in and we have tranquil conversations, sitting on the floorboards of my soul and I realize that I have been spitting on his face and cursing him the last week of my life. I say I am sorry, not really realizing how much I have hurt him, and say a sheepish thank you, never understanding how amazing it is just to be accepted by him. I don't get how I can kill my Jesus everyday with the things that I do and yet he is so willing to wrap his arms around me and just give me a hug and a warm meal when I come back in from the streets. I am homeless without him in my life. I am a new person, with my citizenship in the heavenly realm and yet I sleep on the streets of this planet so many nights, shivering, starving, and deeply alone. I am wandering the streets of this dark, decaying world, looking for beauty and peace and joy and then I feel so foolish because I remember that my dad has all of those realities waiting for me. I am so glad that his love does not depend on my ability to remember him.

..fleeting

The things that are fleeting are my thoughts, they are fleeting away from this place. I am wondering all over the world with my brain, and then coming back the the stancdard center of it all, me. There is nothing more disgusting in life than a self centered existence. Not only do you not include God in your life but you replace him with the most faulty thing, yourself. I long just to serve. I wonder what it would feel like to be on the other side of the globe right now, risking death and disease and just doing it. Waking up early, bathing your day in prayer and faith, and going to bed completely exhausted but fulfilled and overjoyed with the promise of doing it again. Tomorrow I have no such promise. I have the promise of 3 classes, plenty of food, comfortable social interaction, and selfish thoughts. Teach me how I am to live in the place that you have put me God. Teach me to be grateful for the circumstances, situations, and people you have brought into my life. Give me new breath where I need it and transform my eyes to see my world the way in which you do. You have a phenomenal plan for my life and I am too near sighted to see it. Give me your eyes God. Give me people who long after you. Make me your child.

..tension

The concept of tension has been one that has been consuming my life as of late. It seems that there is this divine tension in everything that happens to me and I embrace it and love it while simoteniously dreading its implications. It brings me to the place where I am not comfortable with certain things that I don't think that I should be okay with. Simple things such as where are my clothes coming from, and my food, and are the choices I am making with my financial blessings really glorifying God? I have the immense tension of being so incredibly blessed to be a Christian university and be experiencing the amazing things that I have but at the same time I feel as though an intimate relationship with Christ would be so incredibly real in a situation other than this. I long for peace about this situation but rejoice in the tension, because it pushes me to think and allows me to be okay with whatever circumstance I am in. I find tension in the way I desire to live and the life that I blooming before me. Perhaps that tension is simply there to drive me to my knees in my weakness and to cry my Abba father and beg for his presence in my life. It draws me closer to a Jesus that isn't always easy to understand but takes pleasure in his ambiguity at time, since you must rely on his power to know him. Benny asked me today if I knew that Jesus loved me. The answer is yes, but sometimes I wonder if my lifestyle choices reflect my love for my Jesus.

..revolution

The taste of the world revolution on my lips is a combination of excitement, confusion, and fear. I know that I am called to live in a way that directly opposes modern culture. I don't really know how to describe it but its as if this thing, currently called "the revolution", chose me. I was sitting in nice suburbia and then transferred in the same comfort to the city and then became irrated. I started to get angry with church. 'Christians', and my school and I didn't really know where that came from. Frustration with apathy, lukewarmness, and triggered for the teaching of Jesus. These feeling began to boil up inside of me and I didn't really know what to do and I saw glimpses of it in others around campus but it was just a glimpse. The crazy thing about it now though is that there are other people like me. Except they have translated their frustration into action and have begun to live a life that stands in direct contrast with our current culture.

I suppose I sit here and I read my Bible, the beautiful words of my crazy, homeless savior, Jesus and think that they were not just lofty ideal or only culturally relevant two thousand years ago. His words transcend the culture he was in and directly apply to the United States of America in the autumn of 2006. In fact they are more than applicable, they are truly revolutionary. How sad is it that to be a revolutionary all you must do is read your Bible and do it? God help the church and the people who make up the church.

As I sit here right now, I am approximately 9 days away from entering back into SPU land, a disenchanting combination of self gratifying good works and stale good news. I walk into this year different from the last. Last year I still had the beautiful, virgin ideals of an incoming freshman but after a year, they have lost their charm and have been broken against the rocks of white, wealthy, Christianity at its worst. I am very grateful that my awkward dance with mediocrity is over. I am very much will to start a new chapter in my life. Where I view the Bible as an instruction book, not just lofty ideas, but things that I must do if I claim the name of Christ.

I have always longed to be different. I think its a naturally selfish desire to be unique and different from the rest. How ever I long for me and a ton of people to be radically different. To stay in our situations and life callings but follow Jesus, and actually try to understand what that means. I want to meet the crazies that actually believe that following Jesus is possible. That heaven is not simply a destination in the sky, but a reality that Christians are called to develop on earth, despite the sin surrounding us and in us. It seems to me, that no matter what road we go down as Christians, whether we are accountants, artists, mathematicians, fighters, protesters, revolutionaries, soccer moms, doctors, missionaries, business people, or gas attendants.

I am ready for something different. Something that I have been waiting in anticipation for the last several months. God give me the faith to actually follow the words of your Son this next year and bring me into crazy, authentic fellowship with others that are crazy in love with you too.

..faithfulness

As I skip from June to the end of August I look back on the journey that God has taken me on and I stand in complete amazement. I don't even know how to describe the things that he has done for me and the ways that I have had an opprotunity to meet him this summer. His presence has become so tangible in my life and I don't think that I could think of living my life in any other way. People ask me how my summer was and I sit there, speachless and full of awe toward God that I cannot even express in words. How do I explain a whole summer of experiencing his face without breaking into simoteneous laughter because I am so over flowing with joy and tears because I am so incredibally thankful. His love towards me this summer has touched my heart in a way that is so intimate I don't know if there will ever be a way to express what it 'was like'. I tend to almost not want to talk about it with people in fear that I will butcher my experience and then remember something other than what reality was. I have been back for about a week and being back has been slightly surreal. Here I look at my plate and all I really have is myself. There are no responsiblities that I must take care of and that void of assignment leads to a selfish existance for me. At camp there were other people there. I looked into my day and I saw the faces of kids that needed love, comfort, acceptance, and grace and all I could do was look to the face of God, because his supply was endless when mine ran out after the first week. Experiencing the presence of God in my life was something that was different for me this summer because I needed him to survive, emotionally, mentally, and physically, and he was there, caring me through the entirety of the time. His faithfulness throughout the summer brings me to my knees and makes me long to trust him more. How great is our God that he rewards us immensly for just seeking his face? The irony in that is that there is nothing else that would ever satisfy me more than just being with him. He truely is with the broken hearted and the downcast. I suppose I am in an ackward possition now because in my life back home God is not really needed. I get my 10 hours of sleep nightly and there really aren't many difficult behavioral issuses to deal with. I don't like living like this. I really don't. When I look back at my day and I see that really, my life didn't make much of an impact, I can hardly enter into the presence of God without feeling slightly ashamed and emptyhanded. I would rather live a life of small, earthly meaning but need the presence of God for survival that exist in the absence of need and be forced to create it.

But where would that leave me?

Does that leave me at SPU? or does that lead me into the wilderness? or does that lead me into the land of the greatly unknown for a wild adventure with my creator?

Time will tell I suppose. God is good, all the time and I will be waiting and preparing for what he has in store for me.

I want to live for something great. I want to exist in the power of God and have my only other option be death, not a life that is lukewarm with apathy.

Create in me a consuming fire for yourself, God. Let me walk boldly into your trone room and declare your name in my life every minute of my day. Take all of who I am and place me in the fire. Comsume all that is not of you and strip it away. If that takes me to a place of painful, gashing wounds, I know that you are faithful to heal me. If that leads me into a land that I must walk through with only God, I will swallow hard and walk on in faith. No matter where Jesus will lead me, I will follow with all of who I am because when I am found in him I can do all things through his strength.

Lord, I ask you right now, in the name of your son, Jesus Christ, to bring forth a new chapter in my life of authentic faith. Bring me people that are passionatly in love with you and who will push me on towards the goal you have marked out for me. Let me seek your face and give up the things that do not please you and give up the things that I think please you but simply make me to busty to serve. Reveal to me your heart, so I may serve you in a way that brings you the most glory.

You are so worthy God, of all of my praise. Be with me and be my God.

..laziness

I have fallen back into my natural and comfortable cycle of doing pretty much nothing. I haven't really sat down and read my Bible for quite a while and honestly, don't really have a passion to. I haven't made much of an effort to talk to people and have felt slightly out of place in my own skin. I have mentally given myself a break, saying that camp will be exhausting mentally and emotionally and that I will give enough of myself there. I have also started to read the book, Chasing Daylight, and that has made me far more aware of the importance of every moment, the small and the large. I don't really have anything else to say, but I am tired of not doing anything and excited to turn over a new leaf, where the exciting and the mundane have the same value of importance and God doesn't take a raincheck because I will see him a lot later.

It was really good to see my family and it was really to realize that I have changed.
I miss my friends, but it is good to be my own person and I know that I will be stronger because of the absence.
God is good all the time, all the time God is good.

..parents

I just found out that I have been infinately blessed with the opprotunity to go to camp this summer.
Thank you God for that blessing in my life.
I don't know why you have given me the opprotunity to be used this summer, but thank you,
I pray that you would be with me now as I talk to my parents.
It makes me so sad to even have a tinge of fear in telling them, but I do.
It might just be my insecurities, but I just want them to be as excited as I am.

..prayer

Lord thank you so much for your hand of providence in my life.
I can't really think of where I would be without you and for your salvation I am so thankful.
I worship you with my heart and my life.
Lord, make me thirstier for you and satisfy my thirst with your living water.
I desire to only be found in you, humble me.
I pray though when you do, be with me and make your presence known to me.
Jesus, I pray right now that you would enter into my relationships.
You have saved me so that I can love you but you also saved me so that I can be in loving relationship with others.
That is so difficult because of my personal short comings and others as well.
I pray that you would be there, in between me and every other person, and open up the channels of communication and love.
Teach me how to love every person in the way they need to be loved.
Bring people into my life that will love me in the way that I need to be loved.
Make me more aware of your infinite love for me, and teach me how to be satisfied with it alone.
You are amazing and I can't really understand everything you have done for me, because you have kept me from so much.
I thank you with all that I am for the life you have given me, your love, and the other people you have brought into my life.
Continue the good work you have started into completion.
Be with me the rest of the school year and give me a divine dose of motivation, love, and understanding.
Please break me of my selfishness.

..heaven

Heaven is often a concept that I separate from my life, limiting it to merely a destination that I will arrive at when I die. I think that to believe that though, I miss so much of the way that life is intended to be lived. I believe that I an eternal being, that I will live forever, no matter where, and that my eternity starts now. That perspective on my life changes the way that I view tomorrow, as not being another day that I simply have to trudge through but a very small window into what pure bliss will feel like. The joy that you get when someone listens, or a friend gives me a hug ordinarily gives me limited and momentary burst of joy but viewing it as a window into heaven allows it to be something so much more. I guess it makes a lot of sense to me as to why I want so many things to be perfect too. It puts me at ease knowing that eternity is build inherently in me and that is why I want to experience it now and experience it with other people. Knowing the, deep spiritual intimacy that will be there is going to be beyond amazing. I think that is why it is so amazing to live a life of worship because that is what we are made to do. I should sound more theological about this at some point. Its really all just about making people think I am smart...

..perspective

It is hard to understand just how much of my personal happiness depends upon the perspective I have of my life. The mental dialog that I have continuously throughout the day is one that shapes the attitude and outlook with which I go through life. Today I woke up and focused on my stress. There was so much to do and why I had been given every burden in the world and only 24 hours to do something about it. It didn't seem fair. I prayed for a new perspective, that Jesus would touch me in my moment of weak faith and insanity and keep me from going crazy. Even though I mentally uttered these words, I didn't really believe them and continued on in my stress, worrying about my future. It is times like this that I realize just how weak my faith is. I have so far to go in my journey with God but the promise of the security in that path is astounding. The fact that he does answer prayer too is reassuring. I don't feel stressed now and things are falling into a nice space in my life. Things are being canceled and I quietly wonder if its because I freaked out. God only gives us as much as we can handle, and maybe I am just not strong enough yet. I don't know but Jesus loves me and that's pretty awesome.

..hope

Today was Mother's Day and I went home last night. Slipping back into family and a familiar home strange feeling seeped into my blood and I rejoiced with my whole heart to see my mom healing and falling in love with Jesus. There is honestly no greater joy than to watch someone experience true freedom in Christ when their yoke of burden and obedience has kept them from joy for so long. I think that this weekend was one of intense paradox though when I look at my father. I confronted him for the very first time and I did so with no fear of his reaction. I honestly just wanted him to know how I feel and to express that to him was a great burden being lifted off my chest. I know the longer I went, silently accepting the terms of our relationship based on the bullshit label of 'a good father-daughter relationship' would simply continue mediocrity. I want to experience a relationship that is permeated with love and trust and I think that I have to see ours for what it is, so the areas that need to be changed can be seen. I spoke the truth and I think that it probably hurt him. It hurts me to hurt him but ultimately I know what I did was out of love and hope and therefore I am fine with some tenderness in the coming future. Ultimately though, I am so certain of the hope that lies within the connect between us because Jesus is there. I know that we both love him, although usually imperfectly, and we desire to grow in him. I am so excited for our adventure in Christ and living in the truth is the only way to live in Christ. If I would have never said anything, and comfortably kept my mouth shut, we would never live in Christ because he cannot exist in the presence of a relationship that is based upon a lie. The thing that really blows my mind in all of this though is that Jesus is in between us, filling in the gaps of our own shortcomings, allowing us to connect in love despite our depravity. Although my dad doesn't know how to listen well yet, Jesus does and I can be loved in him while I wait for change in my earthly father. There is so much hope for salvation between me and other people because Christ has saved me unto him, to be completed in him, and also so that I can love other people out of that completeness. How great is my Father!

..everything

Jesus, you have not given me too much to handle. Not only that but you told me that I can do all things through your strength. I believe that you will give your strength because I want to do your will, whatever that may be. I am begining to realize just how futile and hopeless my own attemps at living my life for you are. The hard part about this situation is that I am so incredibility human. In my brain and in my heart I want to live a life for you but so often the substance of my day does not reflect that. In addition to my crippling humanity I find that I do not really understand the way that you are loving me right now. Your love is perfect and desires more than anything that I become more like you but why does that have to cause so much pain in my life> I don't really understand it all that well right now. But I know that through this I have been pushed back to you and I need you so much more that when my life seems easy. I need to feel your presences and providence in my life and I need you to increase my peace and my faith. You have created a storm for me right now to strengthen me but you are also my rock in that storm and my shelter too. So right now I don't really understand this form of love in my life but I am so grateful and am the luckiest girl in the world for being able to experience it.

..help

I waited patiently for the LORD;
he turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.

Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust,
who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.

Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders you have done.
The things you planned for us no one can recount to you;
were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare.

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced;
burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.

Then I said, "Here I am, I have come— it is written about me in the scroll.

I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."

I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly;
I do not seal my lips, as you know, O LORD.

I do not hide your righteousness in my heart;
I speak of your faithfulness and salvation.
I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly.

Do not withhold your mercy from me, O LORD;
may your love and your truth always protect me.

For troubles without number surround me;
my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see.
They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me.

Be pleased, O LORD, to save me; O LORD, come quickly to help me.

May all who seek to take my life be put to shame and confusion;
may all who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace.

May those who say to me, "Aha! Aha!" be appalled at their own shame.

But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who love your salvation always say,
"The LORD be exalted!"

Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me.
You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay.

Psalm 40

..Jesus

I pray also for those who will believe in me through [the disciples] message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them. [John chapter 17.verses 20 through 26]

Jesus, I repent for all the times that I think I am following you but really am just going.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent for not loving you enough and not letting me become lost in you.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I am really sorry for all the missed opportunities that I have had to show people you.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent of hiding behind my 'introverted' personality and not loving others as I should.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I want to know you more, thirst for you more, hunger for your righteousness more.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I am sorry for all of the wasted time that I have selfishly used in my life.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent for my ungrateful attitue that I have most of the time.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent of complaining, everything you have blessed me with is amazing and I do not deserve it.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent of my condemnation of other people and my judgments on their lives.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent of not seeking first you kingdom, but my own.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent of seeking out fellowship with others for selfish motivations.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent of becoming distracted by the temporary, meaningless crap of this word.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I am so sorry for ignoring the poor in my life and simply writing most of them off as lazy.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent for being incredibly lazy in my relationships with others.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent of impure thoughts that do not please you and distract me from my walk.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent of my lack of diligence in my faith walk.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent for not loving others that love you and being distracted by denomination and creed.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent insulting your bride, the church.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent for knowing the truth and not doing it.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent for becoming too proud in myself.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent for not loving you with my whole heart, my whole mind, my whole body.
Please forgive me and help me to change.
Jesus, I repent for not giving up you whole future and whole present.
Please forgive me and help to change.
Jesus, I repent for my lack of trust and faith.
Please forgive me and help me to change.

Jesus, I want to be found only in you.
Help me die to myself and live out your crucifixion every single day for the rest of my life.
Consume me.
Take my life and kill it.
Dwell in my body so that I can be you with skin on.
I repent of my sin and my life.
Take me, break me, and make me yours, only and competely yours.

..feelings

This is the part in my life where I really do think I might be emo. This is the part where I sit and write in my blog [yes, I have an emo blog] and transition from what I think to how I feel. My emotions, I stand in awe of their effect on my day, my relationships, and my thinking, and I think that I should probably write them out so I understand them.

Right now I feel lonely.

I don'’t really know how close I have gotten with the people around me and the looming change in the future has caused me to become lonely. The closest friendship I had at SPU is fading in the immerging springtime, filled with the beautiful distractions of bicycles and popularity. I am not alone, I am never alone, but I am at times, painfully and intensely lonely. My family has slipped off into a hazy never-land of unapproachable confusion and I look at my hands and only see Jesus' there with me.

Right now I feel frustrated.

I look at my life and I see a dissonance between the way I exist and the way I know I want to be living. The strain is constant and the only way I can ever escape it is to drown out my sorrow in activity and duty and responsibility. I feel like I am numbing my passion for something very very different with a nice routine of work, school, and play. I am terrified to do something else because it would mean risking everything. My idea of a college education, connections, plans, and friends. All things that I want to think don't matter much to me but at the notion of them all being gone, fear is my natural reaction. I don't know what I am waiting for and then at that very same moment I realize that taking a step in any direction would be acting out of line of faith. I guess that I just don't really understand why I am waiting for an answer if it makes me so ridiculously pissed off. Why does following God make me angry? Haha. I don't know, probably because I am really screwed up sinner and my flesh hates God. Sucks to be me I guess.

Right now I feel lost.

I feel like I don't really know where I am suppose to be or what I am suppose to be doing and lost is a good general overall view of my life right now. Will someone please find me and hold my other hand?

..humility

The art of being humble is one that is practiced and not simply acquired by having a relationship with Christ. I pray to become dead to myself and only found in Christ and that is what I am getting but that process stings a little bit. I know that there is something else in store for me and the possibility of the unknown is so tangibly at the fingertips of my existence that excitement is the only emotion that can be used. The vast openness of the next year of my life is slightly overwhelming and takes my breath away if I think about it. There is so much that will fill that space and so much learning that will occur that it will not seem empty. The unknown terrain of tomorrow causes faith and my tomorrow needs to be unknown for me to trust. Oh how simple it would be to see and trust and then obey. However easy it may be, it is not the way I want or desire. I desire to grow in Christ and be only found in my and if that means coming to the humiliating ends of failing and the unknown plaguing every corner of my life, then I am fine with that. Why do I go into times of my life of unknowing with fear and apprehension when there should be an overwhelming air of elation the moment my eyes part for the day. The feeling of possibility that washed over me this morning is one that should quickly come to mind at any given moment. In Christ I can do all things but that does not mean I will or have to. It means that there is possibility and in that possibility, hope for something great.

..being

The art of being. I sound like a sage from the East when that phrase comes out of my fingers but it is something that I have defiantly not obtained yet. If I truly am saved and am becoming a Christian then I am and no longer have to try to be. It seems to me to be something that should be so innate to my being that it is as permeating as gender or personality. I think that it ultimately is and that is the journey that I am on. I see what I need to be, a human in complete unbroken communion with God and realize that the passion and shape of my heart is for just that but the problem is my humanity in all of this musing. My heart is shaped for God. I realize that he is what I need but the humanity in me doesn't. It is so easily distracted by what is set right in front of it. The next action, the next activity, the next event are the areas of my life that I get so distracted by. My heart and being desire God with unyielding passion but my body turns and quickly runs down a different pathway. The struggle between my flesh and my God inside of me make me tired and frustrated at times. The balance between being and doing is tender and often times I feel myself polarized, staring at the face of the other and longing for the fragile middle ground of peace. Perhaps my life is like the nature of a pendulum right now. I swing wholly to the service and deeds side of my faith, resting in the reassurance of deeds and then gaze over the large gulf to the other side where God sits and beckons me to come sit with him. I jump back on my pendulum and swing on over to the other side of my life, and rest with God, sit at his feet and bask in the radiance of his glory. And at the moment I feel still and my feet start to itch and my hand begin to fidget and I glance over my shoulder and see the people on the other side of the gulf, waiting to be served and feel their gravitational pull of need. I simply want massive land transformation in my life. I want the being and the doing to be on the same mass of land, and be able to freely operate in both areas simultaneously. God is fully on both sides of my life and he is very patiently waiting for my pendulum of immaturity to slow down, for my mind to clear and my body to quiet and then he will give me a big, warm hug, hold my hand and we will walk through the balanced life of the unknown together. I am pretty excited for that and my heart skips a few beats thinking what it will look and feel like in my life.

..pain

Pain. Ahhh pain. Where to begin. I think that pain is one of the most beautiful things in this world. Pain brings ideas and forces them into our lives. Pain creates love. In the birthing process pain, is what makes the love so real. If people where brought into this world painlessly the connect would not be as strong. I have been in pain. I existed in the pain of feeling disconnected from God for a month. I sat in my state of hypertention and wallowed in my situation. Coming out of it though, the love of God is so much more immense because of the tenderness from the pain. I would never know love if I didn't know pain. I would get tatalizing glimpses of its glory but never know what true love felt like. How great the Father's love for me. I am so blessed and do not deserve it but pain, caused by sin, makes the love of God amazing!

Needless to say, I will be giving birth naturally.

..passion

Where to start... I love Jesus and that love is all consuming. I forget sometimes how much I do love him when I get busy and fill my life with things other than him. But at the end of the day, when my heart is quiet and I come into his presence I really really do love him and that love is a longing and desire that is only quenched through him. The struggle that I am facing right now though is one of passion. I am a person of passion and the more I fall into a consuming relationship with Christ the bigger that passion becomes. It is like a ball of fire, deep within my heart that is always there and never satisfied. The moments that I feel okay with it are usually the moments when I am conveniently forgetting its presence in my life. It is the time when I stop and think that I become wrestles and my heart breaks and I want to cry because I don't know what to do with it. I am really frustrated right now. I applied to be an SMC because maybe that would be a good way to use it. Forest Home over the summer perhaps... But I don't feel satisfied and I feel as though I am scrapping things together to use my fiery ball of passion but they are not the things that it was intended for. What do I do? I have fallen in love with Jesus and yet feel ultimately stuck at the same time. Why would the God I love place so much burning passion in my body and then reveal what it needs to be used for. I know that I am designed to pursue and love God and others with reckless abandonment and that is all my heart desires. I fear that if I remain like this much longer I will cry a lot or just slowly suffocate the passion that is currently bringing me more pain than joy.

"But if we hope fore what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." Romans 8.25

..connection

I need a deep, deep connection in my life right now. I need uniformity in my faith and in my life and I need them to be completely one in the same. There is no room in my mind for a faith that is understood without the lifestyle that reflects that. If Jesus loved the displaced and poor of his generation, that is where his faith met his life and that is where mine should be reflected as well. If I continue to live a faith that can be verbalized but not necessarily seen in my life then I am the ultimate hypocrite and should not be viewed as a Christian. The purity of heart that I search for is only possible through Christ and it is through him that the things that I know and the things that I do and the person I am all become one. I want to be one in Christ, in every possible inch of my being. The more I die to myself the more of him I will reveal and he is unity. There needs to be an unavoidable simplicity in my life if I am going to call myself a Christian. I don't really know what I have been afraid of up to this point. Perhaps I look around and see what the standard of Christian living is and see it simply as a melancholy existence that is a quiet groaning of dissatisfaction. There is a discontentment in it that doesn't appeal to me and I don't want it. I don't want to grow up to be the Christians that I had modeled for me in my life. I want to be entirely different. My lifestyle will be different and therefore I will have a spotlight aimed at me, although I do nothing for the spotlight. It will focus its rays and expose every point of my life, even the ones that I desire to keep hidden just because I want personal intimacy in Christ. I need to become mature enough to withstand the spotlight and not melt under its scrutiny and ignorance. I need to live a life free of fear, because I know what the ultimate result of my lifestyle will be, and perfect love casts out all fear. I want to live in passionate, life consuming love; for God and through that love for God, others. There is so much simplicity in the life I want to live. Christ takes all of who I am, throws away everything that doesn't make him happy and fills me with himself so I am nothing but his. When people see me they should see a Lindsey who is peeling and crumbling, like the decaying wallpaper in a crack house kitchen, to reveal what is underneath- Jesus. Each day I should slowly, despite its pain, peel away more and more of my decaying flesh to be left only with Christ. There is nothing else to live for. Nothing else will leave me happy. Husband. Children. House. Wealth. Family. Success. Happiness. Fulfillment. Uniqueness. Nothing will leave me complete at the end of the day because I was created to be in a passionate, life-consuming infatuation with Christ, where all else is a distraction compared to the desire I feel towards him. Abba, help me fall into deep, borderless, wild, carefree passion with you. That is the only thing that will every satisfy me, ever.

..dry

From Friday on something has been missing. It's not God, he never leaves, but its my realization of him being here. Skipped bible reading after skipped Bible reading has left me with an entire weekend with very little God connection. He is reaching his hand out to touch me but I am not placing mine in his. The past days have seemed empty and lonely, devoid of meaning and purpose and joy. I have gotten sick to and I feel as though it is another weight to add onto the pile. I get selfish when I am sick. I become more conscious of my body and my own physical perdicament and have little energy to invest in others. Part of me says, you can't give anymore, you need to take a break and this is it. The other part of me says that you can do it if Christ is the one that gives you strength. I wish I was well so I could have the energy to read my Bible and talk with God but maybe he is just bringing me to the end of myself to prove that he is a shelter, refuge and friend, one that doesn't leave when I don't call for a few days. I also started my fasting last night and feel as if the experience might be totally wasted this week because it hasn't been about Christ and I haven't replaced food with Him. At the end of it everything comes back to grace. Grace that covers me for the sins I do and that I don't do. Grace that is willing to give me a huge, long hug after I have been out of town for the weekend.

..confession

This section on confession is difficult for me, not necessarily the confession part but the love part. It is difficult for me to love myself at times. Let me clarify, I don't sit paralyzed by fear or in self-doubt but I know how sinful I am and how much I need a savior. I continually thank Christ for his work for me and for loving me despite all the times I go astray. The part that is difficult is loving myself despite all of the reasons I shouldn't. The logical stream of thought that often flows through my mind is Christ loved me enough to die for me and all of my sins and he loves me still. Because he loves me and I am learning to love through him, shouldn't I love myself?

I struggle so much with this. What does loving myself look like? Is it self-righteous admiration or seeing myself through the glasses of Christ? Quezada makes the logical connection between confession of sin and the forgiveness of Christ, which is his love. He then connects the forgiveness of Christ as forgiveness that we should apply in our own lives, thus forgiving ourselves and loving ourselves. It causes me to wonder if I really have forgiven myself because that cannot be seen through my own self-love.

The part of this reading that I understand is releasing unrealistic expectations from my daily thoughts and life. I am learning to live in the moment, with a balanced view of eternity in the back of my mind. Lofty goals and extreme aspirations allow me to look to the path I can take to that point, my own personal strength getting me there. I devise plans for my life, slowly squeezing God out the more concrete plans I make. The releasing of unrealistic goals allows the faith that I have to flourish, not limiting it to confines of my own finite thinking.

I still haven’t reached balance in my life and while I know that I need to change, I am fine with not being perfect yet. I have been broken of my pride and shown my real and very personal need for Christ and for that I am thankful. I need to learn the other side of that experience and learn to love myself because of who I am in Christ, because if he loves me than there must be something special there.

..knowing

I want to know so much. I want to know the answers to my questions and be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think that the weight of knowing is so overlooked though. The moment I know is the moment I am held accountable for knowing. The Bible says that the people to whom much is given much is required. In my flesh I think I want to know but if I actually think about it, I don't want to know. Faith seems so much harder because the tomorrows of my life are so gray and vague. The converse of that reality, a clear understanding and full knowledge of what tomorrow hold would be way more terrifying. It would be impossible to need God. For me though, I don't know tomorrow but I know things today. I know that I am suppose to wait a year to apply to Antioch House, I know that I am suppose to apply to be an SMC, I know that my tomorrow will be okay if God is the one holding my hand through it. The knowing part is the hard part though. If I know I am held responsible to that knowledge and defending it. I have to defend it from people who do not know yet. My parents do not know. I know through Christ therefore I must lean only on that and not waiver because of other people's ignorance. Its just hard when the ignorant and complacent people are the ones that shaped your life and led you for so many years. I know but I am not strong enough yet. I am not strong enough to know and defend and that is fine when there are no forces coming against me. I don't really know what to do with my parents yet. My soul crumbles and breaks watching them at work. In every memory of the times when they once were alive in Christ my soul is pounded into a more bloody mess. It breaks me to watch them wallow in remembrance of the days of old when they know things that, if they were fleshed out in their lives, would look so different. The separation of me and my parents has been good. I need it to know more and be responsible for that knowing.

..dream

I don't really know where I got the notion that not dreaming was okay. Where it was fine to think inside the context of my finite brain and operate in a world that had boundaries and borders to existence. I can call upon the way I was raised. Having limited funds and limited faith, to a certain extent, resulted in living life within my limits. Grand things were not always possible because there was no money to propel them into existence. The faith of my parents also did not allow the fact that we had no money to be null and void. We lived within our means, which meant living within the walls we placed around our lives. In this mindset I have begun to live my life. Thinking too critically about the things that will happen tomorrow that I can predict because of my past. In Christ I can do all things, because he is my strength. When did I forget this? Or is it rather that I am just learning what it means in my life for the first time? The infinite nature of his power is not limited to the context of my brain or my own will for my life. It is far greater than that and it is my lack of faith that keeps me from seeing life through the eyes of Christ. With faith, as small as a mustard seed, I am able to move mountains. Maybe faith and dreaming are both equally important sides to the same coin... Give me faith to trust and through that faith let me dream in you.

..thirsty

I am thirsty for God.
There is nothing like him and I know that he is the only thing that will ever satisfy me.
I need him right now.
I need him to strengthen my faith when I don't see and assure me that he is here when I don't feel.
My body longs for him. He is the living water that will never leave me thirsty but I need him.
I want to die. Dyeing to myself and living through Christ is what I seek for myself.
Death of my feet and new feet in Christ.
Let me go where you want, not letting the too small shoes of my immaturity slow me down.
Death to my hands and the evil they do when I dwell in myself.
Give me the scars of Christ and the suffering he endured so I can know you.
Death to my lips. The things they speak that make you cringe. Death to the evil that flows out of my heart.
I want my life to scream Jesus. I want my lips to overflow the praise of you.
Death to my mind.
Give me your thoughts. Show me your ways that I can know that I know you.
Death to my heart and the meaningless yearning it feels towards the things of the earth.
Your heart is pure and your actions are upright. Kill me and let me live you.


You are too good to me. I do not deserve what you have given me. The hope that is rests in the nail scarred hands you cradle me with should not be mine. I accept it with humility and eternal gratefulness, knowing it was out of pure love and not obligation. I want to know you more. Be all that sustains me. Teach me what it means to love you and to live love through you. You are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My body longs for you. Without you I am nothing. I have nothing to give you. You desire no sacrifice from me. I just want to know you Jesus. I love you.



Psalm 13
..............
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Oh LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
my enemies will say, "I have overcome him,"
and my foes will rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.

..change

The element of change has become an essential requirement for the Christian faith that I claim to have. The longer I flesh out my life in Christ the more I realize that my tomorrow will be absolutely nothing like my yesterday. This concept of consistent renewal is very exciting but also slightly terrifying at the same time. It changes the entire context of which I operate in this world, continually redefining that which I label as important and the relationships that mold me into who I am. The scary part is the unknown, the lost friendships because of Christ and the pain in my life that will result in living out a life of God worship. In this change is found the faith that I desire to possess. The only way I can make it through a change by God is through the power that he has put in my life. A constant, nagging uncontested with the place I am spiritually is a requirement for me in my love story with Abba. The closer I come to finding him the more of a mircale he becomes to me and the more my life will transition itself into his likeness. The simpler I become for Christ and the more I my flesh is killed for him the more dynamic and evident that change will become. The only hope that I have in myself is knowing that Christ has died for me, it is finished, and that through him I can become a new person everyday for the rest of my life.

..silence

The word and concept of solitude grew wings and flew out of my life the moment I stepped into my dorm room. The role of solitude in my life has slowly been demoted to a luxury rather than a spiritual discipline or a requirement for spiritual growth. Living with three women on a floor with twenty-five other girls on a campus with hundreds of undergraduates is forcing me to redefine the essential practice of solitude for my personal sanity and relationship with God.

In the first paragraph Paul Tournier makes the point that “[people] no longer lead their own lives; they are dragged along by events.” This statement has been fleshed out in my life and the results are starting to become heavy on my heart. I have allowed my passion for Jesus to be manifested in activities rather than in personal communion with him through simply being with him. As I continue to grow, I more clearly see the danger of an abundance of activities and events combined with a frazzled lifestyle, devoid of the peace of God that transcends my understanding. The converse absence of organized and structured God seeking allows God to work on me personally and demonstrates more precisely his intimate intensions within my life.

In the presence of my activities I commune with others who love Jesus and their fellowship is appreciated and much needed for my spiritual formation, but the other side of that coin is just as important. The hour I spend in the morning, reading my Bible and praying, brings me into the presence of Jesus and sets me by his side for the day. When my discipline falls victim to my busy lifestyle, I become lost in the waves of busyness and do not clearly realize that Jesus is standing next to me, waiting for me to recognize his existence. Because I am a Christian, I am a temple of God, a resting place for the Holy Spirit; therefore my life needs to be a temple in order to experience him. If there were televisions and math textbooks strewn around the church I worship in, focusing on the presence of God in that place would be infinitely more difficult. Silence clears my life of those distractions and leaves me alone with God to talk to him and be his child, in the pureness of surrounding and mind.

..ache

Today has been strange. It feels as though I have been on the edge of something that feels like tears but is not. The only way that it even begins to make sense to me is to call it a divine ache. I know that there is something profoundly wrong with me, I realize it about every twenty minutes of my existence but most of the time it is not as tangible as it was today. Tuesday I found myself lost in the love of Christ and what he had done for me and just hung out with him all day. But today was different, he was still there but we didn't talk as much and I saw the filth and unbandaged holes in my life more clearly. There is an ache in my soul and I can feel it physically that needs God. I need him to complete me and I am nothing without him. I can not live without him. I crapped out on my reading today and I felt it, yesterday wasn't much better either and my life felt empty then too. I find myself deeply troubled at the things in the world that are not how they should be and I think that the reason that it so greatly pains me to see them is because they are so evident in my own life. I not only feel pain for the broken things of this world and others but also an intense ache because they are so perfectly exemplified in my life. I don't really know what I need to do next. I need to love God and through that my life will fall into order. I need to seek [first] the kingdom of God then everything else I know that I need to do will fall into place. I kind of just want to cry right now and I can't even express why. I am not sad, but there is just an ache because I am so broken...

..love

Today is the American Day for love. I have received a fair amount of love today from the girls on my floor, from my parents, and from God. The thing that digitizes these loves from each other is their consistency and their scale. My parents love me infinitely more than my floor mates and they will love my deeper and longer than anyone I have met at SPU but God goes above my parents and loves me beyond words. I have been meditating on Romans 5:8 today, which in essence says, This is how God demonstrates his love for us- that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. The fact that I was making the world a worse place when Jesus decided to scoop me up and hug me is very humbling and comforting. If he loves me enough to save me when I am acting in outright opposition to him then how much more will I feel his love when I am doing what he wants me to do. A relationship cannot be merely based upon what I do for than other person. I can only do so much for someone else and if I don't love that person very intimately then my actions will transition from good deeds to a dead relationship. We understand this in marriage and in friendship so then why is it so hard to transfer that concept into my relationship with God? The things I do for him will flow naturally from me because I love him. They will be painless and effortless and will fill my heart with joy because they are simple expressions of what I feel. My mom has finally begun to understand this and it makes me so happy. She said to me today that she just wants to love God, not do good things for him because that is what she is suppose to do, she simply wants to rest in his presence and feel his arms around her. I am praying that she will get that chance and that the environment of Mountain View will not stifle her desire. I pray that God will use her and my dad to create change there and start of fire of love, so that other people will know they are Christians by their love and not by their intellect. There is no reason for me to avoid the love of God in my life. I am thankful for Valentines Day, the fact that God has helped me embrace my season of singleness and that it is a day that I can truly remember that I am loved so much by God. Jesus loved me so much that he came through the most humble means possible to die, because he loved me. I don't think I can ever understand how incredibility deep that love is and I don't think I have to. I need a God that is bigger than my brain and who can love outside the limits of my mind.

..simplicity

Jesus told us that "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:21). For the modern American a double take must occur since the initial reading of the passage leaves the reader puzzled. I read it quickly in my own devotional recently and then realized that this is a section of scripture that I needed to take a closer look at.

The implications are much deeper than a physical level of possessions and dwell in the world of the heart. It clearly makes the claim that where you put your treasure; the valued things of your life, your time, your energy, and your thoughts, that is the place where your heart will inherently be. If my treasure is consumed with my food or my clothing, the basic necessities of life that I often inflate to idols, my heart will be in them. A narrow minded lifestyle, filled with fleeting and meaningless worry about things that are needed for survival, brings me to a hollow and empty existence, where my focus is not on the amazing provisional power of God but rather on the transitory needs of this life.

Too much focus on earthly things keeps my mind tethered to this earth. If I spend time and effort worrying about what I look like or what I will eat I will not be spending that time with God. My mind will be securely anchored to this earth and the immense awesomeness of heaven will not be in the range of my view. Ultimately, the things of this earth take up too much time in my life, time worrying and wondering, when surrendering them to Jesus would allow me freedom to worship him and increase my faith in the fact that he will provide for all of my needs.

..need

God has a funny way of responding to me. I cried and whined at him last night, discontent with my circumstances and the substance of my life and went to bed asking God to become a need in my life. When I pried my eyes open this morning to face my day I saw clearly the flip side of my passionate night and the lack of faith I actually possessed. Where would I be if God let me have my way with myself? I would be stranded in middle Asia with a weak faith and be just as discontent with life because my heart had not changed, merely my location. I realized that having an overwhelming desire to be elsewhere illuminated the fact that I had not faith in him to work here. If God is big, He is big everywhere and if I don't see it then there is something wrong with me, not God. He is no bigger in India or in Africa than he is at Seattle Pacific University. Wanting something other than what he has given me proves how much maturing I need to do to bring me to a place where I can go some place and not melt under pressure. I have the passion now but I do not have the maturity and the discipline to make radical, reformed life applicable to me. I need to mature in the walm waters of a Christian campus for a few years, learn to trust in God (he knows I cannot get through this school by myself), and then he will give me the desires of my heart because I will have earnestly sought him. He didn't give me a passion for something completely different than what I have seen my whole life for no reason. He won't let that die with time and fade with the grind of school and culture. But I need to be refined so that the passion inside can be most clearly seen as Christ, meaning I must become invisible and only be found in him. That takes time and although it might be hardest in a place saturated with Khristians, I will be that much stronger to face the simple, raw things of this world.

My mom asked me to lunch today. It made me feel loved.
Jeremy apologized for Pamela and her outburst. It made me feel cared for.

..why

Why am I at Seattle Pacific University? Why am I here, in a place that seems to be mediocre to me, and have a passion for something so much bigger? Why do I desire to be broken, emptied of myself, yet remain in an environment that makes it so easy to not rely on God? Why am I waiting for tomorrow to come for my life to begin when I am never promised tomorrow? Why do I have to be surrounded by peers at a school to learn about God? Why is it not possible for me to learn about life and God through action? Why is my faith so weak that I seek something different than the place I am? If God is everywhere that means that he is here, but does that necessarily mean that I am suppose to be here? Is the reason I am here because I am too afraid to go and do something or is it for preparation for something in the future? If I do not want a life of mini-vans and ballet practice why am I preparing for it through my actions now? If the choices I make today create the person I am 5 years from now, don't I need to change something today in order to be the person I know Christ desires me to be? I want to be dead to myself and live a life that requires Christ and leaves no option otherwise. I would much rather have a life that makes me weep bitterly at the end of each day out of frustration, but in that moment be completely emptied of myself that I have no strength of my own. I want to die. I want to live as Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering. I want to be broken and crushed for the sake of Christ. I want to be found in him, knowing nothing of myself because at the end of it, I don't matter. This shell that is me will die and there will be nothing left here. I don't care about my reputation or ego but I want to be only in Christ. I suppose I want to be perfect in Christ but I realize that that is a process. If to obtain that perfection I have to die to myself, should I find the place that I can do that the fastest in or the place where it is the most difficult? I think I am going to go cry now.

..faith

I want to live a life that requires faith, rather than limiting it to an option in my day. Would it be wrong to purposefully strip away the luxuries of this world to force faith and trust as lifestyle requirements? I want to walk with the unknown of tomorrow to be truly unknown, no 401K to catch me if I fall because it would be another net that I would create by myself. We are never called to have a retirement plan in the Bible, why is it a requirement for modern living? My parents want my life to be bigger and better than theirs, for that is the American dream. I want that too, I want my life to have more passion and more joy and more faith than theirs but that results in a lifestyle that is not as big or as comfortable as theirs. Faith is the need of something and the trust that it will be provided for. If I am not in need then how am I suppose to have faith? I can muster up things in my life to fill my need for faith but if the essentials of daily living require faith to make them come together, how much stronger would my faith be? Life is fulfilling when it happens on the fringes, and that is where faith flourishes. It grows in doubt and opposition and becomes strong when the waters flow hard against it. I want to live with faith as a requirement and with unbounded love as its obvious conclusion and if it means that I live a life with no financial security and no promise of an okay tomorrow that is fine by me.