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. 

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.

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.

Into the Fold

I cried at work today.

We were doing our morning devotions, and today, we decided to do a devotional thought over "O Come O Come Emmanuel", which happens to be my favorite Christmas song.

It also happens to correlate with my favorite Bible verse, which had been weighing on me heavily for the past week or so. This is what I shared and what brought me to big tears of remembrance and of thankfulness and humility.

It re-appeared in my heart last Thursday. I was sitting there beside my boyfriend, our mothers, and our fathers, in the Candlelight service at my university.

As I sat there, I marveled at how far removed and redeemed both our families (and us) had been in the past two years. In the past two years, both our parents had been at places where they thought they had lost their children to darkness forever.

We had thought the same about ourselves.

And in the past two years, we have been restored to joy, to God, and to our families. Granted, more work is yet to be done, but God is so good.

My heart felt full to burst, and the words of Psalm 126 pushed their way into my thoughts:

When the people returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, they became as those who dreamed. Their hearts were filled with laughter; their tongues with shouts of praise. The people of Earth said to them, "The Lord has done great things for you." Indeed, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

That's the verse I shared this morning after we sang.

I reflected on my own "return from Babylon" two years ago tomorrow.

I was broken. I was ugly. I was beyond all reckoning.

And my parents opened their arms up and loved me. My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my grandmother. They loved me and took me as I was: broken. ugly. lost.

And yet, and yet!! the Lord has done great things for me. 
Though Decembers cause me to get way too deep in my head and heart and ache with the past woundedness, I know too of the deep joy of restoration to hope and light and life.

The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

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.

Wish Says, 'Gotta Keep Movin'

My Aunt Joycie used to be integral to the coordination of an event in Tulsa called the Wish Lemons run.

The run was designed to raise money for missions, and it fit Wish well because he himself was an avid runner. On all the cups and t-shirt designs, his mantra, "Gotta Keep Movin'" made you feel like you could actually accomplish something.

Moving isn't running, isn't sprinting, isn't jogging. Moving is determined progress in an intentional direction.

You may be wondering if this is a post about running (it isn't, but I'll get there), since I've mentioned my running progress more than once recently, though I did, in fact, complete a 5K with my coworkers without walking once:

It was on the coast of Florida, and it felt like I was chewing my oxygen.

My stamina is pretty pathetic generally.
It took two months of training with the Couch to 5K app to be able to do it.
Have I run since?
No.
Running is the worst.

More to the point, though, building stamina through slow determination and a time-oriented goal can be really helpful.

If I had been asked to run a 5K in a week's time, I would have been miserable. Miserable miserable miserable. There would have been shin splints, vomit, walking, stopping, and a lot more complaining. Because I hadn't run in multiple years really. At least not with any consistency.

The app started me slow. Lots of walking, with spurts of running, just short enough that they were doable, but just long enough that they winded you.

By the end, I could do it. I did do it.

Reading is something that has been important to be since long before I could actually read. Words, movement of language, poetry, the poetry of communication, the communication of poetic experience. I love it. I have felt more known by books and language than by other people for most of my life. It's interwoven with my identity.

Then it was tidal waved out of my life.

There comes a point of fear when we realize that what we thought was a temporary phase of complacent mediocrity has become a sturdy "normal".

My diet of philosophy, history, historical fiction, modern poetry, creative nonfiction, and science fiction became replaced by pinterest, twitter, and facebook status updates. Neither my eyes nor my attention span could hold on for much longer than 8 or so seconds.

Scroll scroll scroll.
I missed movement, but I couldn't move.
Depression robs you of all you love.
Worse, it  makes you feel as though you weren't robbed but rather have made a choice to abandon.

Perhaps because that's easier than admitting the truth. It's better, you think, to claim you have power, even if in doing so you're communicating that you knowingly want to make the choices that your life is now characterized by.
For me, that's been lethargy, apathy, and mass consumption of the digital world.

Where I had read nearly 60 books in 4 months, the next 4 were only 20, reduced to 8 in the 8-9 months after.
I can't even tell you how many more I started and failed to progress past the first chapter. Didn't even make it through the first chapter, actually.

My pen was just as dusty as my bookshelf. I used to fill pages a day with thoughts and curiosity and updates.

There's not a record of the existence of this past year. I have nothing to say.

Frustration with myself grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.

Is there a point in frustration that frustration becomes your new identity?
Where your words about your inabilities become who you are?

Yeah.

There is.

I also wasn't being very fair to myself.
The books I was choosing were either far above my "reading level" or so far below that they were children's books that I had already read.
Neither are something to build momentum on.

Then, I don't know, I chose one that looked fun and easy, but it was new and interesting, too.
And I finished it.
In two weeks.

After that, I finished A General Theory of Love, which I had started in October and a bunch more technical. The next day.

Two days after that, I finished a book on the history of JBU, which I had started a year to the day that I had started both the book and my work at JBU.

Then I started a totally new one last Thursday, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And finished it yesterday.

That's more consistent reading than I have done in more than a year.
My pen has been more active, too, beginning to fill up the final pages of a tiny journal that's taken me more than a year to fill a quarter of.

It's now been a year since I moved back to The States.
This is the first time in that space or even more than I have begun to feel a return out of the ditches of my dead mindedness and back to me. I'm starting to feel ebbing relief in knowing that the part of me I love most isn't lost for good.

I no longer feel defeated. I feel like moving.

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. 

When the Bottom Falls Out

When I was somewhere in the region of age 7, my family went on holiday to Florida.

On one of those days, my mom and I went on a walk and came across a true clothing entrepreneur. He was amongst the first of his kind, strutting down the street with his trousers down by his knees, held up only by a hand on the belt buckle.

We could not stop laughing, imagining what his predicament would be were he to need the use of his hands. BYE  BYE PANTS! He was bringing booty back, for sure.

Last night, I unpacked my rolley basket with my promotional materials from the trunk of my car and began to make my merry way into a college fair in Temple, Texas (in the rain, mind you), suddenly, the basket I had so much faith in pulled open, leaving all of my set-up magazines, pamphlets, pens, etc on the asphalt.

My day had been pretty absurd, so at this point, I wasn't even upset, I just burst out laughing. Luckily the rep from Abilene Christian gave me a hand and I loaded as much as I could into my tablecloth and carried it like a knapsack into the fair. I can't claim that it was my classiest moment, but I did feel very hick Arkansan. Another load and Abilene and I got it all inside.

I put a lot of faith in that basket. I put a lot of weight in that basket. I had to. There wasn't a way for me to carry all of it, not even with a tablecloth knapsack. But, fair after fair, I was able to rough-it, really only struggling when I had to lift it in and out of the car or up stairs.

When my basket failed me, though, in the least convenient time, my puny muscles and lack of a zillion arms failed me as well, and I couldn't act in excellence. I needed help. I needed my "competitor's" help.

Sometimes, in life, the bottom of our baskets fall out, and all our crap that we've been "successfully" lugging around with us spurts all over the parking lot in the rain and we've got to either accept help or accept that parts of our crap are going to get ruined.

More than that, even when we accept help, the reality is, the process of getting ourselves set back up is going to be messy and a bunch of "put together" people are going to see us struggle. Some may laugh, some may look at us pitifully, and some (those gems) will tell us, "Oh dude. The same thing happened to me a couple months ago...[insert totally humiliating story here that makes you forget that you've got mud on your ankles]."

All of that is better than having a meltdown in the parking lot and never making it inside at all. And yet, so many of us choose the rain.

A Week in Her Shoes

And if the world were black or white entirely

 And all the charts were plain

Instead of a mad weir of tigerish waters,

A prism of delight and pain, 

We might be surer where we wished to go

Or again we might be merely

Bored but in brute reality there is no

Road that is right entirely 

- excerpt from Louis MacNeice: "Entirely"

It was a week of pro-con listing and prayer.

Therefore, it was a week of fasting and walks. Since my sincerity is not to be trusted in food fasts, I redirected it to the next obvious thing: liquid. Anything that wasn't water was off-limits. I have never wanted tea so badly. However, when I felt myself craving it, I took it as an opportunity for prayer and focus.

In addition, I took a daily walk. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others.

Monday, I decided to take a morning run. Those who know me know that running is not nearly my forte. I look like some sort of wounded animal. It ain't pretty and I give up fast. It's my go-to for burning off excess emotion, though. My wee run ended in walking the perimeter of my home.

Tuesday, I walked at night down to the food co-op about a half mile away to top up my bus pass. I left the house at 17:30, which mean my descent down the hill matched the descent of the sun, and my walk home was dark. Cold air, music, and seeing my neighborhood by night. It may be my favorite walk of the week.

Seen at Co-Op: He's with Royal Mail.

 Isn't his wee truck just the cutest little thing? I love it I love it.

Wednesday: I finished up my first class' homework early, so after lunch, I headed into town for a few errands and then a dander down to Queen's Library to retrieve my books for class 2. Just before I started down to University, the heaven's opened up (from the side) and spurted water on us like a slit jugular, in pulses. Luckily, my "errands" were to pick up an umbrella and some wellies, so I changed into them, slipped my cloth shoes into my backpack, and headed out. 

The McClay Library in "Fall"

yes, two views of the same thing. The first because it's clear and the second because I like the reflection of the light on the wet stone. It's my favorite walk in Belfast, from the library to the bus stop. Especially when it's wet, the whole street glows and the church at the end of it is lit at odd angles, giving it an ominous look, but ominous in a good way. I don't know the right word. 

Thursday was Halloween! My walk was more of a swagger in my sweet onesie and, of course, my smooth dance moves (not smooth. not cool even kind of. don't let me fool you). The Europa Hotel was right across the street from Robinson's Pub, where I was. 

Fun fact: The Europa was the most bombed location in all of Belfast during The Troubles. It's also a thing here to fasten yourself to the top and rope shimmy down the hotel. Man, I butchered that. There is probably a real name for what I just described. Either way...

Friday's walk was in Dublin. I went with the group of students down to the south. Dublin is built up around the River Liffey. Our walk mostly involved walking from Grafton (tourist shoppy area) down to Kildare Street (political and artistic area).  

This is across the street from the Leinster House (like the capitol building. hub of political life). This house in particular has absolutely no historical value that I know of, it just happened to have a lovely door next to a really cool lamp post. 

It was also on this day that Hadden (wise and old. all you need to know) told me something I thought was some very good fodder for thought: "If you are true in your intentions and ambitions to follow God, no matter where he's leading you, then he may not show you the one right door--in fact he probably won't, love--but he will make absolute sure you don't open the wrong one." 

Good words and good perspective. 

Saturday: Turning point: figurative and also pun. 

Wet streets, if I haven't mentioned before, are one of the most soothing things, especially wet streets that have stop lights glowing on them. There's a place in Tulsa that is especially beautiful in the rain. It's a couple stoplights in a row with an overpass separating them. The whole street glows, but you can only see it from certain angles. Mmm. 

I went out at 17:30, but it had been dark for an hour already. I walked from the house down the hill to the stoplight above. No earbuds, no people. Before I left, I was trying to finish up some homework and found myself praying instead. I don't know. I just felt different in my head and in my heart before leaving for this one.

And it was a different walk and I came home from it with an entirely different perspective, one which didn't make me cheerful exactly but one which finally gave me peace, like that's what my pro-con list had been lacking all along. 

For the first time all week in my debacle-ing, I saw my own part in the problem. Praise God for that. 

Sunday: I anticipated the ability to tell you that today brought total resolution and clarity, but it hasn't. Some things can't be fixed that fast. That doesn't mean they can't be fixed or that it's not right to fix them, but change is hard and slow and forces you to own up to yourself and confront your insecurities and shortcomings and that's just never fun. 

The "autumnal" walk to and home from church. Joined by Abbi and Shelby and mostly spent in silence. Silence which I usually fill up with mindless chatter because that's just what I do in my own socially anxious way, but I didn't today. I just let it be quiet and okay. The sky was perfectly cloudless, the wind was a little whippity, but overall, it was a nice cleansing walk. 

My final walk of the week was 12 hours later and to the mailbox just a bit down the road. Why tonight and not tomorrow? Because tomorrow I might have answers. And tonight I just have faith. 

Practical Christianity.

The realm of Christianity often remains up there in the cloud of happy ideas. You  hear, "Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young," or "Fear not!" or "Cast all your cares on Jesus," but what does that look like?

Do you stand up for yourself? Go jump in front of bullets?

Let's be honest, I'm really most concerned with that last one. Casting our anxieties on Jesus. Taking our thoughts captive. At what point is it just faking it till we feel it?

Sure, in the morningtime, we pour out our hearts to Jesus, ask for guidance and peace and a big cosmic hug, but then you go out into your day. Things haven't changed. All those things that were filling you with fear and anxiety are still there! But you cast your anxieties on Jesus! So you feel as though if you're not joyful and bubbly, then something is wrong. So you do it anyway until you feel it. Obedience, you tell yourself. Acting out in faith, you tell yourself.

A friend of mine (a very wise owl type) this morning was telling me about a situation in her life and ended her little talk with saying, "Honestly, I think it's a good thing [I don't know what's going on]. It's reminding me to be constantly surrendering this to God. This isn't mine to have and control."

Beautiful. Two thumbs up, really. (No, you cynics. I'm not being sarcastic).

But what does it look like? Does surrendering something to God mean you stop trying to fix things by your own means and if it works out it works out? Pray hard? Does it mean you keep working and keep fighting but rely on his strength and guidance to help you get there?

Or at what point do you realize that it's time to let go? Not "let go and let God," but let go entirely.

Manna Munchies and Jericho Crunchies

I'm a big Jill Briscoe fan.

She's a Christian evangelist who happened to visit my alma mater while I attended. 

She's jam-packed with sass and a love for Jesus without being obnoxious. She's what I would call an advocate for practical Christianity. 

By that, I mean to say that the things she speaks of have direct application in everyday life.

While she was at JBU, she spoke of daily walking around Jericho. 

The Israelites were instructed by God to walk around the Walls of Jericho once each morning. Once. 

Now, Jericho was a big 'ole city, and Israel was a pretty shabby looking bunch by the time they'd reached the outer boundaries of this formidable, infuriating obstacle. 

I can just imagine the Israelites finally crawling out of their endlessness in the desert, high-fiving each other, seeing Jericho, stopping, and saying, "You're shitting me, right?" 

Do we not do the same thing? 

I finally crawl out of what seems like an endless struggle or semester or conflict, give myself a pat on the back, then look forward and see what? WHAT?! Another. Right there stretched out in the middle of my life road, just smirking at me like my brother when he's denying he stole my cell phone. 

In those instances, we have a tendency to curse, cry, and crack. That's right: give up. 

Instead, God told the Israelites (and us) to proceed onward with courage and faith! He who brought you to this place will be faithful to take care of you! 

The Israelites could have a. not listened, b. attacked at will, or c. walked around that dang wall once each day. 

Jill calls us to do the same thing. Rather than giving up or letting our anxiety mentally pace around our minds all day, we must walk around our wall once each morning, present our worry to God, then live and leave the stress of our problem there until the next morning. 

Yesterday, I read her book Here I am Lord...Send Somebody Else! and she discussed the idea of--we're staying with the Israelites for this post--picking up our daily manna, our daily provision from the Lord. 

Practical application: spend time with the Lord first thing each morning, collecting enough soul food to sustain you for the day. Not the week. The day. Tomorrow has enough worries of its own. 

He is faithful. He will provide for you new nourishment every single day. We just have to leave our tent and pick it up. We could even walk around our Wall of Jericho while we're at it. 

The point is, we are not just laying something down, we're also picking something up. Like how in yoga you breathe out the bad energy and breathe in the good energy, we stamp down our anxiety and pick up our manna. Every day.

And Jericho? Didn't you hear? It fell. Not one stone was left atop another.