You are here.

Today is a new day.

I was reminded of this fact as I drove home from Jacksonville this morning accompanied by a beautiful sunrise.  The darkness has passed, if only for the next 11 or so hours, and it is day.  I smile with the hope of a new day.

I thought a little this morning about the ways that people deal with pain.  When I'm hurt, the way I see it, there are three different ways I could approach it:

1) Just be me.  This involves copious amounts of passive aggressiveness, making sure to let everyone know I'm hurting in ways that bring me attention.  And if not that, it means retreating into myself and trying to heal my heart on my own terms.  It means praying that God will fix things for me.  It involves loving those who love me and it involves a great deal of selfishness.

2) Set out to do things that will make me happy.  Live for myself in big, obvious ways.  Celebrate myself as a prime example of the best kind of human.  In all I do, whether kind or unkind, further myself.

3) Turn to God in all situations.  Love Him above all else, and trust Him above all else.  Find reasons to praise him no matter the day or the hour.  Give my life to Him minute by minute, always trusting that He knows best.  Death to myself.  Hard, painful, real death to my desires, hopes, and dreams.

I'm learning.  Slowly, but surely, I'm learning to follow God.  I'm learning to choose number three.  I'm learning what it means to trust, and how hard it truly is to do so.  I'm learning to put his ways above my own, or at least learning the extent of what that means, even if I don't implement it fully.  Always I will be learning, never in this life will the surrender be complete.  But every day it will be closer.

A couple months ago, in the midst of spiritual confusion and fear, I prayed that God would teach me what I must do to follow Him.  I prayed that He would lead me.  And He has answered my prayer in such a huge way, even if it totally sucks at times.

Today I will be thankful for that.  Forgive me, Father, for so quickly forgetting how much You love me.  May Your love for me saturate my life.  May it run over into all those forgotten places in my heart.  May you refine me by fire.  May I walk through the flames stronger because I walked through them in Your footsteps.

You are here.

surrender

I've been realizing how difficult it is to surrender.  How hopelessly impossible it is to give my life and everything that comes along with it to God.  Tonight all I could pray is that God would be so merciful as to teach me to surrender.  Surrender is painful, unpleasant, undesirable.  Surrender involves giving up my desires that God would have his way in my life.  Although I can easily admit I want God's way for me, it's harder to take the difficult steps to put that in motion, particularly when my emotions aren't catching up with me.

So tonight my prayer is simple:

God, forgive me.  Teach me to surrender.  Have your way in my heart and in my life.  I love You more than life, teach me to put those words into action, no matter how difficult.

Lord, today is Yours.  Teach me to love you and your law above all else.  Keep my eyes fixed on you.  May I learn to love as you have loved me.  Thank you for all the work you are doing in my heart.  I thank you that although growth is never easy, it's always, always worth it.  I thank you for the storm that rages because You are here.  And because You are here, I'd walk through this storm a thousand times.  You are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love.  You are good to all, you have compassion on all that you have made.  As far as the east is from the west, that's how far you've cast my sin from me.

And always the call echoes:

"Follow me, my Daughter."

"I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
No turning back,
No turning back."

the day after a sleepless night

Today I'm learning to live with this new pain.  I remember all too well what it feels like to want to work because of the distraction it provides, I remember all too well what it feels like to be immersed in the mundane when suddenly the pain comes flooding back.  I remember all too well the struggle to smile for real again.  But I remember the joy that came when the pain had finally gone for the last time.  And it's for tomorrow that I hang on, knowing that today is only today.  Tomorrow is a new day.  New day will follow new day until the day I wake up free from pain.  That is the day I live for.  That is the day toward which I strive. 

In this pain, I also strive to love God and my neighbor more fully.  I strive to not allow myself to be buried in my pain, but to allow it to draw me closer to the Father.  Pain tends to draw me into myself.  I struggle to reach out because pain centers all my energy on healing my own heart.  But, God, You call me to love no matter the day and no matter my own pain.

Thank You, Father, for last Saturday night.  Thank You for this prayer you gave me when I had no idea of the storm waiting for me, and the strength it provides me today, strength that I so desperately need, strength that only You have:

"Lord, thank You that your love covers me.  Thank you that if I will have but faith the size of a mustard seed you will move mountains.  You have already moved mountains in my life and I thank you that you will continue to do so.  You are a God whose love never ends.  Show me a glimpse of Your love.  Not in a mushy gushy way but in a way that changes, convicts, draws us to give our very lives over to death that You may be glorified."

So today I am thankful.  Thankful for a God who holds me.  Thankful that my worth is found no where else but in Him, so incredibly thankful that no matter the pain, my God is big enough.

when i'm stuck with a day that's gray and lonely

Some days there's nothing left to do but laugh and be thankful that tomorrow's a new day.

Today was one of those days.

It stunk.  In probably every way possible, except that nothing went wrong, exactly.  It was just...terrible.

By the end of the day, I was drained - exhausted both physically and emotionally.  I was sick of the fake smile, sick of my lack of appetite, sick of feeling sad.  I got home, called a friend, and as I recounted the day to her, all I could think was how ridiculously great it'd be as a movie, and how ridiculously ironic some of its moments were.  I laughed, a lot.  And then yawned.

I'm tired thinking about today, and I'm tired thinking about the future, knowing that it many ways it'll only remain difficult.  I am thankful, though, that each day is a new day.  I'm thankful for the song "Tomorrow" from Annie.  I'm thankful for pita bread and hummus.  I'm thankful for a barrier island just off the Atlantic Coast that affords me the daily opportunity to leave my cares behind.  And I'm thankful for amazing friends who care so much about me and lift me up in prayer.  It's only because I trust my God is a big God and because I know people who love me are praying that I persevere, thankful for the place God has put me.

thoughts inspired by a caramel latte

Tonight someone said something interesting.  She, like me, is from the Great Plains, and one thing she misses about the Midwest is the ability to see for miles.  She said the South can feel isolating, because all one can see are trees.

I suppose it's true in some ways.  I don't miss the wide open spaces all that much, mostly because of my couple years in Bellingham compounded with my fundamental dislike for all things Midwest (except the lovely people there, of course).  However, I do know what she meant.  Rural Georgia can be overwhelming in its isolation sometimes.  We're in a forest, and there are a few stores and restaurants, but the longer you're here, the smaller it all feels.  Like going to college in Orange City, Iowa, really.  I guess I've had practice at this sort of thing.

So tonight I met some friends in Fernandina Beach, Florida.  It was so nice to drive different roads and see different things.  It was nice to feel free again.  And, best of all, there's a Starbucks in Florida (well, more than one, I suppose).  Naturally, on the way home, I stopped.  How could I not?  This was my first Starbucks since August.

After getting my coffee, I had a 30 minute drive back to rural Georgia during which to think.

Starbucks reminds and probably always will remind me of Bellingham.  It brings back memories of walks down beautiful trails to the Starbucks a few blocks from my house.  It brings back memories of way too many coffees on campus.  It brings back memories of those two years that changed me forever.  It reminds me of the people I left behind, the people who I will always fondly remember, the people who took me under their wing and loved me unconditionally.

I'm a different person now than I was a few months ago.  The person who left Bellingham was a person who had come of age, a person who had found her wings.  The person who left Bellingham was heartbroken to leave the place that had represented some of the happiest years of her life.  That wasn't all, though.  The person who left Bellingham was, although confident in the tenets of her faith, disconnected from a relationship with the God in whom she claimed to believe.  The person who left Bellingham was deeply cynical about so many things.  The person who left Bellingham had allowed herself to stop following Jesus in favor of an intellectual exercise that allowed her to convince herself she was believing the right thing, and that believing was enough.  The person who left Bellingham was lost.

Georgia wasn't always an easy transition.  God was gracious to me, though, providing me with friends I connected with on a deep level the very first time we hung out three days after I arrived here.  God was also gracious to me in providing me with a job that I loved enough to sustain me through the uncertainties of life in a place so far removed from the place I had come to call home.

And God started to change my heart.

A couple months ago, one of my best friends from back home and I started reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer together.  I remember reading that first chapter and being so convicted. I remember agonizing over my life and my priorities, wondering what following Jesus even looked like and how to go about doing such a thing.  And then God started throwing similar themes at me left and right.  Sermons, articles, conversations with friends all pointed me toward the question of discipleship and what it means to truly follow Christ.  Somewhere along the line I stopped reading The Cost of Discipleship.  It came due at the library, and I had it through interlibrary loan, so I had to wait a couple weeks to get it back. When I picked it back up again a week or two ago, I realized how much had changed in my heart from when I first started reading it.

It is truly a testament to the call of Christ when I begin to take note of all the ways that God has transformed my heart and the way I think.  A couple months ago I'd come home from work and proceed to spend the rest of the night watching TV on netflix.  I don't really do that anymore.  TV lost its luster somewhere along the way.  A month ago I was getting caught up in work drama, allowing myself to be angry about this, that, and the other thing.  A month ago I was agonizing over the disconnect between the Bible I read and the life I was living.

And I most certainly don't have anything figured out.  But I can truly say that God has been transforming me and it is one of the most incredible things ever.  I remember struggling for years with the role of emotion in worship.  That struggle is gone, now, because my relationship with God is actually back, making the question of whether I should be emotional or not while at church completely and utterly a moot point.  I remember struggling with theological questions as if the answers to those questions was life or death.  I remember the thirst I had for God and the way I attempted to satisfy that thirst with academics and theology rather than with God Himself.

And then God brought me to this place.  This terribly ugly, humid, God-forsaken (but really not at all) place where nothing but mosquitos live.  And He gave me new life.

Yeah, God is good.

He is gracious and compassionate.

My cup runneth over.

sad days

Ya know, life can be downright hard sometimes.  It's a constant battle not to give into utter frustration.  Little things that shouldn't matter add up to major internal battles.  I war with myself, with God, with my emotions. I wonder if I should change something about myself, or if I simply need to give my cares to God.  I'm trying to be strong, trying to be confident, but sometimes that's difficult.  It's a beautiful but very hard thing to move somewhere far from home and the support system I had there.  It's hard to be so very alone and know there's really no hope of that changing in the foreseeable future.  It's hard to battle between my identity as a Christian and the crap that is thrown at me left and right from the culture around me.  It's hard to wrestle with my identity, to figure out what God would have me be.  It's hard to boldly follow Jesus into those places where I have no control.  Incredibly hard.

So I'm just hanging on.  Day by day.  If not tomorrow, certainly the next will be better.  Certainly life won't always feel this desperate, this sad.  Certainly God is faithful, and certainly He knows what He's doing with my life.  I'm trusting He's big enough to deal with my flaws and failures.  Because He is.  I serve an amazing God.

surrender

That thing that keeps me from focusing on God fully is the thing that I most enjoy about my new life here in Georgia.

That’s hard to face.

And also hard to know what to do about, because it’s so beyond my control, living in the realm of emotion.  How do I give a desire to God?  Desire seems so beyond my control.  I can ask God to change my desires…but to be honest, that’s so scary to do.  Holding onto my desires is too easy and too fun.  To let go is to face the empty void once more of a life out of my control.

What sort of change of mind is required to surrender all?  I do know that it will require a constant re-surrendering.  But I need to do so, because at the moment I cannot let anything stand in the way of relentless pursuit of Christ.

God, I give You my desires, my most deeply held wishes and dreams.  I give you my hopes, my plans, all those things to which I am constantly looking forward.  I give it all to You, and I trust You with my heart and with my life.  I trust You to give me the best kind of life, a life that is at the center of Your will.  I trust that You will be there for me when it’s hard, when it’s lonely, and when I question what on earth You’re doing with me.  

The hardest part, God, is that desire is so all-encompassing.  Even in giving this to You, I find myself secretly hoping that giving this to You will mean You’ll give it back.  And in that insidious hope, the truth is exposed; I’m not surrendering a thing.  

Please know, God, that when I say I am surrendering, I am committing to a daily surrender.  I am committing to You no matter the cost.  Yes, I may not be perfect in my surrender, but I surrender to You the right to my future.  My future is Yours.

random thoughts

1.  bittersweet is mostly sweet and mostly bitter at the same time.  bitter because of the ache in my heart, sweet because that ache reminds me of the blessing.  at times the bitter outweighs the sweet, at other times the sweet outweighs the bitter.  but always the sweet makes the bitter worth it.  and the bitter only reinforces the sweet.

2.  i don't know how to process the fact that i no longer desperately long to return to washington.  i love washington, but i don't believe i want to return anymore.  this is both really sad and really happy.  i'm beginning to see washington for what it ended up being - a season of life that taught me a lot, but that needed to end when it did.  i'm thankful for what God has done in my life as a result of my change in geographical location.

3.  one of the things God has really been impressing on my heart lately is my need to pursue Him.  and it's extremely difficult to do.  it's easy to get emotional and long for God.  it's another to actually follow through in my pursuit of Him.  it's easy to make a commitment to this or that, another thing entirely to actually keep my commitment.  i want to serve others out of love for God, not out of a sense of guilt or obligation.  i want my service to flow from a heart that is deeply in love with God, not from a heart that only gives love to receive it in return.  i want my love to flow freely, reaching the lovable and the unlovable alike.  i want to love God in such a way that my love for others flows naturally and from Him.  i want to decrease so that He may increase.

4.  i'm a musician.  but i'm not just that; i'm so much more.  one of the greatest blessings here in Georgia has been being surrounded people with a strong love for music and a great deal of musical talent, because I'm able to stand back a little bit.  this has obviously happened before, but always before I was in a position (either willingly or not) where I stood (or attempted to stand) in the limelight.  at times i was defined by my musical ability.  people knew me as the soloist, or as the piano player, or as the trumpet player.  the biggest problem is that music was thrust on me from an early age.   although i certainly have always had certain proclivities for music, i wasn't ever really allowed the option to not be a musician.  the result is that i don't know how to not be "the musician."  maybe that's why i love my identity at work so much.  there i'm the tour guide.  they know i can play the piano, because they've heard me play at the mansion.  but i'm not defined by my musical abilities, but by my status as a north end tour van driver.  that's so nice.  i love being able to just be for a while.  maybe one day i'll want to be on a worship team again, or be "the piano player."  but for now, i'm letting myself (as much as is possible) not be the piano player.  and it's freeing.  it's nice to not be mistaken as a music major, and it's nice to not have to sell my soul to music for a scholarship.  music is how i express myself, it is often one of the ways I serve God, but it is not my primary interest in life.  and i think i'm finally achieving a life where that is the case.

"You are making me new"

I spend a lot of time concerned with the way I appear to other people.  Depending on the day, I wish I were stronger, more talented, less opinionated, or more feminine.  You name it, I probably have wished it about myself.  You see, I spend a lot of time thinking about what could be, if only I were different.  I spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix the wrong things, how to capitalize on the tolerable things.  I think about "me" all the time and it's a losing battle.  I can't fix me.  I'm hopelessly flawed, both in terms of things I could theoretically fix and things over which I have no control.

I spent the last two years getting a masters in history.  The constant research and being surrounded 24/7 by academia left my faith very academic in nature.  After graduation, I moved about as far away geographically and culturally as possible, and it was a rough transition for a while.  I found it so difficult to relate to other Christians.  I spent quite a bit of time reading theological stuff, trying to transition into a life not characterized by academia.  I read "The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer toward the end of the summer.  Bonhoeffer really convicted me because he talked about the cost of following Christ, and the need for a conscious decision to die to oneself in following.  I didn't know how to handle it, because I feel as if my work life runs separate from my personal life.  I don't know how to mesh my faith into all areas of my life.  I asked God to show me the way to follow Him, though.

I think He's answering my prayer.  He's lined up so many things in the past few weeks - an accountability partner, random books that I have come across all on that same topic of following Christ in a real sort of way and what that means practically (namely "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan), and a sermon video last night at church by John Piper that talked about what it means to follow Christ.

What if I stopped living life so focused on me?  What if my heart's cry became God and His glory rather than my own?

What I've come away with is this:

1) what I think about myself matters very little.  My intelligence, attractiveness, or personality traits matter very little because God created me as I am.  I am here for God.
2) following Jesus involves learning to love God.  Like, really love God.  Desire him more than all else.  I need to actively cultivate a relationship with Christ.  It's not okay to simply believe certain things or try to do certain things.  All of it is empty and futile without a relationship with God.  This seems so basic, but it's something I have all but walked away from in my pursuit of academic answers.
3) following Jesus involves making much of God.  It involves practical decisions about my life, my job, my finances, my family, my everything.  Everything needs to be centered around my relationship with God and making Him known.

Only then will I be truly following Christ.

emotions

I'm not always sure what to do with emotion.  It takes me by storm, reminds me of those things I suppress somewhere deep inside me most days.  Reminds me that I'm not so very strong, not so very brave, and not so very self-sufficient.  Emotion reminds me of my susceptibility, of my vulnerability, of my very humanity.  Emotion, that intangible quality that defines most if not all aspects of my life blurs my focus, clouds my vision, and disorients me.  

Emotion often takes the place of reality.  When I feel something, it doesn't need to be real, because perception is reality.  When emotion defines me and the way I perceive my relationships with others, life becomes very empty indeed.  Emotion is that thing which fuels affection and connection, but it also threatens to replace those very affections and connections.  Unchecked, emotion becomes a wild weed that drowns out everything it touches.  

Once this has happened, I come to depend on emotion.  Emotion is not only a drug, it becomes the only connection I have to the world, my friends, and to God.  Emotion keeps me from the concrete reality, keeps me from action, blinds me to the reality of my immobility.  Emotion deceives me; I feel alive, but am never so far from it as I am when overcome with emotion.

Unchecked, emotion destroys.