..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.

..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.

..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.

..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.

..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.

..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.

..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.