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.
