the big picture

one of my favorite things about blogging and journaling is going back and reading old entries. i recently read part of my journal from my second year of college. at the time, i thought i knew what i wanted: the career i was studying in school, the boy i was interested in, what i hoped to get out of everyday life. eight years later (holy cow!) i found myself laughing at my former dreams. now that so much time has passed, i am able to see the bigger picture. i know now that had all those desires been met, i would have ended up pretty miserable. and i can also see now that not getting what i wanted at the time ultimately lead to where i am today. and life is pretty great today.

i would like to say that seeing the big picture of my past has enabled me to realize god has reasons for not giving my all of my current desires, but it's not that easy. but i think i'm getting there. one step at a time.

a story of faith.

i heard a story yesterday which hit home for me. i have not experienced anything remotely close to what happened to this young woman, but i can learn from her experience and i think that's why god gives us stories; they are meant to be shared.

sunday morning at church, our congregation sang these words:

no guilt in life, no fear in death
this is the power of christ in me
from life's first cry to final breath
jesus commands my destiny


i'll be honest with you; i sang these words half-heartedly. maybe because i was distracted in thought, maybe because they are almost too familiar. but then some friends and i grabbed lunch and janelle, a labor and delivery nurse, told us that she lost it and started crying during that song, because she had been having a hard time dealing with losses at work and questioning why some people never get their first breath. she told us a story of a woman who went into labor prematurely and the baby was stillborn. the mom gave janelle a blanket she had knitted and asked her to keep it with the child, and said that all of their tears and prayers were in that blanket. the mom held her lifeless child to her chest and kept repeating these powerful words: "everything's a blessing. everything's a blessing."

i am blown away by the faith of this woman i have never met. my struggles are trivial in comparison to what has happened to her, and yet she has more clarity into god's promise for her.

i don't really have any grand conclusion for this post. i just felt i needed to pass this story along. i know there are others out there who need to hear it just as much as i did.

the simple truth

sometimes i feel as though the lessons i'm being taught aren't new lessons, but rather the same one over and over. it all boils down to one simple truth: he is all i need. at the root of anger is fear, and the root of fear is sin, and the root of sin, idolatry. and it all goes back to the original sin: eve wanted to be like god, and so she ate the forbidden fruit. i am no different.

woman vs. transmission

i had plans for tuesday. i was going to get to work at 7:30, go to the park on my lunch break and read for a bit. then i was going to get off work at 4, go to the library, fill my car with gas, get my hair cut, meet my roommates for pizza, then go see our friends cori, erin, and sam sing at the village pub in east nashville. as i was rounding the corner to get to the office parking lot, my transmission failed. as a result, my day turned out quite different. i spent my lunch break paying a towing charge, left work at 4:30, deanna and i picked her kid up from daycare, and then i took her car and got home at 6, just in time to eat cereal for dinner and then i did end up going to village pub.

sometimes plans change. sometimes things happen that are beyond our control. but there is one thing that is in our control, and that is how we react to life. for example, in this situation, i can be angry that my car isn't working. or i can choose to remember that god is in control and that it's much better that way, and i can choose to live in that peace. and i can thank him for my struggles, for the reminder that he is sovereign, i can choose to trust in him to work this situation out, and i can choose to write in run-on sentences.

the upper room

i sat in the orange chair in what we called "the upper room". looking out the window, i found myself mesmerized by the slow and steady falling snow. flakes bigger than i have ever seen before, which is saying something having spent all of my 18 years in michigan. i knew this place was special, a holy ground of sorts. a place where my soul felt free, felt peace. a peace i have felt in no other place. i didn't know what the future would hold, what adventures lay beyond my high school years.

five years later i returned to that room. a room which had previously represented peace now brought confusion. i sat in that orange chair again and poured my heart out on paper. the snowflakes replaced by raindrops, a relief from the heat of the august afternoon. everything i thought i had been working towards was falling apart. or so it seemed. i know now that it was a gift. protecting me from a future i didn't know i didn't want.

another five years has come and gone. i haven't seen that orange chair since. i long for it though. for the familiarity. for it's comfort. even in the confusion that room brought comfort. physically of course, but mostly emotionally. i often wonder if i will ever return to that place. but then i'm reminded it's not the room that matters. it never has mattered. what made that room so special was the community surrounding me. the great cloud of witnesses along my path, helping me to fight my battles.

and then i remember i still have that community. the face are different, as are the stories behind them. but an evolving story needs evolving and changing characters. new faces with new stories to help fight new battles in new places. here's to the next five years.

breaking the silence

well once again i unintentionally neglected the blog. it's not from a lack of anything to say, i've actually had several blog-worthy thoughts rolling around in my head the past couple weeks. it's been more out of lack of time to write them down. it's sometimes always better to chase after things rather than just talk about them.

a couple weeks ago i was sharing what's going on in my heart with my community group. the thing about community is that it's not safe. we were never promised safe. in c.s. lewis "chronicles of narnia", aslan (the god-figure) is described in this way:

"safe?" said mr. beaver. "don't you hear what mrs. beaver tells you? who said anything about safe? 'course he isn't safe. but he's good. he's the king, i tell you."

this is true of god as well as godly community. it's far from safe. when we truly invest in each others lives, it gets messy, dangerous, and it wrecks us. and i think it's one of the most beautiful things that can happen to humanity.

so what has been wrecking my life? stay tuned...

mistakes and frivolity.

god doesn't make mistakes. and as i write this, i'm reminded of what that means. it means it's not a mistake that i'm where i'm at in life, in my career, in the world. i think it's fair to say god also isn't frivolous. i think these two things mean so much more than they seam. it means i was born on february 21, 1983 with a purpose. there is a reason i was born that day, and not the day before. there is a reason "glosli" by sigur ros started playing as i'm writing this. there's a reason i'm in nashville, a reason i live in the house i'm renting with the girls i have as roommates. there's purpose behind my job, even if it's hard to see. he doesn't make mistakes. he did this for a reason.

the question is: what am i going to do about it?

wednesday wisdom: #2

"real religion, the kind that passes muster before god the father, is this: reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world."

james 1:27, the message

wanderlust and dreams undreamt.

reading things like taylor hanson's paper mag blog make me sad and jealous. watching their lives - and the lives of 80% of nashville... people living their dreams. i'm not naive enough to believe it's always easy for them. they have their own share of troubles, doubts, stresses, and deadlines. but at the end of the day, they love what they do. they work with some of their best friends, they work on their own schedule (to some extent), they travel and see the world. they know what they want. and maybe i do. maybe i'm too scared to admit it and to pursue it. i think it can't be done, that i'll fail, or that i'll learn it isn't what i thought it was. burn out. dead end. but i do know this:

-i was made to explore and discover
-i was not made to live in a cage of drywall and florescent lights
-i was made to create. god is the creator, and i was formed in his image.
-i was made to bring him glory.

the power of a song.

i remember 9th grade. my youth group was on our annual winter retreat to warner camp. it was our last night of the weekend, and almost everyone had already gone to bed; there were maybe 3 or 4 of us still awake, plus our two youth pastors, chris and jim. it was late - probably 11pm. chris and jim were sitting in some folding chairs, and the rest of us were cuddled up on a ratty old sofa in front of a blazing fire, trying to stay warm. through the picture windows we could see the snow falling hard - big, fat, slow, heavy snowflakes falling upon the several inches that already covered the ground. it was a beautiful night.

jim started to tell us his own story - one of pain, guilt, grief, and hope. then he told us that this song helped him recover from this particular time in his life, and he and chris started playing their guitars and singing this song. meanwhile whenever i hear it, i'm back in that room, surrounded by close friends, gazing into the dancing flames.

"worlds apart" by jars of clay -



note: this is most definitely notan official video. obviously.

dinner with the new guy

last night was the first time in a month that my community group got together. we normally meet every other week, but two weeks ago i was in michigan, heather had a meeting, and emily and gregory were on their honeymoon. so it was good to regroup and catch up on life together. we also invited our new pastor, russ, to join us. it was good to get to know him a little bit and hopefully we were able to help him feel at home while he waits for his family to make the move from kansas city*.

what originally started as a "get to know russ" question-and-answer session turned into some really good conversations about community, relationships (with both friends and family), and transitions. russ shared a lot of things that i really needed to hear. he reminded me that "god is sovereign, and that we aren't living an accident or a big mistake." while i never thought to that extreme (of living an accident or mistake), it was good to be reminded of his sovereignty.

so here's to family, friends (old and new, close and far), and being thankful that i'm not the one in charge.

*if anyone reading this blog knows of anyone looking to buy a house in kansas city, i know someone trying to sell. :)

a quote.

two guys are talking to each other, and one of them says he has a question for god. he wants to ask why god allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world. and his friend says, "well, why don't you ask?" the fellow shakes his head and says he is scared. when his friend asks why, he mutters "i'm scared god will ask me the same question." over and over, when i ask god why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, i can feel his spirit whisper to me, "you tell me why we allow this to happen. you are my body, my hands, my feet."

-shane claiborne

a lesson from the bachelorette

now. i feel like i need to start this blog out by defending myself: i am not a regular bachelorette watcher. a couple weeks ago, laura, our downstairs neighbor came up to our apartment to watch the show, since she no longer has a tv. and as a result, my roommates and i decided we had to watch the last few weeks of it. so. there's that.

anyway. moving on.

last night they showed a clip of her talking to one of the guys she kicked off and she said something that struck me as being not quite right. though, given the world we live in i can totally see why she said this. the guy asked her, “when it’s all said and done, what do you want from life?” and her response was “i want a family that will fill me with unconditional love.”

first of all… your family will not unconditionally love you. they can try and maybe you’ll be lucky and you will have a family who will love you as well as any human can love in a fallen world, but it won’t be purely unconditional. only god can love like that. which brings me to my next point.

we should only expect unconditional love from god, because only he can provide it. and we should be so full of his unconditional love that it pours out of our life into the lives of those we call family (and friends. and neighbors. and enemies.)

so instead of wanting a family who unconditional loves us, we should allow ourselves to receive the unconditional love that god offers, and out of that love we love others.

does this make sense? do you agree? disagree? thoughts?

my story, or, what i want.

several months ago i finally got around to joining a community group in my church. a few gatherings in, one person suggested that we each take turns, one person per meeting, telling our stories.

and then i panicked.

not because i didn't want to tell my story, but because i realized i didn't know what it was.

what is my story? what is any story?

last week i read "a million miles in a thousand years" by my favorite author, donald miller, and later that week i got to hear him speak on the book. the book talks about how to tell a better story with our lives. in it, don defines (well, actually, his roommate defines for him) what a story is: "a story is a character who overcomes conflict to get what he wants." don goes on to explain that the story is only good if what the character wants is interesting. for example, he says, no one wants to watch a 2-hour movie about a guy trying to buy a volvo. we don't care.

so. back to my story. if my story is a character (me) overcoming conflict (let's not get into that now) to get what i want.... wait. what do i want? i don't know. i don't know what i want, and perhaps that's why i don't know what my story is.

i'm sick.

church was intense on sunday. dave mentioned the things that we make idols in our lives... what we let control us. he said the best way to tell what is an idol is to look at what fills our imagination, our time, and our money.

so i thought. and i looked. and i was disgusted with myself.

the things that i let consume my life aren't necessarily bad things by themselves, but to realize how i put those things up on a pedestal, while trampling all over my creator... it's gross.

i'm sick.

it's a good thing he did not come for the healthy.

a place unknown.

recently, a friend of mine questioned whether he was the only one who felt like he was a million miles away from where he was supposed to be. as it turns out, he is not the only one. several people responded, and they all felt the exact same way.

i love nashville. you all know this by now; i talk about it a lot. but there is still a part of me that feels... homesick. but not homesick for michigan (where i grew up). not homesick for indiana (where i lived for four years). but homesick... for a place unknown.

maybe this is because i have always felt as though the world is much too big to live in one place for forever. maybe it's because i have such a strong desire to travel (if only my funds were as equally strong).

or maybe, just maybe, it's because we weren't designed for this world.

perseverance.

i am not in the mood to blog today, but i agreed to participate in "blog everyday september". so, here i am, blogging.

it may be a small feat, but still, it is perseverance. which is actually something i've been thinking about quite a bit lately. i don't have enough of it. i need more in so many areas of my life.

we rejoice in our sufferings,because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.romans 5:3-4

silence.

this weekend i got caught up on my friend chris's blog. one day he decided that he would start to drive in silence during his commute. rather than spending the 12 minutes listening to a few songs, he chose to spend that time in prayer.

upon reading this, my first thought was "that would not be very peaceful if i turned off the music in my car."

for those of you who don't know, last year someone attempted to steal my catalytic converter. they didn't take it, but they did saw into my exhaust pipe. it has been welded, twice, but it's just a patch. it's not really fixed, and therefore my car is loud. and i mean l o u d. so i drown it out by blasting music.

i hide the noise with music, and the noise is the telltale sign that there is a problem with my car.

i could say the same about my heart.

breathe.

breathe.



breathe.






breathe.

a glass can only spill what it contains

sunday in church we talked a lot about conflict. i had always considered myself as one who tends to avoid conflict. but leave it to randy to turn things upside down on me. he started talking about how there are people who say they hate conflict and so they push everything down inside until if finally explodes. in the past he has used the illustration of trying to hold a beach ball under water... you can only hold it there for so long before it jumps back up and breaks the tension of the water's surface.

and that, my friends, is where i am in most of my relationships. obviously some relationships are healthier than others, but i can count several specific times when i have held everything down until i couldn't contain it any longer.

so there you have it. my confession: i need to learn how to confront in love.

a glass can only spill what it contains. what does my glass contain? love?

in other news, i want to congratulate my old* friend libby on her recent move. i it is a breath of fresh air to live in a place where you can really feel at home.

more on that next time... when i blog about my past three years in nashville.

*libby is not old. she's just an old friend. i believe we are going on 23 years of friendship now. crazy.