I'm sure I've mentioned before how much I hate change, but change is also good.
I am announcing here and now that I am blogging on a new website. Personally and technically, I have outgrown this blog. I have found that Wordpress offers not only a different space for me, but also much more technical options.
In lieu of moving all of my posts and tags over to the new website, I am simply starting afresh. There will be plenty of links back here, but I am looking to move in a new direction.
Check out the new website here: deannalexis.wordpress.com.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
River Reflections
On the last night of summer camp each session, we all go to the camp's dock on Little River, high atop Lookout Mountain. In the moonlight, we can see the faint outline of the blob and it's staircase, the edge of the concrete dock, the bleachers where campers sit, the canoe shed.
We light the campfire, sing our evening songs to the strums of Shannon's guitar, watch with awe as counselors in canoes lit only by torches sing hymns as they round the riverbend, and listen intently as volunteers from each cabin read aloud their cabin's wish for the session, usually something along the lines of: "We wish we will keep old friends and new friends, make it home safely, and come back next year." The director, Mrs. Susan, gives an inspirational talk, encouraging us to love those we meet or press on through difficult times. Shannon plays Michael W. Smith's "Pray for Me" and we dismiss with hugs.
As I worked the entire summer (five sessions), I had the honor of attending five River Reflections. They provided the appropriate closure for the session and, in the case of our final session, appropriate closure for the summer. Therefore, this post presents closure for me personally: my own River Reflections.
I lived in two cabins over the course of the summer: my first cabin was for ages thirteen and fourteen, and my second housed girls eleven to thirteen. My co-counselors (fellow college students) and I often wondered aloud to each other: "Was I like that when I was their age?" We encountered strange things, like eleven year olds with cell phones and boyfriends, or thirteen year olds unable to deal with a simple disagreement. Thinking back to my middle school days, I realized so much has happened since then. If I compared my twenty-one year old self to my middle-school self, I am almost a completely different person. I mean, I'm still me. I'm still Alex, introverted people person who likes mint chocolate. But since then I have learned how to drive, I have moved away from home, started college, had actual jobs, my car's broken down, I've made friends my parents have never met, I've been out of the country, I've driven more than five hours by myself, I've done my own laundry, shopped for and cooked my own meals... I am closer to twenty-four than I am to fourteen.
Yet what was so incredibly cool is that camp breaks down the walls between my twenty-one year old self and these thirteen year old girls. Yes, my co-counselors and I are the authority figures. But we are also friends with these girls. No one is driving, no one is using their cell phones, no one is cooking their own meals, everyone sends their laundry out on laundry day and has to go searching for it the next day. We were more equalized than we would have been in real life.
This gave me the opportunity to speak into my campers' lives. I read Bible verses and prayed with them at bedtime, spoke positive words over them, and played games with them. In fact, when one of our girl's parents arrived to take her home this last session, she gave each counselor a letter she had written for us. She mentioned in the letter that it meant a lot to have someone like us to look up to. I grew to really love the girls each session. Sometimes I became apathetic towards building new friendships with them, since each group stays for two weeks or less and then a new group arrives, but God always sent encouragement my way to keep loving on them.
One of the most difficult aspects of camp by far happened because I loved these girls so much. Ironic, isn't it? Over the course of the summer, I dealt personally with young ladies who were involved in self-harm, bullying (both sides), who struggled with parents divorcing, eating disorders, who were developmentally delayed, and much more. Not only did circumstances like these require me to heavily depend on my co-counselors, head counselors, and the directors, but I was broken for these girls before God. I learned what it means to ache for someone and realize there is little to nothing you personally can do for them. I remember one night, after a particularly difficult day, getting into the shower after all the girls were in bed and just crying. There's so much I can't do, but I learned what I can do: pray and speak truth and love.
I truly learned to love on some precious girls.
Late one night, after tucking all the campers into bed, I was reading my Bible and reflecting on the day. I began contemplating on our one Jewish camper. Now, the camp itself is a Christian camp, but we accept girls of all religions who are of good character. We model Christianity through our actions and we teach it at morning watch and campfire, but many nonbelievers or other-believers choose our camp regardless.
I wondered that night whether I should encourage her sharing about her religion or ignore her differences. I knew I would respect her and her beliefs, but I wasn't sure how that would work with camp and the other campers. I debated whether or not to read only Old Testament passages at bedtime or to eliminate mention of "Jesus" when I spoke around her.
And then I thought about her faith. I don't know how devout her family is, but Judaism as a whole is a very intriguing religion. Jews must have the most hope and faith of anyone I know. Case in point: they believe that the Messiah has still not come - and that God is still silent. He has not spoken to the prophets since Old Testament times, and they are still waiting patiently for their Redeemer. What awesome hope is that!
While I praise her hope, I am heartbroken that she is still waiting for the Messiah. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick," says Proverbs 13:12.
I chose to read from the Old Testament when I put her room to bed, but I didn't shy away from Jesus. He, of course, fulfills and proves the Old Testament. And I came to love her as person, not seeing her religion, but seeing her heart, seeing her likes and dislikes, loving her humor and smiling at her jokes. I pray her experience at camp planted a seed or maybe watered a growing one, but I know God is working in her.
This summer, I worked on the ropes course and co-taught a few knitting classes. And if you know me, I am not much for heights. At all. But I signed up for the ropes course because I love the thrill of the adventure. I'm tired of being boring.
We went through a week of intense training on the elements, sometimes going through each element (zip line, V-swing, climbing tower, swing by choice, etc) as many as ten or twelve times and then training on each element for two or three participants before sending ourselves. It was very intense. I faced a number of fears, learned boundaries and restrictions (my own and those of the course), and grew to trust Adam, Shannon, Ali, and others I worked with and on whom I depended.
We also learned something I had never heard before about ropes courses. I cannot tell you how many times I heard Adam express some or all of the following statement to girls on the elements:
In life, we don't always get to choose our challenges. But we are given a choice in how we react to them. And often, we are afraid. Unlike some believers who assume that all fear is bad, I think a certain level of fear is good. I'm afraid of going outside in the woods in the dark by myself. That is a healthy and good fear because it keeps me safe. We know that if God has called us to something, he will be with us and will protect us, and we don't need to be afraid, but fear is normal. We can also learn to overcome fear, as I eventually slid off the zipline platform like it was nothing by the time I had been on the zipline a thousand times.
I gave a morning watch devotional one morning about how God's got us, mentioning both the big storm we had the night before and the ropes course. Just like the ropes on the course can hold up to 5,000 pounds and the cables are the same strength used to hold up airplanes, God is not going to let me go. I used Psalm 91 as my key passage. Verses 9-10 read: "If you make the Lord your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you; no plague will come near your home."
I'm learning how to be a more adventurous person. I love adventure. Secretly, I love thrill-seeking, but don't tell my mom, haha. However, there is no way I could pursue the adventures I'm after, like Thailand, college graduation, life after college, moving to a new place, a new teaching job, a Masters?, a family?, etc., if I did not believe wholeheartedly that God's got me. And he will not let me go.
.JPG) |
| Little River |
As I worked the entire summer (five sessions), I had the honor of attending five River Reflections. They provided the appropriate closure for the session and, in the case of our final session, appropriate closure for the summer. Therefore, this post presents closure for me personally: my own River Reflections.
I lived in two cabins over the course of the summer: my first cabin was for ages thirteen and fourteen, and my second housed girls eleven to thirteen. My co-counselors (fellow college students) and I often wondered aloud to each other: "Was I like that when I was their age?" We encountered strange things, like eleven year olds with cell phones and boyfriends, or thirteen year olds unable to deal with a simple disagreement. Thinking back to my middle school days, I realized so much has happened since then. If I compared my twenty-one year old self to my middle-school self, I am almost a completely different person. I mean, I'm still me. I'm still Alex, introverted people person who likes mint chocolate. But since then I have learned how to drive, I have moved away from home, started college, had actual jobs, my car's broken down, I've made friends my parents have never met, I've been out of the country, I've driven more than five hours by myself, I've done my own laundry, shopped for and cooked my own meals... I am closer to twenty-four than I am to fourteen.
Yet what was so incredibly cool is that camp breaks down the walls between my twenty-one year old self and these thirteen year old girls. Yes, my co-counselors and I are the authority figures. But we are also friends with these girls. No one is driving, no one is using their cell phones, no one is cooking their own meals, everyone sends their laundry out on laundry day and has to go searching for it the next day. We were more equalized than we would have been in real life.
This gave me the opportunity to speak into my campers' lives. I read Bible verses and prayed with them at bedtime, spoke positive words over them, and played games with them. In fact, when one of our girl's parents arrived to take her home this last session, she gave each counselor a letter she had written for us. She mentioned in the letter that it meant a lot to have someone like us to look up to. I grew to really love the girls each session. Sometimes I became apathetic towards building new friendships with them, since each group stays for two weeks or less and then a new group arrives, but God always sent encouragement my way to keep loving on them.
One of the most difficult aspects of camp by far happened because I loved these girls so much. Ironic, isn't it? Over the course of the summer, I dealt personally with young ladies who were involved in self-harm, bullying (both sides), who struggled with parents divorcing, eating disorders, who were developmentally delayed, and much more. Not only did circumstances like these require me to heavily depend on my co-counselors, head counselors, and the directors, but I was broken for these girls before God. I learned what it means to ache for someone and realize there is little to nothing you personally can do for them. I remember one night, after a particularly difficult day, getting into the shower after all the girls were in bed and just crying. There's so much I can't do, but I learned what I can do: pray and speak truth and love.
I truly learned to love on some precious girls.
Late one night, after tucking all the campers into bed, I was reading my Bible and reflecting on the day. I began contemplating on our one Jewish camper. Now, the camp itself is a Christian camp, but we accept girls of all religions who are of good character. We model Christianity through our actions and we teach it at morning watch and campfire, but many nonbelievers or other-believers choose our camp regardless.
I wondered that night whether I should encourage her sharing about her religion or ignore her differences. I knew I would respect her and her beliefs, but I wasn't sure how that would work with camp and the other campers. I debated whether or not to read only Old Testament passages at bedtime or to eliminate mention of "Jesus" when I spoke around her.
And then I thought about her faith. I don't know how devout her family is, but Judaism as a whole is a very intriguing religion. Jews must have the most hope and faith of anyone I know. Case in point: they believe that the Messiah has still not come - and that God is still silent. He has not spoken to the prophets since Old Testament times, and they are still waiting patiently for their Redeemer. What awesome hope is that!
While I praise her hope, I am heartbroken that she is still waiting for the Messiah. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick," says Proverbs 13:12.
I chose to read from the Old Testament when I put her room to bed, but I didn't shy away from Jesus. He, of course, fulfills and proves the Old Testament. And I came to love her as person, not seeing her religion, but seeing her heart, seeing her likes and dislikes, loving her humor and smiling at her jokes. I pray her experience at camp planted a seed or maybe watered a growing one, but I know God is working in her.
This summer, I worked on the ropes course and co-taught a few knitting classes. And if you know me, I am not much for heights. At all. But I signed up for the ropes course because I love the thrill of the adventure. I'm tired of being boring.
We went through a week of intense training on the elements, sometimes going through each element (zip line, V-swing, climbing tower, swing by choice, etc) as many as ten or twelve times and then training on each element for two or three participants before sending ourselves. It was very intense. I faced a number of fears, learned boundaries and restrictions (my own and those of the course), and grew to trust Adam, Shannon, Ali, and others I worked with and on whom I depended.
We also learned something I had never heard before about ropes courses. I cannot tell you how many times I heard Adam express some or all of the following statement to girls on the elements:
It's okay to be afraid. Fear is your body's normal and natural reaction to heights. The ropes course is a challenge by choice. So, you make the choice to push yourself to try new things even when it's scary. Or, you can make the choice to be lowered. If you keep going, you might like it, but you can come down if you don't want to keep going.Camp's ropes course philosophy can be summed up in two mantras: Challenge by Choice and the Full Value Contract. It's your choice to be challenged and how far you want to go - we can lower you at almost any point. The Full Value Contract exists to make sure each participant is treated with fairness: each person gets the same opportunity.
In life, we don't always get to choose our challenges. But we are given a choice in how we react to them. And often, we are afraid. Unlike some believers who assume that all fear is bad, I think a certain level of fear is good. I'm afraid of going outside in the woods in the dark by myself. That is a healthy and good fear because it keeps me safe. We know that if God has called us to something, he will be with us and will protect us, and we don't need to be afraid, but fear is normal. We can also learn to overcome fear, as I eventually slid off the zipline platform like it was nothing by the time I had been on the zipline a thousand times.
I gave a morning watch devotional one morning about how God's got us, mentioning both the big storm we had the night before and the ropes course. Just like the ropes on the course can hold up to 5,000 pounds and the cables are the same strength used to hold up airplanes, God is not going to let me go. I used Psalm 91 as my key passage. Verses 9-10 read: "If you make the Lord your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you; no plague will come near your home."
I'm learning how to be a more adventurous person. I love adventure. Secretly, I love thrill-seeking, but don't tell my mom, haha. However, there is no way I could pursue the adventures I'm after, like Thailand, college graduation, life after college, moving to a new place, a new teaching job, a Masters?, a family?, etc., if I did not believe wholeheartedly that God's got me. And he will not let me go.
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Sunday, July 14, 2013
Crumpled Pieces of Red Paper
Of the many things working at camp has taught me, the fact that I am growing up too fast is consistently evident. Case in point: One of the songs played at camp dances is N*Sync's "Bye, Bye, Bye." Do you know when that song was released? Thirteen years ago. How is that even possible?!? That was my jam back in the day - how is it over a decade old?
She then passed out pieces of red paper that counselors had torn up earlier and had both campers and staff write something that was keeping us from peace. We would then crumple our papers and pray for peace, bringing those things before God, before bringing our papers to the cross at the front of the gym. Head counselors taped the pieces of the paper to a large wooden cross in the front. Mrs. Amy and one of the older campers were singing "Lord, I Need You" acoustically.
As I pondered this, I was reminded that there are only six short months until I embark for Thailand and then, 3-4 months later, I will be college graduate. And it's pretty terrifying but exciting and adventurous and all that. What a great God, to have brought me thus far and to keep leading me onward. I am blessed.
With all that is happening in my personal/interpersonal life with this whole growing up thing, God spoke to me today about the growth that has happened in the area of my spirituality.
After exchanging Secret Santa gifts (today is Christmas in July at camp), we had a Pajama breakfast before heading to the gym for camp church. All the counselors are a part of Counselor Choir, so we gathered on the stage in our new navy Christmas in July shirts and sang Christmas and worship songs with Mrs. Amy, who leads church each week. (She is also our camp mom for this session.)
Then Mrs. Amy led a discussion on Jesus as our peace and pulled from several verses to illustrate this concept. Our key verse was John 14:27, which says, "I am leaving you with a gift--peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid."
I wrote the thing that I feel has been holding me back this summer on my slip and followed a group of campers up the cross. When I got up there, I waited for a group of campers to get their papers taped to the cross, and I looked up to see a little slip of paper that read simply: "not being perfect enough."
You guys, I broke right there. I handed my piece of paper to the head counselor and started to weep. That was me. That girl who wrote that she wasn't perfect enough, whoever she is, was me a few months ago. Just a few months ago. And I still wrestle with that little girl inside me who just can't do anything right, who is broken and hurting and falls down over and over and over again.
I wept for that young woman who thinks that God doesn't love her because she isn't perfect enough. I wept because I don't know who she is and I don't know how to help her. And I wept for myself. For the pain and the struggle and the fighting that it took for God's grace to finally break through my clouded vision. Even at this point in my spiritual growth, with a much healthier relationship with God's grace and a much better perception of how he relates to me, I still don't understand. There is so much about forgiveness and grace that I don't understand. SO much.
But I know one thing: I'm not who I was. I'm not the same person, the same doubting and shame-stricken girl. I am blessed. When I related the story of a broken friendship to a co-counselor just this week, I was able to present the story as grace-filled and, ultimately, God-honoring. Because it is. When I realized that I was not in the same place I was before, that I have overcome, I was able to praise God for what he has done. He is not finished with me, but he has done so much in me already! Hallelujah!
Could I beseech you as my brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for mentors in my life? I am blessed to be here at camp, but sometimes I find it difficult to discover the presence of strong Christian mentors and build deep Christian friendships. Pray for unity and openness among the staff. I am honored and humbled to be able to share this with you tonight.
With love.
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Tuesday, June 25, 2013
How Ropes Taught Me Patience
As of yesterday, I have been here at camp in Alabama for one month. When this current week comes to a close, I will be half way through the summer, halfway through my job working here at a camp for girls. How did it go by so fast?
A long time ago, it seems, when I was in counseling with a Christian counselor at my college, the question was posed: "Do you love yourself?" Now, I grew up being taught that JOY comes from loving Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last. So I kind of shrugged off the question and moved on, going on about the fact that I like who I am becoming or something equally strange and cheesy. Whatever.
Yet my counselor kept going back to the question. Later, or in different sessions, or the next semester, he would ask. Again. "Do you love yourself?"
So I asked what that meant. Aren't I always supposed to put myself last? I asked God to show me why I needed to love myself and how I could do so. You can see some of the posts I've written about the realization <a href="http://losingmyselfblog.blogspot.com/search/label/love%20yourself">here</a>, but to summarize, I learned that 1 Corinthians 13 applies to me too. The adjectives in that chapter should define the way that I treat others and the way that I treat myself.
Fast forward to camp. My very first week in Alabama was staff orientation, and I began training on the ropes course. My goodness, that was tough! It was several hours each day (usually 9am-4pm) of not only training on each element, but also going on each element multiple times so everyone had a chance to train well. I was exhausted. One afternoon, while I was training high in the zip line tree with my friend Ali, I was taking a little longer than some of the other trainees. Ali remarked between participants that I was being really patient with myself.
I don't think I realized it at the time, but it came to me slowly later. And I almost broke down. I was being patient with myself. Patient. You know what love is? "Love is patient, love is kind..." I was astounded. Here I am, learning how to love myself 50 feet up in the air.
A couple weeks later, when I was asked to train in the rappelling wall window for the advanced class, I mentioned to my friend Kat, who has been doing ropes for a number of years, that ropes course is teaching me to be patient with myself. And as I continued to train, it was proven true. You must remember each specific aspect of the element; which way to clip into a harness and when to flip the carabiner; which way to turn and hold the belay device; when to use a screw gate, a rapid link, or an auto lock; how to get the best helmet adjustment, etc, etc. Yes, a lot of it becomes muscle memory after a while, but like I said in introductions for this new group of campers, I've been doing ropes for an entire four weeks. I have noticed improvements, such as the amount of time it takes me to five point check a camper and clip in my belay device or my ability to get a helmet fitting just right, but I am still learning. I am so grateful for the people I work with who challenge and encourage me and make me keep trying.
I am thankful that this often difficult experience occurred at this time in my life. I am grateful for all the times I have learned to overcome and press on and achieve things I thought I could never do. And I'm grateful that I have learned one way to love myself: and that that is to be patient.
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Friday, June 7, 2013
Peace on the Rock
A steady rain falls outside the floor length window I'm sitting beside. The floors are old wood, the ceilings are a fancy wood and plaster design. There is modern art hanging on the alternating red and white walls. The door handles and fixtures are antique in metal and design. Mini light bulbs are strung up like a classy carnival and big band music is filtering through the air. The display case is full of homemade goodies and I'm sipping a frozen chai latte. And if I didn't keep hearing "y'all," I would think that I was in the downtown eclectic area of a big city.
Instead, I'm chilling in small town Alabama on my day off. Haha.
Orientation and our first week of camp are over. On Sunday, we get new campers for two weeks. If I have learned anything from the past two weeks, it has been that being a camp counselor is hard. This past week, we had mostly thirteen year olds with some 12 and 14 year olds sprinkled in. Some of them were excellent, well-behaved, and considerate young women. Some had the energy of little children mixed with the behavior of older teenagers. It was definitely a learning experience. I learned to be both tough and gentle with them.
I also learned that thirteen year olds can really shake your peace. When the usual three tables are combined into two because two of your co-counselors have a night off on the same night that Oreo Yum Yum is served for dessert, there is no peace to be found. Nowhere.
Except in God. Just the day before Oreo-Yum-Yum-for-dessert night, my devotional directed me to a verse that really stuck out. It has come in handy throughout the week and I have learned to meditate on it. It goes like this:
"You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Trust in the LORD always, for the LORD GOD is the eternal Rock." - Isaiah 26:3-4, NLT
We serve a beautiful God, you guys. He is the Rock. At a place like the mountains of Northeast Alabama, that imagery is so significant. He will provide peace of mind and heart like the mountains here that are immovable and unchangeable.
His peace is unchangeable. Even when 19+ thirteen year old girls are screaming at the top of their lungs and singing Justin Beiber like there is no tomorrow, his peace is unshakable. And the cool thing is that he loves those thirteen year old girls as his own precious children. What a blessing to rest in his love for these girls and for me.
Until next time.
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Monday, May 20, 2013
God of Second Chances
Scroll to the end of this post for updates and blog changes!
Here I am, spending seven days at home before I'm off to my next adventure: 10 weeks at summer camp in Alabama. And I'm excited for it, albeit a bit terrified. I have hope it will go well and I will learn a lot.
Let's explore that idea of second chances, because I don't yet have an answer for the "problem" of the Purity Culture. My pastor and his wife will have been married for ten years this summer. She was not a virgin when they got married and she told me once told me how heartbreaking it felt that she couldn't give her husband everything. I guess it was the realization that someone else had also known her intimately.
Yet her husband, my pastor, is truly in love with her. He does not see her as damaged goods. He sees her as beautiful. When they first met, he had hope for her. When I look at her now, I see a life changed. She left behind a girl of addictions to become a woman of faith. She shared her story with us on Mother's Day this year and I was reminded that God is a God of second chances.
 |
| from People of the Second Chance |
Here I am, spending seven days at home before I'm off to my next adventure: 10 weeks at summer camp in Alabama. And I'm excited for it, albeit a bit terrified. I have hope it will go well and I will learn a lot.
In the meantime, I've been getting up to date on the blogs I follow, and I came across a post referencing the "Purity Culture," that is, something along the lines of True Love Waits with a heavy emphasis on the sanctity of the marriage bed and chastity before marriage. The post (you can read it here) is not only expressing concern over the Purity Culture for keeping men and women from a healthy expression of their sexuality (it's bad and wrong until you get married, but then it's 100% perfect and encouraged), but is also offering up the hope of second chances. Jonalyn argues that much of the Christian community has an inadequate understanding of God's gift of sexuality. I would agree with her.
Let's explore that idea of second chances, because I don't yet have an answer for the "problem" of the Purity Culture. My pastor and his wife will have been married for ten years this summer. She was not a virgin when they got married and she told me once told me how heartbreaking it felt that she couldn't give her husband everything. I guess it was the realization that someone else had also known her intimately.
Yet her husband, my pastor, is truly in love with her. He does not see her as damaged goods. He sees her as beautiful. When they first met, he had hope for her. When I look at her now, I see a life changed. She left behind a girl of addictions to become a woman of faith. She shared her story with us on Mother's Day this year and I was reminded that God is a God of second chances.
The summer after I graduated high school, my oldest first cousin got married at a lovely ceremony I had the privilege of attending. He and his wife moved up north after the wedding and were together for less than a year before separating and subsequently divorcing. When I heard of their divorce, I wrote a painful and probably much-too-harsh post (that I happen to have located) detailing my frustration. I had high hopes for this couple and I felt broken when I learned that my hopes that this marriage would be the one out of our family to last were dashed.
It's been three years this month after that wedding, and I am proud to say that I saw a tweet slide up on my Twitter feed that indicated that my former cousin-in-law is happily remarried to a fellow believer. There was a spark of happiness in my heart when I saw that. What a God of second chances!
Even though this young woman is no longer a part of my family, she is still a member of the body of Christ, and God provided her with the gift of second chances that he willingly provides each of his children.
As I write this, my great-great uncle is lying on his deathbed. After almost ninety-one years on this earth, he spent his life well and is nearing the end of his time with us. As the story goes, he was in the Navy back in the day and was taken by helicopter off of his ship and out of the war zone for some reason. While he was gone, his ship was attacked and lost, and none of his friends and shipmates survived. The helicopter could not locate the attacked ship, and my uncle's shipmates were gone.
The story has been told to me multiple times, and it always ends with my uncle's feelings of guilt for leaving his crew behind and being the only one who survived. He never talks about it. But yesterday, as I sat beside his bed and stared up at his plaques and photos lining the wall, I came to the conclusion that God gave my great-great uncle a second chance. After leaving the Navy, he went to college and seminary, became a Methodist preacher, got married, and had two sons. He also helped raise my grandmother and her sister, who never knew their father. He wrote and published a little book and was able to move back to the area where he grew up. He and his current wife are presently living in the home where she was raised.
And God gave him another chance. I think the reason God gives us second chances (and third, and fourth...) is because he has something better for us. God doesn't want the mistakes men and women made in their pasts to mar their futures beyond repair. God didn't want my great-great uncle to die that day when he was in the Navy. I believe that God has great plans for his children, and if that means structuring events and circumstances to provide them with another chance to choose good, even another chance to choose him, I believe he will do just that. God is in the restoring business, and that includes second chances.
Speaking of second chances... I am preparing to move my blogging-self over to http://deannalexis.wordpress.com/, to a blog tentatively titled "Grace Upon Grace." I would love to have your insight into the next stages of my blogging career. If you are able, please take this quick survey and answer how best you can. I appreciate it greatly!
Need that survey link? Click here. Thank you so much!
It's been three years this month after that wedding, and I am proud to say that I saw a tweet slide up on my Twitter feed that indicated that my former cousin-in-law is happily remarried to a fellow believer. There was a spark of happiness in my heart when I saw that. What a God of second chances!
Even though this young woman is no longer a part of my family, she is still a member of the body of Christ, and God provided her with the gift of second chances that he willingly provides each of his children.
As I write this, my great-great uncle is lying on his deathbed. After almost ninety-one years on this earth, he spent his life well and is nearing the end of his time with us. As the story goes, he was in the Navy back in the day and was taken by helicopter off of his ship and out of the war zone for some reason. While he was gone, his ship was attacked and lost, and none of his friends and shipmates survived. The helicopter could not locate the attacked ship, and my uncle's shipmates were gone.
The story has been told to me multiple times, and it always ends with my uncle's feelings of guilt for leaving his crew behind and being the only one who survived. He never talks about it. But yesterday, as I sat beside his bed and stared up at his plaques and photos lining the wall, I came to the conclusion that God gave my great-great uncle a second chance. After leaving the Navy, he went to college and seminary, became a Methodist preacher, got married, and had two sons. He also helped raise my grandmother and her sister, who never knew their father. He wrote and published a little book and was able to move back to the area where he grew up. He and his current wife are presently living in the home where she was raised.
And God gave him another chance. I think the reason God gives us second chances (and third, and fourth...) is because he has something better for us. God doesn't want the mistakes men and women made in their pasts to mar their futures beyond repair. God didn't want my great-great uncle to die that day when he was in the Navy. I believe that God has great plans for his children, and if that means structuring events and circumstances to provide them with another chance to choose good, even another chance to choose him, I believe he will do just that. God is in the restoring business, and that includes second chances.
Speaking of second chances... I am preparing to move my blogging-self over to http://deannalexis.wordpress.com/, to a blog tentatively titled "Grace Upon Grace." I would love to have your insight into the next stages of my blogging career. If you are able, please take this quick survey and answer how best you can. I appreciate it greatly!
Need that survey link? Click here. Thank you so much!
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Rebelling Against Grace
I've been cynical and rebellious towards God's grace for a long time now. I chose grace as my OneWord for 2013 because I was really hoping that I would be able to get a handle on the crazy notion that God would give me what I don't deserve. And I kinda feel like I haven't learned anything.
For several months, I've been asking what God's response is when we sin. Why would he treat me with grace when I deserve nothing less than punishment and Hell? No one has a really solid answer. Yes, Christ died for me and took my punishment, but I can't stand the feeling of not being held accountable. It feels wrong, and I don't know how to handle it. I caught myself asking "Is grace really all there is?" It doesn't feel like enough has been done. Do I just not understand what Christ really did?
I've included here two songs I love that have guided and continue to guide my thoughts on grace. I've included links and lyrics for them. I pray that even when I don't understand what God is doing; even when I wonder, yet again, why he loves me; even when I cannot seem to grasp this concept of his love for me, that I would be able to find rest in his provision and hope.
The Scandal of Grace - Hillsong
Grace, what have You done?
Murdered for me on that cross
Accused in absence of wrong
My sin washed away in Your blood
Too much to make sense of it all
I know that Your love breaks my fall
The scandal of grace, You died in my place
So my soul will live
Chorus:
Oh to be like You
Give all I have just to know You
Jesus, there's no one besides You
Forever the hope in my heart
Death, where is your sting?
Your power is as dead as my sin
The cross has taught me to live
And mercy, my heart now to sing
The day and its trouble shall come
I know that Your strength is enough
The scandal of grace, You died in my place
So my soul will live
Chorus
Beautiful, Scandalous Night - Smalltown Poets
Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified
Follow Christ to the holy mountain
Sinner sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul
In the fountain that flows
For you and for me and for all
At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree
On that beautiful, scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful, scandalous night
On the hillside, you will be delivered
At the foot of the cross justified
And your spirit restored
By the river that pours
From our blessed Savior's side
For several months, I've been asking what God's response is when we sin. Why would he treat me with grace when I deserve nothing less than punishment and Hell? No one has a really solid answer. Yes, Christ died for me and took my punishment, but I can't stand the feeling of not being held accountable. It feels wrong, and I don't know how to handle it. I caught myself asking "Is grace really all there is?" It doesn't feel like enough has been done. Do I just not understand what Christ really did?
I've included here two songs I love that have guided and continue to guide my thoughts on grace. I've included links and lyrics for them. I pray that even when I don't understand what God is doing; even when I wonder, yet again, why he loves me; even when I cannot seem to grasp this concept of his love for me, that I would be able to find rest in his provision and hope.
The Scandal of Grace - Hillsong
Grace, what have You done?
Murdered for me on that cross
Accused in absence of wrong
My sin washed away in Your blood
Too much to make sense of it all
I know that Your love breaks my fall
The scandal of grace, You died in my place
So my soul will live
Chorus:
Oh to be like You
Give all I have just to know You
Jesus, there's no one besides You
Forever the hope in my heart
Death, where is your sting?
Your power is as dead as my sin
The cross has taught me to live
And mercy, my heart now to sing
The day and its trouble shall come
I know that Your strength is enough
The scandal of grace, You died in my place
So my soul will live
Chorus
Beautiful, Scandalous Night - Smalltown Poets
Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified
Follow Christ to the holy mountain
Sinner sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul
In the fountain that flows
For you and for me and for all
At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree
On that beautiful, scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful, scandalous night
On the hillside, you will be delivered
At the foot of the cross justified
And your spirit restored
By the river that pours
From our blessed Savior's side
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Saturday, April 27, 2013
A Good Gift
This is a story of a father who knew how to give good gifts to his children...
One day a father gave his two children a present. He was a good man and a really mindful and caring dad, and he gave his children everything they needed. This gift was really special, over and beyond simply meeting a need. He carefully designed the gift himself, crafted it with both of his children in mind, and even got custom gift wrapping. When it was just the right time, the perfect occasion, the father gave the gift to his children, and they both appreciated the gift. He gave them specific guidelines for using the gift, but they found no problem with keeping to the guidelines.
Sometime later, no one knows exactly how long, the children disobeyed their father. They had been coerced into doing something that he specifically told them not to do. Even though they felt like they had been tricked, they willingly and individually chose to disobey their dad.
The children were ashamed and felt guilty, and they hid from their dad. When he came home and couldn't find them, he realized what had happened. It broke the father's heart, but he had to send his children away for a time. They had broken his trust and they needed to experience his discipline.
So the father helped his children pack their things, although it wasn’t much. Before they left, he wept with them. He told them that their choice to disobey him had disrupted not only both of their relationships with him, but also their relationships with each other. He assured them that he still loved them, but that this would be best for them. Then he reminded them to take with them the gift he had given them earlier. Their father explained that it would be more difficult to enjoy it now that their relationships were marred, but that it was still good. He sent it with them as a reminder of the perfect relationships they once had with him and with each other, as well as a reminder of the plans he had for them. These plans, he explained, were that one day they could both have perfect relationships again. “One day,” he told them, “We will be together face to face again, but until then, you might not be able to speak directly with me. It may feel like looking into a cloudy mirror, but I will write letters when I can, and I will send you messages.”
So his children left home, got jobs, and moved to different areas. They each had their own children and, eventually, grandchildren. When their children were old enough and mature enough, they passed the gift on to their children, and their children passed it on to their children. As the years went on, some parents did not instruct their children in the correct way to use the gift. Even when parents gave instructions, some children rebelled against these guidelines. The gift became misused and mistreated. Some people used the gift against others, perverting the purpose of the gift.
As a result of this treatment of the gift, many people experienced the shame and guilt that the first two children felt. Most of this guilt and shame forced the people into hiding, just as the first two children hid from their father. Because of this, the marred relationships the father spoke about grew even more disfigured. Yet some people who were broken by their guilt and shame realized that they did not want to or have to stay in that mistreatment of the gift. These people told each other of their guilt. They shared with each other that they didn't want to keep hiding.
By this time, the first father was a wizened old man, and many people would come to see him. He regretted that his children had disobeyed him and that the gift had been perverted over the years, but he knew that through this, many people would come to know him as their adopted father. While the time had not yet come for the children, both the first two children and the adopted children, to be reconciled completely to their father, he was ready to provide them with hope and healing despite their shame. When people sought out the father and asked him for hope and healing, he forgave them for misusing his gift and then gave them a renewed desire and strength to pursue the gift in its pure form. The people weren't perfect, but they tried, and the father met all their needs. And when the people messed up? The father continued to show them grace upon grace.
In light of recent interpersonal and community-wide discussions on sexual brokenness, I was challenged to think of sex as God's gift. This has been really difficult for me, and I wondered whether I should write or post about it at all, but I find that silence is the worst choice in this area. One of the causes and contributors to sexual sin, especially hidden sin, is loneliness. Shame from the sin breeds silence, which breeds loneliness, which leads to more sin, which causes shame. It's a relentless cycle unless someone knows, unless it becomes one less person struggling alone.
I wrote this simple retelling of the Garden of Eden and sexual sin to encourage us to find the goodness in God's gift. He is a good father who gives good gifts, but he gave instructions and parameters to this gift so we could enjoy it wisely. (This is an interesting parallel to his command that Adam and Eve not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.) In terms of parameters, I was once told that we don't build fires on our living room floors - we build them in fireplaces. These guidelines are good and wholesome, but there has been a lot of confusion. I think Satan loves to corrupt God's good things, and he has corrupted this quite a bit. There is much brokenness, guilt, and shame as a result of the misuse of God's gift, both because we live in a fallen world and because of the sinfulness of ourselves and other humans.
But God is good.
"But God" is my favorite phrase in the Bible. It shows up 59 times in the NLT. Therefore, despite the corruption, the misuse, and the guilt and shame, God is good. I believe that he gives us good gifts and he is heartbroken when they are misused, but it is not his plan to leave us in that. He is a God of grace and forgiveness and freedom.
What does that look like?
In February of my sophomore year, I started counseling in response to some difficult stuff that had happened earlier. One of the ways that I was able to heal during counseling was by changing the way that I saw God. Through counseling and prayer, I came to see God as a daddy whose lap I could climb up in. It came as a new revelation to me at the time that God would want to listen to me. I pictured having chai lattes with him at my kitchen table or sitting on his lap in a big, comfy chair. Interestingly, just the summer and semester prior to counseling, I had been reading and studying Captivating by the Eldredges. Every time I read it, something else jumps out at me, and that time I just faintly underlined (and didn't even put a tab at) one sentence almost half way through the book. Looking through the book now, I randomly found that sentence on page 100 and nearly cried when I saw it. It says:
The key here is that loneliness solves nothing. Shame will try to keep you down, but it will not define you. We are not defined by our failings and shortcomings, in this or any other area. Accountability and community are the safeguards.
And grace is the cure.
If this post hits home for you, I encourage you to seek out someone you trust who will listen and can help. If you're a TFC student, I pray that you'll get connected with the Breaking Free ministry (this chapel and others) or free counseling on campus. Let me know if I can help in any way.
One day a father gave his two children a present. He was a good man and a really mindful and caring dad, and he gave his children everything they needed. This gift was really special, over and beyond simply meeting a need. He carefully designed the gift himself, crafted it with both of his children in mind, and even got custom gift wrapping. When it was just the right time, the perfect occasion, the father gave the gift to his children, and they both appreciated the gift. He gave them specific guidelines for using the gift, but they found no problem with keeping to the guidelines.
Sometime later, no one knows exactly how long, the children disobeyed their father. They had been coerced into doing something that he specifically told them not to do. Even though they felt like they had been tricked, they willingly and individually chose to disobey their dad.
The children were ashamed and felt guilty, and they hid from their dad. When he came home and couldn't find them, he realized what had happened. It broke the father's heart, but he had to send his children away for a time. They had broken his trust and they needed to experience his discipline.
So the father helped his children pack their things, although it wasn’t much. Before they left, he wept with them. He told them that their choice to disobey him had disrupted not only both of their relationships with him, but also their relationships with each other. He assured them that he still loved them, but that this would be best for them. Then he reminded them to take with them the gift he had given them earlier. Their father explained that it would be more difficult to enjoy it now that their relationships were marred, but that it was still good. He sent it with them as a reminder of the perfect relationships they once had with him and with each other, as well as a reminder of the plans he had for them. These plans, he explained, were that one day they could both have perfect relationships again. “One day,” he told them, “We will be together face to face again, but until then, you might not be able to speak directly with me. It may feel like looking into a cloudy mirror, but I will write letters when I can, and I will send you messages.”
So his children left home, got jobs, and moved to different areas. They each had their own children and, eventually, grandchildren. When their children were old enough and mature enough, they passed the gift on to their children, and their children passed it on to their children. As the years went on, some parents did not instruct their children in the correct way to use the gift. Even when parents gave instructions, some children rebelled against these guidelines. The gift became misused and mistreated. Some people used the gift against others, perverting the purpose of the gift.
As a result of this treatment of the gift, many people experienced the shame and guilt that the first two children felt. Most of this guilt and shame forced the people into hiding, just as the first two children hid from their father. Because of this, the marred relationships the father spoke about grew even more disfigured. Yet some people who were broken by their guilt and shame realized that they did not want to or have to stay in that mistreatment of the gift. These people told each other of their guilt. They shared with each other that they didn't want to keep hiding.
By this time, the first father was a wizened old man, and many people would come to see him. He regretted that his children had disobeyed him and that the gift had been perverted over the years, but he knew that through this, many people would come to know him as their adopted father. While the time had not yet come for the children, both the first two children and the adopted children, to be reconciled completely to their father, he was ready to provide them with hope and healing despite their shame. When people sought out the father and asked him for hope and healing, he forgave them for misusing his gift and then gave them a renewed desire and strength to pursue the gift in its pure form. The people weren't perfect, but they tried, and the father met all their needs. And when the people messed up? The father continued to show them grace upon grace.
In light of recent interpersonal and community-wide discussions on sexual brokenness, I was challenged to think of sex as God's gift. This has been really difficult for me, and I wondered whether I should write or post about it at all, but I find that silence is the worst choice in this area. One of the causes and contributors to sexual sin, especially hidden sin, is loneliness. Shame from the sin breeds silence, which breeds loneliness, which leads to more sin, which causes shame. It's a relentless cycle unless someone knows, unless it becomes one less person struggling alone.
I wrote this simple retelling of the Garden of Eden and sexual sin to encourage us to find the goodness in God's gift. He is a good father who gives good gifts, but he gave instructions and parameters to this gift so we could enjoy it wisely. (This is an interesting parallel to his command that Adam and Eve not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.) In terms of parameters, I was once told that we don't build fires on our living room floors - we build them in fireplaces. These guidelines are good and wholesome, but there has been a lot of confusion. I think Satan loves to corrupt God's good things, and he has corrupted this quite a bit. There is much brokenness, guilt, and shame as a result of the misuse of God's gift, both because we live in a fallen world and because of the sinfulness of ourselves and other humans.
But God is good.
"But God" is my favorite phrase in the Bible. It shows up 59 times in the NLT. Therefore, despite the corruption, the misuse, and the guilt and shame, God is good. I believe that he gives us good gifts and he is heartbroken when they are misused, but it is not his plan to leave us in that. He is a God of grace and forgiveness and freedom.
What does that look like?
In February of my sophomore year, I started counseling in response to some difficult stuff that had happened earlier. One of the ways that I was able to heal during counseling was by changing the way that I saw God. Through counseling and prayer, I came to see God as a daddy whose lap I could climb up in. It came as a new revelation to me at the time that God would want to listen to me. I pictured having chai lattes with him at my kitchen table or sitting on his lap in a big, comfy chair. Interestingly, just the summer and semester prior to counseling, I had been reading and studying Captivating by the Eldredges. Every time I read it, something else jumps out at me, and that time I just faintly underlined (and didn't even put a tab at) one sentence almost half way through the book. Looking through the book now, I randomly found that sentence on page 100 and nearly cried when I saw it. It says:
The best thing we can do is to let Jesus come in, open the door and invite him in to find us in those hurting places.God wanted me to let him in, and he continued to give me that image when I wasn't getting it the first time. That's what healing, forgiveness, and freedom looks like. It starts with letting someone in. For some people, the first person is Jesus, for others, they have to tell someone else before they can open up to the Lord.
The key here is that loneliness solves nothing. Shame will try to keep you down, but it will not define you. We are not defined by our failings and shortcomings, in this or any other area. Accountability and community are the safeguards.
And grace is the cure.
If this post hits home for you, I encourage you to seek out someone you trust who will listen and can help. If you're a TFC student, I pray that you'll get connected with the Breaking Free ministry (this chapel and others) or free counseling on campus. Let me know if I can help in any way.
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Monday, April 8, 2013
Constellations and Redemption
As Orion sinks slowly below the horizon, a little farther each night, so spring rolls softly around the corner.
My 6th grade Math and Science teacher, Mr. Underwood, taught our class how to find Orion in the night sky. We were supposed to locate the constellation for homework and report back the next day. I remember slipping out the sliding glass door into my backyard, wrapped in a blanket from shoulders to knees, but with nothing on my feet, gazing up until my neck hurt.
When the days grew longer, Mr. Underwood explained to a concerned student that Orion wasn't disappearing. The constellations that we could see in our hemisphere changed as the earth rotated, and Orion is only visible in the winter.
I continued to visit Orion after that first night, especially in the dead of winter, especially when I needed some grounding. It's crazy how seeing the vastness of the universe can ground you.
Today I reflected on what God has been doing in my life. I have all but completed a huge paper, due largely to the fact that God provided the crazy idea to check to see if the library in town had the book I needed for my paper Friday night. I prayed long and hard that I would be able to finish it in time - it's not due until Tuesday. I have been experiencing a bit of a digestive issue, but my roommate suggested a simple remedy that is really helping. In addition, tonight we had a time of worship at my college, and during one song I had a really personal heart-to-heart the Lord.
And he told me that he is doing something new.
Just as Orion can be seen in the northern hemisphere only in the winter, and then it fades from our view, so God is preparing to do something in me and in my life that has been hidden from my view. I'm excited for whatever it is and I'm eagerly anticipating the next stage in my life, but I'm a little afraid as well. I once told God I would follow him anywhere - from the shack in the middle of India to the country club in the Carolinas, and God has been known to do infinitely more than we could ask or express. He has a sense of humor like that.
Despite my fear, I just can't help but be excited. God told me, "That stuff you were dealing with a year, two years ago... It is over. I have redeemed you from that and I have set things in a different direction. I have the next step prepared for you."
And so I wait with eager anticipation. God, reveal to me more of who You are.
I realized just last week that I literally have nine months until I return to Asia. If my last trip was any indication, there's going to be a lot of heart-prep that needs to happen in the next few months, as well as a lot of working and saving and prayer to be able to go overseas. Just the other day, I had a kind of vivid daydream in which I felt like I was in Hong Kong again. I saw the familiar sights, felt and smelled the same sensations, everything.
It also hits me often: How can I expect to make an impact on people in Thailand if I cannot love the people beside me? That cuts deep, and I am often unable to understand why I find it difficult to love people. Often, I either try really hard and fail or I have no desire to try. This reveals itself in relationships with friends or acquaintances I know, but choose not to treat with patience, kindness, etc. God, make me more like You.
It also reveals itself in the frustration I occasionally feel with the pace of this whole dating business. I mean, I hate to harp on something no one likes to hear about, but, really, do I treat guys like real people? Do I treat them with patience, kindness, etc., or do I think about only what I could get from them (no matter how weird that sounds)? I want to be respectful and considerate towards every guy, not just the ones that I maybe could possibly date one day.
I want to love these people around me, both guys and girls. I only have about nine months left with them.
Yes, God has redeemed me from a significant amount of difficulties I faced earlier in college. But I am not perfect. I still have bad days. I rejoice in the fact that my paper is 99% finished, but I still have a thousand (not quite) rationales to write for my portfolio, which is due on the same day. I face struggles consistently, but I know God is good, even when it doesn't seem like it.
I know God is good because Orion fades away, and then returns. I know God is good because winter turns to spring. Every. Single. Year. He is doing something new, even if I feel stuck. He makes all things new.
Jesus, You're the one who saves us
Constantly creates us into something new
Jesus, surely you will find us
Surely our Messiah will make all things new
Will make all things new
- "Dry Bones," Gungor
My 6th grade Math and Science teacher, Mr. Underwood, taught our class how to find Orion in the night sky. We were supposed to locate the constellation for homework and report back the next day. I remember slipping out the sliding glass door into my backyard, wrapped in a blanket from shoulders to knees, but with nothing on my feet, gazing up until my neck hurt.
 |
| Photo by Bahadorjn, Flickr |
I continued to visit Orion after that first night, especially in the dead of winter, especially when I needed some grounding. It's crazy how seeing the vastness of the universe can ground you.
Today I reflected on what God has been doing in my life. I have all but completed a huge paper, due largely to the fact that God provided the crazy idea to check to see if the library in town had the book I needed for my paper Friday night. I prayed long and hard that I would be able to finish it in time - it's not due until Tuesday. I have been experiencing a bit of a digestive issue, but my roommate suggested a simple remedy that is really helping. In addition, tonight we had a time of worship at my college, and during one song I had a really personal heart-to-heart the Lord.
And he told me that he is doing something new.
Just as Orion can be seen in the northern hemisphere only in the winter, and then it fades from our view, so God is preparing to do something in me and in my life that has been hidden from my view. I'm excited for whatever it is and I'm eagerly anticipating the next stage in my life, but I'm a little afraid as well. I once told God I would follow him anywhere - from the shack in the middle of India to the country club in the Carolinas, and God has been known to do infinitely more than we could ask or express. He has a sense of humor like that.
Despite my fear, I just can't help but be excited. God told me, "That stuff you were dealing with a year, two years ago... It is over. I have redeemed you from that and I have set things in a different direction. I have the next step prepared for you."
And so I wait with eager anticipation. God, reveal to me more of who You are.
I realized just last week that I literally have nine months until I return to Asia. If my last trip was any indication, there's going to be a lot of heart-prep that needs to happen in the next few months, as well as a lot of working and saving and prayer to be able to go overseas. Just the other day, I had a kind of vivid daydream in which I felt like I was in Hong Kong again. I saw the familiar sights, felt and smelled the same sensations, everything.
It also hits me often: How can I expect to make an impact on people in Thailand if I cannot love the people beside me? That cuts deep, and I am often unable to understand why I find it difficult to love people. Often, I either try really hard and fail or I have no desire to try. This reveals itself in relationships with friends or acquaintances I know, but choose not to treat with patience, kindness, etc. God, make me more like You.
It also reveals itself in the frustration I occasionally feel with the pace of this whole dating business. I mean, I hate to harp on something no one likes to hear about, but, really, do I treat guys like real people? Do I treat them with patience, kindness, etc., or do I think about only what I could get from them (no matter how weird that sounds)? I want to be respectful and considerate towards every guy, not just the ones that I maybe could possibly date one day.
I want to love these people around me, both guys and girls. I only have about nine months left with them.
Yes, God has redeemed me from a significant amount of difficulties I faced earlier in college. But I am not perfect. I still have bad days. I rejoice in the fact that my paper is 99% finished, but I still have a thousand (not quite) rationales to write for my portfolio, which is due on the same day. I face struggles consistently, but I know God is good, even when it doesn't seem like it.
I know God is good because Orion fades away, and then returns. I know God is good because winter turns to spring. Every. Single. Year. He is doing something new, even if I feel stuck. He makes all things new.
Jesus, You're the one who saves us
Constantly creates us into something new
Jesus, surely you will find us
Surely our Messiah will make all things new
Will make all things new
- "Dry Bones," Gungor
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Monday, March 25, 2013
Already Forgiven
My college's prayer team has spent days and weeks participating in 24/7 prayer for a number of years, and next week is our big Spring 2013 week of nonstop prayer. 24/7 Prayer is an "international, interdenominational Christian movement praying and working for reconciliation" spiritually, socially, and environmentally.
A couple years ago, while I was spending an hour in our prayer room on campus with a group of people for a 24/7 prayer week, I got the strong sense that God was speaking to me. This was before the really powerful sense of God's voice I felt when my vision clouded over and my heart beat faster, like when I was called to Asia, even though I haven't had that same experience in a while. Anyway, I felt as if God was saying, "I've already forgiven you." At the time, I had not been to counseling or expressed my need for confession or accountability yet. I didn't understand. It was almost like I could not quite process what God was saying to me, like I wasn't ready for it.
I'm not sure if I felt like I was being "super-righteous" or what, but I opened my eyes and looked for someone to whom I could tell what God had told me. I figured that since I didn't quite understand what he meant in reference to my own life, he must have meant it for someone else. I stood up and walked across the room to a girl I barely knew, who I'll call T, and I told her, "God has already forgiven you." She smiled at me, I smiled back, and I returned to my seat.
The funny thing is, she no longer attends my college, but I recently became acquainted with her blog. She is working with the International House of Prayer in the area where I used to live, and I am reading such encouraging and spiritually-motivating thoughts on her blog. A tiny part of me is like: Who am I to think I'm all high and mighty for God Himself to give me a message for this girl who is obviously closer to Him than I am?
I chastised myself for that thought, because why would I think that? Maybe she really did need to hear what God had told me. On the other hand, for several weeks after that night, I have questioned why I so distinctly felt God telling me "I've already forgiven you" if there was no point to it. Eventually, I gave up my concern for the circumstance and let it pass. Now, years later, it struck me tonight that perhaps that word from God was for me.
I have been out of counseling for over three months now, and I do not have all my problems solved. However, I am at a much healthier place in my life. I have learned positive coping mechanisms and successful thought processes. I have seen God in an entirely new light. And now even when the emotional roller coaster of that changing process is pretty much over, and it's tempting to get down on myself again, God continues to reveal little things to me. Like this thought tonight that maybe that word was for me: to prepare me for dealing with my crap and to prepare me for the time of learning after dealing with it.
His Words to me are:
Our God is not a God of anger. He is a God who speaks.
I have been praying for God to speak to me again, and I have been asking for more of Him since very early this month. I'm sad to say I have not been asking him consistently for these big things, but mostly I have been asking him for little things, like to "please let this computer open my document now so I won't be late to class." I know, those are ridiculous things. People write sermons on how we shouldn't treat God like a vending machine when they hear prayers like that.
Fortunately, those "little" prayers are teaching me something, too. A relationship with God is built not only on big things, but also on little things. Similarly, my relationship with my roommate L is built on "big" things, like finding time to Skype over Christmas or summer break or buying each other nice things for our birthdays. But it is also built on little things, like when I save her the chocolate piece at the end of a nutty ice cream cone. She loves the little chocolate piece. It's something small and meaningful, as crazy as that sounds.
A relationship with God should not be lived on Sunday mornings and during revival weeks. It should be lived in the day to day, and my seemingly petty prayers only serve to remind me to keep a conversation with God at the forefront. They remind me to ask God what he would have me do instead of constantly asking him to do things for me. He is so good and so patient and so graceful with an already-but-not-yet-resurrected-fallen-woman like me.
Oh, and by the way, the document opened before I had even finished my prayer. Even in the little things, God reminds me that he will always pursue me. He will always speak to me. He will always forgive me.
We are already forgiven.
A couple years ago, while I was spending an hour in our prayer room on campus with a group of people for a 24/7 prayer week, I got the strong sense that God was speaking to me. This was before the really powerful sense of God's voice I felt when my vision clouded over and my heart beat faster, like when I was called to Asia, even though I haven't had that same experience in a while. Anyway, I felt as if God was saying, "I've already forgiven you." At the time, I had not been to counseling or expressed my need for confession or accountability yet. I didn't understand. It was almost like I could not quite process what God was saying to me, like I wasn't ready for it.
I'm not sure if I felt like I was being "super-righteous" or what, but I opened my eyes and looked for someone to whom I could tell what God had told me. I figured that since I didn't quite understand what he meant in reference to my own life, he must have meant it for someone else. I stood up and walked across the room to a girl I barely knew, who I'll call T, and I told her, "God has already forgiven you." She smiled at me, I smiled back, and I returned to my seat.
The funny thing is, she no longer attends my college, but I recently became acquainted with her blog. She is working with the International House of Prayer in the area where I used to live, and I am reading such encouraging and spiritually-motivating thoughts on her blog. A tiny part of me is like: Who am I to think I'm all high and mighty for God Himself to give me a message for this girl who is obviously closer to Him than I am?
I chastised myself for that thought, because why would I think that? Maybe she really did need to hear what God had told me. On the other hand, for several weeks after that night, I have questioned why I so distinctly felt God telling me "I've already forgiven you" if there was no point to it. Eventually, I gave up my concern for the circumstance and let it pass. Now, years later, it struck me tonight that perhaps that word from God was for me.
I have been out of counseling for over three months now, and I do not have all my problems solved. However, I am at a much healthier place in my life. I have learned positive coping mechanisms and successful thought processes. I have seen God in an entirely new light. And now even when the emotional roller coaster of that changing process is pretty much over, and it's tempting to get down on myself again, God continues to reveal little things to me. Like this thought tonight that maybe that word was for me: to prepare me for dealing with my crap and to prepare me for the time of learning after dealing with it.
His Words to me are:
I have already forgiven you. And I will keep forgiving you.This is about more than the "sin that so easily entangles" that we all deal with everyday. This is about the deep tragedies of life from when we were younger, the sins we committed and the sins committed against us. This is about the sense of failing that grinds into our shoulders and backs and hearts and keeps us from standing up straight or letting our real faces show to the world.
Our God is not a God of anger. He is a God who speaks.
I have been praying for God to speak to me again, and I have been asking for more of Him since very early this month. I'm sad to say I have not been asking him consistently for these big things, but mostly I have been asking him for little things, like to "please let this computer open my document now so I won't be late to class." I know, those are ridiculous things. People write sermons on how we shouldn't treat God like a vending machine when they hear prayers like that.
Fortunately, those "little" prayers are teaching me something, too. A relationship with God is built not only on big things, but also on little things. Similarly, my relationship with my roommate L is built on "big" things, like finding time to Skype over Christmas or summer break or buying each other nice things for our birthdays. But it is also built on little things, like when I save her the chocolate piece at the end of a nutty ice cream cone. She loves the little chocolate piece. It's something small and meaningful, as crazy as that sounds.
A relationship with God should not be lived on Sunday mornings and during revival weeks. It should be lived in the day to day, and my seemingly petty prayers only serve to remind me to keep a conversation with God at the forefront. They remind me to ask God what he would have me do instead of constantly asking him to do things for me. He is so good and so patient and so graceful with an already-but-not-yet-resurrected-fallen-woman like me.
Oh, and by the way, the document opened before I had even finished my prayer. Even in the little things, God reminds me that he will always pursue me. He will always speak to me. He will always forgive me.
We are already forgiven.
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Peace From the Heart of God
It's Tuesday of Spring Break week and I'm sitting on a screened-in porch in central Florida. The birds woke me up this morning a little before nine, and I had a breakfast of cereal and a clementine before reading the morning away. The sunshine is warm and the breeze is cool. When I walk down the tile and hardwood hallway, my feet make "plick-plick" sounds, like a museum. Yesterday, we saw manatees and a natural spring, and today we're going shopping before dinner with M's grandmother.
There is nothing like a peaceful place to set your heart back in line.
I have friends at college who are heavily into philosophy, apologetics, and psychiatry. Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend who changed her major from education to philosophy, and, although she never said it aloud, I found a beautiful reminder in her major-change: studying philosophy seemed to lead her closer to the heart of God.
See, God is a God of truth. Many even say that "all truth is God's truth." If this is true, then philosophy (which is basically logic, ethics, and wisdom), would lead its follower deeper into the God of all logic, ethics, and wisdom. That is why the world does not deny Christ, but proves him.
(I hope my philosophy friends can share their thoughts on this!)
When I found myself in this beautiful setting for spring break, in which the mornings are for reading, the afternoons are for fun, and the evenings are for fellowship, I wondered if perhaps this peaceful setting could and would lead me closer to the heart of God: the heart of a God who is peaceful and welcoming.
Psalm 118, the Bible reading for the Lenten devotionals I get each morning, made reference to the goodness of God. My phone call last night with my roommate reminded me of God's goodness and grace, provision and hope, and then today, reminded again of the peace here, I sought out one of my favorite passages: John chapter 14.
John writes, "I am leaving you with a gift--peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid." (John 14:27)
Even though the peace of this week will fade away when I return to the busyness of next week's school assignments, I am reminded that God's peace, the kind this world cannot give, will not fade away. He is the rock I can cling to during this storms of this life.
There is nothing like a peaceful place to set your heart back in line.
I have friends at college who are heavily into philosophy, apologetics, and psychiatry. Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend who changed her major from education to philosophy, and, although she never said it aloud, I found a beautiful reminder in her major-change: studying philosophy seemed to lead her closer to the heart of God.
See, God is a God of truth. Many even say that "all truth is God's truth." If this is true, then philosophy (which is basically logic, ethics, and wisdom), would lead its follower deeper into the God of all logic, ethics, and wisdom. That is why the world does not deny Christ, but proves him.
(I hope my philosophy friends can share their thoughts on this!)
When I found myself in this beautiful setting for spring break, in which the mornings are for reading, the afternoons are for fun, and the evenings are for fellowship, I wondered if perhaps this peaceful setting could and would lead me closer to the heart of God: the heart of a God who is peaceful and welcoming.
Psalm 118, the Bible reading for the Lenten devotionals I get each morning, made reference to the goodness of God. My phone call last night with my roommate reminded me of God's goodness and grace, provision and hope, and then today, reminded again of the peace here, I sought out one of my favorite passages: John chapter 14.
John writes, "I am leaving you with a gift--peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid." (John 14:27)
Even though the peace of this week will fade away when I return to the busyness of next week's school assignments, I am reminded that God's peace, the kind this world cannot give, will not fade away. He is the rock I can cling to during this storms of this life.
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Friday, March 8, 2013
Twenty-One: Expectations vs. Reality
Maybe this is what twenty-one feels like. I thought to myself. A couple days ago, a few days before my birthday, I sat with two friends as we pondered and discussed housing arrangements for next semester... My last semester living on a campus as a college student. What. Then the conversation shifted to grad school. We want to look into a certain school together, maybe apply, see about living in that town. Hold on.
How am I this old? How am I planning for student teaching and Thailand and grad school and after college already? How am I already to the point of making my own budget, cooking my own meals, saving for that strange and crazy world after graduation? Graduation has always seemed like a far away pie in the sky. Something only for grown people, adults with plans and dreams and futures lined out. I don't even know what I'm eating for dinner most nights, how can I figure out my plans for the rest of my life?!?
Okay, deep breaths.
See, the thing is, I am not alone. No one else knows what they want to do. And even those who do will see their plans changed twice or thrice over during the course of their lives. It's okay to not have it figured out. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to make a weird choice and suffer the consequences. It's okay to budget wrong or spend too much and have to pay the "stupid tax," as my grandma calls it.
Because, you see, I am only human. Becoming an adult does not mean that you are somehow more than human. Adults make mistakes all the time.
So I guess it comes down to expectations verses reality. For example, I had once hoped that I would be in a dating relationship by my 21st birthday. Yet I always saw myself as a very independent and very single college graduate. I know things can happen between now and graduation (I've got a little over a year), but I've started to wonder if this really is the place where I will meet the guy God has for me. I wonder if we will start dating in college or sometime later.
When I had decided on a school for college, my mom's boss told her that the school I eventually chose is a great school, spiritually and academically. She told my mom that the reason this was important is that I will probably be meeting my future husband here. I agree with her in that typically you would find great guys at a great school, but it is frustrating to me when people assume that is why girls go to college. I am not going through four years of college to get my MRS degree. Come on now. I'm going through college so I can be equipped to teach for the rest of my life. I'm going to college for experiences I otherwise wouldn't have been able to have, things like living on a hall with thirty beautiful and crazy ladies in a building with almost ninety squealing freshmen girls. I'm going to college so I can have experiences like traveling to Hong Kong and Laos last summer to teach English and befriend students. I'm going to college, a Christian college, so I can learn how my faith interacts with and calls me to my career, how God works in the secular arena. All of those things can happen simultaneously with marriage, but the point is that marriage is not my focus in this.
Expectations verses reality... I didn't expect to get married right out of college, but a part of me did expect to date here. A part of me did expect certain relationships to be different. And yet looking back, I'm encouraged that God did not allow certain events (and allowed others instead). He knows what he's doing!
Another expectation verses reality is that I often expected that college would change me into a totally different person. In all honesty, I am different. I am much more likely to talk to people I don't know well, much more likely to share about my faith, much more likely to worship freely, and much less likely to worry as much as I did in high school. Yet, I am still the same person. I've dealt with a lot of crap and pain, but I am still dealing with it. I am very, very different, but I am still me. I am still an introvert, I am still a "J" personality, but I feel as if I am more well-rounded now.
Someone once told me that in college, we become over-exaggerated versions of ourselves. As we grow older, we mellow out. After college, we "slide into" the personas we discovered ourselves to be during college, and it gets toned down a bit. I think that is a great way of putting it.
Therefore, I'm becoming myself.
In all actuality, this is earth-shattering. See, I started this blog exactly 3 years ago today and named it "LosingMyself" because I wanted to focus on the fact that the purpose of life is not to go and do and "find" myself, but to lose myself in Him. I wonder if that is a correct way to look at it. I wonder if that is how I see life anymore. For example, I feel most alive when I am serving God in the capacities in which he's gifted me. I love teaching and I feel as if God has given me abilities to teach. This is becoming more Christ-like, through service, but it is also definitely becoming myself. What if becoming like Christ is really becoming who I was meant to be originally? As in, what if becoming like Christ is honing and developing the elements of me (and Christ in me) that are good?
I wrestle with this here because it is very intriguing to me. I have been facing up to who I am as I grow into me each day, and I wonder, yet again, if this is what twenty-one feels like. I still have two days, but I feel as if I'm getting much closer.
I wanted to share this blog post from December 2011. I had just finished Fall semester sophomore year when I composed this post referencing the acts of growing and serving in the season of singleness. I wrote:
A final expectations versus reality moment: I did not expect to experience God as much I have since I've been in college. There was a time months ago when I specifically knew that God was speaking to me. I wrote about it in regards to going to Asia, "My heart skips a beat, my peripheral vision clouds over, I can’t breathe." It was definite. However, there was a long time in which that did not happen, and it hasn't happened recently, which led me to wonder if God was still speaking to me. Or is it just that I'm not listening?
My roommate challenged me to ask God for more of Himself, so I did. This past week, I had time with God each morning for five straight days, which I haven't done in a while. He also showed me some amazing things through not only that time with Him, but also the consistency of his love and his provision. For example, I have been yearning for a while for God to show me my new name. Our September spiritual emphasis week at college focused on our brokenness, and how God wants to come and sit with us there. At the end of the week, we were given the opportunity to take a small stone to remind us that God is giving us new names. A connection was made to the invitation Jewish people would give friends they were inviting to a wedding. In a sense, God is writing our new and true names on our invitations to eternity with him. I was reminded of Isaiah 62:4, as God is renaming Jerusalem. I was pondering this desire when my morning devotional was on Zephaniah chapter three. We are all familiar with verse 17, but I wanted to draw your attention to the remainder of the chapter (emphasis mine):
Maybe twenty-one will be about accepting who I am and who God made me to be: a single adult allowing God to change me and refine me to become more Christ-like and more me. And I'm okay with that.
In fact, it's a pretty exciting adventure. Let's do it.
Edited 3/25/13 at 9:54pm for labels.
How am I this old? How am I planning for student teaching and Thailand and grad school and after college already? How am I already to the point of making my own budget, cooking my own meals, saving for that strange and crazy world after graduation? Graduation has always seemed like a far away pie in the sky. Something only for grown people, adults with plans and dreams and futures lined out. I don't even know what I'm eating for dinner most nights, how can I figure out my plans for the rest of my life?!?
Okay, deep breaths.
See, the thing is, I am not alone. No one else knows what they want to do. And even those who do will see their plans changed twice or thrice over during the course of their lives. It's okay to not have it figured out. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to make a weird choice and suffer the consequences. It's okay to budget wrong or spend too much and have to pay the "stupid tax," as my grandma calls it.
Because, you see, I am only human. Becoming an adult does not mean that you are somehow more than human. Adults make mistakes all the time.
So I guess it comes down to expectations verses reality. For example, I had once hoped that I would be in a dating relationship by my 21st birthday. Yet I always saw myself as a very independent and very single college graduate. I know things can happen between now and graduation (I've got a little over a year), but I've started to wonder if this really is the place where I will meet the guy God has for me. I wonder if we will start dating in college or sometime later.
When I had decided on a school for college, my mom's boss told her that the school I eventually chose is a great school, spiritually and academically. She told my mom that the reason this was important is that I will probably be meeting my future husband here. I agree with her in that typically you would find great guys at a great school, but it is frustrating to me when people assume that is why girls go to college. I am not going through four years of college to get my MRS degree. Come on now. I'm going through college so I can be equipped to teach for the rest of my life. I'm going to college for experiences I otherwise wouldn't have been able to have, things like living on a hall with thirty beautiful and crazy ladies in a building with almost ninety squealing freshmen girls. I'm going to college so I can have experiences like traveling to Hong Kong and Laos last summer to teach English and befriend students. I'm going to college, a Christian college, so I can learn how my faith interacts with and calls me to my career, how God works in the secular arena. All of those things can happen simultaneously with marriage, but the point is that marriage is not my focus in this.
Expectations verses reality... I didn't expect to get married right out of college, but a part of me did expect to date here. A part of me did expect certain relationships to be different. And yet looking back, I'm encouraged that God did not allow certain events (and allowed others instead). He knows what he's doing!
Another expectation verses reality is that I often expected that college would change me into a totally different person. In all honesty, I am different. I am much more likely to talk to people I don't know well, much more likely to share about my faith, much more likely to worship freely, and much less likely to worry as much as I did in high school. Yet, I am still the same person. I've dealt with a lot of crap and pain, but I am still dealing with it. I am very, very different, but I am still me. I am still an introvert, I am still a "J" personality, but I feel as if I am more well-rounded now.
Someone once told me that in college, we become over-exaggerated versions of ourselves. As we grow older, we mellow out. After college, we "slide into" the personas we discovered ourselves to be during college, and it gets toned down a bit. I think that is a great way of putting it.
Therefore, I'm becoming myself.
In all actuality, this is earth-shattering. See, I started this blog exactly 3 years ago today and named it "LosingMyself" because I wanted to focus on the fact that the purpose of life is not to go and do and "find" myself, but to lose myself in Him. I wonder if that is a correct way to look at it. I wonder if that is how I see life anymore. For example, I feel most alive when I am serving God in the capacities in which he's gifted me. I love teaching and I feel as if God has given me abilities to teach. This is becoming more Christ-like, through service, but it is also definitely becoming myself. What if becoming like Christ is really becoming who I was meant to be originally? As in, what if becoming like Christ is honing and developing the elements of me (and Christ in me) that are good?
I wrestle with this here because it is very intriguing to me. I have been facing up to who I am as I grow into me each day, and I wonder, yet again, if this is what twenty-one feels like. I still have two days, but I feel as if I'm getting much closer.
I wanted to share this blog post from December 2011. I had just finished Fall semester sophomore year when I composed this post referencing the acts of growing and serving in the season of singleness. I wrote:
...After this summer (spending five weeks in Asia [June-August 2012]), and my junior year..., what kind of person will emerge? A stronger, deeper, healthier, and more Christ-like person, that’s my prayer. I made a list a couple months ago of qualities I desired in my future husband, but also qualities that I would seek to reach as well. One such quality was the ability to attempt difficult things. Challenging things. Things like ministering overseas, but also things like becoming yourself.I'm three-quarters of the way finished with my junior year, and I am so encouraged by the prediction I made at the end of 2011. I have become myself so much more during this time and I am grateful for that.
I think too many of us are afraid of who really are, but like my psychology professor always says: “There must be a ‘me’ before there can be a ‘we’.” A Relevant Magazine article discusses the importance of singleness as it relates to your individuality: “Making the most of being single means being on your own. It’s just you and God. Being single is about discovering who you are, setting personal boundaries, knowing your likes and dislikes, your passions and the desires of your heart.”
A final expectations versus reality moment: I did not expect to experience God as much I have since I've been in college. There was a time months ago when I specifically knew that God was speaking to me. I wrote about it in regards to going to Asia, "My heart skips a beat, my peripheral vision clouds over, I can’t breathe." It was definite. However, there was a long time in which that did not happen, and it hasn't happened recently, which led me to wonder if God was still speaking to me. Or is it just that I'm not listening?
My roommate challenged me to ask God for more of Himself, so I did. This past week, I had time with God each morning for five straight days, which I haven't done in a while. He also showed me some amazing things through not only that time with Him, but also the consistency of his love and his provision. For example, I have been yearning for a while for God to show me my new name. Our September spiritual emphasis week at college focused on our brokenness, and how God wants to come and sit with us there. At the end of the week, we were given the opportunity to take a small stone to remind us that God is giving us new names. A connection was made to the invitation Jewish people would give friends they were inviting to a wedding. In a sense, God is writing our new and true names on our invitations to eternity with him. I was reminded of Isaiah 62:4, as God is renaming Jerusalem. I was pondering this desire when my morning devotional was on Zephaniah chapter three. We are all familiar with verse 17, but I wanted to draw your attention to the remainder of the chapter (emphasis mine):
For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
"I will gather you who mourn for the appointed festivals;
you will be disgraced no more.
And I will deal severely with all who have oppressed you.
I will save the weak and helpless ones;
I will bring together
those who were chased away.
I will give glory and fame to my former exiles,
wherever they have been mocked and shamed.
On that day I will gather you together
and bring you home again.
I will give you a good name, a name of distinction,
among all the nations of the earth,
as I restore your fortunes before their very eyes.
I, the Lord, have spoken!"
Maybe twenty-one will be about accepting who I am and who God made me to be: a single adult allowing God to change me and refine me to become more Christ-like and more me. And I'm okay with that.
In fact, it's a pretty exciting adventure. Let's do it.
Edited 3/25/13 at 9:54pm for labels.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Relapse (Or, Grace Upon Grace)
It always happens the same way. Stress tends to build up like a slow but severe snow storm and, before I know it, I’m snowed in. Or, rather, “stressed”-in. I have lost the simplistic joy I once felt. I have mistaken jokes for criticisms and companionship for annoyance. I have done what I do best in tumult – hide. I take introversion too far. I snap at people. I neglect the needs and desires of those around me. I cannot see above the obligations, the homework, the work hours, the confusion. I cannot see God. I slip into the sin that so easily entangles and I cannot find my way out. The tension within stretches and snaps my frail defenses.
But God (the two greatest words in my opinion), in his infinite wisdom, draws me back to himself like an adoring father forgiving his daughter, like a patient lover restoring his bride. I don’t know why he wants me again. After letting the things of this world almost crowd him out of my vision, I do not understand why he would fight to be my vision and fight to win back my heart.
But he is. He is fighting for me. Early last week, I flipped my Bible open to 2 Chronicles 20, when God tells the people that they need only to “stand firm” while he fights on their behalf. God’s got this. He knows what he’s doing.
I could have sworn that the gorgeous, warm day we had this past Sunday was created just for me. Warm weather is a blessing to the soul, and I welcomed it wholeheartedly by letting two friends convince me to hammock with them. I read Edith Wharton while lying in a friend’s hammock and experiencing a strange sense of peace. It was as if I had vitamin D deficiency and the sunshine was recharging a battery of sorts. A physical battery and an emotional battery.
We read from Job on Sunday morning and I was reminded of Job’s blatant finite-ness compared with the amazingly infinite God he served.
It is in the place of brokenness, when have not spent with time with God earlier, when we are falling into sin and fear, that we often call out to God to save us. I wonder if God gets upset with us. If you had just stayed with me earlier, you wouldn't be in this mess, I imagine him saying sometimes. Yet that doesn't sound like God. God doesn't bring up all the bad things Job must have done to be deserving this pain, but he does ask Job who he thinks he is. Job answers by saying, “I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head” (Job 42:5, MSG). God demonstrates his omnipotence and omniscience in this situation and he proves Job's (and man's as a whole) nothingness.
Yet I don't think that God was necessary angry in the last couple chapters of Job. I think he was acting like a powerful father in a kind of protective rage. In a sense, he wants to prove man's nothingness so man will return to him with all he is. God isn't sitting up on some cloud berating me for the combination of circumstances and mistakes that led to this stressful situation. God isn't criticizing me for not running to Him at first sight of what I could not handle.
He’s standing here with his arms open. He is asking me to come back.
This world is not our home and it will not treat us kindly or fairly, but take heart, because He has overcome the world.
John 1, while describing Jesus's incarnation, pauses for a minute to discuss Christ in relation to the law. Basically, where the law could not provide peace or salvation for us, Christ does. God's unfailing love came from Christ, not from the law we couldn't keep. John 1:16 says, "From [Christ's] abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another."
The English Standard Version comes close to what I've read that the original Greek means. It translates "one gracious blessing after another" as "grace upon grace." The Amplified Bible translates it as "gift heaped upon gift." My friends, even in our times of relapse, brokenness, shame, pain, or confusion... Because Christ came and died for us, we have grace heaped upon grace freely available.
He is a God who welcomes us back.
This post was contributed to Only a Breath's Monthly link-up party for OneWord365 bloggers on March 14th, 2013.
But God (the two greatest words in my opinion), in his infinite wisdom, draws me back to himself like an adoring father forgiving his daughter, like a patient lover restoring his bride. I don’t know why he wants me again. After letting the things of this world almost crowd him out of my vision, I do not understand why he would fight to be my vision and fight to win back my heart.
But he is. He is fighting for me. Early last week, I flipped my Bible open to 2 Chronicles 20, when God tells the people that they need only to “stand firm” while he fights on their behalf. God’s got this. He knows what he’s doing.
I could have sworn that the gorgeous, warm day we had this past Sunday was created just for me. Warm weather is a blessing to the soul, and I welcomed it wholeheartedly by letting two friends convince me to hammock with them. I read Edith Wharton while lying in a friend’s hammock and experiencing a strange sense of peace. It was as if I had vitamin D deficiency and the sunshine was recharging a battery of sorts. A physical battery and an emotional battery.
We read from Job on Sunday morning and I was reminded of Job’s blatant finite-ness compared with the amazingly infinite God he served.
Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do anything, and no one can stop You. You asked, ‘Who is this that questions My wisdom with such ignorance?’ It is I--and I was talking about things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me… I had only heard about You before, but now I have seen You with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.”(Job 42:1-3,5-6)
It is in the place of brokenness, when have not spent with time with God earlier, when we are falling into sin and fear, that we often call out to God to save us. I wonder if God gets upset with us. If you had just stayed with me earlier, you wouldn't be in this mess, I imagine him saying sometimes. Yet that doesn't sound like God. God doesn't bring up all the bad things Job must have done to be deserving this pain, but he does ask Job who he thinks he is. Job answers by saying, “I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head” (Job 42:5, MSG). God demonstrates his omnipotence and omniscience in this situation and he proves Job's (and man's as a whole) nothingness.
Yet I don't think that God was necessary angry in the last couple chapters of Job. I think he was acting like a powerful father in a kind of protective rage. In a sense, he wants to prove man's nothingness so man will return to him with all he is. God isn't sitting up on some cloud berating me for the combination of circumstances and mistakes that led to this stressful situation. God isn't criticizing me for not running to Him at first sight of what I could not handle.
He’s standing here with his arms open. He is asking me to come back.
This world is not our home and it will not treat us kindly or fairly, but take heart, because He has overcome the world.
John 1, while describing Jesus's incarnation, pauses for a minute to discuss Christ in relation to the law. Basically, where the law could not provide peace or salvation for us, Christ does. God's unfailing love came from Christ, not from the law we couldn't keep. John 1:16 says, "From [Christ's] abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another."
The English Standard Version comes close to what I've read that the original Greek means. It translates "one gracious blessing after another" as "grace upon grace." The Amplified Bible translates it as "gift heaped upon gift." My friends, even in our times of relapse, brokenness, shame, pain, or confusion... Because Christ came and died for us, we have grace heaped upon grace freely available.
He is a God who welcomes us back.
This post was contributed to Only a Breath's Monthly link-up party for OneWord365 bloggers on March 14th, 2013.
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Wednesday, February 13, 2013
"What is Man?" [My Thoughts on Lent]
Stuck between hours of reading, journal responses, and craft nights for Valentine's Day sits something I usually scarcely notice. My desk and the kitchen table are scattered with glittery heart stickers and pink and red hole scraps of paper. There are books everywhere.
My nights are late. When they're not, my mornings are early. And sometimes both.
This is the point of the semester when you prove yourself. It's not yet mid-terms. It's not yet pay-day. The homework level has increased to the typical norm and you must balance your time wisely so you can complete the bigger tasks that lay ahead.
I am not-so-patiently awaiting details on overseas student teaching, acceptance at a summer job, and confirmation for my future. I struggle with feeling alone, again, on Valentine's Day. I struggle with feeling tired too early in the semester. I struggle with keeping a budget when I'm on the five-meal plan. I struggle with freedom.
Today was Ash Wednesday, which marked the beginning of the Lenten season. My college has, in the past couple semesters, introduced a variety of worship styles. Our chapel service this morning was an Ash Wednesday service based on Anglican liturgy. It included Scripture reading, responsive reading, chanting, kneeling, standing, prayers aloud and silently, and the traditional ashen cross. We were given the option of coming forward during the Imposition of Ashes to receive the cross on our foreheads.
While the speaker, a professor here, spoke candidly about how we must not skip ahead to the resurrection too soon, I found myself longing for it desperately throughout the service. It is true that being raised in communities that only barely resemble liturgical churches may have colored my perception of liturgy. However, it seems to me that we can get too easily caught up in guilt and shame and sin that we neglect to act as if and believe that we are forgiven. Having lived in a mindset of legalism, guilt (real and false), and worthlessness for years, I am tired of feeling guilty for my sins any longer. Maybe that is not the appropriate response, but it is exactly how I feel. I don't want to be beaten over the head with rules that make me feel like crap. Don't God and I have a relationship?
Someone once told me that legalism is the natural course of the heart. When we realize we aren't doing it perfectly, we strive to make rules for ourselves so that we will, by our estimation. What we don't understand is that God doesn't want rules and God doesn't want sacrifices. He wants us to do what he says out of love, not out of a fear that we don't, we will be struck down from heaven.
Yet perhaps there is a time and a place for the "Ash Wednesday" phenomenon. I mean, the church calendar has been around for ages and no one really seems to have a huge problem with today's purple and black and ash crosses. Yes, my sinfulness brings me to my knees on many occasions. I guess the problem I have is with "requiring" repentance just because this is the beginning of a season.
I would just like to change the connotation of the Lenten season. Rather than a time of repentance and sad reflection, let this be a time of eager anticipation. Do not fast because it somehow reminds you of the suffering of Christ (how can it even compare?). Fast because it allows you that time to devote to knowing Christ more. And never, by any means, fast because everyone else is doing it. Fast (from anything) because God is telling you to do it.
In the scheme of things, finite man is nothing compared to infinite God. Nothing. But the fact remains that he is deeply in love with us. Why? Because he is delighted in the creation that he chose to create.
My nights are late. When they're not, my mornings are early. And sometimes both.
This is the point of the semester when you prove yourself. It's not yet mid-terms. It's not yet pay-day. The homework level has increased to the typical norm and you must balance your time wisely so you can complete the bigger tasks that lay ahead.
I am not-so-patiently awaiting details on overseas student teaching, acceptance at a summer job, and confirmation for my future. I struggle with feeling alone, again, on Valentine's Day. I struggle with feeling tired too early in the semester. I struggle with keeping a budget when I'm on the five-meal plan. I struggle with freedom.
Today was Ash Wednesday, which marked the beginning of the Lenten season. My college has, in the past couple semesters, introduced a variety of worship styles. Our chapel service this morning was an Ash Wednesday service based on Anglican liturgy. It included Scripture reading, responsive reading, chanting, kneeling, standing, prayers aloud and silently, and the traditional ashen cross. We were given the option of coming forward during the Imposition of Ashes to receive the cross on our foreheads.
While the speaker, a professor here, spoke candidly about how we must not skip ahead to the resurrection too soon, I found myself longing for it desperately throughout the service. It is true that being raised in communities that only barely resemble liturgical churches may have colored my perception of liturgy. However, it seems to me that we can get too easily caught up in guilt and shame and sin that we neglect to act as if and believe that we are forgiven. Having lived in a mindset of legalism, guilt (real and false), and worthlessness for years, I am tired of feeling guilty for my sins any longer. Maybe that is not the appropriate response, but it is exactly how I feel. I don't want to be beaten over the head with rules that make me feel like crap. Don't God and I have a relationship?
Someone once told me that legalism is the natural course of the heart. When we realize we aren't doing it perfectly, we strive to make rules for ourselves so that we will, by our estimation. What we don't understand is that God doesn't want rules and God doesn't want sacrifices. He wants us to do what he says out of love, not out of a fear that we don't, we will be struck down from heaven.
Yet perhaps there is a time and a place for the "Ash Wednesday" phenomenon. I mean, the church calendar has been around for ages and no one really seems to have a huge problem with today's purple and black and ash crosses. Yes, my sinfulness brings me to my knees on many occasions. I guess the problem I have is with "requiring" repentance just because this is the beginning of a season.
I would just like to change the connotation of the Lenten season. Rather than a time of repentance and sad reflection, let this be a time of eager anticipation. Do not fast because it somehow reminds you of the suffering of Christ (how can it even compare?). Fast because it allows you that time to devote to knowing Christ more. And never, by any means, fast because everyone else is doing it. Fast (from anything) because God is telling you to do it.
In the scheme of things, finite man is nothing compared to infinite God. Nothing. But the fact remains that he is deeply in love with us. Why? Because he is delighted in the creation that he chose to create.
When I consider your heavens,- Psalm 8:3-5
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
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Saturday, February 2, 2013
Grace Means Freedom and Second Chances
Freedom is what happens when you choose to forgive, and forgiveness is a process. A long process. And it's pretty stinkin' hard.
I was talking with a good friend tonight who has been feeling disrespected and unappreciated, and she was angry towards the person she felt had wronged her. She told me that she knew she wanted to love and forgive this person, but she didn't know how to love someone with whom she didn't have a relationship.
How do you love someone you don't know? How do you forgive someone with whom you don't already have the basis of relationship?
I smiled and cried at the same time, because I realized it could be done.
God loved us before he had a relationship with us. How do we know? Because he forgave us. He gave us his Son so that we could be reconciled to him. If God was not all-knowing, his gift of his Son would be a bit like an act of faith. It would be God extending his offer of forgiveness and waiting to see if we would accept it.
Of course, God is omniscient, so I don't think that was an issue for him, but it is worth acknowledging because it applies to us. If you have a healthy relationship with someone, you can say without fear, "Hey, it bothers me when you don't take out the trash, could you please take it out next time?" Or, "I'm sorry about what I said about you." But if you do not have a relationship, or even a healthy relationship, with the person who has wronged you, forgiveness is so much more harder. You have to put yourself out there in an act of faith, hoping that they will give you what you are asking for.
I was blessed to have a very encouraging time of closure in a broken friendship earlier this week. When the friendship dissolved, we were both forced to seek God individually, alone and in appropriate communities, and the conversation this week was about what God has done in our lives since that time. And God has done some beautiful things.
I remember praying desperately and clinging to hope when things started crashing around me during the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. Remembering that God is good enabled me to keep clinging to Him through that time. Songs like "Times" and "Beautiful Things" rang in my ears. I didn't have immediate proof that all things worked out for our good and His glory, so I held on to the hope that they would eventually.
A year and a half later, God showed me the beautiful things he did through that time. He brought two people out of the crap they were stuck in and washed off the dust that settled on them after the collapse of a friendship and a ministry. He brought us out of places of darkness, sin, and pain through a catastrophic event.
God made us new and has given us second chances.
I was able to forgive this person only, ironically, after I realized God's forgiveness for me. I could extend grace only after I received God's grace towards me. In that point of forgiveness, I realized that grace is freedom.
Now, set free through God's gift of grace from things which kept me in chains of brokenness, I am alive. I am given a second chance. God made me a new creation when he rescued me from the eternal consequences of my sin, but he also continues to make me a new creation each day when his mercies are new.
His attitude towards us is full of grace, not shame, not anger, not bitterness. The Son is pleading for us before the Father to bring about his righteousness over us. Because he loves us.
Finally, I see that grace has brought about a purpose to my mistakes instead of shame. For one, my mistakes led to the development of a healthier and stronger relationship with Christ. I can rest in that.
I was talking with a good friend tonight who has been feeling disrespected and unappreciated, and she was angry towards the person she felt had wronged her. She told me that she knew she wanted to love and forgive this person, but she didn't know how to love someone with whom she didn't have a relationship.
How do you love someone you don't know? How do you forgive someone with whom you don't already have the basis of relationship?
I smiled and cried at the same time, because I realized it could be done.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.- Romans 5:8
God loved us before he had a relationship with us. How do we know? Because he forgave us. He gave us his Son so that we could be reconciled to him. If God was not all-knowing, his gift of his Son would be a bit like an act of faith. It would be God extending his offer of forgiveness and waiting to see if we would accept it.
Of course, God is omniscient, so I don't think that was an issue for him, but it is worth acknowledging because it applies to us. If you have a healthy relationship with someone, you can say without fear, "Hey, it bothers me when you don't take out the trash, could you please take it out next time?" Or, "I'm sorry about what I said about you." But if you do not have a relationship, or even a healthy relationship, with the person who has wronged you, forgiveness is so much more harder. You have to put yourself out there in an act of faith, hoping that they will give you what you are asking for.
I was blessed to have a very encouraging time of closure in a broken friendship earlier this week. When the friendship dissolved, we were both forced to seek God individually, alone and in appropriate communities, and the conversation this week was about what God has done in our lives since that time. And God has done some beautiful things.
I remember praying desperately and clinging to hope when things started crashing around me during the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. Remembering that God is good enabled me to keep clinging to Him through that time. Songs like "Times" and "Beautiful Things" rang in my ears. I didn't have immediate proof that all things worked out for our good and His glory, so I held on to the hope that they would eventually.
A year and a half later, God showed me the beautiful things he did through that time. He brought two people out of the crap they were stuck in and washed off the dust that settled on them after the collapse of a friendship and a ministry. He brought us out of places of darkness, sin, and pain through a catastrophic event.
God made us new and has given us second chances.
I was able to forgive this person only, ironically, after I realized God's forgiveness for me. I could extend grace only after I received God's grace towards me. In that point of forgiveness, I realized that grace is freedom.
Now, set free through God's gift of grace from things which kept me in chains of brokenness, I am alive. I am given a second chance. God made me a new creation when he rescued me from the eternal consequences of my sin, but he also continues to make me a new creation each day when his mercies are new.
Jesus is pleading for us even today because we still sin even today.- Bryan Chapell
His attitude towards us is full of grace, not shame, not anger, not bitterness. The Son is pleading for us before the Father to bring about his righteousness over us. Because he loves us.
Finally, I see that grace has brought about a purpose to my mistakes instead of shame. For one, my mistakes led to the development of a healthier and stronger relationship with Christ. I can rest in that.
Edited 3/25/13 at 9:57pm for labels.
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Sunday, January 27, 2013
God Who Proves Himself
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him!The lyrics of this beautiful hymn, written in 1882 by Louisa Stead, sound like a paradox. I trust Jesus, I've proved Jesus, I need to trust Jesus more. Wait, do I trust him or not? Is trust an all or nothing thing, like being dead? Or is it more like a gradient thing? Like being hungry for a 3 Musketeers but not hungry enough for dinner.
How I've proved Him o'er and o'er;
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
Oh, for grace to trust Him more!
Yeah, I don't know.
I do remember facing a circumstance and its subsequent aftermath and wondering if I could trust God again. It was a subtle unwinding of my faith, but it was rebuilt each time I called out His name, even if His name was the only thing I could muster. Somehow I came to the point where I trusted Him again. I think that was a very slow process, and I think it occurred because I needed Him. I needed God to be real and trustworthy and even though I wanted to hide with shame, He was there. He started to prove himself again.
This past June, I wrote about the confirmation I felt about my call to go to Asia. I specifically referenced the fact that my eyes kept "leaking." I was crying all over the place because of the confirmation and fulfillment that the God provided about the trip. It is here, in the beginning of this semester, that I am faced with a similar situation. My eyes are leaking again. It is confirmation again.
The day before yesterday, I read the first chapter of our Literature for Today's Young Adults textbook and I found myself tearing up. What am I doing? This is a textbook for a college class, I thought to myself. But isn't God in the college classroom? Isn't God in my career choices? Isn't God in what I want to do for the rest of my life?
Yesterday, I attended a professional development conference for education majors. I had a conversation and prayer with an encouraging speaker on overseas teaching. I listened to a presentation / Q and A session with a principal at a Christian school who supports Christian education. That is what I want to do for the rest of my life. The last speaker, the one who is a principal at a Christian school, shared with us that if God has called you to Christian education and you follow Him in that, He will be faithful. You won't have money, but He will be faithful.
God's faithfulness is something I have been overwhelmed with for a long time, so that was an encouraging thought. Above and beyond, I was aware of being needy. Teachers don't make very much and Christian school teachers don't make anything. But God provides. God proves himself.
I have written before about actions and qualities of God. For example, God is a God who is here. He is a God who knows and who sees. Today, I want to write about the God who proves himself.
I had a first hand experience of this when I went to the store yesterday. To understand this story, you need to know that I have an envelope of money I've set aside for groceries to use until I get paid again that clearly has the word "Groceries" written on the front. So... I was walking down the hill to my car when I realized I had forgotten my grocery money. Because it was important, I turned around and went back to get it. I drove to the grocery store, went in, bought the sour cream I needed for a recipe and a couple things I probably didn't need, and went to check out.
That's when I noticed I didn't have my grocery money envelope with me. What's weird is that I found enough cash in my wallet to pay for my sour cream and stuff without even having my grocery money. I bought my stuff and went out to my car. And it was then I realized my car door was unlocked. I was worried, because I knew I had left my money in the car and I couldn't find it! When I got in my car and looked around, it turned out that my money had fallen between my car seats. So even though my car door was unlocked, my clearly marked grocery money envelope was not obvious. I don't think anyone would steal my money, but I was so thankful the situation wasn't tempting to anyone walking by. God proved himself in that.
God has also proved himself in how even though I won't get paid again until the end of February, I am confident I don't have to worry about what I'm going to eat. I tweeted the other day that Matthew 6:25 was definitely written for students on the five meal plan. The great thing is that I don't have to worry. God is proving himself.
God is also proving himself in the next thing I think he is teaching me, which is listening. I am not naturally gifted in extroversion or intercession or socializing. At all. I cannot do small talk or make speeches or answer impromptu questions without at least a hint of my old stutter coming back. But you know what happened? God has placed me in multiple situations in which I have to listen. One of those has been people in my life who talk a lot. No offense to these people, but when they keep talking, all you can do is listen. Sometimes God teaches you something by plunging you headfirst into it. Another situation was when my roommate and I got into a disagreement and she chided me for interrupting and speaking critically of her. I wasn't listening.
I heard once that people most enjoy talking about themselves. If you listen to people, you give them the honor of your presence. You build their self-esteem because you are demonstrating interest in their lives. Listening means being quiet and occasionally asking open-ended questions. It means looking with interest and showing that you care about what they have to say.
And when you do listen? You get to hear about the awesome stuff that God is doing, like making ways for your friends to go on mission trips and providing stories of angels in disguise. You can validate a person's story and testimony just by listening. When Jesus healed the demon-possessed man in Luke chapter 8, the man wanted to follow Jesus as a disciple, but Jesus told him:
"No, go back to your family, and tell them everything God has done for you." So he went all through the town proclaiming the great things Jesus had done for him.- Luke 8:39
So keep listening, and take it from me. God is proving himself in my finances, my future, and his instruction to me to listen. When you follow God, he will provide. He will prove himself in little ways and in big ways. Do not worry.
So don’t worry about these things, saying, "What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?" These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.-Matthew 7:11
So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Grace Relaxes Perfectionism (And Other Lessons)
A little over two weeks ago, I picked one word to focus on for the year 2013: Grace. I chose to modify my word with one powerful adjective: Intentional. It's time to take a look at my OneWord challenge and see what has happened recently.
In the first two weeks or so of 2013, I sliced my left index finger open while chopping collared greens (lovely scar still remains), drove down to my college apartment to pick up my swim suit and summer-y clothes, took my brother to get sushi for his birthday, celebrated his birthday with some of the extended family and our traditional chocolate ganache cake, packed and repacked for our vacation, went on said vacation (Christmas-present cruise with the family!), swam with stingrays on said vacation, and then returned home just in time to begin a week of observations at a private school in town. Today is day two of observations and I am as exhausted as ever. This teaching business is tiring, and I'm not even teaching!
Even though it has only been fifteen days, I took some careful notes regarding intentional grace. When my brother and I got in an argument over who would sleep on the "couch" bed and the "real" bed during our one-night stay in a hotel before our cruise, I was taught that grace is patient. I let him have the "real" bed. It wasn't worth arguing about, and I knew it was right to think of him before myself. Even if I failed the first few thoughts. Grace doesn't lose her temper with a little brother who has always slept in the "couch" bed when traveling. Grace doesn't lose her temper because she is blessed to know she has a bed tonight that she doesn't have to share.
When we were on our cruise, I realized that grace relaxes perfectionism and doesn't demand her own way. I hate this lesson. I will probably learn it everyday for the rest of my life. I'm the kind of person who reads all the flyers and watches the information channel just to tell you that yes, we do need to eat before we leave and yes, they will call us off the ship at this time. I like to know where things are and how much they cost and what time the show is and I'm not afraid to tell you. Early in our vacation, my mom pulled me aside and said, "Sometimes it hurts people when you talk like you know more than they do." Instead of getting defensive, I listened. It is God's Grace that grants me a second chance when I'm not perfect. Who am I to demand everyone be perfect on the first try? I mean, really?
I heard somewhere that humans were not made to withstand every shake. Just as tall buildings in earthquake-prone areas are made with a bit of flexibility to them, so also are people made to "wobble" a bit. Grace is what lets us struggle like buildings in an earthquake. If we were always strong, we would never wobble, and a single catastrophe would ruin our lives. But if we allow ourselves to struggle, if we allow ourselves grace, we will not crumble at the first sign of disaster. We will weather the storm. Don't bottle it in; let yourself feel and move and wobble.
It's been fifteen interesting and unique days. I'm ready to keep at it this year. Before I sign off, I have one very exciting tid-bit to share. I will completing my student teaching one year from now. I applied to complete this student teaching experience overseas and I just discovered today that my placement at a specific international school has been secured. I will receive a confirmation of placement soon, but I could not wait to share the name of my school. Want to take a guess? Grace International School, of course!
In the first two weeks or so of 2013, I sliced my left index finger open while chopping collared greens (lovely scar still remains), drove down to my college apartment to pick up my swim suit and summer-y clothes, took my brother to get sushi for his birthday, celebrated his birthday with some of the extended family and our traditional chocolate ganache cake, packed and repacked for our vacation, went on said vacation (Christmas-present cruise with the family!), swam with stingrays on said vacation, and then returned home just in time to begin a week of observations at a private school in town. Today is day two of observations and I am as exhausted as ever. This teaching business is tiring, and I'm not even teaching!
Even though it has only been fifteen days, I took some careful notes regarding intentional grace. When my brother and I got in an argument over who would sleep on the "couch" bed and the "real" bed during our one-night stay in a hotel before our cruise, I was taught that grace is patient. I let him have the "real" bed. It wasn't worth arguing about, and I knew it was right to think of him before myself. Even if I failed the first few thoughts. Grace doesn't lose her temper with a little brother who has always slept in the "couch" bed when traveling. Grace doesn't lose her temper because she is blessed to know she has a bed tonight that she doesn't have to share.
When we were on our cruise, I realized that grace relaxes perfectionism and doesn't demand her own way. I hate this lesson. I will probably learn it everyday for the rest of my life. I'm the kind of person who reads all the flyers and watches the information channel just to tell you that yes, we do need to eat before we leave and yes, they will call us off the ship at this time. I like to know where things are and how much they cost and what time the show is and I'm not afraid to tell you. Early in our vacation, my mom pulled me aside and said, "Sometimes it hurts people when you talk like you know more than they do." Instead of getting defensive, I listened. It is God's Grace that grants me a second chance when I'm not perfect. Who am I to demand everyone be perfect on the first try? I mean, really?
I heard somewhere that humans were not made to withstand every shake. Just as tall buildings in earthquake-prone areas are made with a bit of flexibility to them, so also are people made to "wobble" a bit. Grace is what lets us struggle like buildings in an earthquake. If we were always strong, we would never wobble, and a single catastrophe would ruin our lives. But if we allow ourselves to struggle, if we allow ourselves grace, we will not crumble at the first sign of disaster. We will weather the storm. Don't bottle it in; let yourself feel and move and wobble.
It's been fifteen interesting and unique days. I'm ready to keep at it this year. Before I sign off, I have one very exciting tid-bit to share. I will completing my student teaching one year from now. I applied to complete this student teaching experience overseas and I just discovered today that my placement at a specific international school has been secured. I will receive a confirmation of placement soon, but I could not wait to share the name of my school. Want to take a guess? Grace International School, of course!
I'm writing this post as part of a monthly link-up party for OneWord through Only a Breath. Check out the January reminder and other bloggers' thoughts on their words for the year.
For more information on my overseas student teaching trip, visit Alex's Adventures in Asia.
What has God been teaching you about grace?
What has God been teaching you about grace?
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Thursday, January 3, 2013
Intentional Grace.
Grace means that all of your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame.- People of the Second Chance
I like to categorize things. I organize my clothes based on occasion in which to wear them. I organize my music into theme or season playlists. I spent a long time cleaning up this blog when I could have been cleaning up my room. It's the act of categorization that makes me happy.
Looking back over my recent history, it is clear to me that stages of my life fall into certain categories. For example, high school was very over-extenuating and provided me with opportunities (not always taken until much later) to learn quite a bit. My freshman year of college was a time of new opportunities and new friends, especially that spring, when I developed many of the friendships I still have today. It was that next semester (fall of my sophomore year) when I realized how much I needed those reliable friendships I had formed. That was one of the most painful times yet. With the spring of my sophomore year came a lot of coming to terms with the past. This "past" included thirteen years ago, eight years ago, and even the semester just prior. I started counseling that semester. It was that February when God called me to singleness of heart (and it was April when He redefined it). Summer 2012 was marked by an amazing and life-changing trip to Asia.
And then I began my junior year. Looking back over last semester (fall of my junior year), I see a lot of growth. I treasure the growth and challenges and "pressing through the hurt" that occurred from August to December 2012. I went through a funk but I came out on the other side. I learned quite a bit about God and grace.
I have also learned to learn from the past and move on. So in this post, I want to look ahead. When I was preparing for 2013, I stumbled across a project called OneWord365. In this project, participants choose one word and meditate on it (and live it!) for one entire year. I knew I had to participate.
Is it any wonder the word I chose was grace?
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| OneWord button courtesy of Melanie at www.onlyabreath.com. |
I feel as if I'm at that point in my walk where I've gone through some difficult challenges and now God is asking me to put what I learned into practice. I know I am not finished with the tough stuff, because I still have work to do before my sanctification is complete. The good news is that God is not finished with me yet. His graciousness means he never gives up. He is still working, and He is working in his timing.
I believe this is the time for me to move. To be adventurous. To act on what he's shown me. And what has he shown me? That He is good. All the time. That He is just and merciful. That He is forgiving.
That He is full of grace.
And if God Himself is not angry with me, who do I have to fear? If God Himself is not upset with me, what can anyone or anything else do to me? If I know that God is forgiving and accepting and gracious towards me, how will I then treat others?
With intentional grace.
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