A Change.

I'm not one who typically runs to the Lord in times of need and despair, and if I do I typically run to prayer and not to the Word. There are certain things I know about myself, and this is one of them. I'm a military brat, I run to myself, retreat within myself and draw on my own strength to deal with things that are hard. Its incredibly tiring and not how we were created to confront situations.

I'm also not an emotional person. That's another concrete fact about myself. I'm a military brat, I was taught to put on a facade of strength because I'm supposed to be strong. I'm slowly learning that I'm broken, that emotions are okay. About a year ago a wise person preached at our church, and he said something along the lines of "we should be praying for our emotions to be aligned with the emotions of those in scripture." I shouldn't apathetically be reading the Word. If the Israelites are crying, I should be crying; if the disciples are dancing with immense joy, I too should be dancing with immense joy. This idea rocked, and continues to rock, my world. The notion that feeling is godly, that I am not called to be numb, but rather to have my heart in line with the Lord and therefore my emotions as well is just something that I can't really comprehend.

Today this two ideas came slamming together in my life. One of my teammates called me with news that saddened me deeply. It didn't directly effect me in any way, but I felt. I was sad, and distracted, and frustrated, and mad at a string of events that didn't effect me and that I had no control over. As I sat trying to study for a test I was overwhelmed, distracted, on the verge of tears, and unable to comprehend why this was happening. My first instinct was to write because I'm weird and that's how I process my lack of emotions, but being aware of my tendency to shy away from the Lord in times like these my second instinct was to pray. But I'm also aware of how quickly I run to that rather than God's living Word, so I decided to go there. To the word.

As it turns out I opened right a passage that helped make the situation vividly clear. It didn't reveal God's specific purpose, but rather his heart behind why this happened. I was still overwhelmed, but I also began to feel a sense bittersweet joy. I'm still mad that this had to happen to my friend, that hard things have to happen, but I'm joyful because this means that the Lord has great things in store, that he has something in the works that we aren't even aware of yet.

As I was reading through John 15 this morning (my favorite right now, check it out and dwell on it) I wrote in the margin, "Abiding in Jesus means that he will take away things that will hinder my ability to produce fruit. It won't always be easy, but it will always be good because God is good." It's cool how the Word can change attitudes toward a sucky situation in short amounts of time, and that God really does work things out for good - even if we can't see that initially. It's cool that the Word really is active and able to relate to my crazy and broken life.

Triangles and a Triune God.

I did ballet until I was 16. I definitely didn’t always love it, but it’s always been the absolute most beautiful thing in the world to me. I’ve never been an amazing talker so I think the fact that dance is communication in the absence of words drew me in a little extra to its beauty. There’s a simple complexity to it. To just watch it you’re simply blown away by the sheer beauty and elegance of what you’re seeing, but when you really contemplate what it takes to produce the complexity of movement that you’re watching you’re mind is absolutely blown. Even as a dancer I don’t always know exactly how all of that works.

I picked up Tim Keller’s Jesus the King (formerly The King’s Cross) this week, and haven’t been able to put it down. Pretty much every idea or concept Keller presents is astonishing and profound and beautiful to me, but the one that got me the most was his comparison of the trinity to a dance. I think it was actually C.S. Lewis that actually pioneered this thought – which just makes it even better – but none the less its an astounding idea. I get this picture of the three persons of the trinity – Father, Son, and Spirit – dressed in flowing white gowns just laughing and twirling around each other. Maybe even grabbing hands every so often or spinning or dipping each other, just have endless amounts of beautiful, graceful fun. (I know this picture is incredibly stereotypical stupidly flawed, but that’s the only picture brain can produce that makes any sense so that’s what I’m gonna go with, cause it’s still beautiful).

Six months ago I got a tattoo. It’s a tiny little triangle on the inside of my wrist (my sweet sister Beth’s artistic representation of the trinity). I originally got it as a kind of memorial/reminder tattoo. I got it to remind me of the pain that I felt, and still feel, surrounding Eric’s death, how I NEVER want to feel that again, and how that solution to that is to spread the news about that amazing power and love of Jesus that saved and changed by life and gives me eternity. A reminder that my life is permanently temporary, but with Christ that doesn't even matter.

The fact that it represented the trinity was just kind of a side note. But in the last six months, specifically the last few weeks, I feel like my eyes have been opened to a totally new and exciting view of the trinity.

I used to think that I was invited into a relationship with Jesus. Which I most definitely am. But the sweetest and coolest thing is that it’s so much more than that. I’m invited into a relationship with all three aspects of God – Father, Son, and Spirit. But it’s so much more than a relationship that I’m invited into, it’s a dance. An elegant, intimate, beautiful, fun, no holds bar dance. I spend my days trying to portray to Jesus and the beauty of a relationship with him to middle school girls, but I forget that's it's actually this incredibly complex, but also beautiful simple dance with a Triune God, not just Jesus.

This picture to me is overwhelming. My amazing and hard to understand triune God wants to engage in a dance with me. This most beautiful and elegant art that I am so in love with. And that is simply incredible to me. 

My sweet ink that reminds me of the beautiful dance with God I get to tell my friends about. Triangles are pretty powerful.

To Where Are You Called?

"It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home." 

-Hudson Taylor

Go read the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19). What is the first thing that comes to mind? To leave? To get away from wherever you are and go somewhere exotic to tell people about Jesus? That was me. I thought that the only way to proclaim the good news of Christ was to get up, hop on a plane to the middle of nowhere Spanish speaking country, and just start screaming JESUS LOVES YOU from the hill tops. Okay maybe not that ridiculous, but the thought may have crossed my mind once or twice. I didn't have a heart for my own country. I don't know if I thought that American was beyond help, or if I was just blind to our plight. In my eyes American didn't need me, they already had Jesus.

I'm not exactly sure when I realized how wrong I was, but the straw that broke the camel's back for me was a documentary that I had to watch for one of my classes, ironically. It was a Frontline special called Poor Kids, which chronicled the lives of 3 kids living in poverty in the US completely through their eyes. I sat with my hands on my head, my jaw dropped in astonishment, and tears running down my face. And for those of you that know me you know that if something makes me cry it's pretty freaking powerful because I don't cry.

I don't really know why this video was so powerful. I mean I lead WyldLife in a pretty rural area, a lot of the kids I know their get free lunches and are technically homeless. Poverty isn't a new phenomena to me. I'm very aware that it exists. I even knew before watching the video that 2 million people in our country went without dinner tonight because they couldn't afford it. But for some reason this struck a cord that is so tender and sensitive that I'm getting worked up just thinking about it.

We are so quick to leave America. I remember in middle and high school that staying in country for a summer mission trip was seen as "subpar" and definitely not as cool. If you went to Nicaragua for a week out of the summer you were like so super Christian doing the hardest of work. Middle and high school friends - that is a very large pile of cow manure, going to Nica is awesome, but so is going to Appalachia or Iowa.

(Don't get me wrong, international missions are still awesome and the Lord definitely calls people to that. I'm thinking of my friend Kate and how clearly the Lord has called her to Nicaragua to serve him there, that is incredibly sweet and very much for his kingdom. But I think that so many of us are so often quick to dismiss how desperately our own country is in need of the gospel and that we are in denial of the fact that the Lord is calling us to stay put and serve him recklessly here in America).

I am confident that Jesus is the solution. I don't know how exactly that he can draw millions of people out of poverty, or give them a permanent roof over their heads, or make sure that their stomachs are filled when they start to growl, but I have absolutely no doubt that he is able to accomplish all of that and then some. We as humans, as Americans - as privileged as we are - are incredibly insufficient (and greedy, let's be aware and seriously address this in ourselves. I know its a struggle for me), but God IS sufficient. As we discussed in Floyd leadership last night, shouldn't the knowledge of this encourage us to step into even more difficult situations confident in the fact that God is sufficient and powerful enough to accomplish all? In John 16 Jesus says, "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." He has overcome the world. All of it.

A few months ago I would've told you that I was going to hop on a plane to anywhere but here when I graduated from college, but my heart has never been so broken for my home. I have never felt so called, for the first and only time so far in my life, to stay home. Its weird and I don't know what it will look like but I have never been more confident that here is where I belong.

A House of Flies.

Last year Magnolia was not the most fun place to live. I think back to the pictures we took as a house last year and how they were a mask that we put on to the outside world. They made it look like we had our act together, that we were all best friends, and that we are insanely hot (that one has been true the whole time). But in reality the only things that within the walls of our house were hurt and loneliness. Of course there were good days where this wasn't the case, but for the most part it was. Mag was devoid of Jesus, devoid of community, and devoid of true friendship.

Thankfully my roommates and I are pretty awesome people and cam to the realization that our first year in our house was miserable. We had more bad things to say about that year than we did good. We realized that the way we had been living was not glorifying to God and not honoring the incredible blessing we had been given of living with 6 other girls that were also crazy about Him for just a few short years. We wasted year one, but we sure did learn a lot from it.

At our pre-classes starting house assembly we came up with the one idea that has been the single best thing that has ever happened to this house of magnolia flies: hang out in common areas. If you're home, just be out where you run into everyone else. Do your homework at the kitchen table, read your book in the living room, watch a TV on the couch - even if you have headphones at least you're still out there. This one little adjustment (and a whole lot of Jesus) has transformed our sweet home in the past two weeks. We see each other more, we know more about each others lives, and it is so much more easy to take spontaneous trips to Kroger or Willard hill to watch the sunset. It's awesome.

There used to be a sign hanging above our couch that said "How good and pleasant it is when sisters live together in unity. -Psalm 133:1" and its funny to me because we looked at that sign every day last year, and I don't think we ever really understood or contemplated what it meant. It just went in one ear and out the other. We lived in division, we hurt each other without knowing it and let frustrations brew, we didn't live life together, and the live we did live wasn't all the pleasant because many of us (myself included) avoided home because it was unpleasant.

There's a song that my mom likes to quote that says, "maybe your blessings come in rain drops," and another one out there that says something to the effect of its not the sunshine that makes you grow, but rather the rain (I usually really good with song lyrics and every time I hear this one I'm like oh-man-I'm-gonna-remember-that-now and then I don't. Gosh dang it.). Unfortunately/fortunately for our house we had to go through a years worse of steady drizzle with occasional down pours to figure out what it really means to pursue the Lord and each other in our house. My prayer for this last year with all 7 of us together is that as we continue to fall even deeper in love with Jesus we will be able to more deeply love each other and experience the true joy that accompanies that.

Praise the Lord that no matter what he makes all things work together for our good!

Not gonna lie, we're some pretty happy and gosh darn cute flies. So incredibly thankful for the laughter that echoes from the walls of our home because of these girls.