So 3 out of 4 winter breaks has come and is going and it followed the trends of the previous two, with quite a bit more intensity.
Timeline of my break:
Finished school December 7th, left for Camden, New Jersey on the 8th, came back to Seattle on the 21st, went to visit my grandparents the 22nd-25th, and will be going to Portland for New Years tomorrow.
There has been a lot of movement and traveling but it has been littered with struggle and frustration, fantasies of chain smoking, and censored conversation with my family.
For the sake of brevity I guess I will just run through what the hell has happened over the last month in my life.
Right before I left, we had a semi-good bye party for John. He has decided to travel for the next quarter and so this would be the last time we all had a chance to enjoy his company for the next few months. We spent the night throwing Lunchables bologna at the walls and at some point our kitchen table turned into a tattoo parlor. The joy of freedom from academia and stress was apparent and we stayed up too late to enjoy the last few moments of our lives together. At some point in the night a small group of us gathered in the guest bedroom, where John was repacking his bags, and we decided to pray together. This spontaneous eruption of prayer is probably the most sacred time in our house for me and it was so fitting. In that moment I was overwhelmed with the amount of blessing that had been poured out on us over the last quarter and the amazing blessing of being able to share life with the people in that room. Not to sound clique, but God was really there.
I slept for 2 hours, got up and put my luggage in the car for the airport at freaking 4 in the morning. We said our goodbyes and some where fine, with the promise of familiarity in just a short 3 weeks. The goodbye for John was not really like that though. I had been wondering what that moment would be like since his announcement of traveling was made in our living room a month before. I hugged his little torso, with a fresh tattoo of 'HOPE' from the night before and left for the airport. I let myself cry awake.
But I got to the airport and I had to shift gears, preparing mentally for two weeks of a SPRINT group and a new place, with new challenges and problems and people. The flight was good, filled with excitement and my journey to Camden began with a prayer in the airport. We arrived in Philadelphia 7 hours later and Matt picked us up, drove us over the Ben Franklin Bridge, through Pennsaken, and to our home.
I worked in a 7th grade class room in the mornings with Mrs. Richards, a 50-something white teacher from the suburbs and 18 beautiful kids. Ador, AB, Shane, Ricky, Cierra, LeShawn, Alexsandra, Joel, Edwardo, Natalie, and others where the energy filled potential that sat in the seats and where bustled around the school by raised voices for the two weeks I was there. To be completely honest, the classroom was really difficult for me. I wasn't really integrated into the course. Mrs. Richard's was reaching the end of the quarter and exhausted so I did what I could and graded papers, imputed scores into the computer, and explained the Holocaust. It was exhausting to watch her yell and after a week I was frustrated to the point of tears, watching a good 40% of the class day rot away in a struggle for silence and stillness, objectives that seem futile and pointless to me, a simple diversion to creative engagement and positive re-enforcement on the teacher's part. The best part of the two weeks that I was there was the hour I was left alone with the class, to monitor 'free time'. After about 20 minutes of knitting and other various activities, boredom entered the classroom and the volume rose, indicating a need for some direction. So Shane came up to the front of the class and shared a poem that he had written about a love just out of reach of his clammy, prematurely aged hands. And the class was quiet and then they erupted in clapping and began to clamor for their chance at classroom fame. Cierra came up and shared a poem about her life in Camden and then the class snapped with reverence at her accurate depiction of marginalized hope in a 'place like Camden'. It was this moment that Mrs. Richard's returned to the class of civilized poets. In my pride and self-righteousness I felt like it was my middle finger to her two of screaming demands.
I would leave, have lunch with my team and then scrounge up a ride to the downtown after school camp. I worked with 12 kids there, between the 3 and 5th grade. They were noticeably more intense than the kids at Camden Forward and the experience was much more confrontational and brash. I found it much easier to love these kids, in all of their cursing and song-singing that in the artificially forced silence of the private school. I worked with Jacob on his social studies homework, Shaniya on her reading, Tanequah on a crayon rendition sun bathing rabbits, and Robert on basic phonics. Robert is in 3rd grade, has a learning disability, and can't read. He can also plaster this ears to the side of his head which is pretty funny. His nickname for me was Squidward and it kind of made me sad. Haha. After school was great. We left with the grand finale of roller skating. The is something neutralizing about a common activity where screaming is okay and everyone is on the edge of failure. It was the deepest sense of settledness I experienced in Camden, rolling around in circles with my lonely hand filled with the love and trust of learning roller skaters.
I struggled immensely in Camden. Poverty is fucking horrible. It watch children be neglected and an entire section of society ignored is infuriating and I don't really know what to think/do about it at the end of the day. I found myself looking at my skin color with confusion, realizing how little I know about myself and how awkward I feel in my caucasian suit. I am excited about this awkwardness and excited to stumble into learning something new about the world and myself.
God was in Camden and he was there in little ways and in big ones too. The people that are there are brimming with God. I have much more to learn about this and I feel like it will come with more reflection and time and conversation with God.
Coming home. Haha. The same. Nothing changes but I change and then this become an intense disconnect because I have the same face and the same laugh, but my brain is different and my heart is different and my understanding of myself and God and this world are all different. So I get asked how it was working with inner city black kids and don't know what to say and I get talked at about how many people in poverty would not choose to leave because of a lack of moral fiber and sit in shock and I get told that hating rich people is a sin and that I comprise 1/4 of the perfect American family. I am at the point where I don't know how to engage my father. I don't know what loving him looks like because I feel loved by him but entirely misunderstood, which leaves me confused and frustrated as hell.
I don't know how to be the quintessential daughter in a lilly-white, suburban landscape when I don't think about family like that anymore and I experience God in community. So I cry because they don't know me and its hard to love people who are so close but who don't understand. I fear that I come across as an arrogant bitch and I don't how to be and how to love.
So its good to be back in my house, where laughter comes easily and God is here in life and not just in verbiage. I am really excited for this next quarter. I am excited to learn, so much! I am excited to love with abandon and get hurt and get up and be okay. I am excited to fall asleep talking with God and wake up dreaming about foreign relations with China and laugh at how fucking ridiculous I am.
It should be a great quarter.
12.29.2007
12.05.2007
..failure
Sometime I feel like I fail at all of my relationships at the same time.
I think that this might go in cycles and it something that I need to pay attention to.
I don't think that I have a place to fall that is soft, relationally, and at the end of a exhausting quarter, its all I want.
God is good, he provides. He is perspective and he is the greatest sociologist. (Damn sociology. I hate you right now)
I think that this might go in cycles and it something that I need to pay attention to.
I don't think that I have a place to fall that is soft, relationally, and at the end of a exhausting quarter, its all I want.
God is good, he provides. He is perspective and he is the greatest sociologist. (Damn sociology. I hate you right now)
11.29.2007
..imagination
About month ago I was struck with the lack of imagination around me. I think I was in the midst of planning another program that had been done annually before, and therefore tradition was enough motivation to keep me going. It wasn't really. I also found myself in afew forums and advocacy discussions and inevidibly a hand would raise up at the end and ask the disheartening question of 'So what do we do now...?' I found myself gathering data on social issues, gathering theories in which to frame them, rooting them in theological reasoning without any imagination for something different that what I was seeing already done.
So for a while I championed this cute new idea of having a Christian imagination. I let it rest in my brain and I let it sit there until I felt smart and wise. For a while I felt nice because Shane Claiborne talked about these ideas in his book and I liked thinking like Shane. The problem with it was that I didn't really know what a Christian imagination was, I just knew what not having one looked like.
Over the course of the last week or so I have been struggling with the realities of a few of my current life situations. I didn't think that they had much to do with Christian imagination and put my pet passion to the side for a while. I began to learn that much of my tensions came down to the role of expectations in a group setting. I personally have so many expectations in most situations. I have expectations for myself, my morality, and my behaviors around other people. I have expectations of the group as a whole and the direction we are going. I also have expectations for each person within the group. For a group of four there are 25 different expectations and for a group of six, there are 30. I think that the tension I am feeling in these situations is the collision of idealism and reality. Idealism, to me, is based in the future, in the non-existent and I am beginning to realize that it is often based in ignorance, however blissful it may be. Living in a world of idealism is comfortable and happy. The world looks rosy and ideas become more important than people, making personal relationship contingent on the agreement of ideas rather than deeply abiding, sacrificial love across divides. The tension comes when this problematic idealism steps into reality and is met with busy schedules, limited resources, and the cold facts of a difficult life. This tension, if not quickly evaluated causes unmet expectations to fester and this leads to frustration. A wise friend once said that frustration is unmet expectation and his words haven’t failed me yet.
So this leads me to Christian imagination in a practical way. I think that Christian imagination is deeply rooted in reality, not idealism, because Jesus met us where we are and works with us in this world, not just mentally in our thought lives. So expectations are great, but should not be the primary force keeping relationships together because they will usually be unmet and that is dangerous territory to operate in. Ideals are great, but need to be less important that the facts of peoples lives and the difficulties in a lot of relationships. Permission into heaven is not intellectual, it’s relational. Ideals that are second class to people and a hopeful marriage of reality and those ideas is the birthplace of the Christian imagination. It is a difficult marriage it is definitely hard work but I think that this intelligent, relational hope is what God is calling us to. To me, there is so much more practical hope in the marriage of these ideas than in romantic, optimistic idealism that can often become caustic to other people in one’s life. I think that this is why I can have expectations, they are a human experience, and go to school to learn about the difficult realities of this world, and believe that it is suppose to be so much different, and blend them together in a way that is sustainable and lifegiving.
So for a while I championed this cute new idea of having a Christian imagination. I let it rest in my brain and I let it sit there until I felt smart and wise. For a while I felt nice because Shane Claiborne talked about these ideas in his book and I liked thinking like Shane. The problem with it was that I didn't really know what a Christian imagination was, I just knew what not having one looked like.
Over the course of the last week or so I have been struggling with the realities of a few of my current life situations. I didn't think that they had much to do with Christian imagination and put my pet passion to the side for a while. I began to learn that much of my tensions came down to the role of expectations in a group setting. I personally have so many expectations in most situations. I have expectations for myself, my morality, and my behaviors around other people. I have expectations of the group as a whole and the direction we are going. I also have expectations for each person within the group. For a group of four there are 25 different expectations and for a group of six, there are 30. I think that the tension I am feeling in these situations is the collision of idealism and reality. Idealism, to me, is based in the future, in the non-existent and I am beginning to realize that it is often based in ignorance, however blissful it may be. Living in a world of idealism is comfortable and happy. The world looks rosy and ideas become more important than people, making personal relationship contingent on the agreement of ideas rather than deeply abiding, sacrificial love across divides. The tension comes when this problematic idealism steps into reality and is met with busy schedules, limited resources, and the cold facts of a difficult life. This tension, if not quickly evaluated causes unmet expectations to fester and this leads to frustration. A wise friend once said that frustration is unmet expectation and his words haven’t failed me yet.
So this leads me to Christian imagination in a practical way. I think that Christian imagination is deeply rooted in reality, not idealism, because Jesus met us where we are and works with us in this world, not just mentally in our thought lives. So expectations are great, but should not be the primary force keeping relationships together because they will usually be unmet and that is dangerous territory to operate in. Ideals are great, but need to be less important that the facts of peoples lives and the difficulties in a lot of relationships. Permission into heaven is not intellectual, it’s relational. Ideals that are second class to people and a hopeful marriage of reality and those ideas is the birthplace of the Christian imagination. It is a difficult marriage it is definitely hard work but I think that this intelligent, relational hope is what God is calling us to. To me, there is so much more practical hope in the marriage of these ideas than in romantic, optimistic idealism that can often become caustic to other people in one’s life. I think that this is why I can have expectations, they are a human experience, and go to school to learn about the difficult realities of this world, and believe that it is suppose to be so much different, and blend them together in a way that is sustainable and lifegiving.
11.25.2007
..church
It's a funny thing to me when God calls me away from something. I find that I am usually asking for clarity, for a yes or a now on a major decision, or for assurance in the things that he is telling me to do. This, however, has not been the case for me with 'going to church'. I am finding myself being called away from church and this is unfamiliar territory for me.
Growing up church was always a part of my life. Always. I started to attend Mars Hill in my junior year of high school and God definitely worked through that body to affect me in a really amazing way. I felt a compulsion to go there for several years and grew a lot through the teaching of Mark and the intimacy of my community group. The thought of leaving was never an answer to people who were angry about Mars Hill or the misunderstandings it caused in my life. I am not leaving church because it is a difficult place to be, I just don't feel as though God wants me to be there anymore.
I have tried other churches. They are nice. I think that God wants me to redefine church in my life and right now that means not going to church. I don't know if this is the right thing to do and it honestly scares me. It hurts to think about the misconceptions that will probably come about in regards to my faith. Oh well. I am scared that I won't do it seriously. I am scared that I won't be able to look to my church attendance as a pillar of my faith and that I will be weakened (or have to reexamine exactly what my faith is built on).
But in some ways it’s really liberating. I have the feeling that God and I are doing this together and even though I am scared about it, I know that it will be okay.
I'm excited to watch my vocabulary change too. Church is suppose to be a verb not a noun, I think...
Growing up church was always a part of my life. Always. I started to attend Mars Hill in my junior year of high school and God definitely worked through that body to affect me in a really amazing way. I felt a compulsion to go there for several years and grew a lot through the teaching of Mark and the intimacy of my community group. The thought of leaving was never an answer to people who were angry about Mars Hill or the misunderstandings it caused in my life. I am not leaving church because it is a difficult place to be, I just don't feel as though God wants me to be there anymore.
I have tried other churches. They are nice. I think that God wants me to redefine church in my life and right now that means not going to church. I don't know if this is the right thing to do and it honestly scares me. It hurts to think about the misconceptions that will probably come about in regards to my faith. Oh well. I am scared that I won't do it seriously. I am scared that I won't be able to look to my church attendance as a pillar of my faith and that I will be weakened (or have to reexamine exactly what my faith is built on).
But in some ways it’s really liberating. I have the feeling that God and I are doing this together and even though I am scared about it, I know that it will be okay.
I'm excited to watch my vocabulary change too. Church is suppose to be a verb not a noun, I think...
11.06.2007
..imagination
I have been in a thinking mood lately. I usually know that I have slipped into one when I stop talking and people begin to ask me if I'm 'doing okay'. I usually just giggle and say yes, because I am doing fine, just thinking...
I am thinking about hope, and imagination, and purpose, and anger, and resistance, and stability, and authenticity, and humility. I think that I am growing into a rooted and settled place in my faith, where God's will is more important than me being extreme or known.
I am learning that authenticity is silent. Humility is silent. I have often thought in the past that authenticity was how other people perceived me. I would project myself onto other people, having them mirror back their interpretation of me, and if that matched up to the person I thought I was, I would declare myself 'authentic'. Much of it had to do with my image or my loud social theology or passion for certain topics, not because they were the essence of what I was but because that is the way I wanted to be perceived. My search for authenticity was really me searching for a way to justify my pride. I think that this deeply rooted, silent authenticity is an expression of humility. Humility is being finding identity and strength through Christ alone, living that out silently but always having words of thanks to Him perched at the edge of my tongue. Humility lets me really listen, without even talking in my brain during a conversation. It also invites people to listen when I talk. My words hold more power when they are enveloped with listening.
I am thinking about hope, and imagination, and purpose, and anger, and resistance, and stability, and authenticity, and humility. I think that I am growing into a rooted and settled place in my faith, where God's will is more important than me being extreme or known.
I am learning that authenticity is silent. Humility is silent. I have often thought in the past that authenticity was how other people perceived me. I would project myself onto other people, having them mirror back their interpretation of me, and if that matched up to the person I thought I was, I would declare myself 'authentic'. Much of it had to do with my image or my loud social theology or passion for certain topics, not because they were the essence of what I was but because that is the way I wanted to be perceived. My search for authenticity was really me searching for a way to justify my pride. I think that this deeply rooted, silent authenticity is an expression of humility. Humility is being finding identity and strength through Christ alone, living that out silently but always having words of thanks to Him perched at the edge of my tongue. Humility lets me really listen, without even talking in my brain during a conversation. It also invites people to listen when I talk. My words hold more power when they are enveloped with listening.
10.10.2007
..seriously
The depth of my faith has always been a snag for me. Do I spend too much time worrying about it? Too much time thinking about in place of actually doing it? Is it a legitimate thing for me to be concerned about or simply an outcome of my life and a character trait found out after the fact, like humility?
I think that this discussion ultimately comes down to my perspective on it. My faith is not deep enough. What is deep enough when God is eternally more complex and undiscovered? Heaven will be deep enough faith. I think that I am moving out of a state of panic though. I feel peace and a quite stillness in the fact that God is the purpose and means and end of my life and I don't feel a need to fight that right now.
If I am going to resist anything it needs too be me. My mind and schedule and tongue and life are controlled and operated by me. This is my lack of depth.
What does surrender actually look like? I am so fucking tired of singing songs about concepts and Christian words and things we want from God. I don't give anything to God if I am actually honest. Not only do I not give him much, I give him the shitty leftovers, and complaints, and dissatisfaction, and my thoughts.
I underestimate the magnitude of grace because I over estimate the beauty of myself.
God save me from my pride and myself.
God redeem my mind so I desire, honestly, for you to save me from my pride and myself.
I'm sick of this bullshit.
I think that this discussion ultimately comes down to my perspective on it. My faith is not deep enough. What is deep enough when God is eternally more complex and undiscovered? Heaven will be deep enough faith. I think that I am moving out of a state of panic though. I feel peace and a quite stillness in the fact that God is the purpose and means and end of my life and I don't feel a need to fight that right now.
If I am going to resist anything it needs too be me. My mind and schedule and tongue and life are controlled and operated by me. This is my lack of depth.
What does surrender actually look like? I am so fucking tired of singing songs about concepts and Christian words and things we want from God. I don't give anything to God if I am actually honest. Not only do I not give him much, I give him the shitty leftovers, and complaints, and dissatisfaction, and my thoughts.
I underestimate the magnitude of grace because I over estimate the beauty of myself.
God save me from my pride and myself.
God redeem my mind so I desire, honestly, for you to save me from my pride and myself.
I'm sick of this bullshit.
10.06.2007
..funeral
Time has passed by and I am smiling because I am typing in this box. This is a friendship that I have been missing for a good many months.
I cannot afford an update on life up to this point and I suppose my only desire is to see my maturity through words and not through stories of growth.
I am struggling a lot right now on several funerals I have to go to. I have accepted an invitation to attend the funeral of my friend guilt and I am driving there, dressed in radiant black and I can taste the formaldehyde of its dead body when I enter into the wake. I don't think that I am over with this funeral yet.
I am dining on the refreshments after attending a funeral for my friend business. I don't speak of him anymore and he has been eliminated from my life. I am sure his ghost will haunt me though.
There is an invitation to a funeral that I haven't opened yet. It's for a friend. Not a friend that's an adjective, but a friend. The problem is that I won't be able to attend a funeral or watch them be buried by distance or time, because they are in my life, except wordless and timelessly present. I don't know if it's the 'good Christian' thing to do. To open the invitation. I know it's something I don't want to do, and don't want to admit.
I cannot afford an update on life up to this point and I suppose my only desire is to see my maturity through words and not through stories of growth.
I am struggling a lot right now on several funerals I have to go to. I have accepted an invitation to attend the funeral of my friend guilt and I am driving there, dressed in radiant black and I can taste the formaldehyde of its dead body when I enter into the wake. I don't think that I am over with this funeral yet.
I am dining on the refreshments after attending a funeral for my friend business. I don't speak of him anymore and he has been eliminated from my life. I am sure his ghost will haunt me though.
There is an invitation to a funeral that I haven't opened yet. It's for a friend. Not a friend that's an adjective, but a friend. The problem is that I won't be able to attend a funeral or watch them be buried by distance or time, because they are in my life, except wordless and timelessly present. I don't know if it's the 'good Christian' thing to do. To open the invitation. I know it's something I don't want to do, and don't want to admit.
7.02.2007
..growth
- consistancy, comfort, apathy
- relativity, no foundation, meaningless
- growth rates
- pros and cons
- transformation
- only what we can handle implying change
- relativity, no foundation, meaningless
- growth rates
- pros and cons
- transformation
- only what we can handle implying change
6.20.2007
..challanged
Currently, I am living in the U-District, interning at FareStart, and trying to find some sort of job. Although life is the way that I want it, I also kind of hate it right now. Everything is so disgustingly comfortable. I realized today that I haven't really hit anything hard and that worries me. I feel stagnant and apathetic, or that basically everything I do is expected of me, as though it fits my personality or the "stereotype" that I am attempting to play. This has been really difficult for me. I also have been struggling with my idenity a lot recently too and I think that I need to spend more time with God. I don't want that to be the reason that I do it, but it definatley a positive side effect. I also don't really feel like I own anything right now and that is a strange feeling. I feel like the my personhood is being leached out and taken up by a lot of other people and that is a very strange feeling. Haha, look at that. I also feel like people are gauging conversation around me and telling me things that I want to hear, and at time it feels like they are trying to impress me which is so very weird. I am sure that it is going to be fine, just a few of the pot hole I have hit so far.
I need to pray more.
I need to pray more.
5.08.2007
..honesty
Today has been a great journey of understanding when it comes to the role of honesty in my life. I spent a lot of my day sitting in UI interviews, asking questions and trying to probe into the heart of the people that were applying. I just really wanted to know their heart and I wanted them to feel comfortable enough in the process that they could do it. I think that I am going to have a disclaimer for all of the interviews tomorrow.
I also learned a lot about honesty in my small group tonight. I asked a question about nun's and their romantic view of God and what everyone thought about it and it brought about very engaging and amazing conversation. I learned that I feel most initimately connected with God when I am being one hundred percent honest with him. The times when I break down in prayer and get angry and hit the couch and swear are the times when I feel most connected with God. If I am sitting there and basically bullshitting the creator of the universe it is the biggest insult I can pay him. I also think I discovered the importance of unconditional love too. Its that love that allows me to know that I can be completely authentic with Jesus and he will still be there when I am finished. The times I am most vulnerable with where I am and with God are the times in my life when I feel like I know myself the best.
We also talked a lot about how much of our perspective on God really effected the way we view life and other relationships. I realized that honesty is the way that I feel most loved, respected, and intimate with a person. I feel a deep sense of connectedness with another person when I feel like they are giving me something authentic. I desire this immensely for my relationships with others and demand it of myself. I think that I take this raw honesty into every serious relationship I get in and use it as my pressidence until I am forced to do otherwise. I think this is what kills me about my damaged relationships, I feel like I communicate differently and thats because I do, I am far more calculated with my thoughts. This space kills so much of me. I want nothing more than for reconciliation to happen and for me to trust enough again to be real with that other person but I think that hearts are healed very very slowly. I also think that I have a lot of personal insecurity when it comes to people who have hurt me and I think that I display a lot of self-protective behaviors.
Something else I realized tonight too is the role of God that my husband will hopefully play in my life. I was thinking about the relationship that I want with him and kind of the way I would like him to be and a lot of that had to do with the way I view Jesus. I want him to be passionate about life and I want it to be an overwhelming force of tension and grappling with the core of life, leading to deep and authentic living. I want someone who always knows that there is something better and is pressing on towards that something really really hard. I think that I am excited for the heart of the man I will one day marry and the way that God is preparing him to show me so much Jesus. It also gives me comfort in myself, knowing that in all of this randomness that is my heart and brain, I am becoming refined to be a living and present face of God in someone else's life. Haha, so much for looking for someone. What a waste of time...
I also learned a lot about honesty in my small group tonight. I asked a question about nun's and their romantic view of God and what everyone thought about it and it brought about very engaging and amazing conversation. I learned that I feel most initimately connected with God when I am being one hundred percent honest with him. The times when I break down in prayer and get angry and hit the couch and swear are the times when I feel most connected with God. If I am sitting there and basically bullshitting the creator of the universe it is the biggest insult I can pay him. I also think I discovered the importance of unconditional love too. Its that love that allows me to know that I can be completely authentic with Jesus and he will still be there when I am finished. The times I am most vulnerable with where I am and with God are the times in my life when I feel like I know myself the best.
We also talked a lot about how much of our perspective on God really effected the way we view life and other relationships. I realized that honesty is the way that I feel most loved, respected, and intimate with a person. I feel a deep sense of connectedness with another person when I feel like they are giving me something authentic. I desire this immensely for my relationships with others and demand it of myself. I think that I take this raw honesty into every serious relationship I get in and use it as my pressidence until I am forced to do otherwise. I think this is what kills me about my damaged relationships, I feel like I communicate differently and thats because I do, I am far more calculated with my thoughts. This space kills so much of me. I want nothing more than for reconciliation to happen and for me to trust enough again to be real with that other person but I think that hearts are healed very very slowly. I also think that I have a lot of personal insecurity when it comes to people who have hurt me and I think that I display a lot of self-protective behaviors.
Something else I realized tonight too is the role of God that my husband will hopefully play in my life. I was thinking about the relationship that I want with him and kind of the way I would like him to be and a lot of that had to do with the way I view Jesus. I want him to be passionate about life and I want it to be an overwhelming force of tension and grappling with the core of life, leading to deep and authentic living. I want someone who always knows that there is something better and is pressing on towards that something really really hard. I think that I am excited for the heart of the man I will one day marry and the way that God is preparing him to show me so much Jesus. It also gives me comfort in myself, knowing that in all of this randomness that is my heart and brain, I am becoming refined to be a living and present face of God in someone else's life. Haha, so much for looking for someone. What a waste of time...
4.16.2007
..empty
Hi Mr. Blog.
Today, and the last great while, I feel a deep, pithy sense of emptiness in my life. I sit here eating chips and hummus and my world is very very stable. I don't need anything really, no food, no provisions, and the possibilities of my life are being seized and explored. Separating myself from myself I think that my life is fine. I am moving forward, although not as fast as I would like, but I don't feel as though I am stagnant.
The problem then? I feel like life has been sucked out of me. I feel like I haven't been relying on God and I feel as though I am completely meaningless and powerless without him in my life. Another problem. I don't know what to do about this. I have grand thoughts about willing myself into a deeper relationship with God. Maybe playing an arm wrestling game of Biblical devotion or time spent in prayer and then win and then feel close to him again. I don't even want to entertain those thoughts though. I want to be in love with Jesus and I want to feel very very alive because I am living with him.
I have been incapable of loving recently. I feel as though I am floating through life, doing things and meeting with people and having 'deep' conversation but really I am kind of faking it. I don't feel it so I put on the fake mask of grins and lukewarm theology and nondescript love and make it through my days. Sleep is entirely unsatisfying for me right now. I do it but I don't like it. I don't think about Jesus before I go to bed and I have dreams that are meaningless or frustrating and wake up feeling like I wasted my time. I find that I am pushing things that I know are gifts from God, through my life, because I have hope that sometime in the future I won't feel like this.
I miss Jesus so much. I think that right now I am keeping myself busy and not allowing myself to think about my vacuum because it hurts so badly. I instantly come to the edge of tears and then run away, scared of the pain that jumping off of the edge would cause.
I don't want to be like this. I want the passions and desires of my life to beautifully taint every part of who I am. I want to be amazingly excited about life and possibility and Jesus.
I want to feel life deeper but I don't know how to right now.
ps. moderately obsessed with the Myers-Briggs test. I am an INFJ and that is me to a T (except I am not a T).
Today, and the last great while, I feel a deep, pithy sense of emptiness in my life. I sit here eating chips and hummus and my world is very very stable. I don't need anything really, no food, no provisions, and the possibilities of my life are being seized and explored. Separating myself from myself I think that my life is fine. I am moving forward, although not as fast as I would like, but I don't feel as though I am stagnant.
The problem then? I feel like life has been sucked out of me. I feel like I haven't been relying on God and I feel as though I am completely meaningless and powerless without him in my life. Another problem. I don't know what to do about this. I have grand thoughts about willing myself into a deeper relationship with God. Maybe playing an arm wrestling game of Biblical devotion or time spent in prayer and then win and then feel close to him again. I don't even want to entertain those thoughts though. I want to be in love with Jesus and I want to feel very very alive because I am living with him.
I have been incapable of loving recently. I feel as though I am floating through life, doing things and meeting with people and having 'deep' conversation but really I am kind of faking it. I don't feel it so I put on the fake mask of grins and lukewarm theology and nondescript love and make it through my days. Sleep is entirely unsatisfying for me right now. I do it but I don't like it. I don't think about Jesus before I go to bed and I have dreams that are meaningless or frustrating and wake up feeling like I wasted my time. I find that I am pushing things that I know are gifts from God, through my life, because I have hope that sometime in the future I won't feel like this.
I miss Jesus so much. I think that right now I am keeping myself busy and not allowing myself to think about my vacuum because it hurts so badly. I instantly come to the edge of tears and then run away, scared of the pain that jumping off of the edge would cause.
I don't want to be like this. I want the passions and desires of my life to beautifully taint every part of who I am. I want to be amazingly excited about life and possibility and Jesus.
I want to feel life deeper but I don't know how to right now.
ps. moderately obsessed with the Myers-Briggs test. I am an INFJ and that is me to a T (except I am not a T).
3.31.2007
..choice
Oh boy, it’s been a long while since I have been here. I think that its because I have been a long while from being in close relationship to God. Looking back on the last month of my life I see a whole lot of nothingness and apathy and laziness. I barely pulled through the end of the quarter and stumbled through Plunge and spring break in a daze, confused and asleep. It has really really sucked. Last night I cried about it and I have felt uneasy about 'it' for a little over a week.
Honestly, I like that it sucks. I like that all of my life feels like shit when I am not okay with God. It would terrify me to think about what it would mean if my relationship with Jesus went down the drain and my life remained stable, completely unaffected. This proves to me that it’s real. The fact that I suffer in its absence is proof that it is absolutely legitimate. Being in love with someone affects every dimension of my life and if I am actually in a 'romantic' relationship it should have that same, deeply penetrating presence in my life.
So here it is: I have been looking for God. Basically my whole life and I will be until I reach heaven. It’s at the very core of my being and that longing for God will never go away, whether or not I am conscious of it. Before I came to know Jesus I was looking for him and when I am choosing not to follow him I am still looking for him.
I look for him in other people, in experiences, in who I am and I am so frustrated all of the time because I can never ever be satisfied. I look for unconditional love, complete acceptance, deep understanding, unending compassion and peace in so many of my human relationships. I get so frustrated and depressed with they can't do this. When they basically just suck at life and I stand there and am so dissatisfied with their failure. When I am not satisfied and following Jesus, I look for him in others and hate life because they are human beings.
I am searching for God. Letting this be a fact that defines my life makes me so much more serious about everything I have in it. The one thing that God plays over and over and over and over in the Old Testament is the role of false Gods. God warned Israel so many times not to create false Gods and I have always thought that he repeated himself too much. You think that they would have gotten the point after a while and I get bored with reading it over and over again. I think that I kind of understand why the same point is brought up so many times. Being both a person made in the image of God, I am looking for him and at the same time I am a person of free will, with an endless selection of gods that I could choose from. This situation is the most dangerous and serious one in my life.
If I am honest about my faith journey passion and tension and faith have all played key roles but the role of idol worship in my life have been the one thing that is consistently crippling to my relationship with Jesus. It is the easiest thing to fall into and I do it all of the time, every single day of my life. That fucking sucks. I would vomit, or at least I hope I would vomit, at the ration of God worship to idol worship in my life.
If I look at the past and let it predict the future, as I often do during these times of 'drought', I get really, really discouraged. I think that the fact that God's grace is new every morning forces me to make a decision every morning and every moment of my day as to whether or not I will allow God to be God in my life or if I will try to awkwardly stuff a friend, experience, personality type, or fantasy into that place in my life. I am a thinking and rationalizing human being and I praise God that I am. It makes this life with him so much better because it is so real. In the midst of my thankfulness I must always remember that I am a person of free will and I am person born after the fall and in my nature I choose idols over God.
What is it going to be?
Honestly, I like that it sucks. I like that all of my life feels like shit when I am not okay with God. It would terrify me to think about what it would mean if my relationship with Jesus went down the drain and my life remained stable, completely unaffected. This proves to me that it’s real. The fact that I suffer in its absence is proof that it is absolutely legitimate. Being in love with someone affects every dimension of my life and if I am actually in a 'romantic' relationship it should have that same, deeply penetrating presence in my life.
So here it is: I have been looking for God. Basically my whole life and I will be until I reach heaven. It’s at the very core of my being and that longing for God will never go away, whether or not I am conscious of it. Before I came to know Jesus I was looking for him and when I am choosing not to follow him I am still looking for him.
I look for him in other people, in experiences, in who I am and I am so frustrated all of the time because I can never ever be satisfied. I look for unconditional love, complete acceptance, deep understanding, unending compassion and peace in so many of my human relationships. I get so frustrated and depressed with they can't do this. When they basically just suck at life and I stand there and am so dissatisfied with their failure. When I am not satisfied and following Jesus, I look for him in others and hate life because they are human beings.
I am searching for God. Letting this be a fact that defines my life makes me so much more serious about everything I have in it. The one thing that God plays over and over and over and over in the Old Testament is the role of false Gods. God warned Israel so many times not to create false Gods and I have always thought that he repeated himself too much. You think that they would have gotten the point after a while and I get bored with reading it over and over again. I think that I kind of understand why the same point is brought up so many times. Being both a person made in the image of God, I am looking for him and at the same time I am a person of free will, with an endless selection of gods that I could choose from. This situation is the most dangerous and serious one in my life.
If I am honest about my faith journey passion and tension and faith have all played key roles but the role of idol worship in my life have been the one thing that is consistently crippling to my relationship with Jesus. It is the easiest thing to fall into and I do it all of the time, every single day of my life. That fucking sucks. I would vomit, or at least I hope I would vomit, at the ration of God worship to idol worship in my life.
If I look at the past and let it predict the future, as I often do during these times of 'drought', I get really, really discouraged. I think that the fact that God's grace is new every morning forces me to make a decision every morning and every moment of my day as to whether or not I will allow God to be God in my life or if I will try to awkwardly stuff a friend, experience, personality type, or fantasy into that place in my life. I am a thinking and rationalizing human being and I praise God that I am. It makes this life with him so much better because it is so real. In the midst of my thankfulness I must always remember that I am a person of free will and I am person born after the fall and in my nature I choose idols over God.
What is it going to be?
3.03.2007
..radical
I am moderately certain that I am allergic to 1/2 and 1/2. I have a rash right now on my knee.
In my relationship with Jesus, I find out more and more of who I am when I fall more and more in love with him. I feel like seemingly cliché when I make statements like this but I will unpack it in a little soapbox scream. So much of my life can be wasted on defining who I am. It finds its way into everything; my clothes, music, eating habits, media intake, social dialog, and spiritual rituals, absolutely everything. It is truly amazing for me to sit down and think about the amount of time I spend trying to define who I am through activities and parts of my character and personality. It can become an all-consuming task that avoids total submission to Christ because; I have it all in control, thank you very much. The problem with this is that it is such a shallow and hollow way to spend my time. For every minute I have ever spend weighing the pros and cons about something in my life, whether or not it will make me cool or accepted or different, but in a cool way. I feel guilty about thinking about things like this but they consume my life and that consumption is so natural, such a normal state for my being to dwell in, that I wonder if I can know anything else. I think that this predicament has a direct correlation to my intensity in my relationship with Jesus. The more of myself I recklessly give to him, with only a few strings attached which are only broken through me asking Jesus Christ to break them, the more I become who I am. I scream with Paul when he says 'I WANT TO KNOW NOTHING BUT CHRIST CRUCIFIED'. If I 'know' myself, it is the greatest facade to avoid my purpose that I could ever muster up.
Some people spend their whole lives creating themselves, to realize that when they die, it’s all gone. Perhaps are they not let into heaven because there is nothing of them there on that day? I don't know.
I think that that the point I am at right now is maybe not the surrender point of this process but the acceptance point. Am I going to allow myself to be whom Jesus made me? What if I don't get to share my deep, epic thoughts with others, but listen the rest of my life? What if God want me to be ridiculously wealthily? What if he wants me to do things that 'I am not called to'? What if I am supposed to die slowly? What if I am suppose to stay in shitty mediocre Christianity and find out some way to be of one pure and holy passion in this lukewarm sinkhole? What if I don't like what that Lindsey looks like? It's a promise that I will be hated and spit on and mocked and that I won't be thought of highly and that my humility will be painfully present in everything I do. This is what I sign up for when I flippantly say that I am child of God, trying to follow Jesus. These words fly out of my mouth so easily, perhaps they should come with far more reservation and weight and joy and passion.
There is so much release when there are moments when I am absolutely living in the spirit. They are the heights and depths of my soul and they are the moments when I am truly living. They never fail me even though sometimes I feel as though I am going to explode. It’s the moments when I avoid living that I hate life the most. It’s when I slip into brainless mediocrity and myself that I implode with tension and sadness and apathy.
So what does all of this verbiage actually look like in my life? Most of the time it is simply left in the moment of tension and never actually explored in reality. I usually sit and scream at people and events and conversations and ideals, but not audibly, in my soul. In these moments all I want to do is go to a mountain and scream until I have no physical strength left and then I want to lay down and sob until collapse and then I want to scream pray and then fall asleep for a long period of time. I want to be with other people like me more than anything. I want to be the people that want Jesus 24/7 but are completely honest with their humanity and live in the tensions of a Jesus in human skin. I want to leave everyone I know. I want to meet a monastery or a nunnery or a radical community where Jesus isn't a pet side project, he is an obsession. I want to be with people who encourage my faith, push me into God, and force me to image the impossible. I don't want to suppress it all, pushing it down to make room for lame ass conversations that rot at the very meaning of life. I don't want to be frustrated with Christians, I just want to be obsessed with Jesus and be with people who are completely obsessed.
I realize that all of these words might sound selfish, but future self, know that I love people, dearly with most of my heart, but Jesus is always more beautiful and always more perfect and I trust him so much more.
I don't know what to do with this mess of it all.
If you are creepy and read my blog, whatever, but if your heart aches for this same experience, lets run away to a mountain or a cliff or a beach and scream, cry, pray and sleep in the crazy vastness of God, forgetting all that we are because we are so wrapped in his presence.
In my relationship with Jesus, I find out more and more of who I am when I fall more and more in love with him. I feel like seemingly cliché when I make statements like this but I will unpack it in a little soapbox scream. So much of my life can be wasted on defining who I am. It finds its way into everything; my clothes, music, eating habits, media intake, social dialog, and spiritual rituals, absolutely everything. It is truly amazing for me to sit down and think about the amount of time I spend trying to define who I am through activities and parts of my character and personality. It can become an all-consuming task that avoids total submission to Christ because; I have it all in control, thank you very much. The problem with this is that it is such a shallow and hollow way to spend my time. For every minute I have ever spend weighing the pros and cons about something in my life, whether or not it will make me cool or accepted or different, but in a cool way. I feel guilty about thinking about things like this but they consume my life and that consumption is so natural, such a normal state for my being to dwell in, that I wonder if I can know anything else. I think that this predicament has a direct correlation to my intensity in my relationship with Jesus. The more of myself I recklessly give to him, with only a few strings attached which are only broken through me asking Jesus Christ to break them, the more I become who I am. I scream with Paul when he says 'I WANT TO KNOW NOTHING BUT CHRIST CRUCIFIED'. If I 'know' myself, it is the greatest facade to avoid my purpose that I could ever muster up.
Some people spend their whole lives creating themselves, to realize that when they die, it’s all gone. Perhaps are they not let into heaven because there is nothing of them there on that day? I don't know.
I think that that the point I am at right now is maybe not the surrender point of this process but the acceptance point. Am I going to allow myself to be whom Jesus made me? What if I don't get to share my deep, epic thoughts with others, but listen the rest of my life? What if God want me to be ridiculously wealthily? What if he wants me to do things that 'I am not called to'? What if I am supposed to die slowly? What if I am suppose to stay in shitty mediocre Christianity and find out some way to be of one pure and holy passion in this lukewarm sinkhole? What if I don't like what that Lindsey looks like? It's a promise that I will be hated and spit on and mocked and that I won't be thought of highly and that my humility will be painfully present in everything I do. This is what I sign up for when I flippantly say that I am child of God, trying to follow Jesus. These words fly out of my mouth so easily, perhaps they should come with far more reservation and weight and joy and passion.
There is so much release when there are moments when I am absolutely living in the spirit. They are the heights and depths of my soul and they are the moments when I am truly living. They never fail me even though sometimes I feel as though I am going to explode. It’s the moments when I avoid living that I hate life the most. It’s when I slip into brainless mediocrity and myself that I implode with tension and sadness and apathy.
So what does all of this verbiage actually look like in my life? Most of the time it is simply left in the moment of tension and never actually explored in reality. I usually sit and scream at people and events and conversations and ideals, but not audibly, in my soul. In these moments all I want to do is go to a mountain and scream until I have no physical strength left and then I want to lay down and sob until collapse and then I want to scream pray and then fall asleep for a long period of time. I want to be with other people like me more than anything. I want to be the people that want Jesus 24/7 but are completely honest with their humanity and live in the tensions of a Jesus in human skin. I want to leave everyone I know. I want to meet a monastery or a nunnery or a radical community where Jesus isn't a pet side project, he is an obsession. I want to be with people who encourage my faith, push me into God, and force me to image the impossible. I don't want to suppress it all, pushing it down to make room for lame ass conversations that rot at the very meaning of life. I don't want to be frustrated with Christians, I just want to be obsessed with Jesus and be with people who are completely obsessed.
I realize that all of these words might sound selfish, but future self, know that I love people, dearly with most of my heart, but Jesus is always more beautiful and always more perfect and I trust him so much more.
I don't know what to do with this mess of it all.
If you are creepy and read my blog, whatever, but if your heart aches for this same experience, lets run away to a mountain or a cliff or a beach and scream, cry, pray and sleep in the crazy vastness of God, forgetting all that we are because we are so wrapped in his presence.
2.27.2007
..mind
Here is an update blog. These are always tradgectly feeble attempts at recounting the events and massive movements of God in my life over the last few days. My bones are tired and I don't want to do this but someday I will be able to look back and understand another small portion of God's infinate love for me. I think I feel like an apostle of Christ right now, trying to figure out just what's most important to recount three entire years with Jesus. My soul is burdened for them in that task.
These are my thoughts:
The last few days, with the exception of Saturday, have been very intense in their nature. I have experienced so much of God, in so many ways, that I came to Saturday and felt as though I had to 'take a break' from God because I couldn't handle it anymore. My prayer is that God will help me die enough to myself that I can experience so much more of the fullness of God.
John Swanger and Dana and I had a very intense conversation about Mars Hill at Scum on Tuesday. I found myself coming back to the pure nature of Jesus but I existed so much in the intensity of that conversation. I felt so hurt along with John and Dana because of things stemming from Mars Hill but so hurt also when she said, "I hate, hate, hate Mark Driscoll." This has caused me to question my thinking on the topic, in a constructive and healthy way and it has been part of my mental dialog for a week now. I am asking for the mind of Christ on this issue, that I might rejoice in the preaching of the gospel in any context. I have a feeling that I am going to be working through this tension for a while and to attend any other church would be to avoid it, and that is a sign of my resistance to growth. I want to remain in this struggle and I want Jesus to lift me out of it in his time.
Life has happened, many conversations have surged into my life, leaving a wake of beautiful reconciliation, passion, and dreams. I feel incredibally blessed with the heart God has given me, the people that he has placed in my life and the opprotunities he is placing in my path.
I think that I am learning what radical trust looks like. I am learning to respond to the movement of God in my life and dreaming big dreams because my God is a big God.
I have learned so much more than this mere post and I have sadly forgetten it. Perhaps it has simple seeped from the realm of my brain and into the marrow of my bones and the flesh of my heart and I am not learning them anymore, but living them. I think that this hope might be slightly idealistic though.
These are my thoughts:
The last few days, with the exception of Saturday, have been very intense in their nature. I have experienced so much of God, in so many ways, that I came to Saturday and felt as though I had to 'take a break' from God because I couldn't handle it anymore. My prayer is that God will help me die enough to myself that I can experience so much more of the fullness of God.
John Swanger and Dana and I had a very intense conversation about Mars Hill at Scum on Tuesday. I found myself coming back to the pure nature of Jesus but I existed so much in the intensity of that conversation. I felt so hurt along with John and Dana because of things stemming from Mars Hill but so hurt also when she said, "I hate, hate, hate Mark Driscoll." This has caused me to question my thinking on the topic, in a constructive and healthy way and it has been part of my mental dialog for a week now. I am asking for the mind of Christ on this issue, that I might rejoice in the preaching of the gospel in any context. I have a feeling that I am going to be working through this tension for a while and to attend any other church would be to avoid it, and that is a sign of my resistance to growth. I want to remain in this struggle and I want Jesus to lift me out of it in his time.
Life has happened, many conversations have surged into my life, leaving a wake of beautiful reconciliation, passion, and dreams. I feel incredibally blessed with the heart God has given me, the people that he has placed in my life and the opprotunities he is placing in my path.
I think that I am learning what radical trust looks like. I am learning to respond to the movement of God in my life and dreaming big dreams because my God is a big God.
I have learned so much more than this mere post and I have sadly forgetten it. Perhaps it has simple seeped from the realm of my brain and into the marrow of my bones and the flesh of my heart and I am not learning them anymore, but living them. I think that this hope might be slightly idealistic though.
2.18.2007
..gangs
I just got back from watching Green Street Hooligans. It's violent and overly bloody but brings up a lot of the sociological issues of gangs that I was confronted with this summer and also the personal struggles I have been dealing with currently. Saying that, I think that it was good movie.
Gangs are very interesting to me. I think that they are the ultimate expression of our need to be needed and our need to be a part of something. They are a group of people who have found a way to unite around a purpose, and through that community, find solidarity in the 'us'/'them' approach to life and also in their own personal role in the group. It fulfills the deepest longing to be a person of substance and of belonging because it is the entirety of their existence.
I saw the heart wrenching effects of this over the summer. Walking into it I knew little about gangs, the slang, the dress, or the lifestyle but soon realized that it was something so much more. It is an identity and a security and a form of love that is not being me anywhere else. I talked to kids who were joining simply because they had no where else too go, like the vortex of the gang tasted like some sort of parental love to them. For children starving for place, substance, and love gangs are an easy solution with a high turn over rate.
But what is this need? What is this basic pangs of being human that make us all go to extreme lengths to find love and place and purpose. I try to fill my pangs with friends, and interests, and concepts, and I am always left grasping for something more. I am not satisfied and I attempt to join gangs continually. I am most likely in several right as we speak. They are entities that clamor for my heart, who want all of it and will not be satisfied with just a chunk. Even though some of them are beautiful, great things, their control in my life is deadly and often leaves me feeling like I have been through battle.
I want to join a gang with a boyfriend, I want to have place and purpose and love through that. I want to belong to someone and I want to be inseparable with them in our purpose. That would feel amazing.
I want to join a gang in Christian ministry. I want to be in a club of Christians and be on the cutting edge of God's work, astonishing people with the amazing things that we are doing. Deep down, I want to make a name for myself for how much I do for God. Parts of me want to be in this gang.
But playing out the thoughts of these two gangs in my life I find that I am still searching for something more. The pining for fulfillment is crippling at times and I want to know the way to have it go away, so that I can say I am satisfied with life and be content with all of it for once.
Laying here, I know the pat answer: Jesus. I can simply quit now and this would be nicely wrapped in a Christian box and I could feel great about everything. But that's not actually the way I feel. I feel clueless on how the fuck I am suppose to do that. How am I suppose to be completely satisfied with Christ? What does that actually, really, really look like? It would be easy in a monastery I think, no earthly distractions to loose focus on. I know the answer but I don't know how to get there and because of that I feel so incredibly alone right now. I could give up and accept a boyfriend, Christian ministry, or whatever else my heart might desire but I don't want it. I just want Jesus but I don't know what that looks like and I am sad as I type this and I wish I had a simple Christian answer that made me feel better, that would be lovely. I wish I did but I am guess I don't I suppose because Jesus is better than Christianity and I need that to be true if I am going to do this.
Oswald Chambers. Daily Thoughts for Disciples. February 14.
I want to ask a very personal question- How much do you want to be delivered from? You say, "I want to be delivered from wrongdoing"- then you don't need to come to Jesus Christ. "I want to walk in the right way according to the judgment of society"- then you don't need Jesus Christ. But some heart cries out- "I want, God knows I want, that Jesus Christ should do in me all He has said He would do." How many of us 'want' like that? God grant that this want may increase until it swamps every other desire of heart and life. Oh, the patience, the gentleness, the longing of the Lord Jesus after lives, and yet people are turning this way and that, and even saint who once knew Him are turning aside, their eyes are fixed on other things, on the blessings that come from the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and have forgotten the Baptizer Himself.
Gangs are very interesting to me. I think that they are the ultimate expression of our need to be needed and our need to be a part of something. They are a group of people who have found a way to unite around a purpose, and through that community, find solidarity in the 'us'/'them' approach to life and also in their own personal role in the group. It fulfills the deepest longing to be a person of substance and of belonging because it is the entirety of their existence.
I saw the heart wrenching effects of this over the summer. Walking into it I knew little about gangs, the slang, the dress, or the lifestyle but soon realized that it was something so much more. It is an identity and a security and a form of love that is not being me anywhere else. I talked to kids who were joining simply because they had no where else too go, like the vortex of the gang tasted like some sort of parental love to them. For children starving for place, substance, and love gangs are an easy solution with a high turn over rate.
But what is this need? What is this basic pangs of being human that make us all go to extreme lengths to find love and place and purpose. I try to fill my pangs with friends, and interests, and concepts, and I am always left grasping for something more. I am not satisfied and I attempt to join gangs continually. I am most likely in several right as we speak. They are entities that clamor for my heart, who want all of it and will not be satisfied with just a chunk. Even though some of them are beautiful, great things, their control in my life is deadly and often leaves me feeling like I have been through battle.
I want to join a gang with a boyfriend, I want to have place and purpose and love through that. I want to belong to someone and I want to be inseparable with them in our purpose. That would feel amazing.
I want to join a gang in Christian ministry. I want to be in a club of Christians and be on the cutting edge of God's work, astonishing people with the amazing things that we are doing. Deep down, I want to make a name for myself for how much I do for God. Parts of me want to be in this gang.
But playing out the thoughts of these two gangs in my life I find that I am still searching for something more. The pining for fulfillment is crippling at times and I want to know the way to have it go away, so that I can say I am satisfied with life and be content with all of it for once.
Laying here, I know the pat answer: Jesus. I can simply quit now and this would be nicely wrapped in a Christian box and I could feel great about everything. But that's not actually the way I feel. I feel clueless on how the fuck I am suppose to do that. How am I suppose to be completely satisfied with Christ? What does that actually, really, really look like? It would be easy in a monastery I think, no earthly distractions to loose focus on. I know the answer but I don't know how to get there and because of that I feel so incredibly alone right now. I could give up and accept a boyfriend, Christian ministry, or whatever else my heart might desire but I don't want it. I just want Jesus but I don't know what that looks like and I am sad as I type this and I wish I had a simple Christian answer that made me feel better, that would be lovely. I wish I did but I am guess I don't I suppose because Jesus is better than Christianity and I need that to be true if I am going to do this.
Oswald Chambers. Daily Thoughts for Disciples. February 14.
I want to ask a very personal question- How much do you want to be delivered from? You say, "I want to be delivered from wrongdoing"- then you don't need to come to Jesus Christ. "I want to walk in the right way according to the judgment of society"- then you don't need Jesus Christ. But some heart cries out- "I want, God knows I want, that Jesus Christ should do in me all He has said He would do." How many of us 'want' like that? God grant that this want may increase until it swamps every other desire of heart and life. Oh, the patience, the gentleness, the longing of the Lord Jesus after lives, and yet people are turning this way and that, and even saint who once knew Him are turning aside, their eyes are fixed on other things, on the blessings that come from the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and have forgotten the Baptizer Himself.
2.10.2007
..grace
I think I am learning the freedom of living a life as a creature of grace.
I had a friend confront me about the way I interact with people and because it was wrapped in love, I was able to receive the truth in her words. In my explanation as to why I do the things I do I realized that I am so broken and skill-less when it comes to my compentancy in relationships. I don't have a past filled with examples of great friendship and I don't know what works well and what doesn't in most situations. I don't think I am completely social invalid but at the core of my being there are definitely insecurities about who I am in relationship to other people.
The beautiful realization that all of this has brought me is the depths of God's grace and how there is so much freedom as a result of living in that grace. I can sit on a couch and explain why I am so fucked up and hurt and then exist in that reality, not attempting to fix myself. I don't want to fix myself. That is an endless cycle of self-realization and pointless agony because in the end, I can't. I can do nothing to change myself. The only thing that I can do is be open and willing to let the Jesus inside of me reveal who I am and stand in the huge cravases of my inadequancy.
This gives my the ultimate freedom to not be chained to myself anymore. Even though I am broken and terribly screwed up, I no longer live, Christ lives in me and because of that I don't have to remain in my turmoil and tension. I can be free to be who I am, relying on the blood of Christ in my life, to be everything I am not. This is a great relief and it make me breath a little bit deeper and love a little bit more and understand grace through the power of vulnerability.
Thank you, friend, for being honest with me. I experienced a lot of Jesus through you and I think that I am so much more free to explore to painful but rewarding world of friendship through the grace of God.
I had a friend confront me about the way I interact with people and because it was wrapped in love, I was able to receive the truth in her words. In my explanation as to why I do the things I do I realized that I am so broken and skill-less when it comes to my compentancy in relationships. I don't have a past filled with examples of great friendship and I don't know what works well and what doesn't in most situations. I don't think I am completely social invalid but at the core of my being there are definitely insecurities about who I am in relationship to other people.
The beautiful realization that all of this has brought me is the depths of God's grace and how there is so much freedom as a result of living in that grace. I can sit on a couch and explain why I am so fucked up and hurt and then exist in that reality, not attempting to fix myself. I don't want to fix myself. That is an endless cycle of self-realization and pointless agony because in the end, I can't. I can do nothing to change myself. The only thing that I can do is be open and willing to let the Jesus inside of me reveal who I am and stand in the huge cravases of my inadequancy.
This gives my the ultimate freedom to not be chained to myself anymore. Even though I am broken and terribly screwed up, I no longer live, Christ lives in me and because of that I don't have to remain in my turmoil and tension. I can be free to be who I am, relying on the blood of Christ in my life, to be everything I am not. This is a great relief and it make me breath a little bit deeper and love a little bit more and understand grace through the power of vulnerability.
Thank you, friend, for being honest with me. I experienced a lot of Jesus through you and I think that I am so much more free to explore to painful but rewarding world of friendship through the grace of God.
2.09.2007
..acceptence
So here is the update on my life since the last 30 hours of being has occurred.
I had dinner with my dad. So much prayer and tears went into this event for me and honestly I did not think that God was going to pull through. I didn't have faith that he was big enough to fix my heart for this conversation and I didn't think that he was bigger than my dad's screwed up past and I didn't think that we could be equals in conversation or even equals in Christ. I doubted and entered into the experience with preemptive feelings of defeat and damage control.
The amazing this that happened was that Jesus showed up and that crazy, 'I don't know shit about God and I have no clue what is happening to my life' was the theme of our conversations and we stood at the level foot of the cross, for what was the first time in my whole life. With my nature of thinking and thinking and thinking about thinking and then thinking about thinking about thinking taking over who I was the past few days of my life, I needed an escape and an ear to understand what the hell was happening to my understanding of Christ. I would have never guessed that the answer to this need would come in the form of my broken father and that it would be the most beautiful thing because it was something that I was never even expecting.
He gave me ultimate permission to exist in this state of agony of "who the hell is God and what does that actually mean in my life?" There is a really good reason that we are called to be in the world but not of the world and that is not a nice, cliche alternative phrase but that reality in my life is the most agonizing thing I have ever experienced. I feel so often like my soul is wondering the earth, searching only for God and the people that he most purely dwells in and becoming super pissed off about anything that is not either of those realities.
To live is Christ and to die is gain. What the hell does this mean? What does it really mean to have the only thing that keeps me alive be Christ? How much of America and Christianity do I have to give up to get a purified life in Christ and is this even possible while I am still a human being? Is the most appealing alternative to a life lived in Christ death? Am I so satisfied with the personhood of Christ that death would be the next best option for me?
What does it mean to really seek the face of God? What does it mean to know God? If the only condition for me to 'get' into heaven is to know God, isn't that the only thing that I should be concerned about? Forget ministry, forget Bible study, forget spiritual disciplines if they are in anyway keeping me from knowing Christ. I want to know nothing but Christ and his crucifixion. I do not to be a servant of Christ if I am too busy doing spiritual deeds to hear his name calling out, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for me?" If I can't hear that voice in my life then I don't deserve the person who is calling out and I don't deserve to be following him.
To be seeking completely after Christ I think that all of the other area of my life that so many people think they need to 'work on' can be simple bi-products of seeking Christ.
But ultimately, what the hell do I know. I want to know nothing because knowing things will keep me comfortable and I don't want to be comfortable. Comfort is being fully human and I want none of it.
I want to KNOW Christ and I want to be a partner in his suffering because nothing else is real.
I had dinner with my dad. So much prayer and tears went into this event for me and honestly I did not think that God was going to pull through. I didn't have faith that he was big enough to fix my heart for this conversation and I didn't think that he was bigger than my dad's screwed up past and I didn't think that we could be equals in conversation or even equals in Christ. I doubted and entered into the experience with preemptive feelings of defeat and damage control.
The amazing this that happened was that Jesus showed up and that crazy, 'I don't know shit about God and I have no clue what is happening to my life' was the theme of our conversations and we stood at the level foot of the cross, for what was the first time in my whole life. With my nature of thinking and thinking and thinking about thinking and then thinking about thinking about thinking taking over who I was the past few days of my life, I needed an escape and an ear to understand what the hell was happening to my understanding of Christ. I would have never guessed that the answer to this need would come in the form of my broken father and that it would be the most beautiful thing because it was something that I was never even expecting.
He gave me ultimate permission to exist in this state of agony of "who the hell is God and what does that actually mean in my life?" There is a really good reason that we are called to be in the world but not of the world and that is not a nice, cliche alternative phrase but that reality in my life is the most agonizing thing I have ever experienced. I feel so often like my soul is wondering the earth, searching only for God and the people that he most purely dwells in and becoming super pissed off about anything that is not either of those realities.
To live is Christ and to die is gain. What the hell does this mean? What does it really mean to have the only thing that keeps me alive be Christ? How much of America and Christianity do I have to give up to get a purified life in Christ and is this even possible while I am still a human being? Is the most appealing alternative to a life lived in Christ death? Am I so satisfied with the personhood of Christ that death would be the next best option for me?
What does it mean to really seek the face of God? What does it mean to know God? If the only condition for me to 'get' into heaven is to know God, isn't that the only thing that I should be concerned about? Forget ministry, forget Bible study, forget spiritual disciplines if they are in anyway keeping me from knowing Christ. I want to know nothing but Christ and his crucifixion. I do not to be a servant of Christ if I am too busy doing spiritual deeds to hear his name calling out, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for me?" If I can't hear that voice in my life then I don't deserve the person who is calling out and I don't deserve to be following him.
To be seeking completely after Christ I think that all of the other area of my life that so many people think they need to 'work on' can be simple bi-products of seeking Christ.
But ultimately, what the hell do I know. I want to know nothing because knowing things will keep me comfortable and I don't want to be comfortable. Comfort is being fully human and I want none of it.
I want to KNOW Christ and I want to be a partner in his suffering because nothing else is real.
2.07.2007
..currently
This is the blog where I wish that there was someone to talk to instead of typing out my thoughts, but there's not so this is a shitty second.
Currently, how do I feel. I don't know if I know but I will give a flailing stab at it and probably hit one or two states of being correctly in the process.
I feel apathetic. I feel like I don't trust the passion that I have prayed for so much and I don't feel like my soul is on fire right now. I feel a little numb to it all but at the same time deeply, achingly discontent with this current state of being.
I am afraid that I have suppressed certain feelings so well that I am killing myself slowly, but accepting it because it make my current circumstances more tolerable. I could sit here and passionately type about the evils of killing or displacing your passions but it would all be a bunch of hypocritical bullshit because its kind of what I am doing.
I feel alone, kind of. Its not this lonely alone where I want friends or I desire interaction, but I simply feel alone in the things that I am thinking about and I don't know if I have anyone to talk to and I guess that's okay. Maybe I don't just want to be okay though.
I feel confused a lot. I feel like I don't know what the hell is going on with my theology.
I am starting to believe in a big God, a God that doesn't work within the context of my mind or my reasoning, and I don't know what that means in my life. I don't know how much of me that lets me believe in and I don't know what that does to things like God's will for my life...
I feel like God is purifying my love for him. I know this because often I just want to cry. Not because I am sad but because I just want to be with God and this world is so much of a terrible distraction so much of the time. I feel like often I am just floating because it hurts to much not to be with God but there is so much that seems so petty in this world that I am required to embrace.
I feel like I don't know at all what is happening with my summer or my next year. My opinion on this subject changes hourly and I don't trust myself or my heart any more.
Here are my current options:
Summer-
YWAM in San Francisco
Perkins Center adventure
Jesus People
Colorado Springs...
UI Sprint Trip
Trashy waitress job (become a smoker)
Next Year-
Become homeless and dropout
StreetLevel
Intentional Community
UI Coordinator
New Horizons
House with cool kids
I don't know if I even want any of these though. I think that I just want to push fast forward on this transition and move on to the next stage of my life and I want it to be a lot more real and dirty than this one.
I feel so conflicted about my dad. He really hasn't done anything that I can point to as a scaring emotional experience or anything but at the same time I feel so incredible hurt by him. I am eating dinner with him tomorrow and for some reason I am very apprehensive about it. I don't think I have faith that God can heal us but its all I want. If I could choose to have two relationships reconciled on the whole planet he would be my first choice in a heart beat.
I don't know how I feel about service right now at all. I feel so empty and hollow and hypocritical because it hasn't been a part of my life for so long. I miss it but at the same time I don't want it to be the end all of my faith and I am scared of it.
I haven't been reading my Bible regularly. I kinda threw this practice out with legitimate reasons but I feel like it is killing me slowly. I am loosing a basis for truth in my life and am so hungry for a glimpse of black and white in my world that seems so gray.
My friendship with a friend is different right now. This is something that I don't really know what to do with at all. I just pray a lot. Is this response a cop out?
I don't really now what the hell is happening to me. Its not as apocalyptic as it might sound in this post but its still strange. I think I might go make angry confused and hurting pray with Jesus tomorrow. I think he knows what my heart feels like right now.
Currently, how do I feel. I don't know if I know but I will give a flailing stab at it and probably hit one or two states of being correctly in the process.
I feel apathetic. I feel like I don't trust the passion that I have prayed for so much and I don't feel like my soul is on fire right now. I feel a little numb to it all but at the same time deeply, achingly discontent with this current state of being.
I am afraid that I have suppressed certain feelings so well that I am killing myself slowly, but accepting it because it make my current circumstances more tolerable. I could sit here and passionately type about the evils of killing or displacing your passions but it would all be a bunch of hypocritical bullshit because its kind of what I am doing.
I feel alone, kind of. Its not this lonely alone where I want friends or I desire interaction, but I simply feel alone in the things that I am thinking about and I don't know if I have anyone to talk to and I guess that's okay. Maybe I don't just want to be okay though.
I feel confused a lot. I feel like I don't know what the hell is going on with my theology.
I am starting to believe in a big God, a God that doesn't work within the context of my mind or my reasoning, and I don't know what that means in my life. I don't know how much of me that lets me believe in and I don't know what that does to things like God's will for my life...
I feel like God is purifying my love for him. I know this because often I just want to cry. Not because I am sad but because I just want to be with God and this world is so much of a terrible distraction so much of the time. I feel like often I am just floating because it hurts to much not to be with God but there is so much that seems so petty in this world that I am required to embrace.
I feel like I don't know at all what is happening with my summer or my next year. My opinion on this subject changes hourly and I don't trust myself or my heart any more.
Here are my current options:
Summer-
YWAM in San Francisco
Perkins Center adventure
Jesus People
Colorado Springs...
UI Sprint Trip
Trashy waitress job (become a smoker)
Next Year-
Become homeless and dropout
StreetLevel
Intentional Community
UI Coordinator
New Horizons
House with cool kids
I don't know if I even want any of these though. I think that I just want to push fast forward on this transition and move on to the next stage of my life and I want it to be a lot more real and dirty than this one.
I feel so conflicted about my dad. He really hasn't done anything that I can point to as a scaring emotional experience or anything but at the same time I feel so incredible hurt by him. I am eating dinner with him tomorrow and for some reason I am very apprehensive about it. I don't think I have faith that God can heal us but its all I want. If I could choose to have two relationships reconciled on the whole planet he would be my first choice in a heart beat.
I don't know how I feel about service right now at all. I feel so empty and hollow and hypocritical because it hasn't been a part of my life for so long. I miss it but at the same time I don't want it to be the end all of my faith and I am scared of it.
I haven't been reading my Bible regularly. I kinda threw this practice out with legitimate reasons but I feel like it is killing me slowly. I am loosing a basis for truth in my life and am so hungry for a glimpse of black and white in my world that seems so gray.
My friendship with a friend is different right now. This is something that I don't really know what to do with at all. I just pray a lot. Is this response a cop out?
I don't really now what the hell is happening to me. Its not as apocalyptic as it might sound in this post but its still strange. I think I might go make angry confused and hurting pray with Jesus tomorrow. I think he knows what my heart feels like right now.
1.21.2007
..feasting
I think that Jesus is really great at answering prayers. Recently I have been seeking his face on the role that spiritual disciplines should take in my life. I feel like I have taken a vacation from Christianity over the last week or so and the change has been very refreshing in my life. I have taken a break from the expectations of it all, allowing myself to be content in the moments that I have been given with Jesus and rest in them without guilt of skipping Bible reading or prayer time. My prayers have been sporadic, passionate, and frustrated, but I think that overall they have been filled with both honesty to myself and God about the true desires of my heart. God’s answer to my prayer was one of an image. I want to experience God in all of his fullness. I want my relationship with him to be like feasting on his goodness every moment of my day. I want to radiate in his presence and have that radiate in my life. I love the imagery from Exodus where Moses goes up to the mountain and spends 40 days with God and he comes back and his face is glowing and all of the Israelites know that he has experienced the divine presence of God. I think that this redefines the phrase, “Your life is a ministry”, for me. It is no longer the lifestyle I live that should only scream God but also how much intensity and passion I have just for him. I think that it can be a visible, physical element of who I am and I want to experience that feeling. I want to bring people to Christ because of how beautiful he is in my life, not necessarily because of how many theological ducks I have in a row. I want to experience the deeply powerful beauty of God in my life always and I want to feast on his hisad (all the positive aspects of him) daily. I now have the proper thinking to have my spiritual disciplines come from a foundation of divine intimacy with God and a crazy, all consuming desire to be with him that they are no longer a burden but a humbling pleasure.
1.16.2007
..abandon
How much of my ideals of ministry keep me from authentic love? The idea itself of ministry is derogatory to the people that you are ‘trying to reach’. The soul on soul, heart on heart, and pain on pain are a stepped removed from authentic and buffered comfortably by a title of ministry. Out of my own fear of intimacy and pain I jump into ministry, using it as a shield so I don’t get bloody on the battle field. I am beginning to find so much distaste in Christian phrases and similes and metaphors that have tainted my view on love and people and the world for so long. The books that I read are strings and knots and braids of guarded ideals and fictional attempts at describing reality. I know with all of who I am that even if I was not raised in this culture that I would seek Jesus out in my own life. I know what Jesus has done for me but the rest of Christendom makes me wonder about the legitimacy of it all at times. I stand in fear of the moments when I hear Jesus’ raw and passionate heartbeats inside of who I am but pause and rethink them [I like to console myself and say that I am praying] through a filter of American Christianity. Will I be the one that sees Jesus on judgment day, greets him with a playful high five just to have him say, “Get away from me. I don’t know you.”? Will I look back on my life and think of all of the Christianity I proudly lived out but how much of Jesus I never experienced? I want to be free of Christian over-thinking and ministerial processing of every life decision and I want to be free of the institutions of structure that I rely on so much for my life with Jesus. I feel like I have quit or most likely just fallen asleep to it all and let the system do it for me and that I need to take a vacation from Christianity and escape from all of it and discover God in the dirt and the mold and the trashed carcasses of humanity, not the plastic realities of Christianity. Honesty is beautiful and divinely humbling and I feel like it is miles away from our tainted religion. Why does the word hypocrisy color so much of what we do in this world, and how is that possible if we are not lying? Its not that I hate it all and act like an anarchist towards the church or anything but I am just tired and want to find God without any layers separating us. I don’t think I really know what Jesus looks like without the filter of American Christianity softening his demanding blows of discipline and faithfulness and abundance in my life. I want a break from Christianity to meet Jesus for who he really is, not what Christian culture has defined him as. I think that the depths of that experience could either help me never live like this again or give me enough hope in the dirt of life to endure it until heaven. Jesus promised life and anything other than him is a reality of death. Am I living a life that I would be proud to give to someone else? Does the sheer intensity, abandon, and passion of my life scream Jesus? If you where to examine me without the church I attend, the small group I’m in, or ministry I do, would my being reflect Jesus enough for you to know that I follow him? The Jesus I read about in my Bible and the Jesus that I have experienced in my life are different than the Jesus of America. In the end I will stand alone, exposed to the ridicule and misunderstanding of the religious culture of my past, and weep humbly in the grace of a Savior that I killed. In the rawness of his bloody body he calls my heart to adventure with him and I have to be willing to have my body resemble his once my time is finished on this earth. Jesus save me from Christianity so that I can love you and save me from Christian ministry so that I can love people.
1.15.2007
..lines
There are moments in my life where I feel like all things collide and the beautiful wonder of it all slips away silently and then there is a frozen state of confusion. A haitus of underlying stress because looking out there is gridlock on the streets of my brain.
The intersections of life where faith, morality, passion, living, and loving meet are filled with bloody accidents of misshapen truths and rear-end accidents of speeding thoughts. These are the moments in my life where no thought, ideal, or structured truth is found sacred. Everything is up for examination in this moment of dizzying greyness and they are the moments when I remember that I am intensely human.
I don't really know how to go into the chaotic mess of my thoughts and I think that I am going to let them rest in the land of nod tonight, sleepily inhaling life until the morning thinking begins. Watch out for me thoughts. The power of mate, weetabix, a bible and a blog is mildly unstopable.
The intersections of life where faith, morality, passion, living, and loving meet are filled with bloody accidents of misshapen truths and rear-end accidents of speeding thoughts. These are the moments in my life where no thought, ideal, or structured truth is found sacred. Everything is up for examination in this moment of dizzying greyness and they are the moments when I remember that I am intensely human.
I don't really know how to go into the chaotic mess of my thoughts and I think that I am going to let them rest in the land of nod tonight, sleepily inhaling life until the morning thinking begins. Watch out for me thoughts. The power of mate, weetabix, a bible and a blog is mildly unstopable.
1.11.2007
..abundance
Today has been a definite epic God journey.
This is the list that I will be exploring...
one. conversation with Erendira
two. conversation with Ashley Cheney
three. conversation with John
four. conversation with Becky
five. conversation with Tony
Conversation with Eren. Today I got a chance to meet with Eren in a blatant attempt to try and figure out who she is and what she is all about. It was great to get to know her for the beautiful woman of God she is and breakdown all of my summised, preconceived notions. It made me incredible embarrassed about the stance I had taken so many time before when it was absolutely based on false accepting. She taught me that sometime God uses transitional passions in our live to prepare us for something greater.
Conversation with Ashley. This lunch I got the opportunity to chat with Ashley Cheney and I felt like it was a time where God was speaking through me. I was able to explain the movement of God in my own life over the course of this year and the things that he has been teaching me. I did not feel as though it was me needlessly telling her great things about me but that God was simply allowing me to share my growth process with someone who was willing to learn. I felt a deeply rested place of passion when I talked to her. I am very excited to see where God leads her for her summer.
Conversation with John. So that spine that I had been wanting to grow and that Jesus was waiting for finally calcified today. I confronted a lot of my personal apathy in our friendship which I understand comes from a root of fear and a lack of trust. I am very thankful for the example of Jesus when dealing with Peter and it has given me a great Biblical model in which to love from. I am also beginning to learn the beauty of building trust and solidarity in friendship and I am excited to explore those realities in the future. Needless to say, this conversation was the summation of 9 months of prayer and waiting and it was very sweet.
Conversation with Becky. Becky has been struggling immensely in her life over the last week. Huge, foundation shaking realizations about herself, God, and everything. My struggle through this process has been how to be Christ to her. I want her to know that I love and unconditionally accept her right where she is but I also want to share the truth with her because I love her so much. This has been the heavy burden on my soul over this last little bit. But God decided to answer that prayer tonight too. I was able to intimately and rawly share with her my relationship with Christ and I cried and it was very authentic. Her struggles have brought me to a place of sober judgment about myself and has shown me the depths of God's grace in my life. I cried on the walk home because of the intensity of love that Christ has decided to give me.
Conversation with Tony. Walking back from Becky I met a man at the 13 and offered him some cocoa which turned into lunch which turned into proposed night at the dorm which then turned into a ride to the Seattle Center. This small little adventure was a beautiful section of my day. I apologized and was embarrassed about our school and Tony said, "They just want to be heard and never seen." I agree him completely and her was such a beautiful person.
Today has been a very amazing and abundant day in my life. I have explored the richness of grace, acceptance, reconciliation, honesty, and love and I rest in divine thankfulness now. I feel that if today is a snap shot of the rest of my life, I could definitely be down with that. I am going to say a prayer of thankfulness now and rest in the presence of a Jesus who obviously love me a lot.
This is the list that I will be exploring...
one. conversation with Erendira
two. conversation with Ashley Cheney
three. conversation with John
four. conversation with Becky
five. conversation with Tony
Conversation with Eren. Today I got a chance to meet with Eren in a blatant attempt to try and figure out who she is and what she is all about. It was great to get to know her for the beautiful woman of God she is and breakdown all of my summised, preconceived notions. It made me incredible embarrassed about the stance I had taken so many time before when it was absolutely based on false accepting. She taught me that sometime God uses transitional passions in our live to prepare us for something greater.
Conversation with Ashley. This lunch I got the opportunity to chat with Ashley Cheney and I felt like it was a time where God was speaking through me. I was able to explain the movement of God in my own life over the course of this year and the things that he has been teaching me. I did not feel as though it was me needlessly telling her great things about me but that God was simply allowing me to share my growth process with someone who was willing to learn. I felt a deeply rested place of passion when I talked to her. I am very excited to see where God leads her for her summer.
Conversation with John. So that spine that I had been wanting to grow and that Jesus was waiting for finally calcified today. I confronted a lot of my personal apathy in our friendship which I understand comes from a root of fear and a lack of trust. I am very thankful for the example of Jesus when dealing with Peter and it has given me a great Biblical model in which to love from. I am also beginning to learn the beauty of building trust and solidarity in friendship and I am excited to explore those realities in the future. Needless to say, this conversation was the summation of 9 months of prayer and waiting and it was very sweet.
Conversation with Becky. Becky has been struggling immensely in her life over the last week. Huge, foundation shaking realizations about herself, God, and everything. My struggle through this process has been how to be Christ to her. I want her to know that I love and unconditionally accept her right where she is but I also want to share the truth with her because I love her so much. This has been the heavy burden on my soul over this last little bit. But God decided to answer that prayer tonight too. I was able to intimately and rawly share with her my relationship with Christ and I cried and it was very authentic. Her struggles have brought me to a place of sober judgment about myself and has shown me the depths of God's grace in my life. I cried on the walk home because of the intensity of love that Christ has decided to give me.
Conversation with Tony. Walking back from Becky I met a man at the 13 and offered him some cocoa which turned into lunch which turned into proposed night at the dorm which then turned into a ride to the Seattle Center. This small little adventure was a beautiful section of my day. I apologized and was embarrassed about our school and Tony said, "They just want to be heard and never seen." I agree him completely and her was such a beautiful person.
Today has been a very amazing and abundant day in my life. I have explored the richness of grace, acceptance, reconciliation, honesty, and love and I rest in divine thankfulness now. I feel that if today is a snap shot of the rest of my life, I could definitely be down with that. I am going to say a prayer of thankfulness now and rest in the presence of a Jesus who obviously love me a lot.
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