.together. December 24, 2010

I remember when I was young, I used to drive my dad nuts with it.

Running.  My dad hated my need to run.  And believe me, it wasn’t my love for physical fitness that so irked him.  No, no…”running,” in my dad’s terminology, meant being anywhere off of our property.  Spending the night with friends, going out for dinner, shopping…you name it.  If it used up gas and cost money and wasn’t in any way practical, it was useless running.

What he never saw [and still doesn't, to be perfectly honest with you], is that it was never useless to me.  He couldn’t understand the need to sit with my mom over Chinese food and have a long talk about life.  He couldn’t understand the value of creating memories with friends that still have me laughing a decade later.  I remember the day, shortly after my college graduation, when I called home to tell him that I was going to Italy with my best friend Dezi the next week on an impulse; not really an impulse to be honest, as we’d been dreaming about that trip together for almost four years.  I think his head nearly imploded at some point during that conversation.  My dad’s not one to travel to the supermarket across town on a whim, let alone to another continent.

But, as I look back, there’s not one moment of “running” that I regret.  In all reality, those moments are among the most treasured in my entire life.  My mom remains one of my best friends, and knows me better than most anyone.  I have been blessed over time with friendships that have extended beyond the realm of friendship to being more like family.  I will never forget laying in bed one late night in a hotel in Venice with Dezi, sharing some of the deepest parts of our hearts and lives, crying and laughing simultaneously in the darkness.  I have spent my entire life achieving one goal with my running:  to know and be known.

There is little more in life that fulfills me the way those five words do.  And right now, it feels like I’m missing it.  There’s a sense of community that I’ve spent the bulk of my life engaged in that is, for the bulk of things, missing from my life at this point.

It’s a daily thing, I think.  There’s something so daily about this community.   And I’ve never found a better written example for it than this:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. [Acts 2:42-47]

What a radical way of life.  A group of people who had such a unified vision that they literally lived life together.  They cared for few things, other than as objects to be bought and sold to provide for themselves and each other.  They cared much for each other; they ate together, worked together, played together, served together, worshipped together.  They took on life as a team, sacrificing for each other and strategizing with each other and changing the world with each other.

Not to romanticize the experience.  Being that they were human, I have absolutely no doubt that within a group of people this close, there were disagreements and arguments and hurts and frustrations and conflicts.  No doubt.

And yet…no description of the church, no version of the church has ever called to my heart more than this one.  Than a group of people taking on a challenge as a unit; as a body.  Each one of them committed and each one of them necessary to the vision of the whole.

I cannot express the ways in which my soul craves this sense of unity.  This feeling of oneness and group purpose.  My heart is aching right now, with a deeper longing than I’ve ever experienced for anything.  And I simultaneously want it to stop for comfort’s sake, and want it to nag at me until I can’t be comfortable with anything less.

And all who believed were together…

.overwhelmedness. December 22, 2010

Growth is such a weird thing. I’m in this place where so many things are inspiring me and I can feel the moving of Heaven in my soul. And yet, for some reason, it’s SO uncomfortable. It’s almost like so many things are awakening my soul at once that my spirit feels overwhelmed by it all, and the growth becomes almost painful.

And some days, its just overwhelming to the point of being frustrating.  On days like today, especially.  I know that God is moving, and I know He’s at work, and I know He’s doing His refining.  I know it’s Him doing His best work and still, I get frustrated by it.  I want to step outside into the winter chill and yell at the sky, “Seriously?? What do you want from me already?? Just tell me what you want me to know, what you want me to change or do or be, and I’m there.  Just…let’s get on with it already.”

Patience is not my strong suit, I suppose you’d say.

There’s just something so nagging about this feeling of “something important is happening,” and it makes my spirit ache to know what the important thing is.  Maybe the ache is the important thing.  Maybe He’s trying to teach me to rely on Him in the middle of the ache instead of letting it consume me.  I know there’s a purpose.  I know I’m about to learn something valuable.

But sometimes the most valuable somethings hurt the most in the acquisition.

Praying that the Lord would not take the growth away but help me to experience the beauty in being overwhelmed by His bigness instead of just…the overwhelmedness.

.engaged. December 19, 2010

I need to be engaged.

I keep tossing around this question in my head.  What is it that separates the friend from the kindred spirit? What is it that takes someone from being someone you’d consider a close companion to someone you’d consider moving across the country to be with? Because I have both.  I have, for the entirety of my life, been blessed with great friends.  And yet, at this point in my life, I’m discovering an even more intimate level of friendship.  What is it that separates the good from the great?

And today, for the first time, I’ve been able to put a word on it.  Engaged.  Friendships and relationships in which we are mutually engaged in something bigger than ourselves.  Something for the success of which all parties are necessary.  There’s something to be said for friendships in which you dream forward and together.  It’s so easy to have friendships in which you remain in the here and now; in which you enjoy each other’s company but never really moved past that.

I want to cultivate relationships in which we have more than casual enjoyment of activities.  I want to cultivate relationships in which we consider the weight of our partnership and what we could be doing together to bring Heaven to Earth.

I want to be truly engaged in life with the people I love.

.light.up. December 17, 2010

I love few things more than creating relationships.  I love few things more than writing.  I love few things more than hot tea.  I love few things more than good music.  I love few things more than warm, fuzzy blankets in the winter time.  Combining all of the above is a little bit of utopia for me.  I find myself doing it frequently, much like I am tonight.  Curled up with my blanket and my Mac and a cup of hot tea and some Sufjan Stevens.

This can be a ministry? What??

Sometimes I think we get caught up in the idea that ministry has to be something big.  Something difficult.  Something that includes giving something up.  And truly, sometimes ministry is all of those things.

But the beauty of the way God works is that there is eternal weight in the small actions of our everyday life.  I get to curl up here with all of my favorite things and spend an evening messaging back and forth a dear friend who’s in the middle of a tough week, showing her love and encouragement from miles away.  I get to spill my heart in my blog, and maybe no one reads it…but maybe someone does, and maybe my story is a little like theirs; and maybe for a few minutes, they feel a little less isolated in this big, big world.  I get to share what God’s doing in my heart in the fifteen seconds it takes to update my Facebook status.

I think God gives each of us a story for a reason.  He gives it to us so that we can share it, so that we can share life, so that we can share Him.  And more now than at any other time in history, we have access to countless people who live all over the globe.  A few days ago, in the same day, I was able to use social media to speak to both a friend who lives less than thirty miles away and my baby brother who is stationed in the desert of Afghanistan.  The magnitude of the opportunities this presents is still hitting me.

I’m reading a book called @stickyjesus with a group of women who are, from different parts of the US, jointly reflecting on what it looks like to be salt and light in a social media world.  On how to effectively use it to further plant in the dirty soil of God’s people, on using all our resources to bring Heaven here, to be Him to them.

Praying that God further reveals to me through this study how I can be using the things I already love to give energy and life to others.

In His grip.

http://www.michellesarabia.org/stickyjesus-chapter-1/

.God.is. December 12, 2010

There are moments in time and times in life that you wish you could capsulize.  Take all the beauty and all the wonder and all the anticipation and all the impending births and all the ways you can feel all of it rising in your chest, and fit it into one nice, neat little package and share it with the world.  Me, I want to share it with the world in words.

The closest I can come tonight is to say this: tonight, I feel Heaven coming to Earth in my chest.

And I want so desperately to expound on that.  I’ve been wanting to expound on it since last Sunday, but every time I sit down to write, it becomes more than I can comprehend, let alone commit to words.  Which is very frustrating for me, as someone who’s always been gifted with an extraordinary command over the English language.  And each day, new thoughts and revelations and realities to consider are added to the ones already there, so the wealth of it all is becoming overwhelming.  And I keep wanting to write it down so that I don’t forget it.  I want to detail it so it doesn’t fade.

Maybe this is the lesson.  Maybe Heaven coming to Earth isn’t something I can say or describe or explain.  Maybe it’s something I can only be and live and do.  So I’ll leave it at this:

God is.

.take.up.your.cross. December 6, 2010

“And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” Mark 8:34-35

Have you ever experienced a moment that wasn’t utterly dramatic, and yet, after it had passed, you found yourself shellshocked, tripping over your own thoughts and desperate to unravel the meaning of it?

I have encountered these two verses so many times during the past twenty-six years.  And yet today, possibly for the first time, they went soul deep.  And the reality is that if I’m to embrace them as true, they have some pretty radical implications in regards to the way I live my life.

To be honest, I can’t even verbalize everything that’s in my head right now.  I’ve been typing and deleting for quite some time now, which usually tells me I’ve said all I need to say for the moment.  It usually means that I need to stop talking and start listening.

What does that mean? What does denying myself look like? When You said that, how did You mean it? What was Your heart in that statement? And how exactly does one prepare to die a death that’s sure to not be pleasant? And do I really, deep down, trust You to raise the dead in me? Do I trust You enough to take the fall and let You make me the second man?

.God.is.truth. November 26, 2010

There are few things in this life that I appreciate more than a long conversation that still has me thinking the next day.  And the day after that.  And, likely, sometime the next week.

Last night, Josh and I got the opportunity to spend the evening with our dear friends Megan and KC.  They are, by far, two of my favorite people.  Every moment we get to spend with them inevitably goes into my “favorite moments” file.  And every time we leave their presence, I find myself changed, usually in no small way.  And last night was no exception.  It was what I like to refer to as an “nothing at all and everything in the world” night.  We literally did nothing.  And yet, those moments have this way of becoming everything to me.  And it’s still very hard for me to verbalize exactly what we discussed and what it means for my heart, but this is my attempt.  It may make me sound borderline nuts.  Prepare yourself.

Today, I’m finding myself thinking of God as a wall.  And I envision myself walking across the top of the wall.  And it’s frequently very difficult, in my humanity, to stay on the wall.  Not because it isn’t a strong wall.  It’s perfect and capable, MORE than enough to support me; just because it’s a pretty narrow wall, and I like to wander.  And then you add in the wind.  Pushing at me from either side is a raging wind of voices, and those winds make it difficult to focus on the strength of the wall beneath me, because at moments the winds feel just as strong, even though I know they could never hold me up the way the wall does.  And on either side of the wall is a safety net.  On one side is a safety net, and in it are a lot of people.  People who stumbled or got pushed or maybe even leapt off the wall and into a safety net that says “Truth is truth is truth is truth, and it’s truth for everyone, and anyone outside of that truth or questioning that truth is wrong.”  And on the other side of the wall is another safety net, and in it are a lot of people.  People who stumbled or got pushed or maybe even leapt off the wall and into a safety net that says “There is no real truth.  Every man is his own truth, and he owns that truth, and it’s just as much truth as the next guy’s truth is to him.”

In talking with Meg and KC, last night, one thing that was said that still has me thinking was something to the effect of this: We, as humans, need to rely on something tangible for our sense of everything, including truth.  Which is why we have the Word, and we rely on it for our sense of truth.  The danger is when we separate the Word from God.  When, out of our need for something tangible and stable and black and white, the Word becomes just another set of laws, unconnected to a living, breathing, moving God who is at constant work in our hearts and lives and convictions.  Just another way for us to prove our righteousness against the unrighteousness of someone else.

I do believe in truth.  I believe in truth that is as absolute as eternity is long.  I believe God is truth.  I also believe that God has no interest in carbon copies.  I believe He has no use for a Body that has a hundred eyes and only one foot.  I believe that God finds infinite creative ways to manifest His truth in each one of us.  I believe that the world in completion is a place where we can all exist in unrelenting faith in the perfect balance of God, who has no need of any safety net in order to just BE truth.

I was raised to believe that when you go to church, you wear a dress because anything less isn’t presenting your best to God.  I don’t believe for a second that God cares what I wear when I come after Him.

I was raised to believe that Christian rock music is just too worldly to be of service to God.  I don’t believe for a second that most of my students at school are ever going to listen to Bill and Gloria Gaither and be moved by it.

I was raised to believe that dancing is something to be avoided, because of the immoral things it can lead to.  I dance like a fool on a daily basis, usually multiple times a day, and have no intention of stopping anytime soon unless God suddenly demands otherwise.

I was raised to believe that going to movies in the theatres is sinful, because you’re not only supporting the movie you go to see, you’re supporting the R-rated ones, too.  I believe that the cable we paid for in our house did the same thing.

And yet…I find myself looking at Paul’s words when he reminded us that some people find it sinful to eat meat, and some don’t.  And that the important part isn’t the consumption or non-consumption of meat at all.  It’s that God speaks individually into every person’s life and tells them who they are and what being Christlike looks like for them, and its our job as brothers and sisters in Him to encourage each other in that Christlikeness.  It’s that I’m aware that the differences in convictions between my parents and I probably aren’t an indication that one of us is sinning and one of us isn’t…but an indication that God is a person God, who IS truth to each one of His children on an individual basis.

Still wrapping my head around this one.  Still trying to dig the heart of God out of it.

.unedited.version. November 22, 2010

Brutal honesty, right? Here it is.  I have not thought this through, I have not mapped it out, I will not edit it or apologize for it.  I’m going to speak the truth as my heart sees it in this moment and hope that, at some point, it begins to make sense.

 

I hate my job.  Which is kind of ridiculous, because anytime someone asks, I always say, “It’s the biggest challenge I’ve ever experienced, and I love it.”  Which is kind of a white lie.  But you know the deal with white lies.  Anything that’s close enough to a lie to actually have the word “lie” in it…well, it’s not to be trusted.

 

Teaching is a kind of like a whore for me, to be brutally honest.  You have this craving, this passion, this need.  And it overtakes you in a way you can’t explain, so much so that when you have no healthy outlet for the passion, you have to create one.  And the created one is always at least somewhat false.  You always end up paying it more than it’s worth to you, and it never satisfies the longing.

 

Yep.  I just compared teaching to a hooker.  This is why I rarely leave myself entirely unedited.

 

The truth is this: Teaching, for me, is an excuse to be around kids.  My passion is not teaching.  Honestly, it’s my least favorite part of my job.  I hate having to make lesson plans, I hate doing paperwork, I hate staying on task, I hate having mapped out expectations for getting to an intended goal.  I hate that last week, when a student asked me for personal advice during independent working time in class, I got dirty looks from a colleague when I took three minutes out to help a student work through something that, however trivial it might seem to an adult, mattered to her at that moment.

 

The raw truth.  I do not care if my students learn music.  I do not care if they walk out of my classroom having no clue what an eighth note is.  I do not care if they meet the standards for student achievement set by the government in regards to music class.  Which sounds terrible coming from someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes music.  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that music, no matter how much I love it, is not my greatest passion nor my end goal.

 

My passion in life is a little girl who sought out my friendship five years ago.  A little girl who was broken beyond my realm of comprehension, who had known nothing but hurt and devastation and broken trust.  And over the course of five years, I have done nothing but LOVE her.  I have laughed with her, cried with her, lived life with her from hundreds of miles away, and because of that, she has seen a vivid image of what love looks like.  What friendship and caring are.  I love her for who she is and where she is.  I have no short or long term goals or objectives for her.  It is love with no performance-related strings attached and no expectations other than that she be wholly, relentlessly honest with me.

 

So where does that leave me?  Where is God going with the mess that is my heart at this moment? I know my heart’s passion isn’t for nothing and yet I know it’s only barely tapped into at the moment.  And that aches.  I am a person of deep heart and deep conviction, and not one who finds it in the least desirable to live out only a portion of my passion.

.be.my.strength. November 20, 2010

A few weekends ago, I got the privilege of attending a Women of Faith conference with my mom and sister and mother-in-law.  One of the speakers there that weekend was Marcus Buckingham, who works in strengths assessments and utilizations.  He brought a whole light to the way I use the word “strength.”

So, in light of that conference, I asked my middle school students this week, “When I ask you to tell me what strengths are, what do I mean?”  And unanimously, they decided that a strength is something you’re good at.  And, conversely, a weakness is something you’re bad at.  Which, up until a few weeks ago, would probably have been my answer as well.

And yet, as Marcus held up a magnifying glass to the word, that particular definition makes no sense at all.  The Lord tells us over and over in scripture that He is our “strength.”  Really? God’s purpose in our lives is to become something we’re good at? And over the course of the weekend and the following weeks, the definition of that word began to be transformed in my mind.  What if a strength isn’t at all something we’re good at, but something that makes us strong? What if a weakness isn’t something we’re bad at, but something that makes us weak?

What if strengths and weaknesses aren’t words that should measure our proficiency in any given area? What if, instead, they’re a key to unlocking a deeper part of our souls, a deeper part of who we are, a more abundant life? And what about weaknesses? What if weaknesses are things you may or may not be good at, but in the end, they always sap you of energy and inspiration and life.  It may sound silly, but those questions have created an “Aha!” moment for me.  Or, rather, a series of moments.

Am I living in my strengths? I mean…not only does God want to be my ultimate strength, but he’s given me other strengths as well.  He’s put abilities and talents and situations and people in my life that I would most definitely classify as strengths, in the “unlocking a deeper part of my soul” sense of the word.  And the more I find myself utilizing those strengths, the more I find myself personally fulfilled, and able to pour into the lives of others using the energy I’m given.

An example.  One of my strengths is the written word.  Sometimes it comes in the form of music, sometimes it comes in the form of journaling or blogging.  But every time I sit down to put pen to paper, I feel alive and I feel as though that life is something worth sharing.  A story worth telling, even if it’s only ever read by myself.  I find a power in writing things down, in preserving my thoughts and experiences for another day when God will bring me back to them and make them more useful than ever.  Writing makes me feel like my thoughts might hold weight past today.  Like I’m learning things that aren’t just for this moment.  Writing feels like immortality to me, in a sense.

On the opposite ends of the spectrum, one of my weaknesses is mingling in large crowds.  Which might surprise a lot of people; I fake it quite well, to be honest.  But nevertheless, I struggle with this most every Sunday when I go to church.  Not because I dislike my church or the people in it; QUITE the contrary.  But the ten minutes before the sermon and the ten minutes afterward are excruciating for me; I need far more than ten minutes to engage in the intimacy required for anything but superficial conversation (which drives me nuts in and of itself).  Especially when they’re people I don’t know incredibly well on a real-life level.  There are always small groups of people talking, and I face the challenge of navigational questions.  ”What group do I join for conversation? How do I make my way into that conversation? What if I’m unsuccessful and seem awkward? How long do I stay there before I move to another group? Will the first group be thinking that I’m rude for leaving, or are they still wondering why I joined in the first place? What about the second group, the one I’m thinking of navigating into? What if I have nothing to add to their conversation?”  Let me tell you, this is EXHAUSTING.  Even on the days that I do manage to squelch all the questions in my head long enough to join up and talk with people, I leave completely exhausted from the effort of silencing the voices in my head.

Why do we spend so much time trying to improve in the areas of our weakness, and so little time immersed in the strengths God has given us? What is it inside us that calls us to never be satisfied with what we do have, with all that God’s blessed us with? Not saying that we should float through life with no thought for how we can improve, ways we can grow.  But I know that I always focus my “growth” energy into my weaknesses, and very rarely think about the ways I’m really truly tapping into what I’ve already been gifted with.

This week, my prayer is to focus on my strengths.  To love them well and build them up and be used through them.  Praying the same for everyone I encounter.

.Mine. November 11, 2010

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. [Eph. 4:2]

I’m struggling this week to be humble and gentle and patient.  God, give me the humility to remember that I have not arrived.  I won’t pretend to be self-sufficient or independent.  I have no knowledge or wisdom of my own.  I only have a remarkable kind of Grace that says, “This one’s Mine.  And all the goodness you can ever imagine flows out of her because of that.  Because she’s Mine.”