Trying Our Best

My husband and I decided that power couples, more than anything, are two people doing their best. With how many different monkeys we have spinning on plates, I'd say that for us, we aren't doing our best, but we're sure trying. 

This semester I have felt like I was falling to pieces, dissolving into a human puddle person. Between family medical emergencies, computers that crash when you've just finished an 8 page research paper due that day, huge cracks in your windowshield that you could have prevented but didn't quite make it in time, deceased dogs, fat jeans that don't even fit anymore, 50 students, the work to grade of 50 students, 300 pages of required reading a week for my grad classes, and my never-just-40 hour work weeks, I have been barely holding it together. 

Meanwhile, the hubs stopped working full time in order to work full time for no pay at the same place he had been working full time for full pay. Hooray internships!!!! He also took 12 hours of classes on top of that. 

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo you could say that we're a little stretched thin. 

Moments of this semester, I have felt truly thankful and blessed. I love my students. I love them. And I love seeing the students I helped get here around campus, making friends, growing up. 

I have been thankful for the continued life of my grandmother, after she scared us pretty good at Thanksgiving. 

I have been thankful for classmates that I have enjoyed very much in my grad classes this semester. 

I have been thankful for time spent with my brother's family from Atlanta last month. Only seeing them once a year makes me feel like they grow 6 inches and 6 years of maturity each time I see them. I can't believe how much they've grown. 

I've been thankful for time spent in Arizona for my cousin's wedding and the good memories made climbing mountains and laughing with my family. 

and I've been thankful for having my husband as the light at the end of the tunnel of this semester. He makes sure I eat food and take care of myself. And he gives me all the snuggles. Marriage is so hard sometimes with all the stressors of life, but having a human there to love you and bring you shoes when you forget them and bring you snacks to work when you get a meeting scheduled--again--over your lunch break and squeeze you when you're panicking and squeeze you when you have a migraine and try really hard to make you laugh when you're grumpy is the best. He's the best. 

So, at the close of a really hard semester, when I feel like I am dragging my empty body across the finish line by one bloody arm, I can really only be thankful. Anything else might feel justified, but it wouldn't be true. I am loved, I love others, and I am loved by God. At the end of a difficult season, that's the part that's most important. 

Pretense and Prayers

This week, I have found myself caught in a difficult place I have found myself so many times before.

To families I work with, I have often called myself a "nontraditional Christian". Perhaps that's prideful, perhaps it's a cop-out so that I avoid judgment, but I'm really not 100% sure of my motivation. A professor in college once called my personality "slippery". I didn't like that, but he's not wrong. I avoid, as much as possible, any and all definition, even though there's nothing more satisfying than feeling known.

I am a question asker. I am a person who needs to know "why". I am a fighter and a seeker, and that can come off wrong. Many times, people have judged that as not being a faithful Christian because they see it as a sign of doubt or disbelief. In my mind, I see it as a sign of faithfulness, of belief. Why fight for something you don't believe in? No, you fight for that you do believe in.

Throughout my life as well, I have been in puddles of "perfect" people while at the same time having a knack for collecting broken people. Maybe I love the broken because I know that we are all broken. Everyone is broken. Everybody has their fissures and canyons in their life. That's why we need Jesus. But there's something beautiful about broken people's inability to hide theirs. You can see Jesus better when you can't hide where he's working, or wants to be working.

Perfect people, people with rock solid testimonies and veneers, bother me. They bother me at some level because I distrust them and their stories. God is good; yes, all the time. But he is also working all the time. In true community, you share. If we are supposed to be in true community spiritually, then why are we not sharing? Why are we judging instead? I posit that we judge out of our own insecurity, out of our fear that we ourselves are seen as being imperfect. Because maybe we won't be respected anymore or get that job at that Christian foundation or be thought of as a "struggler."

Because we have seen how those labels have power and have seen their impact on lives, as people start to believe what they are called. We're responsible for our own development, but it is hard not to feel the sear of the rejections and the names.

My broken collective has all gone different directions. Some have become their labels, some have overcome their labels. All grow, just in different ways.

Have you ever sat down to "judge" someone's faith walk for one reason or another? Walk that line with prayer and petition. Just because one person has chosen to be vulnerable and share where they honestly stand does not mean that they are necessarily more or less "solid" than the person who stands in front of you and says that they're rock solid in Jesus. No man knows another's soul. No one has "arrived" in their spirituality or their walk with Christ. One man's plateau or peak period may be during another's valley. Give them six months. The man you thought couldn't be shaken might have proven himself weak and the "weak" man may still be standing strong.

We are called to love, to lead back to Christ, to be diligent and prayerful and gracious. We correct when we need to correct, but we should always start with love and with God.

I am a person with the propensity for very strongly worded opinions, This is something I am challenged about daily and something I try daily to be more wise about. However, with regards to this topic, I know that I speak truly when I say that above all other subjects, this one should be treated with more gentleness, wisdom, diligence, and prayer than any others before words come out of our mouths.

Paul writes, "may your love abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you maybe able to discern", "approve what is excellent" "and may be sincere and blameless for the day of Christ--filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ".

The first definition that comes up for "sincerity" is "without pretense." Without our masks.
When I read this verse, I hear, "If you are following God with your whole heart, then he will cast aside all human-coated thoughts, leaving behind only what is true and good and holy."

Follow God, listen to his voice while turning yours off, and speak out with a voice that is not your own, one not coated all over with your pride, your position, your particular brand of sinful.

I Know You By Name

If you've never read The Book Thief, you're missing out.
Found for a quarter at a garage sale down the road, this book was a steal in and of itself.

The Holocaust is not something to be taken lightly, but it gets as close as you can without crossing any lines. Why is that important? Because humor, even dark, is part of the human experience, and Book Thief's purpose is to show the human experience as colorfully as possible, the whole of it, not just in part.

The entire narration is from the point of view of Death. It's the first I've read of its kind, but the most interesting part is how Death describes himself. As "amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's" (Zusak 1). He calls himself a result. And, when asked to describe himself, he says for humans to only but look in a mirror. Humans, he posits, are the real carriers of death.

However, in my English II course, we explore how that's the most powerful and hopeful statement. We have the capacity to carry death, but that also means we have the power to carry life, to promote joy and healing and goodness.

Death searches, throughout the entire novel, to answer the question of why human existence is worth it. He knows it is, but he is on a quest to show how.

So, that is our course thesis for this novel: Human existence is worth it.

At the end of each class period, we spend time answering the half statement, "Human existence is worth it because..."

It's my second time teaching through this book, but this semester has hit nerves so much deeper inside me and, I believe, my class.

There's something about this semester at my university that has just been a little off-kilter, a darkness felt by so many of our students, faculty, and staff. As a believer, I do believe that spiritual warfare is alive and well and that the enemy seeks to steal, kill, and destroy, especially when there is so much life and light in a place.

I have, thus far, had 3 students drop my course out of overload. Two stayed at the university, one withdrew due to suicidal ideations. Another yet is taking next semester off because of similar mental and psychological stress. And then there's [Claire].

If we are being honest, Claire bothered me. She came to even the first day of class late. She would sit there and I just felt uncomfortable by her presence because it came off as almost hostile. She rarely turned in assignments. It was as if school--and my class--were below her. Which surprised me, as she is an English major.

Then, one day at Walmart, I saw her with another student of mine who I had recruited, a student I dearly love. Call it Jones' Effect, but if she's friends with my student, she is a good person. My whole perspective changed, and I felt it deeply that I needed to reach out. Her tardiness had gotten much worse, if she showed up at all.

She shared with me of her depression, how she wasn't coming because she couldn't get out of bed. She hadn't turned in her major paper because she had never even started her paper.

We talked. We met together. We made compromises and worked through her missing pieces. I told her how valuable her feedback in class was to course discussion. She didn't even know she had been "seen."

She started showing up to class right on time. With assignments. Good assignments. Blew me away with her next paper. I thought everything was going better, going better than better.

Then came an email telling me she was hospitalizing herself for self harm.
Then came emails from the registrar asking if she would succeed if she came back; I confirmed.
Then came an email from her asking what work she had to make up, if she could.
Then came the first day of class back after Thanksgiving. Late. No paper.
Then came the second day of class back after Thanksgiving. No Claire.
Then came the classified ad posts desperately asking for help toward this "new treatment" and a public expose on her mental illness.
Then came the text from the university at 10pm last night saying they were searching for a student they believed had self harmed.
Then came heartbreak.

A reassurance of her life was sent about 20 minutes later, but so much damage had already been done. There isn't anything that could convince me that it wasn't her. I'd be delighted to know it wasn't, but it was. I know the evidence too well.

Human existence is worth it because...

The heartbreak is because I know the answer to that question. I know it for me, and I know it for her. In fact, I could write a full list for any one of my students about why their specific human existence is worth it.

It doesn't matter if a person is Christian or not. Their human existence is worth it because they each have the capacity to love and be loved. To bless and be blessed. To care. To listen. To give. To write and think and create and dream and dance and play and BE.

To me, today, human existence is worth it because I know the Lord. I know that he has the capacity and desire to restore the broken and to pour love and compassion and grace out on us. Human existence is worth it because I am known by name by the creator of the world, and he has given me life and the ability and opportunity to love and individually care for so many people around me--and to forgive me when I sometimes suck at loving and individually caring for those around me.

I know that he sees Claire. I know that he sees her hands full of tears and the pieces of her life and that he loves her and has a plan for how to make her broken world into a stained glass mosaic full of light and color and loveliness.

Human existence is worth it because we have potential. No matter how old or young or broken or ignorant, we have potential.
There is so much more than we can see in our frozen moments of life.


*student name changed to protect privacy

Faith like a Lunchbox

My husband has a new habit of taking everything but the correct lunch. We'll have a full conversation about where the right lunch is and what the right lunch is but, as soon as he gets to work, I'll get a text with the truth of which lunch he actually took.

Last week, he took both his lunch and my lunch instead of the muffins I'd baked him for breakfast. Husband up two lunches and down one breakfast and wife left with no lunch.

Last night, I packed up his lunch and didn't even tell him about the second one hidden in the back, just saying, "Remember, your lunch has the blue lid." And, since blue is his favorite color and the lunch was the only one visible and sitting right at the front of the fridge, I thought we'd be golden.

I actually thought he was joking when he texted me this morning saying he could swear I'd said red push lid.

Allow me to explain. The red lidded lunch had about 4 stale noodles and a drizzle of marinara. It was also buried in the back of the fridge. The blue-lidded lunch had a big, delicious slice of homemade quiche in it.

**When I say stale, I mean, we forgot them in the pot in which they were made on the stove all night and a full work day sometime last week.**

Instead of a healthy well-balanced meal for lunch, he will be jawing his way through his handful of mostly naked penne that is not going to sustain him through his work day and night class.

As I was joking with a coworker about this, I thought about how often God must think the same thing about us:

"Jamie, I prepared and set aside for you this amazing, healthy choice for you. I wanted that for you. Did you take it? No. You went digging around the backside of life and found door number 3 which, I know for a fact, will not satisfy you."

It's so easy to make the right choice, but we get caught up in ourselves at the last second. We think, "this is too simple. I must have misunderstood." We convince ourselves it has to be someone else's, that we should look for something other. We think that we deserve something less, that it's too good for us. We're simply not paying attention.


"Wake up, you sleepyhead city! Wake up, you sleepyhead people! King-Glory is ready to enter."
(Ps 24:7)

May our minds daily be awakened to truth, to God, and to lunch.

On Prayer and Pens

Lately, I've been feeling the crux between who I am and who I could be. 

The could be isn't necessarily a good one. 

I, like all humans, have the propensity for both good and evil. 

Creativity, excitement, book worm-iness vs. numbness, depression, anxiety

Sometimes, I delude myself into thinking that I do not do the good for me because I don't have the time. Time-filled days call my bluff, though. I do not do good because I can't make myself. 

And what's so funny and terrible is that if I would move, the rest of me would follow. If I would move, I would keep moving. It takes practice. 

One good day doesn't mean that the next will be just as productive. But that also doesn't mean to give up. It means to practice, in the smallest of ways, discipline. Be consistent. Be persistent. 

I got a letter today from my friend and now long time penpal Leslie. 

Together we discussed prayer and pens, how difficult prayer can be and how settling and clearing writing can be. 

Several years ago, an author named Lauren Winner came and spoke in chapel at JBU. She was super zany with her big ole butterfly glasses, electrocuted looking hair, and Miss Frizzle clothes. Her content didn't help build a case for her either. The most dynamic moment in my memory is of her holding up an invisible squash as though it were the skull in Hamlet and asking if that squash were prayer. 

That question has quietly gnawed at me for all the years since. 

Was that squash prayer? She had tilled the soil and planted the seed and remembered to water the sprout and weeded the garden and pruned the dead leaves and protected the small plant from bugs and squirrels and then, squash. Was that squash prayer? Well...yeah. 

Does that mean that prayer may be more fluid a concept than we think it is sometimes? 

I think yes. 

The deep breath I take to center myself before a phone call, the conscious mercy shown to a persnickety coworker or friend or student, the serotonin supplement I remember to take, the dishes I put up even though it isn't my turn, the letter I write to a friend, the moments spent reading a book and using my mind, all of that might just be prayer. All of that is pursuing righteousness and godliness. 

And prayer, connection, propels us forward, even if at a glacial pace. 

Leslie ended her letter in a way I found poetic in the most beautiful way, and it works as a "call to action", I believe, in a way I'd like to share (pieces of which are paraphrased). 

I hope life is moving forward for you in the best ways. Writing these letters reminds me that life has substance, structure, and is in need of redemption, though the process of writing in itself presses me to pursue a better ending. And seeing your thoughts reminds me that I am not alone in my inward struggles, that everyone has them; an ever-needed "of course other people live life too" moment is always found when I open your envelopes. 

May we all pursue better endings and good words.

Hearing Voices

Recently, I became an associate editor for a very small publishing company,  called Kharis.

Someone in my office asked me how I dig my way through manuscripts written by non-writers.

Editing is like music to grammar-y people. In more ways than one.

For me, when I hear music, it's difficult for me to keep track of the actual melody. To do so takes conscious effort. More often, I naturally hear the harmony.

In the same way, when I read a paper or manuscript, I don't hear the content. I hear the grammar. So for me, it isn't a question of agreeing with the information being said, so long as that information is being communicated in the clearest, cleanest way possible.

And, like music, each voice has a different tone.
When you are listening to the radio, you can tell by various clues and the texture of the music whose it is, even if there are no vocals.

The longer you "listen" to any particular writer, the more you know their voice. And, the more you know their voice, the more you "learn" them. You anticipate particular errors or writing patterns, favorite words. When you need to add in a section to provide more clarity, you know the language structure to use in order to graft in the new piece seamlessly.

Like most things, I find that I get re-directed to God when I get into my land of metaphors, as he, too, understands this. He knows my tendencies toward both sin and saintliness. He knows the posture of my language and my heart. And, like any good editor, he knows how to redirect in order to gain the best possible outcome. It's up to the owner of the manuscript, though, to accept the edits.

In Decembers

In Decembers, I miss God.

I recognize that that's an odd sentiment to share (and to have) but it's the closest way I can think to communicate how I feel.

Belfast and I have reconciled. We are good friends now. My second semester there was beautiful in every way, and even the first semester was necessary.

But in Decembers....I get in my own head. Can't shake it.

Decembers taste like unending, UK-attempted green bean casserole, apples, puzzle dust, cold tea, grief, and vomit. It smells like I need to shower. It sounds like "Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More" and "Dark Horse" and songs I still can't listen to. It feels like darkness crushing into each cell.

Last December, I spent my time with friends at graduation in Belfast, laughing with my housemates, loving and being loved by my handsome boyfriend, holding my family. It was a good time.

This December, I'm so happy at work, at home, in Tulsa. I am so blessed. I am so happy.

and yet.
and yet.

In Decembers...I feel it all. As though nothing present were present.
As though I were still there.

Still alone.
Still dying.

Which, I recognize, seems like an incredibly hyperbolic thing to say. But I never felt as dead-souled as then. In all the other months, I don't think about it, I don't feel about it, I don't write about it. In this month, though, it is around every email, song choice, nap, bend in my drive.

You know when you're sick and all you want is your mom?
No matter your age or situation, your mom is your first instinct to call out for. You want her. You need her.

Even though I'm better--wonderful, in fact--that's how I feel. I feel sick. My mom wasn't there, couldn't be there, the first time it happened. The one who took care of me--geez. the only one in that whole stinking country who cared about me, it seemed at the time--was God.

So now, when I feel sick at heart and soul from feel-backs and uncontrollable sentiments, I miss God. We aren't separated, but we aren't together in the same way.

My mom and I talk all the time. We go shopping, we enjoy one another, but our relationship is very different when I'm ill.

It's the same with God. We spend time together, but it just isn't the same kind of need.

Either way, here I am. Feeling. Sick at heart with no reason to be. Missing God, and thankful for my savior. Thankful to have been saved and loved and have my life and my favorite country redeemed.

Pregnancy, Weight

Though it's called the miracle of birth, and we get so excited when we learn of a friend's pregnancy, there's something sinister about pregnancy.

For some women, like my mother, it actually has the potential to be kind of a miraculous experience. My mama and her birthing hips had a lovely time during pregnancy. 

For others, not so much. 

Currently, all of Siloam is pregnant it seems. 

I've got a whole theory about the role that essential oils is playing in this (they are not an alternative to birth control, friends), but nevertheless, cute pregnant bellies fill the streets here. 

A friend of mine (home birth types) just gave birth (in a hospital) after being more than 2 weeks late and after more than 48 hours of labor. 

Another friend has been ill every evening at 5pm since she first learned of the human in her belly. 

The wife of a professor friend--the one responsible for getting myself and Julius initiated and integrated with our church--has horrible pregnancies. Horrible. 

He is a compulsive coffee drinker. I remember as a student in his class during her last pregnancy that he made his coffee on the porch of his house because it would make her vomitous. 

During her last three pregnancies, she's been ill to the point of hospitalization. 

This one was awful as well. But with pregnancy, unlike other diseases and abnormal growths, there's a heightened layer of joy and anticipation to pair with the anxiety and nausea. At the end, you'll have a squirmy life. 

However, though she was an invalid for a couple of months, she found joy and comfort in the fact that through pregnancy acupuncture and other homeopathic remedies, she had been able to avoid the hospital and had finally made it back to church and most of her normal life. 

Today, we received a short email from our pastor--The family mourns the loss of their unborn child...pray for her as she'll have to go through delivery soon. 

I've heard mothers compare labor and delivery to a lot of things I can't unhear, like volcanic eruptions, dinosaurs escaping, being dipped in acid. 

None of those are comforting images. 

Again, though, they are mixed with this peace because it's worth it. It's worth it to finally be with this creature that you and your beloved have created together, procreated in the image of God. And it's beautiful. And it's valuable. And it's good. 

I've just got this image in my head, though, that I can't release myself from. 

We are not meant to grieve like those without hope. 

But finding hope in more than "We'll be together one day in Heaven" is surely impossible in the midst of excruciating pain that will leave to the inevitable delivery of death. 

Today is a reminder to be thankful for children, thankful for nieces and nephews, thankful for our own lives and the lives of the women who gave birth to us. 

Some miracles become people. Some, hidden miracles I suppose, are an opportunity to grow closer to Christ, as that is the only option, the only source of true reprieve when our hearts feel like they're being torn out. 

Mind Your Mind

Today at work, it was my turn to do the devotion.

It is not my habit to sign up, but someone was covering a college fair for me, so I took his devotion day for him.

It is also my intent to choose a day for devotions in which I am feeling particularly holy.
This is not that week.

It has been nearly 7 days of stress and frustration.
Overlapping travel planning with the final details of student move-in is a lot more work than you might think. There are also people everywhere, and my introverted self is just not used to it.

I could give a series of excuses, but the end of the story is that I'm just being short with people because I feel a little overwhelmed.

Yesterday was really bad.

Work was bad, tried to go to yoga and came across an unexpected face so I left before it started, went to a girls' night with some people I didn't know, then ended up just going out with friends.
There didn't seem to be any sources of relief for anxiety.

So I wake up, right, and I have to come up with something inspiring and holy to say.

First, I checked Oswald Chambers, but that just wasn't really apt, so I glanced through my bookshelf and found Jill Briscoe and a section in one of her devotions entitled "Doing Yesterday".

It fit.

My devotion of the morning, using her words, was about the tendency of ours to replay yesterday over and over and over again, how we could have done different and said different and all the bad things. We avoid God and just try to talk with ourselves, knowing full well we do so just to avoid the words we know are coming to us from God.

It's over.
Move on.

As a writer, I recognize the capacity of one chapter to be six different things depending on perspective. I can change the entire story just by giving it a revision of outlook.

In the same way, each day we are given the opportunity to look back on our words and actions and the words and actions imparted to us. We are given the opportunity to filter them, judge them, color them however we do so choose.

I can look back on yesterday and see the aggravations and set-backs or I can look back on the hidden pieces--like the gem of a student who appeared last-minute and, despite his financial setbacks, is going to make college happen. Or like my sweet housemates who have become to me inseparable friends and confidantes. Or like church friends who seek me out. Or my sweet boyfriend who is willing to be gracious and give me the benefit of the doubt when my hurt communicates messages I don't intend them to mean.

In any situation, there is so much good underlying.

Jill's prayer is for the Lord to help her mind her mind and for the Lord to mind her heart.
It is up to us not to forget and move on or push out of our minds but actively choose to see the world just a little differently and revise our yesterdays just a bit more constructively.

Change what you can change, apologize for any misplaced words or actions, learn what you can, then look forward.

It's Good to be Smart

It's better to be kind.

The wife of my smallgroup leader, a lady named Heather, was a teeny tiny, quiet woman with a gush of energy inside her, helpful considering she has two boys and now a sweet little girl.

My second semester in Belfast, Heather really took after me, bringing me over for tea, getting me little gifts (like a measuring cup with American conversion rates on it, so I could bake easier), and just showing me kindness.

In small group, she didn't talk a whole lot--I would definitely put her on highly on the introvert scale. But one-on-one, she really connected well with others. I was most thankful for her.

One time, when we were talking about her older son who is wicked smart, she told me that with her boy, she is often drawn to tell him, "It is good to be smart; it is better to be kind."

Being someone who has been born into American competitiveness, a culture where getting ahead by whatever means possible is the only way, this was kind of shocking to me to hear a mother praising her son's braininess but pushing him toward a lifestyle characterized not by wits but by wisdom and gentleness.

In a month, I'll have all 58 of my new students (450 overall oh my goodness) arriving on campus. Some of them I know to be both very smart and very kind. Some are very kind and lack in educational prowess. Others, I know to be intelligent but I have some doubts as to their inter-social tendencies.

I guess as an education facilitator, I'm supposed to cheer on the smart ones. That makes sense. They're the ones who supposedly will do best here.

I was one of those.

But was I kind?

At my core, kindness and gentleness toward others is something very important to me. The manifestation of that, though, is something I have had to work hard to express well.

You see, I can't make myself get on-board with the smarties. Life is more than being smart. University community, not just high data GPAs and test scores, is what makes being at college "the best four years of your life".

Curious, kind students who want to learn and connect beat out brilliance.

Naturally being the best can lead you to believe that you don't need help, that you don't need to connect, that you don't need contribute and respond. And the worst part is, you don't even see that that is hurting you longterm. You see it as a point of pride that you have all that you need tucked inside you.

The thing is, that doesn't stay inside the classroom.
We aren't as compartmentalized as we would like to believe.

Who we are inside BBL_3003 directly relates to who we are at home or church or work.

It all comes down to who we believe we are.

If you believe yourself to be someone entirely self-sufficient, when push comes to shove in your relationship, will you not pull away, throw up walls, and cut out your significant other from relating to you, helping you, or making decisions with you? Will you not turn away from God in the rough times because you can fix the problem better yourself? Will you not miss out from good ideas from coworkers when you are working on a new project?

We are build to relate to one another and to fail and to learn together.
It is good for us to be smart, but it is better for us to be kind.

Ear-Splitting Offspring: When Faith Fails

Last week in Bible study, we talked about the 400 year period of time in which God was silent with his people.

Silent.

Have you ever gone through a period of your life in which you felt the absence of God's voice?

Do you feel as though maybe you've never heard his voice at all?

Then you know the confusion/doubt/anxiety/stress/hurt that comes along with hearing nothing.

Looking back through the histories, we see the way in which God worked it all out for his glory, his good (Oh Jeremiah 29:11, how you plague me), but that is a very long time.

My question back to my bible study leader was this: "How did Christianity survive?"

His answer made sense to me, but I am still pretty cynical about the whole thing.

Christianity survived because there were those who kept up, with obedience and faith, the practices of the church.

But for 400 years?

Of COURSE there were Pharisees by the time Jesus came around, and how could we blame them? They had centuries of works with no relationship to spur them on. Eventually, yah, wouldn't that lead you to legalism?

They explained this as well by telling me that there were both Pharisees as well as those still truly filled with hope, holding fast to the assurances of the scriptures.

They kept up their faith on a promise, though they didn't have firsthand knowledge of the content of that promise.

Once, when I was in Belfast, I met an ex-Christian. It was a rough day, and I was in no mood for a fight, but maybe I needed to have that semi-fight.

In the midst of him telling me how silly I was to believe in a God and questioning why I would, I told him that sometimes, you just need to. Not out of compulsion but because, sometimes, you need the lifeline possibility that there is a reason for:pain/suffering/death/divorce.

That “sometimes” introduction can be the beginning of a really beautiful thing. Not every relationship has a book-worthy beginning. Jesus doesn’t really care how we come to him, though. He cares that we come at all.

What happens when faith fails, though?

What should our response be in the times that suddenly everything feels false, where prayer feels one-sided, when we ask for a sign/answer/direction and receive nothing?

I don’t know.

In times I have felt that way, I have continued to pursue all options on the hope and determination that God will start shutting doors if I just start moving forward. 
But what if all the doors open.
Or all the doors close.
What then?

Should I assume that the answers are all around me already if only I would sift through my own perceptions and bias to see them?
Should I assume God will bless wherever I choose?
Should I assume that the correct doorway has yet to appear?

When faith fails...it's time to redefine faith. Or, rather, to give thought to the definition of faith.

Faith: noun: complete trust or confidence in someone or something. 

Complete trust or confidence. 
Man, I think the last time I had complete trust or confidence in someone was before I was aware enough to realize what I was doing. 

As a baby, you may not consciously decide to put all your cards of faith in with your parents but, given your behavioral responses to them, it is evident that you do. 

As babies, when we get hungry or are afraid, we cry. 
If we did not anticipate a response of food or comfort, we would not cry. 
Because we trust in the goodness and consistency of our parents, though, we know intrinsically that our tears will bring them immediately to our side. And, if not immediately, we know they will be there as soon as humanly possible, if only we will hold out for them. 
The times our parents don't come are when they understand their children's tears enough to know when a response is not required, when it would ultimately serve their child best to self-sooth, even if it kills mom and dad to hear them wailing. 

Maybe that's how it is with God. 
Maybe he hears us cry and knows its time for self-soothing, to be empowered with the training he has already given us to reach our own conclusions. 

For now, then, that's how I'll answer. When God seems silent, my spirit should reflect and turn quiet as well, looking, watching, and waiting for something I may not otherwise be able to perceive in my hysteria. 

The Israelites cultured a spirit of faith, fed with promises, to sustain them. 
Then, as he said that he would, their father, Jesus, came to soothe, save, and sanctify. 

Get Squeamish: Blood and Guts

I'll bet the majority of women spend their periods wondering how it is that women, for centuries, have been able to survive such a substantial amount of blood loss each month.

I was thinking about periods today as I was reading about the woman who bled, who reached out to touch Jesus, and who was healed in her faith.

Bringing up "that time of the month" can be really uncomfortable. Even my sweet daddy, who has been married for a bazillion years to my mom, gets stuttery when he tries to be polite and ask me if I need to pick up any "personal things" at Target when I come home to the "big city" and get stocked up on life supplies (small town struggles).  

I'm sure I lost many readers in the opening sentence even by mentioning that taboo subject (Is she really writing about THAT?).

The Bible sure doesn't shy away, though. It brings up Aunt Flo several times throughout its 66 books. That brings us to the gospels, Luke 8, and the woman who bled. 

This lady had a straight up 12 year period. 

What a miserable existence.

And often, I'll bet, that's where our thinking about her ends, with her blood and with her faith.

God never just stops at the physical though.

You ever pause to think about what her plague entailed?

Women in those days were considered unclean during their periods, banned from the intimacy of relationships. Periods are good, though. They represent a woman's capacity of inhabiting life, even if they didn't take that month's egg up on the option to. 

For our Luke Lady, though, it was a 12 year symbol of death, separation, and shame.

Can you imagine that?

We have nightmares of being turned down for a date, of standing naked in front of the class, of being singled out for our big noses, but those are all pretty fleeting moments of shame.

Picture being known by your qualifier for more than a decade. For her, being known for being "unclean" for 12 years and what that must have done to her personal sense of identity.

Men are thinking, "I don't have a uterus. I can't get there to empathy." So picture just this much: No physical intimacy for 12 years. Nothing. 

It hurts to the bone to go 12 days, 12 weeks without so much as a hug, I would know.

How excruciating that must have been.

And yet. (With God there's always an "and yet") And yet, how beautiful, how wonderful, what an ecstatic sense of relief and glory it must have been to have had that bloody old self ended in one desperate touch. In one desperate move toward hope.

That is the promise of Christ.

That is what we live for: to know that no matter the degree of our unclean existence or removal from dignity, humanity, God is capable and willing to touch us, love us, bring us back to complete selfhood. 

Hadden: Belfast Brought Back

There is an acute release of the soul which comes only when in the presence of one who knows you.

Not someone who has heard your story or your interests or work ethic or habits but someone who is able to discern your character, who is unwilling to misunderstand you.

They are not flippant and they take their time to study, so as to gather the whole picture before making judgments about who you are. Very few in any person’s life can go into this category.

Hadden is one of those people for me.

As the director of studies in Northern Ireland, he was the person who picked me and my team up at the airport during my very first visit (I sat by him the whole van ride to the manor and heard the story of how he fell in love with his wife Betty), and he was the person who was my stable ground when I moved. Though our visits were infrequent, he always approached me with love, with compassion, and with Christ.

There’s something about “old folk” I love and it’s this: they don’t give you no bull crap Christianity. 

Rather, it seems to pour out from a deep and still place and it resonates with truth inside the listener.

I heard a lot of bull during my struggle but never from Hadden, and I think that’s why I love him so. He listened, validated the truth of my words or weeded out the untruth, then redirected me to Christ but also to tea and a hug. It was not indulgent, but it was also not canned.

Hadden saw the ugliest, most pulpous parts of my wreckage, and yet, he trusts me, he loves me, and he always speaks truth over me.

Sometimes I forget who I am.

Who I am here, I feel, does not always reflect who I was there.

Perhaps it is because I did feel so lost and forgotten and silenced that I now find myself almost constantly talking, in a way that practically screams, “NOTICE ME NOTICE ME NOTICE ME”.

Do I want to be noticed or do I want to follow Christ?

Because, if I were to be totally honest with myself, when I was fully following the Lord, I was deep and still and quiet and, somehow, I was seen, though I didn't draw overt attention to myself (you know, being that I lived alone and for a long time had no friends). And now, when I am surrounded by others, I often feel more unknown and misunderstood and alone in my true self than I did then.

Part of that is how I have ceased to write. And part of that, as well, is that I am closer to “reality” than I was there. I am closer to the consequences of my own words, good or bad, than when I lived abroad and this nondistance is discomfiting.

Being known to the level which I desire takes a lot more time than my patience feels as though it can handle, which leads to a lot of explaining on my part. That, as you know, can never end well, as words, unlike consistent behavior over time, can bounce all kinds of directions in other people’s perceptions.

To be known is to have a voice without speaking.

And it’s as though I forget to trust that the Lord writes my reputation, not me. What will be will be, and nothing I can do is going to make me get ahead. All I can do is follow.

I’m pretty passive and a very good follower in so so many ways. That is not one of them.

What do I fear?

I fear that reverence to my true nature will lead me back to being alone, deeply alone. And sometimes, in a very human way, I don’t think it’s worth it.

Yeah, sometimes I really miss the immaculate times of tea and tears with God, but other moments, I do not remember those experiences clearly enough to want them over what I have now.

Then comes Hadden to speak in chapel this week. Hadden, whose friendship blossomed during a time when no one could hear me, and I remember how right and pure and exactly good and better than everything else it is to be someone who is known. To be known by man is precious; to be known by God is worth far more.

Yoga Best

It's time to accept the fact that there is not going to be a time where the prospect of going to yoga at 6am will appeal to me. Especially in winter.

But I'm always glad I have gone.

Our instructor always has us dedicate our time to someone, which feels weird.
It shouldn't, though. since I spend most of the "mindfulness" time praying anyway.
Dedicating the time is more akin to intercession.

Usually, I don't plan who to pray for. When we start the whateverit'scalled breathing (ujjayi breathing) and starting stretches, a lot of times someone just shows up in my mind. It's not work at all to pray for them, it just kind of happens.

Yoga and prayer are a funny couple, as yoga a lot of times involves a lot of pain and struggle and "almost", almost getting that pose right, almost getting that anxiety out of my muscles, almost about to break my wrists and, consequently, my neck.

There are so many times when I pray that I feel a space of contentment, of speaking the words I know.
It's not until some event comes along that I push in to my heart to speak, meaning the words more intently, much like a yoga instructor pushing you deeper (horribly) into a certain pose. Tell you what, there's nothing like the feeling of poisoned needles into your lower spine to wake you up to talk to Jesus. HEYO

Nothing like God doing something similar to push you in like direction toward him.

Sometimes I wonder if that's all right, though.

I have been told before and have come to think of myself as a good woman for a crisis.
Stress and I handle one another pretty well actually. I'm extraordinarily productive and focused, if not a bit edgy.
When given a challenge or serious opposition, some fire licks inside and I kick it into ninth gear.
It's the straight shots, the easy doors, the mundane office work that gets me dumps water on me, however.

How do you learn to serve God in the shavasana as well as the mandukasana?

The Domino Effect

What's crazy is, if my phone wouldn't have drowned, if rice would have solved the problem, if Apple was helpful, if the water damage man had been there on Saturday to fix it, if the phone repair shop had been open the first time I checked on Monday, if I hadn't gone back to Starbucks after dropping off my phone, and if a couple hadn't stolen my cozy window spot, none of what happened would have happened.

As it was, upon sitting down in space number 2 in Starbucks, a girl asked if she could sit with me before seeing that it was, in fact, me whom she was asking. It was my coursemate. 

Of course I was delighted to have her sit with me, regardless that we had never spoken really before. 

I offered her a cookie (baked lemon lavender cookies at Eli's idea. Note to self: always trust Eli's cooking ideas) and we began to chat. 

We ran from how long I'd be in the country to young marriage (I'm leaving in June to make it for Kira's wedding) to Presbyterians (I guess in this country, Presbies get married very young). Naturally, this led to me asking after her own religious beliefs and her divulging a lot of pain and bitterness about the religious abuse she (and a heck of a whole lot of people in this country) has experienced. 

I asked a couple handfuls of probing questions (as I am known to do) and, after fully answering them, she asked me after my own religious views. 

Now, there's something I've started doing since this past summer waitressing, and that is this: I don't volunteer the fact that I am Christian. If there is nothing in me to set me apart as different, I don't want to be any part of furthering the bad Christian title. However, I will tell you all you want to know if you ask.  

Therefore, I told her straightforwardly that I agreed with her view that organized religion has achieved for itself a pretty priggish name for good reason but that I myself had found Jesus himself in a pretty profound way. 

Next came some questions as to a few specifics in my theology (particularly homosexuality, sex before marriage, and "how far is too far?"), and she was a little surprised (in a good way) by my answers' balance of theology and reason. 

She asked about my depression and counselling, and I briefly shared about my last semester's horrors but necessities and reciprocated the question as to whether she herself had ever experienced a wretched time that she would keep in her history anyway, if given the chance to remove it. 

I was given the great honor of hearing her story, known only to half a handful of people. 

Digging deeper, I asked after what it is that gives her the most satisfaction and joy in her life. 

Horses. They're quiet and they listen. 

The way I see it (and told her so as well), the reason we all love dogs and horses so very well is that no matter how many old ladies I kicked in a day, no matter how many homeless people I passed up on the street, no matter how many times I broke my diet, ignored texts from well-meaning friends, or cursed at wait staff, that little ball of fur is going to come running to the door for snuggles and love, treating me like I'm the greatest thing on two legs. 

And if there were a person like that, well, then there just might be grounds for reevaluating everything. 

That, in a nutshell, is why I love Jesus. 

He loves out the very best parts of me regardless of what I've done. 

Love like that changes a person. 

I am a new creation every day because of the wild love I receive and could not ever be good enough to deserve. 

He makes me a better woman, gives me the equipment to love, in part, others in the same way: seeing all and holding onto and speaking truth into the very best pieces. 

My coursemate didn't open up her life to Jesus right then and there, and she may never. But she didn't shut down the conversation either and has asked that we do it again. 

Maybe nothing will come of it, but I am humbled to have been able to even have that one talk. 

My phone is dead. Really dead. And a lot of dead memories that I'd been holding onto in its archives are now gone forever, along with a few pages of writing notes I'd really like not to have lost, but I've no room to be bitter or even upset. 

Scrubbed-down slate for brand new memories, one of which went down in Starbucks over broken Apple products and cookies. 

God is good. 

It Matters or The Bigger Picture

I used to listen to a lot of Ginny Owens.

She's a blind pianist and pretty great, I think. Wonderful lyricist. Not like the wit and charm of Relient K (who literally has an appropriate song for every occasion) but wisdom and spiritual encouragement.

Over the break home, I played one of her songs on repeat called, "I am."

The chorus says, "There's a bigger picture you can't see. You don't have to change the world, just trust in me. "Cause I am your creator. I am working out my plan, and through you, I will show them I am."

I thought of this song when one of my professors from university asked me what the bigger picture here was. Did I see a purpose, a greater purpose in my emotional suffering of last semester?

I didn't know. I saw no purpose except for the death of me for the glory of God which, to be fair, ain't too shabby of a reason all in itself. But things are always greater than us. What is the purpose?

Bit by bit, I think I've started to understand. Not in whole, but in part.

Time after time, I have had the honor of hearing the stories of my own friends back home and students in this group. Time after time, my own story has aligned with theirs, except that they are in the midst of what I've finally been dragged out of by my ponytail and throat and learned from.

I have BEEN there. I am with you in this.

I don't have answers, but I have revelations that never would have occurred to me before and I can't help but pass on with gushy joy and vigor. And if nothing else, I can very simply just be someone who can reassuringly say, "Me too" and stand by them in joint understanding so they know their struggle is not theirs to carry alone.

Hours after one of those conversations, I'll have the evil passing thought of, "Was I just...wise?"

Then there is a moment of choice for me. Either, I say to myself, "DUH!" or "I have no wisdom."

Both are false. I think by experience, nonchristians as well as christians can gain wisdom. The first answer would be prideful and show me to be not wise at all. The second answer just isn't true. By the grace of God, I do have a slight degree of wisdom.

For me, I think the ones who are truly wise are the ones who don't even question it. Who don't care or even consider the question. They love God. They love God so much that he can't help but dominate conversations with his wisdom and grace through them.

My struggles matter. Even if my story only touches one other person in such a way as to cause them to think more critically about his or her life and somewhere, somehow down the line, they are drawn closer to God because of it, then it was all worth it. I don't even have to know.

That's the beautiful thing about being part of the bigger picture. The thin purple thread has no idea that it's a necessary twist to complete a sunset/robe/tulip in the tapestry. But it does. The only one who can truly see its purpose and place is the creator.

It matters what I say. It matters what I do. It matters how I respond to God and people. It matters how I love. It matters how I pray. It matters how I engage.

And how beautiful it is that I'm alive.
Not just resurrected but recreated.
Equipped and able to worship and praise and rejoice with a thankful heart in my and others' existences and place in one another's stories.
I'm not who I was. 

Let Us Now Forget One Another

I'm working on it, I am.

This whole, making friends outside the house thing.

It's a struggle for me, not like that's any surprise. There's a desire for connection and relationship, but that seems to be equally matched by intense resistance to "putting myself out there."

This past Monday, though, was a moderate step forward for me. About a week ago, I made nice with a classmate (one  of the five in my program) in the Special Collections room (the same day I got in trouble for sprawling on floor). That conversation was followed by middleschoolish note passing during class, orange eating under the table (also during class), and an invite to join the weekly group ritual of pre-class lunch (didn't even know they had been doing that).

Therefore, half assuming that they weren't going to actually show up, I arrived at Monday lunch. And you know what? They did.

Each of we five brought a contribution to the meal (mine was orange bread. Yum!). And we chatted and got on. It was actually very fun, and it made class dynamic feel like, well, like it actually had a dynamic.

The social doesn't end there. After poetry class (and my presentation which went quite well I will add), lunch, and modern Ireland class, two of my church friends lifted me from Queen's for dinner.

Over dinner, we caught up on everything we'd missed while I was away in The States over delicious food at Benedict's. A note on them: they've got this stellar deal for dinner where the time you order is the price you pay. So a £12 meal could potentially be gotten for a mere £5.30.

Afterward, we FINALLY got to go to Bible study. The whole group--by nature of it being the Newcomers Lifegroup--had changed over, so there were lots of new names to learn.

After a full 13 hours away from the house, I came home to my Kanukukers.

Things with them are still going well, but I'm beginning to feel the start of separations and, while still enjoying them in spurts, pulling away bit by bit so as to lessen the social "cold turkey" that'll happen in a mere 7 days when they leave.

I never intended to like them or to get attached to them. I can't express how wonderful it's been to have them here as a transition resource, though. They could never understand just where I was and just how much of a blessing their just liking me has been.

With their leaving, the old fear of forgettableness is coming back up.
They will leave.
I will stay.
They will continue to build relationships with one another and live in community.
I will not.
The journeys divide.

I've had thoughts on that particular note of fear over the course of the past few months, and if I'm sincere in them, then this will be okay.

I've always worked so hard to make myself unforgettable, so that people don't want to let me go. But life isn't about me.

All of creation is oriented around the glorification of Jesus Christ.

I'm not meant to be remembered. The pieces of my own fabricated persona are probably pretty revolting in the eyes of God and not worth being remembered.

So if I'm to be remembered by anyone at all, I would hope that they would forget everything about me save that which is of my God.

Game Changer

It's been a long time since I've felt normal. Or like myself.

There have been brief moments (really good ones!) that I've felt it this semester, but they have been seldom. I think the closest I came was the last couple of days I spent in NI. I guess I finally felt free and non-pressured, and my fun came out.

When anxiety-ridden situations arise, my serious side comes in full force and puts my playfulness in permanent time out.

The OneThing conference was top five best decisions I've made (or others made for me) possibly in all of 2013. I only knew two of the people (there were nine in our group) well, two girls didn't want me to come at all (was told this after I was already there), and the rest didn't really know me at all.

Turned out, though, that we had a great group dynamic. The other 8 were all music majors, which meant they were all on board to sing loudly and dance in all times and in all places. In multi-part harmony.

Steve and Alec with their dream lady

There were a few awkward moments the first evening like walking into the house and being told I was sharing a bed with the one girl I'd never met or like when two of the girls made it very evident my presence was unwanted. However, the awkwardness was fleeting.

My roommate and I hit it off as though we'd known each other for all of college. And, it turns out, she knew all about me before I even got there, had seen pictures of me, too. Just didn't realize it until we got to talking (I told you my looks have changed). Then, after an, "Oh my God. You're her," she and I didn't stop talking for the next 6 hours or three nights.

We had a lot in common, she and I, and were both relieved to meet a person who "gets it." Really, so odd. The chances of the two of us specifically being put in that situation are uncommonly low. She's a sensational human. Don't think I've met anyone like her. She will be (and is) a force the devil is going to have a hard time contending with.

The conference itself was okay. Neither unbelievably lifechanging or the worst experience of my life. In many ways, it was exactly what I remember charismatic events to be:

smoke machines, laser beams, light shows. Definitely a concerty vibe. Then mix in mass chanting, dancing in the aisles, and the truly incredible talent of singing the same line over and over for over an hour, and it pretty much sums it up.

Favorite line of the conference was the (my) last evening when Francis Chan spoke. Chan, though he does recognize the Holy Spirit, is not charismatic. Many people actually resented the fact that he was a speaker because of his mainstream ways. However, he did an excellent job of connecting to us and criticizing us. The line: "I think often we fall in love with 'revival' and forget to fall in love with 'Jesus.'" Excellent. So excellent. And true. Our people like a good revival like we enjoy a good pot luck dinner. They should be plentiful and well-attended.

Every night when we'd come home, we'd all sit around in a circle and crack open my Christmas present from Kira: a book entitled "4,000 Questions to Get to Know Anyone and Everyone."

We probably logged 9 or more hours into that book, starting with the Childhood section, travelling on to the Love section and ending with the Habits section.

My two favorite questions that I answered were definition questions, asking after "Intimacy" and "Betrayal."

I'd never really given any thought to my personal definition of either, but I was really glad I was forced to.

For Intimacy, I said that it was anything which created tension. For example, silly things like playing play-doh or dancing or reading a poem you wrote aloud are intimate because there's that moment when the person you're attempting to engage in your special thing has the opportunity to laugh at you or think you're being stupid. It's a moment of brilliant opportunity. The same is true with larger things like sex (literally being naked with another person. yikes) or sharing memories or your fears concerning your character or the future or any sort of argument. Any situation in which you make a terrifying decision to reveal and share with another person something sacred or nervy to you is intimate. Even answering this question was a moment of intimacy and risk.

Betrayal comes when one person makes the conscious decision to sacrifice intimacy in favor of selfishness.

The group I shared with?

To clear up the tension about the two anti-Jamie girls, it came down to perception. They knew me by their perception of my character and not my character itself. Secondhand chatter just isn't fair, neither against me or by me. If you have concerns, go to the source or shut the frick up.
When they took the time (were stuck with me) to understand me, it turns out I wasn't what they expected, especially currently.

I don't think I've conversed or laughed that deeply for that long...possibly ever. There's a lot more I could say about it all, but I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, I shared my struggles with them and they with me, and we made each other actually engage in the discussion about them, but it was constructive and characterized by joy. The deep kind that exists even in the midst of sadness or pain. Happiness is a complacent emotion, the kind that can kill you if you hedonistically chase it. But joy? Real joy? Only beautiful paths are broken-in by joy.

We didn't do any of the prophecy rooms or such that would have been instantly set in the "soul building" category, but my soul was more fortified by those three days with those eight people than I could have even begun to think that it would or could.

I felt normal. Better than normal. I felt delighted and delighted in.

Following Jesus is Putting on Pants or “Structured Depression”

This past summer, I waited on tables for a bit. And, except for the excessive weight and sleep loss, it was a really good experience.

One thing I learned from it is that one crappy table does not make for a crappy day. It makes for a crappy table. Your next table might be the best table ever. Check in with me every 45 minutes or so, and my day assessment would be completely different each time.

That principle is the same with my current struggle against my depression. A morning of exhausted defeatedness doesn’t resign my whole day to the same. It’s hard to maintain that perspective and not sit down in my grief and stay put.

I thought, being home, I would be better, that I would leave this dampered state in Ireland or in Arkansas, but I didn’t.

And I see my siblings and their kids and my parents and I want to be engaging or ecstatic to be with them, but I can’t get there. I feel trapped. I so want to be fun and chirpy or even pretend to be, but I can’t even manufacture that like I used to be able to.

I’m frustrated with myself.

I’m frustrated with who I’ve become, and I don’t want to talk to my friends or “my people” because I don’t want to be such an unending killjoy. Or I don’t want to talk to them because they hear my semester’s story and miss the point. They hear only the superficial struggles, easy to fix and apologize for or only the parts which are congruent with their own delusions of reality, but they don’t hear my heart.

And then, out of nowhere, the plexiglass that stands between me and everybody else melts, and I can hear them and feel happiness and have fun and let go! So wonderful!

Then one comment or well-meant question trips me off again. “Oh you live in Ireland? So jealous. You’re so legit.” You couldn’t be more wrong, but you so don’t want to hear about it.

This was not the plan! This was never the plan! The plan was I go to Ireland and have adventures and the experience of my lifetime, then spend a few days alone, then reunite with people I love for a while, and then come back to my rose-colored life on the emerald isle.

Extended and strangling anxiety was not in the plan, nor being forgotten, nor hatred for almost every moment of my life there, complete aloneness, rejection, replacement, depression, constant misunderstandings, a worry to my family and friends, a worrier for friends who are broken and breaking themselves and, finally, being sent home in disgrace and failure because I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I’m not supposed to be here yet! This was not the plan. I failed. I failed and I’m not getting better. What is the big picture? What is my “why”? And when will I see it?

Being alone, you can be in bad shape and know it to a certain extent, but it’s when you’re surrounded by people that the mirror of reality is shoved in your face.

For instance, I knew I had lost some weight, but I didn’t realize just how much. I’m currently two pounds under my thinnest weight of my thinnest summer, and this the result of “I gained it all back I swear”. No telling how low I got this past semester. Food and I aren’t getting along.

Neither are sleep and I. My sleep schedule has been all kinds of everywhere, but not until I’m around people with normal sleep schedules did I see how odd I’ve been allowing mine to be. 4.5 hours here, 12 hours there, never a pattern, never the same.

Following Jesus is putting on pants; it’s building a steel structure of normality for my fog, and forcing my will and body to cooperate. Like sleep and food. Like making some progress on my looming papers (oops…) or leaving the house. Following Jesus means giving up the last piece of my dignity and self-dependence and getting some help.

I pray so dearly that I never again become so self-important and callous that the Lord has to bring me back to this place.

Pre-Release Reflections

While I've been here, every single thing has gone wrong.

An aspect of each and every one of my most deeply seated fears has come to pass from my nightmare dreamscape and into my reality.

Every single one of my figurative bones was fisted and crumbled in the hands of my God through people and circumstances I had put faith in.

And I did not come out a phoenix.

I came out as blubbering, desperate, shaky, pale, unrecognizable pulp, asking "Who have I become here?"

I have experienced great darkness in my life before. It is terrible and has brought me to moments of unbelievable agony I once felt I could never escape.

This was different.

It was not suffocating darkness but a sword of light.

Lies didn't stick to me. Anxiety didn't overcome me. There was nothing for me to "overcome" necessarily.

Rather, I was being loved so fiercely that He couldn't allow "me" to survive. Good doesn't always feel good.

And then I hit the end. I spoke hope to myself and wrote hope on my blog (or tried to), but I absolutely could go no further.

And it was then, only then, when I was pulverized and defeat had been announced on every front, that God exploded into my life and provided for me a way out. 

The fight that's been so always present in me was beaten out. My hope, my faith in myself, beaten out. Even when I thought everything that could be beaten out was beaten out, God found more.

And yet, I would choose this all again.

No question. No hesitation.

I am not afraid of next semester. After my time of restoration and recuperation, I will come back to the tepee of a life that God and I have built. It will be so good, and I'm even a little excited about what could be in store.

One day, one step at a time.