Thank God for the Fleas

I haven't written in this space in a while.

Probably because there has simply been too much to write!

I've moved back from Asia, and life has been whirlwind since then. My pace of life has accelerated drastically. I've been traveling a lot for my job, getting to meet a lot of incredible students and see some wonderful places. I am so blessed to be based in Austin, where there are still so many people from my days at UT, and where it's okay to be a little weird.

I've really had the easiest transition one could ask for. I've been staying so busy that I haven't really had much time for culture stress or most of the things one usually experiences upon returning to one's home country. Although I miss my friends on the other side of the ocean and pray for them almost daily, thinking of them is more of a sweet than a bitter ache. I love them even as I love the people who surround me now, and I am at peace with the fact that Father has not designed me to be in two places at once. I am perhaps even more at peace because I know He is still over there, and the One whose eye is on the sparrow is caring for all my friends, wherever they may be in the world. I have returned to the very support network that lovingly sent me out. I am surrounded by incredible Chinese friends who patiently listen to me talk in my worse-by-the-day Mandarin and who cook delicious food for me. Jim Elliot famously said, "Wherever you are, be all there." I am blessed that the Lord has enabled me to be all here, for now, just as He enabled me to be "all there" the past two years.

But one consistent problem has been my health.

I've struggled with immune system issues for over a year now. I have tried many kinds of Western and even Chinese medicine and seen multiple doctors. Everything helps a little; nothing completely heals. I had hoped that when I got back to my home country, I would be magically cured, by the climate, the environment, new medicine, whatever. But that didn't happen. The most heartbreaking part is the yo-yo-ing: I will think I am almost healed, see the light at the end of the tunnel, and then suddenly I will have a relapse. Two steps forward, three steps back. This has happened every time I have tried a new treatment that I thought would finally do the trick. Now I am trying a new method of healing that involves drastic dietary changes (no sugar or gluten) and many concentrated whole foods supplements (no synthetic vitamins, y'all - those are bad news). Though I have had setbacks even with this method, such as unintentionally losing 10 pounds, I have improved a lot. I have even experienced positive and unexpected side effects like more stable mood and increased energy. But more about all my recent nutrition/health discoveries another day.

Many people have prayed and are praying for me. And I am so, so thankful for them/you. It is definitely a testing time when you serve a God who can heal instantly, who holds all the power in the universe, and you have to come to grips with the fact that, for whatever reason, He has chosen not to heal you right now. Especially when you feel you've done all you can do.

It's hard to realize that, for whatever reason, in His goodness he has allowed me to endure this. He is so loving, so good, has such an incredible plan for my life, that as crazy as it may seem to my human eyes, He is blessing me with this extended trial.

That's right, I said blessing.

Because God is good, because He is perfect, it is an absolute impossibility that even the bad things that happen could be anything less than His best for me. It is absolutely impossible that my trials will not turn out for His glory and my good. He sits as a refiner of silver, watching the fire carefully to make sure His treasure comes out strong and shining. He does not look away for one second, nor does His hand waver. He will heal me at exactly the right time, for exactly the right reason. And He will teach me exactly what He needs to teach me in the meantime - no more, no less.

I will never forget a story in a book called The Hiding Place in which Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie are put in a concentration camp for aiding the Jewish people. While there, sleeping at night after a grueling day is a near impossibility because their beds are swarming with itching, biting fleas. Their misery is incomprehensible, and yet Betsie tells Corrie they must thank God for the fleas. Of course Corrie can't believe her sister is even saying that, but she goes ahead and thanks God anyway.

Little by little, they begin reading the Bible with ladies in the concentration camp (how it got through the Nazis, who confiscated everything they owned, is another miraculous story). Catholics, Protestants, nonbelievers, all come together to read that beautiful Book of Life. It gives them hope when all other hope seems lost. The guards don't approve, of course, but they will never cross the threshold to make them stop.

Why?

Because the guards don't want to get bitten by the fleas.

And so the fleas are the very means of God's grace through which His Light is able to penetrate one of the darkest places on earth.

Because of that story, I remember in every trial to not lose heart and to trust that my struggle may even be the very means of God's grace to me. I can't see it yet, of course. In fact, I may not ever understand why. But I trust. And I persevere, knowing that every trial I have focuses my heart less on the here and now and more on what is to come. Less on storing up treasures on earth, and more on storing up treasures in Heaven. Less on the perishable body, and more on the imperishable one. What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. And every trial, whether small or large, enables me to empathize with someone else who is suffering but who may not know that our true Hope is not of this world.

The best way to prevent completely breaking down under the burden you are currently called to bear is to thank God for it. Though your gratitude may be shaky and feeble, though you may not actually feel it to be true, say it anyway. Thank God that He sees something you cannot see.



To read the full "fleas" story, click here.

My Obsession With Me

I have a confession to make.

I am addicted to myself.
Maybe I'm not alone in this. Perhaps you're addicted to yourself too. In some ways, I think we all are.

For me, it usually doesn't manifest itself in a prideful, I'm-so-awesome type of way, although now and then it does take that form.

Usually, it's worse than that.

It's self-loathing.

Self-loathing is an addiction, a harmful and destructive drug in every sense. When I make a mistake in class, it's lurking there, waiting for me to slip into its arms and embrace what it says about me, who it says I am.

It is ready to capitalize on every moment of weakness.

When I realize I am not the favorite person in the room, there it hovers, ready for me to swallow that pill and descend into dark and untrue places in which I am small and everyone else is big and tramples over me. When I'm acutely aware of everyone staring at me, when strangers shout at me ("Hey! Foreigner!"), there it is again at my shoulder, saying, "You should hide. If only you didn't look different from everyone else, if only you could blend in." And it spirals from there into deeper self-consciousness, into a fear that spreads and smothers my soul and makes me walk around with a cast-down face and a scowl, in hopes that I might disappear.

Self-loathing is by no means confined to a single phase of my life or a single country. In college, in the United States, I remember days walking around in a pretty summer dress, because, well, I like dresses, and when I caught stares in the corner of my eye, my mind would immediately flutter to "She's thinking, who does that girl think she is, wearing a dress to class? Who does she think she's trying to impress? Why isn't she in Nike shorts and a t-shirt like the rest of us?" It was difficult to believe that perhaps someone might actually be staring because they like my dress; it was even more difficult for me to not care one bit about what I was wearing and feel beautiful and loved all the same. Then the next day I would wear Nike shorts and a t-shirt, and that same horrible voice would whisper, "You're so much uglier than the other girls. Look how fashionable she is. Why aren't you wearing that hipster outfit from Urban Outfitters?" Then the next day I could wear the hipster outfit from Urban Outfitters, and...well, you get the idea.

Here's the thing, though: In the middle of my spiral of self-loathing thoughts, I always hear my Savior and King call out to me, but sometimes His voice sounds far away. I hear Him call out, "All your days were written in my book before one of them came to be!" I hear him say, "I have numbered the hairs on your head, and every one of them is precious, my daughter!" But I shake my head in denial. His voice seems so distant and powerless, whereas the voice of self-loathing is so close and seemingly so invincible, its breath hot in my ear. It's like that quote from Pretty Woman: "The bad stuff is easier to believe." I'm like her. I don't believe Him. I deny His authority. I choose to take the pill without protest.

I give power to that which should have no power and deny the true power of the Lord. I submit to that horrible voice/spirit outside of me and refuse to submit to the one Voice and Spirit I should obey, the one that is living and active in the very depths of my being.

One day when I was admitting all my self-destructive thoughts to my mom, she said, "Have you noticed a common thread here? Me, me, me. I'M worthless, I'M unloved, I'M unlovable. Turn that focus upward and outward instead of downward and inward." This truth has been circulating in my mind ever since. But turning thoughts upward and outward is some heavy, gravity-defying lifting. The problem is that my thoughts literally implode on my soul, and I let them sit there so long without protesting that they get too heavy for me, by myself, to lift. Thus, the truth is crushed, and the lie wins.

The Lord has been patiently and persistently releasing me of this terrible, tenacious stronghold for years, but I keep failing and running back to it. It's always the little things. The self-loathing starts with someone ignoring me, or complimenting someone else instead of me, or me feeling stupid, or someone disagreeing with me in a rude way, and spirals downward, ending with me dissolving into tears, thinking everyone hates me, wondering why I even exist and what use my life is. I can tell the difference between deception and truth, and I know mentally what the truth is, but my heart still finds God hard to believe, and my mouth still finds self-loathing easier to swallow than his promises. As the title suggests, self-loathing is, too, a form of pride, a form of obsession with the self, preferring masochism to grace as long as it means I can refuse His hand. Self-loathing is painful, but it's at least a realm with which I'm all too familiar. A poisonous security blanket. Freedom from comparison with others, unshakable joy, full confidence that I am forever loved? These are relatively new concepts. And, though already accepted mentally, they are sometimes hard to swallow when faced with an indifferent world that seems to so easily smother the Word of God in my head.

I'm reading good ol' Beth Moore, and she's talking about release from strongholds. She writes, "Maybe you can't yet picture being free from that stronghold for the rest of your life. But can you picture it for a day? How about until lunch? How about for an hour?" She said that when the Lord was freeing her of her destructive thought cycles, she would count the days she went without giving in to those thoughts, and the day she gave in, she would start right back at 1 the next day. But rather than getting discouraged, she encouraged us to rejoice that we even have the opportunity to start back at 1. To try again. To be allowed to take our first tentative steps, fail, and yet know we will be picked right back up again and set on the right path. Every. Time.

Right now I would say I'm in the "withdrawal season" from this drug of self-loathing. It might last for a long time. It will be incredibly easy to have relapses. Thankfully, I'm in a rehab program called "Conforming to His Image," and this program will never give up on me or kick me out. Though I may burn out and give up and return to the poisonous security blanket time and time again, His loving hand will not rest until His goal is obtained. He who began a good work in me will carry it through to completion. He will not rest until I am living in victory.

The point is not my failure, but His faithfulness. I am not strong enough on my own; I am crushed under the weight of lies before I can even consciously redirect my thoughts toward the truth, before I can even recall those Scriptures to mind that I have been trying to memorize. It is so much easier for me to think of myself rather than others, to follow a bad train of thought to its conclusion rather than immediately fighting it with the sword of the Spirit. Thankfully, He is faithful to do the heavy lifting for me. If He hasn't given up on me, I know He hasn't given up on you either, whatever your stronghold may be.

Oh, can we all take a moment and praise His glorious name for that?

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Jane Austen Lovers

Written as part of the "Broken Hallelujah" series with Prodigal and SheLoves Magazine

When October approached and I had been here a year, I felt I was really getting the hang of things. I could go to the tea shop and help my friends sort tea, I could eat the local noodles without gagging, and I found I was actually WANTING hot peppers in my food. My language had improved a lot. Though my grammar was still oftentimes horrific, I could communicate with people pretty well, and I felt I had grown to understand the culture much better. Crowds and honking didn't bother me as much as they had at first. I could keep my cool in chaotic situations that would have made me lose it a year before, and I could now speak to people in situations where before I would have frozen up. Oh, sure, there would still be moments when I used the wrong tone and had to repeat myself, but even the local people have those problems sometimes. All in all, I was feeling pretty comfortable.

A friend invited me to go to her hometown for the Mid-Autumn Festival. I was so excited to be spending a few days with all local people, even though I was a little nervous about it. But I felt I was ready, and I loved this precious friend. So we squeezed into the crowded bus like so many sardines, moving and pulsing as one with the squeaky stoppings and goings of the bus, and then packed ourselves onto a train where I sat across from a shirtless elderly man who liked to spit on the floor. I smiled as I thought how this was no big deal to me. In fact, I enjoyed the smooth motion of the train and was not too bothered by everyone peering over their chairs or strolling down the aisles only to stop and stare at me. Even the people walking down the aisles of the train shouting as they sold things like toothbrushes and light-up bouncy balls just made me laugh, even when they woke me up.

We arrived at my friend's hometown late at night. It was much colder than my city. The entire town has no taxis or buses, as you can mostly walk anywhere or pay the equivalent of a dollar if you want to take a little 3-wheel red vehicle to get somewhere. Or if you had a lot of people, you could take a bouncy white bread truck. We loaded up in a bouncy bread truck and thumpity-thump-thumped all the way to my friend's home. We walked up the stairs to the apartment, and I ate some instant noodles because I hadn't had any dinner. I looked up at the posters of prosperity gods and the Chairman plastered on the aging walls during the local TV commercials.

When it came time to sleep, we turned off the matchmaking game show and I shared my friend's bed, a hard board covered with a thin blanket but with a big poofy comforter on top. The windows were all open even though it was cold outside; I slept like a baby.

In the mornings we would eat the local noodles and moon cakes. We might go do a short activity in the late morning, then her mom might make lunch that consisted of things like greens, beer fish, pigs' ears, and chicken soup. Then we would have a long nap in the afternoon and maybe get up at 3:30pm. I couldn't understand her mom very well because she spoke their local dialect, but she was so kind to me.

There was nothing at all wrong with what we were doing every day. It was wonderful to be so immersed in my local friend's life and language. We would go to beautiful pagodas and hills and temples, we would go visit her various family members - uncles and grandparents - and we were getting some great rest and fresh air. But suddenly a longing for home gripped my heart so tight and wouldn't let go.

It's not that everything was bad - it was just all DIFFERENT: Meeting all her different family members, who all had shrines to the female Buddha in their homes and looked at me as a big curiosity and yet were incredibly hospitable and gracious to me; eating countryside food all the time; eating the noodles not just now and then but every single day for breakfast; constantly being corrected in my language usage because this was the first time I'd ever had to use it all day every day; not being able to understand anything my friend's family was saying because they would all jovially shout at each other at dinner in the local dialect; sleeping on a bed that, while comfortable to me, was so different from my own; being careful to not step into the squatty as I showered and dumping buckets of water into it to flush it; and waking up to the smell of incense offered to the female Buddha every morning. I realized that even though I'd been here a year, I still had always had my little me-centered refuge of an apartment that I could return to at the end of the day, complete with cheese and hot chocolate and heating.

I felt a strange shyness creep over me. I began concentrating very hard on my food at meals and feeling oppressed by the unintelligible local dialect that was being shouted across the table. I began relishing times in the afternoon when I could read the very western Jane Austen and escape back to my culture and to my comfort zone, glorying that English flowed so easily in and out of my brain.

Then one day, after sitting down at another meal with tons of local people I didn't know all shouting at each other, looking desperately through the fat and organ meat for a piece of meat I wanted to eat, I walked out of the room to escape the noise and jumped out of my skin as a bazillion firecrackers went off just feet from me, followed by a whole wedding party staring at me. I ran to take refuge in the squatty potty so I could find a place where I could rest, where I knew no one was staring at me. When I got the courage to emerge, we then rode in my friend's dad's bread truck, where he bounced frighteningly fast over mountain roads and knocked the side mirror off of a fellow bread truck that was hurtling toward us at an equally dangerous speed. Then he let my friend drive and gave her a driving lesson by shouting at her constantly in the local dialect as she swerved off the road and onto the other side of the road quite a few times. This swerving caused my stomach to churn on top of everything I was feeling.

Tears started coming down before I could stop them.

I was so embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I'm supposed to be hardcore and cross-cultural, right? I'm not supposed to let my American-ness get to me. In my heart of hearts, I love the countryside here and the small towns and their precious people. In my heart of hearts, I knew her family was being nothing but gracious and hospitable to me. Even what sounded like "shouting" to my American ears was not shouting to them, but lively dinner conversation and cautious instruction from a loving father teaching his daughter to drive (and perhaps not wanting to die). They were offering the best food they could give, and incorporating me, a foreigner, into their daily lives during a very traditional festival.

I was so ashamed that they noticed, and of course they immediately began driving back home. When we got there, I escaped to my friend's room and got away with Jane Austen, tears still blurring my eyes as I tried to read. Even though my eyes were reading Victorian prose, my heart was still in Asia, searching...why was I reacting like this? I'd been in this country a year now. I thought I had outgrown all my weird discomfort over things that were not bad, just different. I felt so ungrateful, so in need of the Father's grace. I felt so ashamed because the last thing I wanted to do was hurt my friend's feelings after all the kindness she and her family had shown to me. I felt like a spoiled, selfish American brat. I told God I was sorry for failing him by failing to have constant joy and love for my friends.

And first, quietly, my friend's little brother's girlfriend walked in. She is tall and thin and soft-spoken and graceful. She has a sweet and gentle heart. You would think she'd listened to all of Beth Moore's lessons or something. But she's never heard of Beth Moore. And the only reason she's read a little of the book I read every day is because I've shown it to her.

Yet she came in and quietly put her arm around me, speaking words of comfort in both her language and mine. I kept apologizing, and she kept showing grace and love. Then my friend who originally invited me came in with a cup of tea for me, sitting down and saying, "JC says not to cry. We are your friends and we love you," and even talking to him for me, though she believes differently.

That night as we sat outside drinking oil tea, I made friends with a cute chubby little boy who wanted to practice his English, and his mom gave me all these local gifts because she was so happy her son had an English speaker to converse with. A guy close to my age who was introduced to me by my friend promptly said, "Sorry, I am shy because you are a beautiful girl!" As we all laughed, I thought to myself how we might all have a lot more dates if American guys were that blunt.

And my friend started opening up to me a lot more. Because I had been open with my ugliness and my shortcomings, she began to open up  - about how it is so difficult having divorced parents in the countryside because it is still very taboo there. How she hates the rush in your late twenties here to get married before you get "left over." How marriage should be about true love, not finances or family connections. And I shared in turn what my favorite book says about marriage, what a beautiful picture it paints. She told me the story of the female Buddha and how people in the countryside still revere her because they had nothing else to pray to during the starving times, and they felt they understood her because she had sought a life of suffering so as to identify better with the poor of the world. We talked about poverty and how Father dearly loves and fights for the poor and the sick and the starving.

On the bus ride home, as I continued to read Jane Austen, I meditated on how even when I'm ashamed of myself and feel like a failure, when I feel like a victim of the comfort I have grown up in, Father lavishes me with grace and good gifts and laughter...even, yes, even through the people I feel I've offended. And this is a grace, not that spoils me, but that refines me and helps me grow. This is a grace that gives me security and peace. It is not conditional, it is not given if I am a good girl; it is freely given that I might have the abundant life and be free to love Him in return with all of my heart. And so in the middle of my shortcomings and failures and chains to my own culture and language, my eyes turn not inward but upward and outward, to Him who gives grace and to the precious friends through whom He gives it. And so when I feel completely unlovable, I can rest in the assurance that I am still eternally loved, and I can still whisper a feeble, contrite, yet hopeful "halellujah."

He will still love you.

"we love because He first loved us."
1 John 4:19

Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving - it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.

O to grace, how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be.
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Oh what a scandalous love God has shown us. "God is not proud. He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him." - C.S. Lewis

That the sinner, deep in his heart, should never love God of his own volition is a fact. We can never love God or love purity and goodness simply by willing ourselves to do so. We love to fool ourselves, thinking we can love well, thinking we can be good enough for Him on our own...but we will always fail.

Even when I began to follow Him, it was because I wanted Him to stop my pain, not because I wanted to be holy. I wanted to be liberated from depression and anger and loneliness, not from slavery to self.

And this is where His love comes in.

This is where He whispers, this is where He woos.

This is where He comes to us in our deepest fears, in our deepest heartache, when we are confronted with all the crooked places in our hearts, and asks, "Will you let me love you? Will you let me restore you? Will you let me call you my daughter?"

And though we say no, He will still ask a thousand times.
He is a constant lover, who never gives up.

Because He knows that death to self, true repentance and new life, is the only way we can get all the other things our hearts seek. It is the only way we can be truly free, truly alive. It is DIFFICULT, yes. But it is WORTH IT. So difficult, and so worth it, in fact, that He is the only one who can do it.

Gently, gently, we are led to repentance. We can never change by ourselves; if that were the demand, if we who love darkness were to FIRST genuinely love the light to receive it, who then could be saved?

No one.

And that's what makes His love so scandalous.

Ridiculous, even.

He was ridiculed on the cross, and He continues to be ridiculed today.

He doesn't care.

He doesn't love us AFTER we change...He loves us BEFORE.

He loves us while we still hate Him, while we're slandering Him, mocking Him, joking about Him in a bar and then crying to Him from our beds that same night.

He loves us in the middle of our hypocrisy, when we're confronted with the emptiness of our lives while knowing full well how we should be spending them.

He loves even the loveless places in our heart that would make everyone else hate us and turn away, were they to view them.

Even if you never surrender to His love your entire life and curse Him on your death bed, He will still love you.

Even if you turn away and follow your own will, your own way, and walk the wide path of destruction, He will still love you.

Even if you scream at him, angry about your life, about a friend's betrayal, about a tragedy in the family, about the atrocities committed to the helpless around the world,
He will still love you (and He will still love them).

And this love, it is not just a feeling
(though He does dance and sing over you, and angels rejoice because of you; like I said, He is not proud. He is not afraid to show His love).
True Love is not a feeling anyway.
He does not stand on high smiling warmly and thinking good thoughts about you, wishing you well. Prosperity! Happiness! Go in peace!

No.

He will not only lift a finger, He will lift mountains and turn the world upside down to rescue you.

He has hands and feet.

He has a Body.

And His power is beyond all imagining.
It can create planets, it can form humans, it can raise the dead, it can mend the heart, it can cause kings to fall, it can cast out demons, it can heal diseases, it can (will) restore this planet,
And it can change you.

Forever.

Oh, a forever love...isn't that what we all desire? If I could be loved forever, by the Only One who has power to even make my life worth living...what more could I need? What more could I ever want?

When your hair begins to turn gray, and you cry as you look at your deepening wrinkles in the mirror and feel how un-beautiful you are next to younger women,
He will still love you. Cherish you even. Call you beloved, the apple of his eye.

When you have been in a foreign country and haven't worn make-up in ages and feel too fat and too tall and too weird, or like you always have to hide from the stares and whistles that follow you everywhere,
He will still adore you.

When you return home and cry because you want to go back to that other country, because you left a piece of your heart there,
He will still love you.

When no one else understands your feelings or experiences,
He will still understand you.

When you are addicted to something and have tried everything in your own power to fight it, when you have deluded yourself about the magnitude of your own power and self-control,
He will still love you...and yes, even heal you.

When you run, He will pursue.

When you cry, He will hold.

When you scream, He will whisper.

When you are hurt, He will rise in power.

When you are lost, He will find.

Still. Still. Though you break your promise a thousand times, though you wander, though to all others you are a lost cause,
Still.

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power 
through His spirit 
in your inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you,
being rooted and established in love,
will have power, together with all God's holy people,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the
fullness
of God.

Facedown in an Omelet

First week at UT, and there I was, facedown in an omelet.

Well, not in the omelet...I just said that because it's a much more humorous picture. Actually, my face was on the table, exactly eye-level with the ham-and-cheddar omelet, at 3 am in Kerbey Lane as I contemplated life at the beginning of freshman year with a friend I would rarely see again (what UT student hasn't had a moment like this?).

I had recently left a party, was very tired, and THAT WAS THE BEST OMELET I'D EVER TASTED!!11! I ate some pancakes too. The waiter came by and told me to get my head off the table at one point because they'd had too many students pass out in the restaurant recently.

I had just come back from a party with people I barely knew, and was now eating with people I barely knew. Everyone was someone I barely knew, including myself. I mean, a few months ago I could identify myself as a scholarship recipient, cheerleader, leader in the youth group, and Valedictorian, among other things. I'd had an identity and a history. Maybe not one I always liked, but I had one nonetheless.

And here, I was the girl who was being told to not pass out on the table.

I had recently attended Camp Texas, this magical place where everyone seemed to be smart, athletic, good-looking and confident all at once. I'd been completely overwhelmed. Most people already seemed to have a plan - a major, a country in which to study abroad, and even which sorority they would join. My first week at UT confirmed that I was constantly surrounded by smart, driven students. While I loved the new environment in which I found myself, I also let it threaten who I knew myself to be. Jesus couldn't be the same here as he was in my one-stoplight town in West Texas, could he?

I was at a crossroads. I could live for myself in college, or I could live for the God who redeemed me at the age of 13. This was a test. Was he real? Was I serious about this?

All through freshman year, I don't think I was quite sure. I had one foot in the world and one foot in the Kingdom. This was not the first or last time my life would be like this. We all have moments when we have one foot in the world and one foot in the Kingdom, one hand holding God's and the other holding money/power/people. I wanted to have everything. Jesus was not my only Pearl.

Then, I ended my first semester with a 3.4 GPA. Even though I'd been Valedictorian in one of the tiniest schools ever, I still had delusions of the unshakable awesomeness of my brain. That even at UT, I could do everything and still make the grades I wanted to make. That wasn't the case.

Don't get me wrong, a 3.4 is not awful. Having a 3.4 instead of a 4.0 is definitely a "first world" problem (as many girls don't even get to go to school), but at the time, being the product of the first-world system and the middle-class family that I was, I felt like my world was shattering. My identity was gone. I wasn't the best. I wasn't even close. I was one of 50,000 students who had all been at least the top 10% in their high schools, and I was competing against them. Sure, I was in an honors program, but so were many others...some who had already started their own nonprofits that cured AIDS and written a Tony award-winning play about it (maybe slightly exaggerating there).

And then my idolatry smacked me in the face. In high school, I had grown to love Jesus. But I still wanted to love the things of this world. I wanted to be the Christian girl, the beloved girl, the smart girl, the successful girl, and the creative girl. The blow to my pride in the form of a 3.4 GPA was almost more than I could take, as pathetic as that sounds. The kind of girl I wanted to be was not the kind of girl who had a 3.4. She was the girl who had a 4.0, yet somehow managed to still be the lead in a play, a leader in a Christian organization, an intramural sports player, obtain a coveted internship, learn a foreign language, and study abroad...perhaps even obtain a perfect boyfriend while doing so.

When all this did not just magically happen, I needed to reevaluate who I was. Who I wanted to be. In a one-stoplight town, there are seemingly only so many choices, but in a big, diverse city like Austin, you can be whoever you want. The possibilities are endless, and you can always find people to agree with you. You have to throw the sand away and choose your pearl.

If this were your typical "success" story, I would say it was all an uphill trajectory from there. That I chose to be a follower of Christ and stuck with it. That I got my head in the game, as Zac Efron would say in High School Musical 3, and never got out of it. By God's grace, my GPA got much better, it's true; I whittled down the things that were good and focused on things that were best; Father blessed me with brothers and sisters who walked beside me through good and bad.

But the truth is, even now at any moment I know I am just a change, a mood swing and a bad choice away from being facedown in an omelet. There were still awkward moments after that, over omelets or pancakes or other late-night fare. There were entire months when I genuinely believed God didn't want me to be happy or care about me. There were times when I got angry at people who had been nothing but good to me, when I had thoughts that I'd be ashamed to tell even the devil, when I let my joy succumb to worry. When I found out I would officially be going overseas for 2 years, my first reaction after the momentary rejoicing was to cry my eyes out. Fear gripped my heart, I'm ashamed to say, more strongly than the love and faithfulness of my Savior.

And so often, it still does. I constantly struggle to love the people I should love easily. I'm faced with the prospect of yet more dear friends leaving our city, after saying goodbye to so many local friends going off to college. I'm faced with the prospect of nothing being the same when I get back home in a year, the uncertainty of where I will live and who will be there for me. That all-too-familiar demon of loneliness always hovers close at hand, never quite vanquished and always ready to pounce. That fear of being alone for the rest of my life, of never having permanent community, of always bouncing around without clear direction or purpose or guidance. There's that too.

My point in saying all this is: I haven't arrived. You haven't either. I know that every day I'm growing more and more, growing in freedom and love and peace. But we've never arrived until we cross over that river and possess the kingdom prepared for us since the creation of the world. As long as we are here, we are sojourners. There is no destination here, only the journey. Here, we travel, we grow, we struggle, we sin, we love, we forgive, we taste and experience the kingdom we have not yet fully known or possessed, and sometimes we pass out in omelets. And the minute we think we have sufficiently distanced ourselves from that omelet is the minute we slip on a giant one that just happens to be frying on the sidewalk. And we think we've made a big fat gooey mess of our lives.

Thankfully, Jesus has an even bigger spatula.

Drowning.

I love fun outdoors things like hiking, canoeing, etc. And I love thrilling things like roller coasters. So Saturday I went whitewater rafting, for the second time over here. A perfect fit for me.

I knew what to expect, I'd done this before, they gave us life jackets (albeit paper-thin) and helmets. Over here, they have two people to a boat facing each other, rather than a long boat with everyone facing forward, so I climbed in one with my friend Olivia because we'd done this together before. It was sunny, the water was blue, the mountains were green, and it was going to be wonderful.

And it was - for a few seconds. Until our boat hit a rock in such a way that it flipped over. After my first task was accomplished, which was to get out from under the boat, I hardly knew what was happening, only that I kept coming up for air only to get sucked back under, that I couldn't hear or see anything but the rushing water above and all around me, that I kept being buffeted against rocks again and again as I struggled, trying to hold onto something but finding myself weak against the current, my backside and my knees and elbow hitting rocks again and again.

Then I felt Olivia's hand grab mine. We were still being swept along by the current, but there was so much comfort in that one gesture. I'd had no idea where she was and didn't know how she'd found me, but in that one second I knew that I at least wasn't going through this alone. Others tried to help us, but we kept getting swept along, until finally the rapids ended and gave way to calm water, and we were able to climb together into a friend's boat. No idea what had happened to our boat, or Olivia's shoes.

It's incredible that it was over so fast and yet was so terrifying. The combination of the mental and physical stress, along with losing some blood and being pretty nicely bruised, meant that we were absolutely exhausted. Olivia told me she didn't know if she could have breathed much longer if we hadn't gotten help when we did. I was shaking from exhaustion when I hoisted myself into the boat.

As I had been flailing helplessly in the water, my thoughts had turned panicky and morbid. I thought of how I'd Skyped with Mom in the morning, and how I'd told her I'd be doing this, and how I didn't want that to be my last conversation with her. I thought I heard people yelling or something but couldn't tell where they were or reach them. There were those moments when the water wouldn't allow me to come up for air when I wanted, and I'd remember hearing that drowning was the worst way to die. Of course I was crying out to Father in my head, and once or twice out loud when I would surface. I knew he saw me but was wondering when he would come to my rescue, or if he would come to my rescue. I was thinking I wasn't ready to "go home" yet, at least not like this.

Though it might seem silly because we ended up being all right in the end, without even a broken bone or concussion (praise the Lord), the incident really left us thinking afterward. I remember Olivia saying she felt like she should have been much more calm than she was, entrusting her life to Father rather than panicking or worrying.

I thought a lot too, about how that is exactly how I react when I feel like I'm drowning in life. When I don't know what the outcome of a situation will be, whether things will be good or bad, and I freeze in my fear. In that time I'm certain that the Lord has forgotten me, that he has lied about having a good plan for me. I remember afterward to trust in God, but in that moment, in the pain and struggle, I find it so difficult to do so. I immediately feel that I have been forsaken before I have even seen things through to the end, before I have let him show me how he works all things together for good.

Another thing, too, was that in that moment, in the rapids, I felt that they would never end. I completely forgot the view from above. Before rafting, when I had viewed them from the top of a hill, I'd seen that the rapids had a starting and ending point, and then calm waters from there on out. But in that moment, in my mind, the rapids would never end unless I fought them. I couldn't relax, let my body be a ragdoll as I hear you're supposed to do, and trust that I would get air when I needed and get to calm waters at just the right time, that the rapids' speed would work in my favor and eventually carry me to safety. I couldn't see anything but the turbulence that was surrounding me, and it greatly affected my perspective. This again is how I treat the "rapids" of my life. Just because I can't see the ending point from my perspective, I think they must not have an ending point. When I think this way, I exalt my perspective above God's. I don't trust him to lead me to calm waters at just the right time, when the refining is over and he has taught me what he wants to teach me for the time being.

Once I was out of the water, back on dry land and looking down, I saw a very clear ending point. I thought that if I had just been able to see that ending point when I was thrashing around, my thoughts might have been far less panicked, and I'd have been much calmer.

I'm reading the prophets right now, and one thing I am learning is that all physical experiences have some spiritual meaning. For instance, God tells Jeremiah to bear a yoke to symbolize the yoke of oppression on Israel as they are ruled by Babylon. He tells Ezekiel to eat defiled bread to show how the people had defiled themselves before the Holy God. I think he still works this way. I think Father allowed this to happen to me so that I would have a powerful, strong reminder emblazoned forever in my memory of how to deal with trials when they come. How to have hope and faith in the midst of them.

I hope and pray that next time I encounter rapids in my life, my mind drifts to the view from above rather than the rushing water around me.

Nothing New Under the Sun and Micah 6

If the wages of sin is death, what exactly is death?

Futility.

It's the abrupt ending of a linear path that otherwise shows such promise of progress, of a better world, of a better life -

and then silence.

Because of sin, the whole creation was subjected to futility. Through painful toil we eat all the days of our lives, and though we labor, the ground still produces thorns and thistles. In painful toil we now strive for successful careers in an economy that constantly pushes back. The majority of people, who have no faces on television and no voices, toil to just eat each day. The last line of the curse upon mankind is futility:

"dust you are and to dust you will return."

King Solomon meditates on this futility: "Meaningless! Meaningless! What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? ...Like the fool, the wise too must die!"

When Israel continues to rebel against God and oppress the poor, Yahweh says through the prophet Micah that he will relinquish his blessing, reminding them of the futility of their sin (that is, following themselves rather than God):

"You will eat but not be satisfied; your stomach will still be empty.... You will plant but not harvest; you will press grapes but not use the oil, you will crush grapes but not drink the wine."

Your first reaction might be that all this sounds overly morbid and depressing...but let's be honest: How many times have you had thoughts like this? Feeling anxious because we only have a few short years on this earth, and wondering how not to waste them? Feeling dissatisfied with your current life because you don't want to waste time doing what you're doing? Even in the happy moments, burying uneasy thoughts, wondering why you're still not satisfied?

I write this because I have had these thoughts many times. I think often we try to just dismiss them and crush them because they're not normal and not okay. We have everything; we are supposed to just be happy and not ask those questions. We have no right to be unhappy because we are not starving, we have not had too much trauma in our lives, we do not live in a war-torn country.

The Book of Micah says that Israel would "eat but not be satisfied." Israel had times of great abundance and was the envy of surrounding nations for its wealth. But God said they were still spiritually empty because they kept sinning and would not turn from it, and so he was sending times of scarcity on them. Rather than acting justly and loving mercy, they were hoarding ill-gotten treasures, cheating the poor with dishonest scales, full of violence and deceit.

What was the ultimate punishment? Not necessarily war, although this did come on the people. Not poverty, although times of suffering would follow. Futility. No satisfaction, no enjoying the fruit of their labor, but enduring a meaningless existence. The same punishment that was exacted at the Fall.

I think we continue to feel this punishment today; the Fall's depth has not lessened. Though we may be less primitive, we may have more material things (well, some of us...until you remember that 2 billion don't even have a toilet and 1 billion will not eat enough today), and we may be saturated with all sorts of information and philosophies to tell us whatever we want to hear, we still feel the effects of futility. Though with modern medicine we may prolong our lives, we can never escape physical death...or even worse, the death of the soul, which can happen much sooner.

But Jesus says we can be born again. He says we have a way out of this meaninglessness and futility. Not by transcending the world and detaching ourselves from it, as some would say; not by doing a bunch of things so we can be "good enough" for a deity; rather, by believing He has power over futility - over death and our deathly ways of living. In Him, there is something new under the sun. We have new life, we have new hope, we have direction even when we can't see two feet in front of us. Even while staying in the world, slogging through the mud and grit of life, we hold tightly to the pierced hand of the one who whispers in the crowded street and the back alley,

Behold, I am making all things new!

Suddenly, we can work a dead-end job and still have joy and satisfaction. Suddenly, we can look at unlovable people and see who they were born to be. We can be uncertain of our direction in life and still be able to laugh at the days to come. Our plans can even fail, the soil of our lives still unyielding, and yet we have hope. All because He went through the worst of our pain, endured our darkest thoughts and all the insults we have to hurl, joined us in physical agony and emotional torment, and came out victorious on the other side, not only alive but with a life that will never die, in a Kingdom where the hungry can feast and the thirsty can drink, and this gives us hope that such a Kingdom can penetrate this cursed world. 

Sometimes, when I catch myself chasing after the things of this world, I find myself dissatisfied and struck anew with the meaninglessness of life. But when I look at the only One who is something new under the sun, the only One who can make all things new, and I give my disobedience over to him and ask to be made new...

I eat and am satisfied.

This week, a high school girl killed herself.

I'm sure many high school girls and other precious people around the world found it too difficult to live this week, but this girl killed herself in my city, at a high school just a few bus stops away. It's always that much more difficult when something like that happens close to us, even if we didn't know the person.

I've been to that high school before, walked around it with my friend Jane. It's supposed to be the best high school in the city. To me it looks more like a university than a high school, with its huge campus boasting multi-story buildings and dorms. Here, it is not uncommon for high school students to live away from home.

I asked my friend why the girl did it. Was it being away from her parents? Was it the heavy work load? I always comment on how hard my high school friends have to work, how they never seem to have a moment to themselves. And right now is crunch time, the worst of exam season. It would make sense. It's happened before.

But that wasn't the reason, apparently. School officials read her journal.

She liked girls.

I may be on the other side of the world, but I'm still keeping up with what's happening in the States. And if it's difficult to be gay or lesbian in the States, I know it must be difficult over here, where it's relatively under the radar and few people are discussing or acknowledging it.

Regardless of what we think about the propriety of men liking men or women liking women, this should never have to occur. No one should ever feel that trapped. It's not about the fact that she liked girls so much as the fact that she did not feel free to bare her soul, with its changes and struggles.

In order to be trapped, a person must first box herself in. She must burrow deep into a hole where she thinks no one can hurt her. She must hide. But what happens when her hiding place becomes her prison? When the choice to hide herself is no longer her own, but the choice of someone fixing a stone door over her cave? Telling her she can never come out, that no one wants to see her as she truly is? The damp earth becomes suffocating, even to the point of death.

We refuse to show ourselves to those around us. We refuse to admit the darkness, the doubt, that constantly lurks underneath our smiling faces. And because we hide our own darkness, our differences, we encourage others to hide theirs. Because we are afraid, we project fear onto others. And so, one by one, we all burrow into our caves. Until everyday conversation is a strain, because no one is truly revealing themselves anymore.

I wish someone had told that girl that she could reveal herself, in all her mess and magnificence. That she had known, deep down, that she would be unconditionally loved. That as she worked through the turbulence of adolescence, she would have had that blessed assurance of a hand that will never let her go.

But a person who must hide herself every waking second is lost in every sense of the word.

C.S. Lewis writes that being truly "saved" does not entail the cancellation of sin and shame but rather the willingness to bear it to the world, pointing to God's grace all the while and trusting Him alone to cover it.

"As for the fact of sin, is it probable that anything cancels it? All times are eternally present to God. Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multi-dimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying and lusting as a schoolboy, forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern? It may be that salvation consists not in the cancelling of these eternal moments but in the perfected humanity that bears the shame forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it furnished to God's compassion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe" (The Problem of Pain).

It's as though the Free are dancing around naked, not because they are stainless and pure but because they are covered by something other than clothes, something other than what the world gives to mask shame. All of the messiness and grit is out in the open, but we refuse to be humiliated. Yes, we will continue to boast in our weaknesses, proclaim our failings from the rooftops, air our stubbornness and our stupidity and our different-ness, laughing all the while and feeling completely unashamed, because of the One who eternally covers us, molds us, and will never abandon his creations. Our hidden things out in the open are all to His glory.

I long for and dream of a world in which no one feels so trapped that death seems to be the only way out. Where no one wants to shrink to the point of oblivion. But those who do not know Love cannot come out of their caves, because they have never known the One who is completely loving, completely trustworthy, and completely unfailing. No one has ever shown them that such love exists. Therefore, to be out in the open means to be torn apart. And so these precious souls wither, souls who never had the chance to hear about grace.

Finally, speaking of Heaven and the Kingdom, Lewis writes,

"...Perhaps the lost are those who dare not go to such a public place."

They would, if they knew the public place was also the place of grace.

The Hard Places

from the book Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis, p. 252


"I have learned along my journey that if I really want to follow Jesus, I will go to the hard places. Being a Christ follower means being acquainted with sorrow. We must know sorrow to be able to fully appreciate joy. Joy costs pain, but the pain is worth it. After all, the murder had to take place before the resurrection.

I'll be honest: The hard places can seem unbearable. It's dark and it's scary, and even though I know God said He will never leave or forsake me, sometimes it's so dark that I just can't see Him. But then the most incredible thing happens: God take me by the hand and walks me straight out of the hard place and into the beauty on the other side. He whispers to me to be thankful, that even this will be for His good.

It takes a while sometimes, coming out of the dark place. Sometimes God and I come out into a desert and he has to carry me through that too. Sometimes I slip a lot on the way out and He has to keep coming back to get me. Always, on the other side is something beautiful, because He has used the hard places to increase my sense of urgency and to align my desires with His. I realize that it was there that He was closest to me, even in the times when I didn't see Him. I realize that the hard places are good because it is there that I gained more wisdom, and though with wisdom comes sorrow, on the other side of sorrow is joy. And a funny thing happens when I realize this: I want to go to the hard place again. Again and again and again.

So we go. This is where our family is today and where I hope to stay - loving, because He first loved us. Going into the hard places, entering into the sorrow because He entered for us first and because by His grace, redemption and beauty are on the other side."

Waking the Dead

Everything was black except one white-clothed figure lying on the ground, golden hair flowing from her head.

I wouldn't normally do this, I thought, but I kneeled over her and prayed, my pounding heart the only sound in the blackness. My hand on her shoulder, I begged God to raise her from the dead.

I don't know how long I knelt there in that dream, but I know that I eventually saw the head lift, golden hair finally leaving the floor, her arms shakily propping herself up. Then, finally, like a baby animal of some kind, she rose to her feet.

I woke up and went about my normal college student morning, hitting the snooze button a few times, probably temporarily forgetting the dream, reading my Bible, spreading some cream cheese on a bagel. Then I got a call from a friend I was supposed to have lunch with.

She said she had to cancel because she was on the way to a hospital where her best friend's little sister lay in a coma.

The golden-haired girl had been in a horrible car accident, had been unresponsive for two weeks, and now no one was sure if she'd ever wake up. A 10% chance of waking. And if waking, then probably no walking. Possible paralysis.

10% chance.

A high school girl. Like I had been just a few years ago.

As I assured her that of course I completely understood, and I would be praying for her, my dream rushed back into my consciousness. I saw that girl getting shakily to her feet. I felt the power of the Most High God rush through my feeble hands and permeate that black room.

I felt it permeate this black world.

And, reopening my Bible and reading the stories of how Jesus raised that 12-year-old girl from the dead and healed a woman who had been bleeding for years, and knowing he is still able, I fasted and prayed most of the day for this girl I had never met and probably never will meet. Emotions that I knew were not my own rushed through me; passion poured through my heart that did not come from my mind but from heaven's. I felt a Father's heart for his daughter. I felt an entire community joining with this one college student in Austin, begging for one small life out of billions. Prayers were lifted that were not from our hearts but from His, power came from our words that was not our own power but His.

In my heart, I felt an incredible assurance. I knew with certainty that this girl would rise, that she would even walk. I knew He'd given me that dream for a reason. I treasured this in my heart, just between Jesus and me.

A few days later I got the word.

She woke up.

Weeks later, she walked.

Supported physically and emotionally by people who loved her, she walked out of the hospital.

As miraculous as this was, and how incredible as it was that Father allowed a distant, unrelated person like me to be a small part of it and watch Him do his thing, her wakefulness wasn't the biggest miracle. Her walking wasn't the biggest miracle.

The biggest miracle was what happened in the next few months, what I wasn't there for but what I can imagine: the mood swings, the progress, the letdowns, a family never giving up hope, taking her recovery painfully slow, day-by-day, moment-by-moment. A girl rediscovering every tiny bit of herself.

When Father shows up and does a momentary miracle, we all rejoice. We are in awe, and we wish we had more moments like that. But one second is not the end. One second may spur the beginning of a life change, one second may mark an important milestone, but the most awe-inspiring works of art take the most time. Relationships take a lot of time. People take a lot of time.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in a matter of seconds. What we are not told was what happened afterward. What would you do if you thought your life was over, and suddenly you were awake again and had that precious time back? Though the miracle took seconds, the life that formed afterward was another miracle.

It only takes seconds for Jesus to raise a body.

It only takes seconds for him to salvage a soul.

May we rejoice even more in the hard, beautiful, refining times that follow, than in that one precious moment.

Other Moments

I enjoy sharing funny and inspiring stories about living in a foreign country. They're fun to tell, and more importantly, fun to live.

But then there are other moments.

I've been struggling a little bit lately with all the new things here. Things I'm not used to. I usually have an adventurous spirit and I'm always up for trying new things and being uncomfortable, but I will admit I actually struggle to leave the apartment at times.

First of all, I'm living by myself. Walking to class by myself. Sometimes eating by myself off in a dark corner of campus, just to get a moment of not being stared at, pointed at, or laughed at. Even babies in strollers have pointed at me, mouths gaping, because they recognize that I'm "different."

I feel so helpless. I have to go to multiple stores around town just to get basic sandwich fixings. Currently my refrigerator contains 1 kiwi, 1 half avocado, some ham, cheese, and a couple of uncooked eggs. And then when I do cook those eggs, I must do it on a gas stove...and I still haven't figured out how to hard-boil them just right. Also, I'd never had to peel two completely black layers off a grilled cheese sandwich until recently.

You know, the last time I came here, it was with 6 other crazy Americans. We stood out together, made cultural and language mistakes together, and tried new things together.

It's much different doing it by yourself.

How humbling is it when you can't even say what kind of meat you want in your dumplings? How frustrating it is when you know you've already learned the word, but of course you can't think of it in just the moment you need it. And then when I manage to stammer out a few awkward phrases in the language and I'm hoping to be told "good job," instead I am immediately corrected at such a fast pace that I can't understand a word they are saying.

I know I should just sit with random people at lunch, make goofy mistakes, and laugh at myself. But sometimes, that's much easier said than done.

Sometimes, I just want to speak English.
Sometimes, I just want for no one to stare at me like I just stepped out of a UFO.
Sometimes, I just wish I was back in Austin with that Starbucks right down the street.
Sometimes, I just want to not be humbled constantly.

And then I walk the 35 minutes back to the apartment, by myself, fighting back tears and secretly hating the loud honking cars and pedestrian-homing-missile bicycles that I have to dodge just to get across the road, with a bag of dumplings in one hand and a bilingual dictionary in the other, and fling my stuff down and cry and pray and sing out to the One who fully understands English, who would even understand nonsense words were I to utter them.

In some moments, that's the best you can do.

Dancing in the Storm

I'm always afraid to try out God's power. I've wanted for a while to see God heal someone miraculously through me, and yet I'm terrified to ask friends if they want me to pray healing over them. I usually just take the safer way out: "I'll be praying for that." Let's just say I'm not like Elijah, daring people to call down fire from heaven and see whose God answers.

But lately I've been reading and hearing stories of friends...not friends of friends, or someone who knows someone who knows someone...my friends, who have healed people instantaneously in the name of Jesus, or who have done some other immediate miracle.

I want to see that.

At Rez Week tonight, this huge screen we were using to project worship lyrics kept almost falling over because of the wind. I was right under it. It was really causing a distraction, as people kept looking away from the speaker to see it sway back and forth. People eventually had to take it down during the speaker's talk, and then began setting it back up so we could end in worship (by the way, if any of you ever read this, thank you for your servant hearts).

I asked a sweet girl near me if she would pray with me that the wind would stop, and just that there would be no distractions and we would all have undivided hearts as we worshiped. We prayed together, as I cited to God the time when Jesus calmed the storm for his disciples and asked him to do the same now. The wind stilled for a minute.

But I was so afraid it would start back up again. So worried. And Jesus says not to worry.

Why was I afraid? I was afraid God wouldn't answer. I was afraid it would only stop for a moment and then start up again and I would doubt if God even listened or heard. I kept stressing out in my mind, wondering why I always do this after I pray...I always look desperately to see if God will say yes, if he will pull through.

Then the wind kicked back up (and just to be clear, it never kicked back up to the levels it had been before, and God had already blessed us and answered my prayers by holding back the thunderstorm that was supposed to happen tonight).

But I distinctly heard God saying: What difference does it make if I stop the wind? Will you be disappointed in me if I don't stop the wind? Ashamed? Will you lose faith? Maybe I have a purpose for the wind. Maybe I have a purpose for every inconvenience.

And he also pointed out an area of pride in my heart. Another reason I'm afraid to pray specific things over people to their face is that I'm afraid it won't happen and that they'll think my faith is phony or that I'm crazy. I'm afraid to look stupid in front of them. I was afraid the sweet girl I prayed with would think I'm not truly connected to God or something because my prayer didn't work. That is the wrong motivation. I need to pray over people and their situations because I love them and because I want God's healing and renewal in their lives, not because God needs to pull through so I can look good.

Then the most amazing thing happened as the wind blew. A girl who had been helping to hold the screen steady let go and jumped right in front of the screen as we worshiped.

And she started dancing.

Then another guy behind her began dancing.

Then people began jumping and laughing.

A thought came to my head: "If God chooses not to stop the wind, we will still dance in it."
And God said, "Calming the storms brings me glory, but it brings me even more glory when my followers choose to dance in the middle of the storms."

And I began laughing as I applied this to the rest of my life. To all my unanswered prayers, to all my unrealized longings, to all my heartbreaking moments. I felt Jesus smiling over me as I joined in dancing with so many others, as we ecstatically sang, "Let hope rise, and darkness tremble in Your holy light." And meant it.

We worshiped without distractions and with undivided hearts. The wind didn't completely stop...but there was no way it could keep us from dancing.

Posters

In this apartment, our posters like to fall off the walls. Frances and I have lived here for almost a full year now, with many days punctuated by shiny rectangles of inspiration crashing to the floor. Those double-sided Scotch squares never hold, white sticky tack never holds...and we even got that annoying orange Elmer's sticky tack that stains the walls, and it never holds.

I was proud of one poster in my room that had never fallen. It's right above my desk. It's a picture of a serene seascape with clouds up ahead and mountains in the distance. Your point of view is from a beach with a docked boat. The boat is pointing at this awesome jungle-y looking island looming in the distance, like Madagascar. It looks awesome. It's like a giant forested thumb rising out of the ocean. It makes you want to grab that boat and sail to that thumbish island, until you look down at your glowing screen and remember the English paper you're writing and your ears reawaken to the lovely Cain & Abel's soundtrack downstairs.

But then I came home the other day to discover that it had finally fallen.

And you know, the funny thing about these posters is that once they've fallen, they never stay up as well again. No matter how you re-roll the sticky tack and firmly press the shiny sheet against the off-white wall, it's always so much easier for the poster to fall down the second time, and the third time. My beautiful poster had held up almost a whole year before falling, but now that it's fallen off the wall once, it's far more likely to succumb to gravity again. It may take only a few days.

"Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary."

There's probably something you're struggling with, something that keeps tugging at you. Something you've been fighting for years. We all have our temptations, addictions, and rough pasts. You've been consistently practicing self-control and giving your burdens to Him, sharing little daily victories with God. But maybe right now that thing looks really good, or maybe you've hit a rough spot with God and just don't care much about pleasing him right now. Maybe now it's hard for you to have hope that you will reap rewards because it doesn't look like God is taking care of you.

Please don't fall. Don't allow gravity to take hold of you. The thing is, once you've taken one fall after climbing up for so long, it's so easy to fall again...and again...and again. We kinda have a lot in common with thin sheets of paper when it comes to God. I mean, we are that weak compared to His strength. Because we live in a world that is often hostile to Truth and Love, we constantly have to fight, but the gravity pulls and pulls and won't stop until we die. We get tired, and it's understandable. We're flimsy by ourselves, with no foundation and no purpose. No matter how independent we like to pretend we are, we need to be held up by our Mighty Fortress. Day by day by difficult day.

There will be times when we have no idea why we're following Him anymore, when we have no idea why we continue to obey. That kind of obedience is best, the kind that seems to go unrewarded, that pushes through when there appears to be no incentive from God and every possible reward from the world.

In The Screwtape Letters, a demon says,
"Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round on a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Keep holding on. Trust. TRUST. Don't fall back into what you were saved from. This could be one of the most important stages of healing - when your temptation is being flung in your face with all its riches, with all its seductive power...and succumbing looks so good, or so easy, or even the only option. Of course the enemy would love to make you fall, right when you're about to reach the top and conquer what he's enslaved you to, right when God is about to do something so great that you would not believe it even if He told you. Remember who is the author of lies and who is the author of Truth.

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him."

Hold on, and God will blow you away.

Ripped Off

I have a lovely friend. Her name is PJ. A couple of winter breaks ago, PJ and I went to Disney World.

After a long day of roller coasting, minnie mouse hat buying (you're never too old for that), caricaturing, and show-watching, we meandered among the gift shops on our way out. She saw a cute carrot-shaped clear bag in the candy section, for the purpose of filling with orange M&Ms. It even had little tufts of green at the top. Don't ask me why this Easter-ish thing was on sale in January. I don't know.

PJ said, "I'm going to get this for my friend. He'll love it!" As she began scooping the M&Ms and weighing the bag, I saw that the price came to...well, a lot more than you'd expect for a bag of M&Ms. Even a carrot-shaped one. At Disney World. When I commented on what a rip-off it was, she said,

"It's okay. He's worth it."

I hadn't even thought of it that way. All I'd thought about was that what she was getting wasn't worth what she was paying...but all that mattered to her was her friend's worth. It didn't matter if she got "ripped off", as long as the gift made her friend happy.

I usually don't think of things that way. We are often told to be practical and logical. And those things have their place, of course, but I'm sick of being told that. I'm so sick of it. Love is not practical, and it is certainly not logical. Life demands unconditional love, not unconditional practicality. We would really be in trouble if God valued what made "sense" over what made love.

The desire for carrot-shaped bags of M&Ms to cost less than they do is often excused because we say, "Well, it's not fair" or "I'm being taken advantage of." But things never cost what they're worth. If things always made sense, it would mean we're in control. I often wish that were true, but I'm not in control, and most things in my life don't make sense. For instance, this thing we call love - the sum of patience, kindness, humility, joy, honesty, and forbearance. It can cost us anywhere from absolutely nothing to everything we've ever worked or hoped for. And sometimes, paradoxically, both at once. However, cost matters little as long as the person we love is worth it. If we look at others and see a person of infinite value, we will view NOTHING we do for them as a rip-off.

Others may take advantage of you, others may hurt you, you may have to give a lot for a little in return...but the one that you do these things for, is He worth it? Is anything worth it just to make Him smile?

The world looks at a lot of things we do, or refrain from doing, and thinks we're being ripped off. The problem is when we begin to agree. If you ever feel that you're being ripped off by doing something, take a step back and spend some time with Him. Allow His affection to pour back into you, because your sacrifice is worth nothing without your adoration. He, your eternal lover, is dishonored by anything less than a simple, unhesitating "It's okay...He's worth it."

Spiritual Warfare

Daily, we're fighting against something, whether we realize it or not. If we're going to school, we're fighting ignorance. If we're working, we're fighting poverty. If we're hanging out with friends, we're fighting loneliness. Life is a constant struggle against evil, regardless of our consciousness of that fact. To even LIVE at all is to upset the evil one, as nothing makes him happier than death and destruction (John 10:10).

So Christians who think they can follow God without encountering daily spiritual warfare are simply wrong. We can't coast along and avoid the enemy's attacks, because no matter how weak your faith is, or how nonexistent, he will always try to make it worse. Nothing will ever be "bad enough" for him, just like we can never be "good enough" for God without His grace. So we need to face facts - life is a battle, whether you choose to fight with God or not. You can go through the battle asleep, or you can go through it awake and actively build God's Kingdom here on earth.

It's that activity that I want us to remember. Constantly living FOR GOD, not just abstaining from doing things for Satan. "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder." (James 2:19) Abstaining from "bad" sins is not what our faith is ultimately about; a lot of non-Christians can do that quite easily. At judgment, God will not say, "Well done, my good and faithful teetotaler" or "Well done, my good and faithful virgin." He will be more concerned about whether we loved to fight evil and advance His Cause here on earth, whether His Cross was our all-consuming passion. Going back to education, if you simply abstain from taking books away from little children, you can't say you're fighting ignorance. You have to actually be teaching them. Saying, "Well, at least I don't steal their Speak n Spells!" doesn't mean anything.

When you read the Armor of God in Ephesians 6, think about it this way. No one suits up with armor as heavy as the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, etc., just so they can walk nonchalantly across the battlefield, whistling all the way and not paying attention to the arrows clanging off of them. (Whew, right? Wriggled my way through another day of life!) You don't suit up unless you're going to be firing some arrows yourself. Otherwise, you're completely useless.

If we're not actively fighting evil daily, we are not Christ's disciples. Jesus did not save us just so we could walk across the battlefield and not get hit, he gave us that armor so that we can join him in his daily struggle against a very real enemy. The fact is, there is no such thing as walking across the battlefield and not getting hit, and your pretending won't make it true. Just try it. Get your nice house, your nice family, your 401(k); go to your all-white middle-class church, ignore the poor and the depressed around you, and just see if you can avoid spiritual attacks.

We shouldn't be cowering, waiting for the enemy to come get us. We should be actively seeking darkness and turning it into light. Jesus didn't leave his mark by hanging out with the holy people and avoiding the world; He confronted darkness with the Father's light and the darkness FLED. And that same power lives in us.

My Portion

I read The Taming of the Shrew this week. It was really funny, probably one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. Alongside it, I read chapter 8 of this “companion to Shakespeare” guide to help us understand the times better. 

“The bride’s family promised to give to the married couple a dowry made up of property, valuables (silver and jewelry, for example), and cash. This was also called the bride’s portion…”

Portion. I’ve heard this word before (I mean, other than in the context of a meal). I thought of a line in “Amazing Grace” - The Lord has promised good to me; His Word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures.

If Christ is my portion…if Christ is my portion…that means everything. The church does not deserve to be the bride of Christ. Not one bit. Has there ever been a more uneven match? Has any husband (even the husband of a “shrew”) ever had such work cut out for him? Of purification, of reconciliation, of unfailing love towards a continually adulterous bride? 

In the Renaissance, a portion was a promise. It secured a husband for the bride (her primary goal in life) and ensured that the young couple would survive as they began their lives together. But once there was a bride that was so unsuited for her would-be husband, so far beneath him, that no dowry her family could possibly give would appease her fiance’s Father. However, as unattainable as this perfect husband was, he was the bride’s only hope. Without him her life would be meaningless. Without him she was nothing.

What if, instead of rejecting the bride, telling her there was no hope, that she would never have this husband, the fiance's Father allowed the marriage? Of course, before doing so, he set up plenty of ground rules to make her a better match for his Son and to save her from herself. You would think the bride, in her thankfulness, would be the best wife possible, with a constant heart and a thankful soul. But it was quite the opposite; the son did everything he could for his bride, serving her though he was infinitely above her, coming to her rescue when enemies threatened her, listening to her though he was infinitely wiser, and treasuring her as a jewel though she was far uglier than he. She, on the other hand, desired another man – charming but insincere, deceitful and selfish, alluring and dangerous, who seduced her but said she could not have him until she murdered her husband. 

So she killed her only hope.

After her hope was dead, she ran into her new lover’s arms, only to be repulsed, beaten and laughed at. He left her completely alone in despair. Of course, now and then he would come back, promising that this time he would be faithful, that this time she would find the hope and joy anew that she had killed…but she would always be left alone, scorned, in a frightening and solitary darkness. 

But the Father…the Father, though it would have been just to avenge his son, though it would have been completely fair to leave the bride to die in her hopelessness with her deceitful lover, had pity. He saw this shamed creature, saw what she could be, not the ugly thing she was, and offered her a new identity if she would only leave her unconstant lover behind. Once again, she needed no portion – only to acknowledge the sacrifice the Son had made for her and exchange her ways for his ways. And so, upon her acceptance, the Father took her to a new place, gave her a new name, gave her a new face. He made the ugly beautiful. He made the old new. He gave her the most complete love she had ever known – an eternal security and yet also an eternal adventure. And best of all, she learned that her husband had never and could never die, though he was no longer physically with her. He would forever live on to battle her deceitful enemy, who had wooed her and thrown her away, and worse, who had mocked and attacked him and his Father, until that enemy was no more. And, once recreated, once she had abandoned her old self, she was fit to join him in that battle for Good, to war against all things untrue. And fit to share in the victory when He triumphed.

Nothing less than a perfect Life was a sufficient dowry for this woman. Nothing less than complete recreation could make her see the truth and stop believing lies. And yet the Father, who is in the business of creation, gave it all willingly, for he forever gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.