atlas

i'm struck by the brilliance of life...

today i ran as hard as i could...six times in a row. it was hard and fast and i loved it. when i broke my foot a couple years ago, i promised myself i would never take having healthy feet and legs for granted. it's taken a long time, but i'm awake now. livened by the sounds of my own hard breathing, bare feet striding on dark grass, bounding pulse.

saturday we rescued a dog and named him atlas. :) he's some kind of crazy black lab/pitt mix, but he's lazy like a mastiff. he came running with us this morning, and loped around with his big ears flopping and his tongue wagging.

he's loved us really well though, always sidling up and leaning in. and he loves to have his ears scratched. dogs remind me a little bit of how to be affectionate and love well.

we named him atlas after the Greek Titan who carried the heavens on his shoulders. and maybe a little because he's a wanderer. i already know my heart is going to shatter when we find him a family...

also, toast is delicious. butter toast and coffee makes morning more bearable. and atlas's lazy bones next to me. oh dear....

diet coke

it's the ordinary beauty that makes our lives rich. this morning, i celebrated my friend Katie's fifth birthday at a pajama party. she giggled, colored, made crowns and ate cake. she also introduced me to her friend Ella who's about her age and has leukemia. "she used to have hair, but now she doesn't," Katie innocently told me as she snuggled up next to Ella and i. earlier i'd watched little Ella playing with Katie's cousin Ellie, who is four months old. laughing lightly, Ella watched as Ellie's tiny hands tugged on a squeaky giraffe. simple and ordinary, yet something brilliant happened in my soul as i watched them play together.

Katie's brother Luke is two and a half and full of brave sentences, curiosity and the most incredible imagination. he served two of my interns and i wooden blocks, which in his game were diet cokes, bread and butter and pieces of cake. his generosity and innocent spirit were contagious....

minutes after Katie began opening her presents, her mom told me that one of my interns (her name's Kelsey) lost her best friend and her mother had just called and told her the news. i was struck by the juxtaposition of celebrating life, and learning of untimely death. Katie's dad and i sat on the bed with Kelsey for nearly an hour...Paul's really good with words, especially in the midst of pain, grief and confusion. pastoral care is definitely his forte....i, on the other hand, fumble and stutter and can't think of something kind and comforting to save my life. but my heart broke with her heart as i watched the inner struggle; denial, overcome with grief, pain, confusion. wave after wave of deep emotion flowed through Kelsey.

and then outside the bedroom door, a light giggle from Luke and Katie, "Mom this is sooo fun!" Paul then reminded Kelsey that there is no right or wrong way to process. it is okay to be wherever you're at...tiny moments of joy do not betray.

it's the most beautiful thing that the Lord gifted us with Kelsey this summer...i have no idea what He is up to, but i am confident that these days, these moments of process with her will mold us...mold me.

i hate that it sometimes takes death to remind us how to live.

still i'm struck by the intense discord between celebration of life and battling death...i suppose that's part of this process. we need to sit with that disconnect and let it invade, be filled with questions and answers and present it all honestly to Jesus. and let Him deal with the rest. let Him fill the gaps and draw the lines. we just lean into the tension and wait for peace to lead the way.

funky orange couch

i'm currently sitting on this great funky orange couch in our new staff common room...this wonderful little room has been a bit of a labor of love. and there's still some work to do. but the walls have fresh paint, the carpet has been cleaned, the couches febreeze'd. there are books on the book shelf and magazines on the coffee table. all the little details have been nearly ironed out. and i think this space is ready for its new inhabitants. jefferey, katie, jeni, nate, samantha and lauren will live here starting this weekend.

it's so exciting thinking and praying for them...because i've been there. i won't soon forget the adventure my friends and i took down to houston three years ago. it was with anticipation and a little anxiety that we arrived. completely unaware of the ways we would see change happen...the ways we would see Christ happen...the unexplainable beauty that transformed us into Christ followers who are fighting for the Kingdom...the tears that would be shed on behalf of our unseen brothers and sisters of the street...the hope that overwhelmed our hearts at the sight of Jesus in the face of a stranger. so it is with great hope and encouragment that i welcome these new hearts to houston. to adventure and reality, dreams and laughter, tears, sweat and rest. rest on this great funky orange couch.

crisp linens

you know when you take your clean sheets off the clothes line in the summer? they kind of snap when you shake them out...

i feel like that - the snap in the linens. like my expectations are the clean, smooth, bleach white sheets, and the snap is reality.

it seems that this is how most of us live our lives. we live in this dance of expectation and reality, and our arms are flailing about for balance.

example a: in january, when i received the initial phone call from the CSM houston office, asking if i was interested in the job, it was like my world was suddenly clicking into place. and i began dreaming of what life in houston would finally be like. all those months of wishing and hoping to be reunited with houston weren't entirely fruitless. it seemed to me that this would be a defining moment in the timeline of my life. i would move to houston and find self actualization, a husband, a new community, Christ in fresh ways, and i would finally be comfortable and confident and at home with this person that i am.

and then i got here. and while i would never say that it's been bad, it has been significantly more challenging than i ever planned. i've learned that finding community requires a certain amount of boldness and courage that i have never needed before. it takes being intentional, even and especially when no one else is. it means going out of my way to meet someone, shake their hand and take the plunge of introducing myself first...

it's so odd being on the other side of a welcome committee. in college, i was a welcome-er. i greeted people and hoped to make them feel comfortable in our worship space. i hugged and loved on people and was sure of myself. and now....now i'm the nervous girl walking in alone, wondering if there will be a kind person to say hello to me. and if you want to know the truth, it's rather terrifying, this feeling of not even knowing who this nervous girl with sweaty palms and anxious eyes is. i look in the mirror and it looks like me though, so i guess it must be true.

maybe if my pride hadn't got in the way i would've been able to admit it before now, but part of me just couldn't tell anyone because it felt...wrong...and i didn't want people to feel sorry for me. i didn't want anyone worrying about how i was doing or questioning if i heard right when i thought the Lord called me here.

can i just clarify that i don't know that the Lord called me here. i'm not positive. but i think that He is a Good and Sovereign and Beautiful God who is for whatever reason, interested in me, his daughter, and is caring for me. even when i can't see the road ahead, or the path behind that led me to this point. i'm not completely miserable; there are wonderful, exciting, joyous things that are happening all around me. i love my job, and i love the people i work with. i feel safe there and confident that Christ is dwelling all around every ministry opportunity that i've had and will have. He is comforting me in little ways daily. but it is still hard. my heart is still a little vulnerable. but i am hopeful now, while last month i was not so much hopeful as i was discouraged. but today i feel pretty good. it was worth waking up this morning. and i think tomorrow will be too.

however, that doesn't change the sting of reality. or the snap of the sheets...

early morning epiphany

since i was twelve years old, i've been strangely interested in people...more specifically what lies behind their eyes, their words and ways, you know...what makes them tick as they say. i remember, and probably will not soon forget, one night in 7th grade sitting in our upstairs office counseling a friend over the phone. what she was so upset about has escaped me, but the idea was that i was craving to know what really was going on inside her head. anyway, my dad came upstairs and after i had hung up the phone, we kind of debriefed the situation. we talked about psychology and what it was, and how i was interested in people's minds. he encouraged me in such a way that from that time on, i never had a doubt that that's what i wanted to study in college.

during my college psychology experience, there were some incredible classes...but i soon learned that theorizing was not for me. yes, i was still intrigued and wanted to know more, but my psych classes were not cutting it. so i added some religion classes....nope, still didn't really meet what i was looking for. -not the religion part mind you, i'm still very much into Jesus.

all that is to say, this morning i was reading, Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller. and i have to say, he hit the nail on the head. and it was such a large nail head that i should've noticed it long ago. probably the most screamingly obvious piece of my short existence and i couldn't see it. not that Daddy and I were wrong all those years ago...just maybe it was too soon to tell what i was made for. so here's the [kinda long but keep reading] exerpt that prompted my early morning epiphany:

"i figure i was attaching myself to a certain identity because it made me feel smart or, more honestly, it made other people tell me i was smart. this is how i learned my sense of importance. now.....by doing things to get other people to value me, a couple of ideas became obvious, the first being that i was a human wired so other people told me who i was. this was very different from anything i had previously believed, including that you had to believe in yourself and all, and i still believe that is true, but i realized there was this other part of me, and it was a big part of me, that needed something outside myself to tell me who i was. and the thing that had been designed to tell me who i was, was gone. [k just pause for a sec...i think he means missing when he says gone....because we've distorted the God of the Bible] and so the second idea became obvious: i was very concerned with getting other people to say i was good or valuable or important because the thing that was supposed to make me feel this way was gone.
and it wasn't just me. i could see it in the people on television, i could see it in the people in the movies, i could see it in my friends and family, too. it seemed that every human being had this need for something outside himself to tell him who he was, that whatever it was that did this was gone, and this, to me, served as a kind of personality theory. it explained why i wanted to be seen as smart, why religious people wanted to desperately to be right, why Shirley MacLaine wanted to be God, and just about everything else a human did.
later, when i set this truth about myself, and for that matter about the human race, next to what the Bible was saying about who God is, what happend in the Fall, and the sort of message Jesus communicated to humanity, i realized Christian spirituality fit my soul like a key. it was quite beautiful, to be honest with you. this God, and this spirituality, was very different from the self-help version of Christianity. the God of the Bible seemed to be brokenhearted over the separation in our relationship and downright obsessed with mending the tear.
i began to wonder if the actual language of life was not the charts and formulas and stuff we map out on a graph to feel smart or right, but rather the hidden language explaining why every perosn does everything they do, the hidden language we are speaking that is really about negotiating the feeling God used to give us.
i don't mean to sound like a pop-psychologist. i am only pointing to the obvious stuff that is taking place in our souls that nobody wants to talk about. it is this obvious stuff that Scripture seems to waltz in and address matter-of-factly.
and that is the thing about life. you go walking along, thinking people are talking a language and exchanging ideas, but the whole time there is this deeper language people are really talking, and that language has nothing to do with ethics, fasion or politics, but what it really has to do with is feeling important and valuable. what if the economy we are realling dealing in life, what if the language we are really speaking in life, what if we really want in life is relational?
now this changes things quite a bit, because if the gospel of Jesus is just some formula i obey in order to get taken off the naughty list and put on a nice list, then it doesn't meet the deep need of the human condition, it doesn't interact with the great desire of my soul, and it has nothing to do with the hidden (or rather , obvious) language we are all speaking. but if it is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the comunity that named it, and an attempt to bring humanity back to that community, and if it is more than a series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of mankind."

there you have it. a glimpse into what makes me tick...and you too i would assume.

thirteen

so just now i was randomly facebook-ing and ran across these pics of loads of Friends Church peeps making over Camp Quaker Haven. all these beautiful faces from memories past. people who i knew in Haviland as a kid; people who knew my parents in Haviland before i was even a kid; people i met once or twice in Mexico but left a lasting impression. all these connected Christ followers joined together for something as simple as making over an old camp...NOT that all that hard work was easy, not at all. i just mean that it's a fairly simple, beautiful idea. that the Body connected to follow through on....there's this one photo that shows everyone in worship....a small sea of Friends all led by a pastor from Mexico and his family. it seems that they made the trek to the bottom of Kansas to lend a hand to their brothers and sisters. people from all over....oh how i love common ground. a basic principle or idea that unites us. a task to spur us on. though i've not actually been to Quaker Haven in nearly 10 years, i carry some fond memories of my youth from there. and it's refreshing to see someone caring about its upkeep. the Lord's been using that place for years and it's so encouraging to think that He still has plans for it, and for the countless people who will drive over the hill to get there.

jeremiah

so. 1958 miles ago (give or take a hundred or so) i was in sunny Los Angeles...that's right, i drove from L.A. to Kansas to Houston in a matter of days. a lot of friends have asked why i suddenly moved across the country. again. and i'm just going to share some of my personal journal entries to shed a little light on the subject. but i should add that when i journal, it really is a way of communicating to the Lord what's on my heart, and on my mind. and also a way of talking out just what i'm feeling, as if i'm speaking to a particular person sometimes....haha does that make me a little crazy? ; ) ......so here's an entry from January 2007....

"do you ever get these longings? these deep achings of your soul that sound like the groanings of a gigantic ship that's sinking...right now my heart, my body, my mind, all of me is aching for Houston. that's where i want to be right now. if i could dream up any kind of fantastical tale tonight in my sleep, i'd dream i was in Houston. seeing Claude and his wife Jenny. smiling at James and telling him good-morning, looking at the joy on his face because i finally remembered his name : ) chit-chatting with Mr. Williams while i count the number of men eating supper at Harbor Light. holding little Zachary in my arms, telling him i'll be back soon. eating thai food with a bunch of hungry jr. highers, enticing them to drink the tea that tastes like barbeque...praying over the city, knowing that our loving God is listening. looking at the lights of the city from Eleanor Tinsley park....that one building with the crescent moon shape lit up on the west side.

i'm still not over that city. it breaks my heart i can't be there.

maybe i'll take your there; maybe we'll go there someday...soon. man i love that place. the green field in front of the water wall. we'll go there and lay down - looking upside down up at the buildings. and we'll hear the water in the background. and we'll hear kids laughing. and we'll forget for a moment about all the bad stuff going on in the middle. all we'll know is peace. contentment. joy. and you'll make me laugh. i'll breathe deep, soaking it all in. and then i'll tell you to cherish this. joy.

i imagine in heaven there's a green field like that only three hundred times bigger. and at the end, instead of a steel building, it's God. and we're all playing in that field, throwing frisbees, turning cartwheels, dancing, laughing and we get tired. and we tumble to the ground. and we're laying on the ground, looking up at God. we're absolutely in awe. like we were at the building, only this is way bigger than that. and we can talk to him and dazzle at his glory all the time. every day we can laugh and play in that field and look up at our very Big God and know He's it. that this is what we've been waiting for. this is what all those trials on earth were building up to. this is what towers in comparison to the joy we had on earth. and we won't cry for the hurting ones anymore. our hearts won't ache for what they can't have anymore; cuz they are truly content. completely and perfectly and incandescently happy. joy."

so you see, my soul has been longing for this opportunity for years. as i was driving into Houston on Sunday, i was listening to Andrew Petersen's song Canaan Bound...it's kind of about Abraham and Sarah and God leading them into Canaan. ironically enough, it's the same song that came on as i was pulling out of the housing site in L.A....it's kind of been a theme of my life these last few months. God leading me into the places He's prepared for me. and i'm struck again with the question, "why me? why am i getting what i asked for?" ....maybe eventually i'll learn something about the character of God and really find the answer. i probably already know, i just can't believe it. He's too good. that's probably not possible...since He's the inventer of good. the essense of it. anyway, maybe those words explain a little better this new chapter of my life. i really believe that the Lord has been preparing the way for this season for a long time....that He's had exactly this time and place in mind and maybe the Holy Spirit in me was speaking echoes of His own voice, leading me here.....

"call to me and i will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know" jer. 33.3