Shining Forth Time!

This is the beginning of the end of this part of our journey.

We have almost completed our time here in Northern Ireland: half our school leaves tomorrow for India and the rest leave this coming Wednesday. We're dealing with the loss in our various ways and trying to spend as much time together as possible, which means that this girl has seen a lot of nights end at 2AM--not my norm. But for the love of those I leave, I stay up, throwing socks at one another or playing ping pong and always talking.

I think that's what I love most about DTS and crave to have as always a huge part of my life: these really deep talks about anything or nothing. We're such a funny group, especially the four girls I have grown closest too: we're either super serious or absolutely ridiculous, with no in-between. We four went on a walk up the mountain today and one moment we were discussing our separation and the fact that we would be in India soon and the next moment we were hitting each other with pine branches, then dancing around and singing. It was a wild wooly, wonderful walk through the whispering pines...

Ireland is winter is an ever changing thing. This morning I woke up to bright California-esque sunshine--so bright and clear that it hurt. This is in direct contrast to the normal foggy landscape. I once had someone describe marriage--or at least seeing your spouse--in these terms: you find someone who, when you see them clearly, you know you want to invest in and move them toward all that God has made them to be: the mountain they're made for. You keep this clear picture in your mind, even on the days when it is shrouded in fog and you can't see at all who they were called to be: it's full of noise and disconnection and diapers and all the things that must be done and you can't help yelling at one another...to pull back and remember that this is not all that they are, but only who they are showing forth that day.

I was reminded of this today, as fog began rolling in in the afternoon and it almost seemed, as you stared through a wall of fog at a mountain now only visible as an outline, that sunshine never was.  That all you saw was only an illusion and that the reality is that fog is, has been and always will be the reality. It is so easy to get depressed when you let this 'reality' sink in and forget what you were made for.

But so many people make this choice: their lives get filled up with the mundane glories and they begin to think that this is all that ever was or could be or could be made of their lives.

I want to live my life defying that.

I want to remember, not just who my spouse (whoever that may be) is and will become, but more importantly, who Christ is and what He will do in the middle of my life. When prophecy is clear and I am speaking truth over myself and have people around me who build into me and see clearly the potential in my life, it's like beautiful, bright California sunshine on me. I can see who I am and what I am made for and where I fit in the midst of all these shifting cogs. But life is not always like this: life is not a DTS, where almost everyone is in hot-footed pursuit of the Lord and Jesus becomes the word we speak most and all we are centered on. Sometimes you are in the middle of ick and pain and begrudging chores and you have to remember and set your gaze again, over and over.

That's what we're doing, in going on this next phase of our DTS. We are spending our time and money and lives believing what Jesus said and choosing to copy Him as we preach good news to the poor, set the oppressed free and release those who are prisoners. We will be walking out what we have been talking about as we bind up the brokenhearted, as we stop for one person and ask them who they are and how they are doing and whether they have ever heard of the man who gave everything for them.

Life is funny and weird and doesn't make sense: and if you get lost in the ocean fog's roll and lose your way, it can seem impossible for a time to get back on track. I have had my days where all hope was lost and I needed an anchor--the mountain which reminded me of who I was and why God would want me and who he was in relation to me was nothing more than a mere shadow, easy to ignore. But then: He kept showing Himself faithful. He, the one who truly did love me and gave Himself for me, spoke directly into my life, gave me strength which sustained me through difficult growing seasons and did not allow my little boat to capsize. Then he called me out onto the water...all the way to Northern Ireland...and clear sunshine has been my joy for the last few months.

I am so excited for this next part, a new beginning, where we learn how to be life and community to one another and search out Christ's face on another continent. His face may be shrouded at times for us there as we go through difficulty, but never for long. And then...

May we never lose the wonder.

DTS will end--and life will go on. But...just as every day when I look outside and see where God has put me--finally a green, growing place where the garden of my soul can come to life again--so Christ is also truly and fully alive in me, a mountain of hope and promise that will never end. I am caught up always in the wonder of a God who saw me through the foggy difficulties and never let go of me--even brought me forth into the beauty of His holiness, a place where I commune with Him face to face. I am consumed, hopeful, joyous in the radiance of this God for who nothing is impossible and who will see me all the way through my journey, until death comes to life.

Death comes to life...

So, for now, as our Lecture Phase ends and we move forward into the dark world that can be India, we know fully this truth, this song we always sing from Galatians 4:4-7: We're no longer slaves to fear, we are the children of God.

Children of God, shine forth! as stars in the universe...or India! Haha

The Wild Ride

Hmmm....

Now that my life has slowed down just enough to allow me to realize what I'm doing...it feels really crazy! haha, you all knew that. But it all feels really blessed. I was between doctors and needed a form signed--bam! sit next to a lady at Bible study who supervises two doctors and gets you an appointment within a week. Whoosh! Need a place to stay? Put it on Facebook and have the perfect person answer within a day...lots of little beautiful miracles--and that's all I need to launch outta here.

I guess there are all ways and wiles to get yourself out of country. A lot of people hold a regular job and raise money for a year. For me, I am just being as honest as I can about what I need (hopefully making you laugh a little along the way?) and trusting that as I move in answer to His call, He also moves to meet me with provision. That's just how this relationship works and has always worked: Father meet Daughter, Daughter meet Father.

A privileged spot, being one of His own, with its own requirements and choices I must make, as well as behaviors expected of me. I am not on my own, trying to be enough (there is always the grace to become more godly, especially as you lean into Him for strength) and that's where I find myself always, leaning into Him. Especially in the middle of this journey, when it all hits me, the choices I am making and how final I know it is...it feels really wild when I stop and let it sink in.

It also feels...almost perfect. I think the words I am trying to find are: meant to be, essential, hopeful, totally worth it. I am making this an all-in thing, no holds barred, no turning back because I feel like that is the stance need. It's a stance Christians are going to have to take in the following months to get anywhere in this changing world and it's a stance I have always been afraid of. I need to have this stance because its the one the Father had as He sent Jesus, the stance the world can't understand or accept, the stance that lets the Son of God hang on a cross. It's an incredible, awful, gravity-defying stance that can only be accepted by those who are willing to give it all away.

And that's where I'm at: just wanting to let it all go, so I can have Him completely. So I am giving away my possessions to the poor (that's essentially what you do when you have a yard sale!), looking to sell my car and dumping my limited savings into this--and whoever longs to join me, jump in! It's hilarious and ridiculous and fun and more than you can handle and all in His control--a wild ride, like Tatsu.

I rode Tatsu at Six Flags magic Mountain with my little (big) bro this summer--the first flip, where you're flying through the air and suddenly looking up into space--that was the moment the Lord was like: "This is a picture of your season! It's going to be a wild ride and a lot people won't understand but it is not your job to worry about them. It's time for acceleration, so just hold on!"

It's a wild and seemingly reckless ride...but I knew He had this planned all along.

God Treats Me Like a Princess

     "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise it, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same."

--C.S. Lewis, from the Hope chapter in Mere Christianity

Friday before Easter (or "Easters" as its regarded in Nacho Libre...I prefer neither!) and I'm sitting at a Starbucks, just having to get stuff off my chest before...I don't even know what before?

--a conversation about a place I may or may not go

--deciding I will leave this country--which I'd love to do but have tried before and feel really unsure of--because it kind of left me in a mess when it never worked out

--trying to hope again--for a lot of things--but feeling SO unsure

--trying to figure out my life--which is impossible and completely exhausting

--hanging out with fam for the weekend

--sorting out that we are not getting the puppy I thought we were :( (no goldenpoo's on my birthday!)

--figuring out that life is not what it seems, nor is it what I envision--and that's okay and I can let it go...even when I feel like holding on is the ONLY safe option

--wrestling with being so different from people's perceptions and what they want from me [no, my profile pictures are not always super happy ones because I happen to think those are false misrepresentations and I prefer the artsy (slightly suffering) look because it reflects more fully my experience and reminds me that I am still alive, even after all I've been through...so let me post it and quite saying how sad I look--that's freaking life!] haha, slightly opinionated here

--teaching a SHARK unit (the boys in my class are going to DIE!) I'm so excited--I put it all together yesterday and we are going to have FUN!

and then there's the Cinderella movie...

haha, most random blogpost ever--but this is exactly the mess that I feel my life is in and instead of moping I'm writing--so chill out and hang with me--we're going somewhere.

     I reached this point yesterday where I just felt like such a mess, crying as I drove away from my friends house, and just feeling tired and purposeless. It's all just feelings, I know--nothing based in reality, my life is good--but there's this piece of me that is really unsure in this time and just searching--almost frantically. And I have no answers, so this piece of me keeps getting more and more undone. It was the worst last night--but that's often when you are truy able to deal with whatever is going on inside you, when it comes to a head, IF (and people miss this and cope out--you know how) you keep pushing through. So I did...kept asking, hanging out, calling out to God--and He brought me back to that movie, one scene in particular. I have watched this movie three times now (3! I never do that!) and the scene is the one where her dress is being transformed. She's spinning around and around as her rags are transformed from tatters to glorious ballgown and hope comes to rest on her (in the form of butterflies) and the adventure--everything she'd ever dreamed about and was never sure could come through--suddenly becomes possible. And it's literally more than she ever could have dreamed.

     And she didn't get there in that instant. That instant was the moment when it all became transformed and she was shown for  who she really was. But the true transformation--the good heart that the life of the Father in her finally brought out--had happened in all the moments before this one: every moment she chose to say 'yes' and served those who despised her or didn't even acknowledge her at all...all those hours when she did the menial tasks when she'd much before anything else...being submissive when it seemed humanly impossible to do so, choosing kindness and forgiveness and letting all the ugly, bad things done to her not make her bitter but more able to love, filled to a fuller capacity.

     It was the journey of a thousand yes's, a thousand times of letting the world work her over and expose not the ugliness inflicted upon her but the true beauty of her heart--refined. Tossed through the fire and not overcome but made more beautiful and of more worth. All that tried to destroy her only showed her off as more of the beauty she had become.

    And then she got the dress. And then she was shown off for all that she had become. And then she moved forward into her destiny.

    And I'm right in the middle of that--not sure at all what is to come but knowing it will be glorious--for He is good, and He is at work in me.

God treats me like a Princess.

That's a Marriage

My brother's getting married in a few weeks--astonishing really!

Not that he's incapable or unworthy of love--but just love, in itself, is an astonishing bit of joy. Sometimes its the craziest thing ever showing up in the middle of pain and the brokenness that can sometimes surround a life. Pouf!--bang!--something new happens and you're never the same! haha

I was working on the "Bride" chapter in my book yesterday--that call is on all of our lives. Heidi Baker puts it really well--I was reading one of her books the other day and she talked about how this love--loving our Father--will cost us everything, but why should we be surprised? That's what it takes to have a great love story. You truly have to give yourself up, completely, for the sake of the other person. At first it's easy because that love is so all consuming--you would literally do anything for them. And then, hopefully, it becomes a lifestyle for you--your life is about seeing this other person become well and whole (not in a co-dependent, "he needs me!" way, but in a "I love seeing Jesus work out His life through you" way that stays near and keeps hoping even in the roughest times), seeing them come fully to life in Him.

That takes a lifetime, a true commitment--and it's never easy. Falling in love with and then choosing to follow God is a lot the same--you must learn a steady commitment, faithfulness--and it's never going to be super easy. It's soul work--hard soul work--to stand by someone, to stand by God and see this journey through to the end. But that's the call on our lives--to live out our lives fully and completely before Him and each other, in this glorious, breaking, joyfully, painful, beautiful and vastly ugly way--all your flaws exposed and yet, at the same time, redeemed.

That's a marriage.

Stripped Away

What do you do when it all gets torn away from you? When you lose the one thing which you thought would bring you happiness...when you have to move away from all you've known...when life can't seem to give you anything but hard knocks?

I ask it because I'm living it. There's a place deep in my soul that's unsettled and striving, that keeps crying out for more when less is all I see around me.

I've read a lot of books on "desire" and "choosing to know your own heart"--books that remind us that the single most painful thing we can do is acknowledge the mess our lives are in--how far we are from where we intentionally tried to be--and to go from that place and keep hoping. Every book...they say that this is the hardest thing you will ever do, but you will only get your heart and your life back if you do choose to keep hoping, keep trusting and keep pursuing God even when all seems lost.

Because all will be lost--especially if we are in a pursuit with Him.

There are easier ways--we can slip in the back door, take the smooth road and end up where we always wanted to be by our own merit--but there's no pride or glory to God in that methodology. If you are in a pursuit of all (ALL!) that God has for you--prepare for the worst.

Prepare to leave all that is familiar behind--you're paving a new trail...

Prepare to be misunderstood--your circumstances will make sense to no one, usually not even to you...

Prepare to lose it all--He needs to have His hands on your life, so you must relinquish control...

Prepare to die to what you want--the vision goes way beyond what you can see...

Prepare to leave silly arguments about calling behind--it all becomes worthless in the light of knowing Him...

Prepare to dance and sing and praise Him even in the middle of your deserts--these are the sweetest moments, the sacrifice of praise...

Prepare to meet Him in a new, life giving way--and prepare for Him to fill you with Himself on a level you could never have imagined when you first started out...

I have lost it all--love, independence, career, hopes for my "future"...it wasn't His best and so He stole me away to a new life--comfort, hope, joy found only in Him. I read in a letter yesterday (the first letter to my husband--haven't meet him yet :)) that I have been praying that I would truly know deep love--we never know what we're praying for, do we? Never realize how deep and wide and crazy those prayers can be and the journeys they will take us on. I prayed that prayer unaware of the pain that would come out of knowing deep love. My Lord asked me to sacrifice all--took things I depended on away, one by one--so that I might truly love and hope in Him. He's a wild God--but so good in the end. I wouldn't trade sun filled days for the dark nights where I have known Him.

And now the journey continues--chooisng to live out of my heart, though I can see less than far and have much to ask...still I will choose to dream. When I moved home I put this Post-It note up on the wall to remind me to keep pressing forward:

Give yourself room to DREAM! 

It may seem crazy and messy, but it's the only way to hope...

I choose hope today, will you...? In the middle of all you can't see, in the middle of desperate pain and broken relationships, will you choose to believe and trust that there is a good God who knows you and wants to show love to you? Give yourself room to dream, remember the words He has spoken to you and move forward in hope...

Even on a rainy day, there's still light and color behind the clouds.

Inspired by Psalm 137   

By the waters of Babylon,
    there we sat down and wept,
    when we remembered Zion.
² On the willows there
    we hung up our lyres.
³ For there our captors
    required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

⁴ How shall we sing the Lord's song
    in a foreign land?
⁵ If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand forget its skill!
⁶ Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
    above my highest joy!

⁷ Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
    the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
    down to its foundations!”
⁸ O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
    blessed shall he be who repays you
    with what you have done to us!
⁹ Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
    and dashes them against the rock!

This is Why We Go...Isaiah 61

I know I should be asleep--so don't tell me about it!

But it's just a turn-Laura-Hackett-on-and-write-it-all-out kind of night...

When all the melancholy of the world and all the things you can't control and don't know about your future come creeping round and hug you tight--and you--sort of enjoy the feeling but wish you were past this point and that the "something more" had happened and you could move into that fairy tale part of your life where all the pieces fit together and you love your husband and know exactly where you'll be for the next twenty years and are perfectly happy and then realize that that's an illusion too.

That even when you're married...

And live in that nation where you have been dreaming you'll be placed...

And doing the "life's work" that you know will be yours...

...it still won't be enough.

You have to recognize your idols for what they are and sacrifice them before the only One worthy of the praise, worship and adoration that you tend to put toward all your ordinary dreams. You have to recognize this tendency to "idolize" the future and learn to live in your present, right now...

Right now...

Because Right Now is the place where you get to meet Jesus...

Remember His love...

And survive "all of this" by living in the complete dependence on Him that He deserves and created you for.

It's...interesting...that Laura Hackett is the one I put on today. She is not Jesus (of course) but she brings Jesus close, you know? And the day I looked up the Haiti footage, all of the wreckage and chaos after the 2010 earthquake, hers is the music that was playing in my ears. So as I read about piles of dead bodies and no real medical help and grief and trauma I heard her letting Jesus sing, "Let's survive this together" and "I'm living in the light of your smile...taking in the newness of life, the abundance...I have a living hope...".

I have a living hope.

What does that statement mean to you? Do you realize the enormity of that declaration! While I stared death in the face, I had life playing in my ears.

I hope my whole life will be summarized in that one statement--staring death in the face while life plays behind my eyes.

Because that is all we do in the world--declare life when none is to be seen...bring hope to the destitute...proclaim freedom to captives...bind up the brokenhearted...

Bind up the brokenhearted...

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, it's just all becoming clear to me. There is one chapter in the Bible which is indelibly, unutterably massaged into my soul. It has been pronounced and prayed, read and sang, cried out and proclaimed over my life more times than I can count. My ears perk up every time that they begin reading, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord has annointed me..."

And I know its presumptous, becuase this was Jesus' Scripture when He came into His ministry--but I know it's also my own.

There comes a point when you hear a word spoken over your life--from many silly, crazy and reliable sources--enough that you finally get it. It's been on repeat so much that it is FINALLY the song of your soul. It's the life playing when death is all around--that is what Isaiah 61 has become to me.

When I think about my life, pondering calling and loneliness and isolation and hope and joy and pain and the other million fragments that make up a life--I remember that my life is hidden with Christ in God and that there are good works that the Lord had prepared way before I took my first breath--and even if not one person had ever spoken hope into my dream to see Haiti whole...

The Lord has given me Isaiah 61.

And asked me to join Him.

And if that was all--if I didn't have journals filled with prayers and prophecies and experiences about and in and in the midst of loving them--which has become my life...I would still go, just because I keep hearing Isaiah 61.

And I will never stop hearing Isaiah 61.

And I will never stop bringing Isaiah 61.

And I will never stop living out Isaiah 61, wherever He deems fit to put me.

Just knowing that you're here with me now

It changes everything

Just knowing that you're here with me now

It changes everything, Lord

 

Cause I thought that I had to make it on my own

But you stopped that and claimed me as your own

Cause I thought that I had to make it on my own

But you stopped that

And called me Yours

And called me Yours

Just don't give up on me now cause I'm scared

 and I need you strong when I'm weak

Hold on and believe in me

When my heart just can't figure out what it wants 

please give me a reason to trust 

You'll still fight for me

from Laura Hackett's song, "Here With Me Now"

Give it all up for Jesus

No wonder God tells us we must give up everything we own in order to serve Him...

I was reading this review of a book about a girl who traveled through China with her friend

(http://mindfultourist.com/2009/04/04/undress-me-in-the-temple-of-heaven-the-mindful-tourist-book-review/) and they put an excerpet in the book which really made me think. It's worth sticking in here: "We thought that by wearing burlap pajamas, contracting intestinal parasites, and opting to ride in third class with “the people,” we were somehow being less Western and more Asian. It never seemed to occur to us that only privileged Westerners travel to developing countries in the first place, then use them as playgrounds and laboratories for our own enrichment. Only privileged Westerners would consider it a badge of honor to forsake modern amenities for a two-dollar-a-night roach-infested guesthouse. Only privileged Westerners sit around drinking beers at prices the natives can’t afford while sentimentalizing the nation’s lower standard of living and adopting it as a lifestyle…we were kidding ourselves in thinking that we were somehow transcending our Western privileges by doing this "

Since high school, I've wanted to be a missionary...but all I see are Western people going into countries, making it comfortable for themselves and then helping a few people. And they are missionaries! Not to bash on all missionaries, because there have been some in the past and there are some now who have given up everything to serve God where He calls them. The thing is, I want to meet these people. I want to be close to them, to see their hardships and the amazing ways in which God gives them the strength to go on. I know I want to be a missionary, it's a desire put into me by God. However, I don't want to go and not know the cost, you know? I guess I'm seeking in my life to hear from those who have been through this process of giving it all away to reach people and...maybe find a model, someone to lead the way. Jesus was that person...He left the glories and comforts of heaven to live among the dirty, broken, and poor of this world. I guess...I'm just wanting to seek Jesus more. That must be what it is. I want to be like Him if I ever live among the poor. Because we really can't love people and relate to them and fill their needs if we don't know exactly what it is like to be one of them. We must live in these places, giving up everything we've ever known, if we are going to be able to minister to them. This is a truth Jesus knew (He learned their culture deeply before He ever began ministry) and I want to take on that mindset and live the way he did, wherever He puts me. It will cost a lot, we must give up everything to go. We must learn a total dependence on God (I mean, can you imagine getting on an airplane with a backpack full of clothes and then just making your way in a foreign country from that point? God might call you to do that. Are you ready?) I know that I am in a time of preparation at this point in my life...but I want to give it all for God.

Does this make sense, the concept of not having anything to lean on when you become that missionary in the foreign culture? You have to get rid of everything in order to be able to truly understand the people you are trying to reach. 'Cause the money gets in the way, the stuff gets in the way...you don't want them to admire your possessions, you want them to hear your message. Oh, power of God! Fill us up so we can give it all away for you! Fill us with Your Spirit, power from on high. We can do anything if you are the strength of our hearts.

Let us count the cost, remember Your cross and go forth singing. You have made us to be Your messengers, move us O Lord. Let us go!

We wait for You and in You our hearts rejoice for our hope is in Your unfailing love.