..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...

..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.

..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.

..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.

..growth

- consistancy, comfort, apathy
- relativity, no foundation, meaningless
- growth rates
- pros and cons
- transformation
- only what we can handle implying change

..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.

..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...