Creative reflections on the personal meaning of Easter

I'm a young girl, and I'm awake.  I'm walking through the hallways of the palace, even though it's past my bedtime.  I should be asleep and I know it, but I was scared, and so I'm seeking out the thing that says security and comfort to me - my father.  I open the door to his study, which is dark and deserted.  He's not there.  I go to the throne room - sometimes he likes to sit there late at night.  I slowly crack open the side door (for caution, but also because the throne room doors are large and I am small).  He's there, sitting on the foot of the dais, but hasn't noticed me yet.  I creep in, still afraid (I am out of bed when I shouldn't be, after all) until he looks up and sees me.  And without thought I run into his arms, slippers flying and nightgown flopping.  He holds me tightly, securely, as I take some gasping breaths, afraid I might cry, but they subside, and I look up into my daddy, the king's face.  There is such a look of tenderness and love and concern and gentleness on his face that I know no one can ever harm me, for my daddy will protect me.

Without a word, he stands, shifting my weight so he's cradling me in his arms, and walks back to my room.  I am content to lie there, hear the beat of his heart (even and strong, it says safe. safe. safe.) and look at his face.  If I were older, I would call it noble, the face of a just ruler, but now I can only think that he has a face I trust.  We get to my room, and he lays me in bed carefully, like I am a precious thing to him, and tucks the blankets in around me.  I snuggle in, happy, as he picks up the storybook from the table besides my bed and begins to read to me, his strong, even voice comforting.  I drift off to sleep, knowing I am safe and secure and loved beyond measure.

Leaps of Faith

Okay.  So I'm currently on the Greyhound on my way back to school, after having spent the weekend at home.  I really enjoyed it, seeing everyone and hanging out.  There were a few points where I was a bit overwhelmed by people, but I was able to chill out and regain my energy, which was great.  And I got to see everyone at home that I wanted to and planned on seeing, which was good.  I didn't have the in-depth conversations I wanted to have with some of them, but we still got to talk anyway.  So yeah, this weekend was good.

The past week has been... um, interesting would be an appropriate term, I guess.  Stretching? Full? Draining and filling?  All of the above?  It started with making friendship bracelets till 1:30 in the morning and included many other late nights (and friendship bracelets.  Yay community!).  I can hardly remember everything that happened this week, but as I rarely go in strict chronological order on this blog, that's okay.  So, what major events/themes have been a part of the past seven days?  Faith. Learning to listen better. Learning to serve and die to myself so as to love others better.  Yeah.

Let's see.  So I think (I can't check because I can't get online right now) that I wrote several weeks back about how God seemed to be asking me to stretch myself and try to get a job as a lab/research assistant, and how I had been taking some preliminary steps towards that goal.  Well, on Monday night (I think) I was talking to God and just being like "God! Everything seems really hard right now and I just don't feel like I can do this, because it's just so incredibly hard and I don't know if I can deal with all of the stretching that you are doing in my life right now and I'm stressed about LT money stuff and I need a job and blah!" etc.  Basically I was like God, I'm going to trust in you, but I need you to come through for me asap.  So on Tuesday afternoon, I get onlinel to find an email from someone in the Earth and Environmental Science department looking for research assistants in their lab for the summer and going into the fall.  Basically, everything about this would be absolutely perfect for me.  I sent an email, and I haven't heard back yet, but I still feel confident that God's favor is on me in this situation and that His Will will be done.  So that's been fun times.

Wednesday I had a meeting with Mikey, my New Life Team leader, which was great.  We got coffee and talked for an hour and a half? Two hours?  Anyway, it was really great to talk like that because I really respect him and enjoy having him ask me questions about my life, because I learn a lot about myself from it.  Sadly, this was only the second such conversation that we have had like that in the past two and a half years. :(  Anyway, it was super great and I came away from it deciding to trust God to provide me the money so I could go to Women at the Cross in April (which is kind of super crazy from a common sense standpoint, as I'm still trying to figure out money for LT and living in Ann Arbor before I get my first paycheck (I really hate asking to borrow and borrowing money, but I probably will have to anyway(no, I will unless God comes through in some crazy awesome way))).  I don't know that much about WATC other than that it's a weekend about healing, about breaking through walls in your life, but at least four people from New Life really seemed to want me to go, and I should listen to those who are in spiritual leadership over me, 'cause it's good for my life and soul.  So I'm going to go, even though I have no idea about the logistics of it all, and even though it has occasionally stressed me out in the past five days (There may have been crying fits/emotional breakdowns.  Though to be honest, ever since I decided that trying to have a "stable" emotional state and not allow things to affect me (ie not allow myself to cry until it gets to be way to much and I have a breakdown) is not actually a good way to live my lfie, I've been crying a whole lot more.  Which I think is a good thing.).  I have been stepping out in faith, and doing things that Mikey has asked me to do, even though they were pretty much the opposite of what I wanted to do in the moment.  Argh.  Walking in a place of trusting God sometimes feels like walking on a tightrope when I have had very little experience on it. (Even though in real life I have had a little bit of experience slacklining.  Anyway...) So I'm trying to raise $95 for it (I got a $100 scholarship and Mikey is raising the other $200) and it would be really awesome if any of you people who read my blog would like to support me in this.  If you do, you can just get ahold of me on facebook and we'll figure it out. :)  So I'm registered for that now.  Cray cray.

When I was home this weekend I got to be a part of a conversation between some people I love about some other people whom I also really love and situations that are not as they could be.  I was really proud to see them taking initiative to fix problems that they saw, and recognizing that they had their own part in it all.  I was really glad that I was able to be there and help facilitate that discussion in some small way.  But it hurts to see people I care about not getting their needs met in the church and relational context that they are in.  I understand how messed up the world is, and that people are people and fallible, but it still hurts.  And these are people whom I really love a whole freaking lot.  I would be willing to sacrifice so much for them if I was in a position where that would help matters; if I didn't feel led to be much more invested in my church community here at school, I would love to just pour into them.  Not that I can't invest in them now, but I can't do it to the extent that my heart would like to.  And it breaks my heart sometimes that I can't love and serve them the way I long to.  I love you guys. :) But through it all, I am choosing to trust God.  Even when it is freaking crazy by the world's standards, I am trusting in his goodness, and his providence, and his love.  He can provide for me even in the most dire situations and even if He doesn't, He is still good and He still loves me.  He can love others infinitely better than I can ever hope to.  His goodness is bigger and greater than words can ever express.

To wrap it all up, in church this morning, during worship, someone asked "What would trusting God in your current situation look like?" and this picture popped into my head.  I was balancing hesitantly on a tightrope far above the ground, taking small, cautious steps and generally being super timid because I was scared of falling despite the safety net below.  Then the picture changed to if I trusted God, and instead of being timid and scared, I would be dancing on the tightrope, twirling and leaping deftly from one rope to another, trusting that if I fell He would catch me, but more than that, that He was in the air and would catch me even as I started to fall, that even before I needed a net He would right me and save me and put me back securely on the rope.

Messy

I'm feeling incredibly vulnerable and fearful and just kind of messy right now.  I'm kind of super emotional, which is frustrating to deal with on a monthly basis, but it is what it is.  And I've gotten a lot better at letting go of my attempts to control my moods and emotions, gotten better at being okay with crying a lot more than I used to and at more things than I used to.  But I still don't like crying in places where other people can see that aren't church or church related things.  And right now I feel like crying, but I'm in my room with Ria and Alyssa, and I don't want them to notice and ask me questions.  I don't want to talk about it with them, I don't want their concern or attention right now.  And so I can't cry the way I want to.

I'm scared.  I'm trying to trust God, trying to figure out my summer, my next two months, but it's scary.  My bank account is rather low right now, as in I will not be spending like any money in the next two months, and will probably need to borrow money until I get a job and can pay it back.  And a job is another thing.  I have the advice to try to become a research assistant, which involves so much trust, so much expending of energy.  It is so scary to me, trying to do new things.  Whereas getting a job in facilities for the summer would be so much easier and less scary, in my mind.

I have way to much to finish tonight to write more.  Everything seems way too hard right now.  But I know that it's really not.  I know that my hormones are having little hormone parties right now, having fun messing with my mind and emotions.  I know it.  I know that things aren't the way they feel.  But I still feel them.

Edit:  God is ridiculous sometimes, you know that?  He just likes to throw things into your lap when you ask for them sometimes.  I'm shaking right now, and am about to email a professor about the exact job that would be perfect for me this summer.  So yeah.  Hopefully this story has a freaking awesome ending. :)

Learning to be okay with being Broken

Why hello there lovely people!  It's time for your regularly scheduled blog post. :D  This past week has been pretty great.  I got back from spring break, and the things that I loved about it continued to happen.  Community, and kingdom talk, and love, and God, and good things like that.  And my schoolwork didn't suck my time up a whole ton, like it often does.  In fact, I think that I spent more time on other people, and more time on schoolwork as well, and I was happier than I have been in the past.  Normally when I spend more time with people than I do normally, I'm okay for a little while and then I crash and can't deal with people for several days.  But I've been going hard socially for two weeks, and while I needed a little me time yesterday, it was nowhere near the level of withdrawal I normally experience.  It turns out that spending time with my family in Christ is way less draining of my people energy than spending time with other people. :D  Also, at least some of that socialization came from a place of "How can I serve my brothers and sisters in Christ?"  Loving motivation (versus a purely selfish motivation) and wanting to give to others makes a huge difference.  So yeah, that's been pretty great.

I signed up for LT (YAY! :D) so now I need to start figuring out my summer and all of that stuff.  It would be overwhelming, but I know that God has good things for me, and so I am trusting him.  I need to figure out housing, a job, how I am paying for LT and housing in advance of having a job and the money to pay for it.  That sounds overwhelming, but I am at peace about it.  I don't need to tackle all of it at once, either, as long as I take the little steps that God wants me to take.  A little at a time, relying on God's strength instead of my own.  Life is so much easier when I do that.  Who would have thought it?  So that's good and exciting!

In other matters, though, this past week God has been bringing up my deep contempt and disgust with myself when I fail to achieve the things that I think I can achieve.  I know that other people don't feel that towards me when I fail, and I know that God doesn't either, but I think that it's okay for me to.  I have such incredibly high standards for myself, and on one hand that's good, but on the other hand, it's bad when I fail to live up to them.  Linda said something in life group this week that really made me think.  She said that often contempt is a mask for shame.  And so I'm wondering if I underneath my contempt for myself when I fail, when I sin, is a deep deep shame.  Shame for not being perfect, although no one but myself expects me to.  I am slowly learning that I don't have to be perfect, but it's hard.  I grew up as the baby of the family, the academic one who achieved good grades, a model christian teenager who was excited to go to church every Sunday and never drank or went to parties.  I was the golden child, and others had high expectations for me.  My teachers expected a lot from me, my principle as well (do you have any idea how annoying that was?).  My brothers, multiple times, have communicated how proud they are of how I am working hard in school, how I have things figured out and they wish they had things figured out when they were my age.  My friends - no, I have projected expectations of myself on my friends.  My friends are great.  My parents, bless them, have always communicated that they only want me to do my best, they don't expect more from me.  That they love me regardless of my grades and my life decisions.  But I expect myself to be perfect, and feel ashamed when I do not achieve that.  I want to be strong, and capable.  I want to be productive, and efficient, and loving.  But... I am weak.  I am incapable so much of the time.  I consume rather than produce.  I am inefficient, and selfish so much of the time.  I sin, I am faithless, I don't trust, hope, or love.  I'm broken.  I am a human being.  And slowly, I am starting to learn that it's okay to be broken.  It's good to be broken in front of God, because that's when he can really transform things.  When I am weak, he is strong.  I'm learning that the love of others, and most especially of God, is not dependent on my decisions, on my ability to get things done, or on my actions.  It is unmerited, irrevocable, and unfathomable.  I know that God loves me, and will always love me.  And when others let me down, as they inevitably will, God is there to catch me, and so I will keep loving others, and trusting in their love for me.

o_O

So this blog is currently google-able because a year or two ago I transcribed the words to a Watsky spoken-word poem. I couldn't find the entire thing online, so I wrote it all out and put it up on here, as I wanted to help other people who wanted to see all the words.  I knew that people were visiting my blog to read the transcription, but I don't think that I realized how many people were doing it.  It's currently sitting at over 550 hits, and I just googled "watsky go big young friends lyrics" and this is what came up.  o_O

I really don't know how to feel about this.  Proud?  Weird that my blog is public in such a fashion.  It's just kind of bizarre.

Regarding Spring Break

So.  Spring Break.  Basically, it was freaking amazing!  Like, oh my word so incredible and fantastic and God is so good.  There is so much that I could say, so much that I could tell, but I only have so much time, and I don't want to overburden you guys with pages and pages of stuff.  So I'll try to keep it on the shorter side.

To begin with, I was put into a vehicle with two people whose names I knew, and someone I had never met before, and it turned out to be so awesome.  In fact, I think that one of the moments during the trip when I felt the most alive was on that first eight hour car ride to Knoxville.  We got coffee from one of the few Tim Hortons in Ohio, and then preceded to refer to ourselves as the caffeine car.  There were many shenanigans in the vehicle, and it was just so much fun, so much community.  Also, this trip has fostered in me an appreciation and - dare I say it - a liking for country music (out of the approximate 40 hours in a vehicle, we listened to country for 30 hours).  The remaining twelve (actually more like fourteen) hours in the car the next day were good as well, with more silliness as well as more personal conversations, kingdom talk, if you will.  Friendship bracelets were made and exchanged between some members of our caravan, and it was a great trip, despite the two hour detour for a brushfire once we actually got to Florida.  Also, I had my first Chick-fil-A, which was tasty, but I did not appreciate the sweet tea.  I don't know.  Tea should be bitter, like coffee (I drink it black, when I do drink it).

The next six days were freaking amazing.  Extended time on the beach was good.  I often had trouble focusing, and I much prefer to talk to God about whatever I have on my mind than go through a plan someone else has put together, but I still got good things out of it.  I think that God wanted me to rest with him, and so even when I had trouble with letting my thoughts fuzz and fade out, I didn't fight it too hard, and was just content to sit on the beach with Him, enjoying the weather and the scenery in front of me.

The talks were good as well, and even when they were about things that I had heard before, or things that I already had internalized, I still got good things out of them about my new reality.  But the focus of the trip, at least for me, and for pretty much everyone else as well, based on things people were saying, was the community.  One of the last talks was on the Church as family, and it was so good.  So so good.  And the whole rest of the trip was basically everyone acting that out in beautiful and touching ways.

Brothers and sisters were a major theme of the week, and there was so much fraternal love.  The girls were sharing clothes, hair-products, straighteners, air mattresses, sunscreen, everything.  The men (I'm making a conscious effort to refer to the males of my acquaintance here at college as men instead of guys or boys in an attempt to honor them), while I can't say much about how they interacted among themselves in the absence of us females, were so great around us.  They served us and each other, doing extra work in the kitchen to serve and clear away food, volunteering to do slightly less desirable tasks, sacrificing things like their shower and one of their bathrooms for four hours in the morning so we girls could shower.  They respected the modesty guidelines on the beach, keeping their shirts on when in the presence of us females and not in the water (we did the same, wearing one-pieces, tankinis, or tank-tops over bikinis when in their presence).  They served us dinner on Thursday, escorting us, giving us roses, decorating, and just generally being super considerate and loving.  They were willing to be open and vulnerable in group settings.  Basically, they were freaking awesome and loved us women so well, and I was so honored to spend a week with them and call them brothers.  God also brought up some stuff with one of my actual brothers... (actual brother, blood brother, real brother... genetic brother? I need a good term to differentiate this.  Or maybe I don't.  Maybe that's the whole point of it, you know?)  So I have that to process with God now.

This isn't to say that everything was great and that negative or painful things never came up.  There was at least one point where I was basically crying and wrestling with God for an hour in the midst of everyone else rejoicing, but even that was good.  That hurt was necessary for God to get me to let go of something I didn't want to let go of.  We were having a time of affirmation, a lovefest if you will, where people said the things they saw in others.  I volunteered to go first, because no one else was (it ended up only being two of us volunteering before the leader running it just started picking people to go).  That decision was what precipitated the intense emotional reaction I experienced.  See, people were still adjusting to the idea of what we were going to do, and that led to fewer people coming up to give me words of affirmation, especially from the male population.  Only two men said things to me, and they were two people I did not especially expect to do that.  What they did say was beautiful and impacted me, and what the girls said was lovely and loving as well.  But still.  I have such a deep desire for masculine love, not even romantic love, but just masculine love, brotherly love.  A strong, protective kind of love.  And I know that I will never be satisfied completely in this life.  I know that.  But I always desire more. And so I cried out to God, in between going up and giving words of affirmation to my brothers and sisters, and just gave him my pain, my desires.  I acknowledged that he could fill the part of my heart that hungered for love, that if I depended upon him, hungered for him in the way I hungered for my brothers' love, then I would be satisfied.  That isn't to say that I don't need the love from my brothers and sisters, but rather that shouldn't be my first priority, shouldn't be the thing that I am dependent upon.  So yes, it was intensely painful.  I was dealing with a part of my heart that was so deep, and so deeply hurt by this world.  A lot of you know a lot of my story, and much of that story involves emotional hurt and fear of connection with my brothers and sisters.  But even in that pain, it was good.  God was good.  He was pursuing me, and loving me, and freeing me.  And then, after that time was over and we collected our belongings again, I found that I had a text from someone I am proud to call a brother asking how I was.  You have no idea how much that impacted me, and how much I was praising God for His goodness at that.  Thank you, Elijah. :)

And then the ride back was wonderful and great.  We were encouraged to switch vehicles to facilitate greater bonding with everyone, but our vehicle stayed the same the entire ride.  We talked a lot of kingdom talk, shared a lot of vulnerable and personal things, and just loved on each other.  I taught the sole male in our vehicle how to make friendship bracelets, and he made one for all of the women in our caravan and two of the men as well.  One of the vehicles had a flat tire, so there was some frustration and annoyance over that, but it ended up leading to a time of greater vulnerability afterwards in our kingdom talk, so I can't regret that it happened.

All in all, it was an amazing week of friendship, fun, and God.  Of family and love.  Of joy and sunburn and dance parties.  It was an amazing experience, and I am so glad that I said yes to God, even when I wanted to do something else originally.  I got to see the church as a family, in a deeper and more concrete way.  I got to see and celebrate two baptisms.  I got to see people change over the week, see them trusting God more and finding peace in difficult situations.  I'm so glad I went, so glad I got to know everyone, so glad for the community (and unity) that occurred.  God is good.

[all photo credits go to Lexie, Alyssa, and Karen. :) Love you!]

An Apology?

I would apologize for the lack of any posting for the past two Sundays, but I was on Spring Break, and while I could get online, I mostly chose not to.  And it was freaking amazing.  Like, the best week I've had in I don't know how long.  So great.  I don't really have time to tell you more right now, but know that I will tell you all about it when I do have time later in the week.  For now, enjoy this wonderful song (I've been listening to it on repeat for the past hour or so).  Love you all. :)