the self-aggrandizement of jana

humble thyself, part 2

2010-03-19T03:19:00.003-04:00

"Come near to God and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up." ~James 4:8, 10

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." ~2 Chronicles 7:14

When I started my Sin Journal, I knew that it would be primarily about shame--accepting it, drinking the cup of shame to the bottom, letting my shame put me in my right relationship with God. But last Friday I realized it was about something else.

My Sin Journal forces me to ask forgiveness for sins I may not "feel" shameful about.

Through my quiet time God has consistently revealed some sins I committed that I don't necessarily feel guilty about yet, and certainly don't feel like giving up yet. And as I grudgingly wrote them down, I realized how few times I ask forgiveness for sins I don't feel sorry for. We generally ask forgiveness only after we have, in a weird sense, been humbled by our sin. So instead of "humbling ourselves" before God, we approach Him already having been humbled. It's the distinction between passive and active humility. So I wonder how often we ask forgiveness only when we finally fully believe the essential bad-ness of the sin and want to give it up. How often do we ask forgiveness for something we aren't quite ready to give up yet?

And that's exactly what I was faced with the other night. To be honest, I wasn't in the "the mood" to write in my Sin Journal. I was struggling with where God's will has taken me, and so I wasn't feeling entirely... well... happy or willing to bow in humility before the One Who wasn't answering my prayer in the way I hoped (yes, I still have yet to graduate from the "whiny baby preschool of understanding God's will." Don't judge me or I'll smack you). But I had committed to God that I would write down a record of my daily sins every night, a record of every sin He brings to my mind, and that I would bow in humility before Him every night. So I did.

And I think I realized for the first time how "bowing in humility" is a very intentional act, one that need not be accompanied by humble, humiliated feelings. Sometimes we have to choose humility against our will, even when we are frustrated or angry with God. Our resistant feelings are not sin, but they are also not excuses for refusing to acknowledge our shameful standing in relation to Him.

And ironically, that move of asking His forgiveness is what I needed to do to break down major aspects of my frustration and anger. Putting myself in my appropriate relation to God helped me see myself in my true light, and also see Him in sharper relief. And what I saw of Him was beautiful and loving, simply because that is Who He is. Beautiful and loving. Anything that helps us see Him better will help us love and fear Him more, and drinking the cup of shame to the bottom (especially when we have no desire to do so) will help us see Him exactly for Who He is.

humble thyself, part 1

2010-03-19T02:39:00.003-04:00

"Don't you remember on Earth--there were things too hot to touch but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it--if you will drink the cup to the bottom--you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds." CS Lewis, The Great Divorce, pg. 61

"Keep short accounts with God." Debbie Fischer, Wise One and Mom of Awesomeness (aka, ME)

"'Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken [...] I have heard you,' declares the Lord." 2 Kings 22:19, New International Version

Lately I've kind of been obsessed with CS Lewis's The Great Divorce. I think I've read it four times in the past three weeks. If you haven't read it, PICK IT UP IMMEDIATELY. It's brilliant, beautiful, convicting, accessible, deep, and did I mention beautiful? In one particular chapter Lewis presents a character who is resistant to accepting her shame for her earthly sinful acts. This particular chapter struck me, as I think we all spend much of our lives trying to avoid or mitigate shame. This is really quite comical, as we as Christians categorically admit that we are, in this earthly form, incurably sinful. It is sort of hardwired in our human will (through our own embrace of sin, not through our initial creation). Since sin is generally defined as anything going against God's will, it is the opposite of Good/Right/Wonderful/Beautiful/GOOD, it is therefore BAD and therefore deserving of shame. We should be a shame-filled race, admitting of our faults and accepting--drinking to the bottom--the shame of our sin and sinful nature.

But oh, how we manage to ignore it or talk it away! We try to associate shame with despair, downtrodden-ness, "self-esteem issues" (for those familiar with secondary education speak), unnecessary negativity. Bottom line: we don't want to feel shame. This is so, so backwards to what we should feel with our relationship with God, because shame is the starting point of every glory! The fact that we stand as traitors, rebels, idolators is the basis for Christ's appearance on Earth, and in shame is where every person meets God before receiving grace and forgiveness. Yes, shame is ugly and uncomfortable. But it is a truthful expression of where we stand in relation to Christ, and therefore we simply must embrace it to understand Him.

So I decided that I wanted to work towards embracing my shame instead of doing my normal routine of shutting it out and trying to somehow not feel it. For the last two weeks I have been keeping what I call my Sin Journal. Every night before I go to sleep I spend some time with God: meditative, receiving time. I ask Him to bring to my mind any and all sins that I committed that day. I write them down in a numbered list, as a permanent record of the sinful acts I have committed against my Lord and Savior Who died for me on the Cross.

I think some may have a negative reaction to this practice: "Why would you choose to dwell in the negativity of your relationship with God? Why choose to keep a record of what He wipes clean?" And the answer is simply: I do it so I won't "forget" the ways I have rebelled and rejected Him. Written records are impossible to ignore and escape. They define us in certain ways. Through my journal I want to remind myself continuously of my shame, of my essential "relation"ship to Christ, remind myself that I am a sinner unceasingly in need of His mercy and grace.

But of course, just writing down each sin is incomplete for Who God is in my life. Once I have what I think is the complete daily sin list (for the moment, anyway--sometimes I have to go back and add on a sin I commit as I'm falling asleep, because give me a moment and I could find a way to sin in it), I pray through and ask God's forgiveness for each sin. Not only that, but I ask that His blood would cover that area of my life and that He would redeem it for His kingdom and for His glory. (I have to believe that God can use absolutely anything--including my sin--for something as beautiful, transcendent, and unsurpassed as His glory and His kingdom.) Then, once I have prayed through every sin, I take a red pen and draw a line through and write "FORGIVEN" next to each one. That is the final word on my sin: Christ's death, God's forgiveness. Not only am I keeping a record of the shame I bear as a sinner, but I am keeping a record of the redemptive work Christ has done for and in me. It is a record of what His blood has purchased for me, of what cleansing work He is doing in my life. My shame is the essential starting point of my life, but it is not the final destination. Pure, overwhelming, cleansing, redemptive, transforming grace is the final answer. And I have a written record to prove it.

fixing

2010-03-10T11:50:00.005-05:00

I'm a type-A perfectionist to the nth degree. So that means whenever I see imperfection in my life (faults, mistakes, flaws, etc.) I can become obsessed with fixing them or hiding them. If I'm not careful I can let myself indulge in certain unhealthy behaviors to accomplish this (working out too much, drinking just "one more glass of wine" to help blur my painful thinking, etc.). I like "fixing" the problems silently, where no one can see, and I do whatever I can to hide them from the world.

Lately I've realized that this drive has always extended to my relationships with others. Sometimes I get uncomfortable or unhappy in relationships because I recognize imperfections and areas of weakness or hurt. This just so happens to be characteristic of every single relationship I've ever had and ever will have because it just so happens that every single person in the entire world (every single potential for interpersonal relationship) is... wait for it... FLAWED. IMPERFECT. No one more so than myself.

Instead of fixing the relational flaws, however, my drive is first to ignore them and secondly to withdraw completely. This involves a LOT of effort on my part, for obvious reasons. I very rarely let God take the imperfection, use it and work through it in my heart and life. Me trying to fix every imperfection, or trying to run from the imperfection, gets in the way of not only my freedom in that relationship, but in the way of God's freedom of working in my life through that area. I get in the way of listening to Him teach me or love me through that imperfection. I get in the way of listening to Him tell me when to speak up and address the issue and when to be silent and let Him work in the heart of the other person a little more.

Oftentimes it's not about fixing something but about letting God display His own glory work through that area of my life. And He will enlighten, cleanse and purify every imperfection in His own time. This may not be tomorrow, this may be not even in my lifetime (after all, only when I'm in heaven will I be truly perfected). And there's a reason married couples still find ways to hurt each other and struggle 20 years into their marriage. This is why some couples divorce even after 25 years of marriage--imperfection is always going to be a part of a relationship. Ok, for many of you this may be the most "well DUH" statement, but for me, someone terrified of imperfection and flaws, it is hard and scary to accept. Relieving, certainly. But scary.

I want to learn how to accept imperfections peacefully, never ceasing my prayers that God will purify and work through each one in His time. I want Him to be able to use absolutely everything in my life in His way, not my way (my way is essentially ERADICATE ALL IMPERFECTIONS IMMEDIATELY AND BE PERFECT AND AWESOME. Because that's the only way people will love me, right? And the only way I can love others? If I'm perfect? And that's totally achievable, right??). I'm tired of being afraid of my imperfections, when Christ has already paid the penalty for them and loves me no more today because today I display evidence of the perfecting work He did in my heart yesterday. And I want to love others like that, and believe that others can love me like that. And even though we will always love each other imperfectly, to soak up that love for exactly what it is: God loving me through His precious created son or daughter, someone struggling under the weight of imperfection just like myself.

pwned

2010-03-09T09:19:00.004-05:00

God has a funny way of leading me to specific books and specific passages right when I need them in my spiritual life. He will literally close my mind to understanding certain books if whenever I first tried to read them is not the time He knows I will connect with the ideas or be convicted by the image of Christ presented. Major "for instance": I've been reading the book The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer for a LONG. TIME. To be more accurate, several months ago I read through 326 pages of it and though I had picked it up several times since getting to page 326 and had made concentrated effort, I just couldn't finish the last 18 pages. My brain just wouldn't take it in, which baffled me seeing as how I had flown through much more dense material in those 326 pages, adored everything else in the book, and soaked it up like a sponge. My previous failures had even led me to start doubting my intelligence (HORRORS!).

Apparently when I tried to read it the last time I wasn't being enough of a WHINY PETULANT CHILD and therefore God wanted to save it for me to read for the time when I was. Which happened to be last weekend. WOW. So I'm convinced that the reason I couldn't "take it in" was because God wanted me to read this last night, when I "at random" chanced to take up the book again and finish it:

"The earthly form of Christ is the form that died on the cross. The image of God is the image of Christ crucified. It is to this image that the life of the disciple must be conformed: in other words, they must be conformed to his death (Phil. 3.10; Rom. 6.4f). The Christian life is a life of crucifixion (Gal. 2.19). [...] Anybody living in the strength of Christ's baptism lives in the strength of Christ's death. Their life is marked by a daily dying in the war between the flesh and the spirit, and in the mortal agony the devil inflicts upon them day by day. This is the suffering of Christ which all his disciples on earth must undergo." (pg. 342)* (emphasis mine)

Oops. Whiny baby phase officially pwned. If Christ's image in my life is made even more clear through my sufferings, then I can rejoice in that. I can't rejoice in the suffering itself (that makes no sense, and God wouldn't require us to rejoice in something painful and, in a deeper way, contrary to the way He designed us to be and to live), but I can rejoice in the fact that through this time His image is made visible in my life. That is something I couldn't do by myself; only God could and can project His image onto my WHINY PETULANT STUBBORN life. Thank God He is willing to do so, persistently and even after I Turbo Jam His will to smithereens.

* Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1963.

For those not in the "leetspeak" know, the word pwned suggests total domination or humiliation of whoever is being beaten (in this case, my whiny baby self)

desert(s)

2010-03-08T12:55:00.004-05:00

God keeps calling me into desert after desert after desert.... and frankly, it's wearing me out and wearing me down. I'm starting to be an exhausted, whiny little baby about it. But that's ok for now; God can handle my emotions. On a side note, my frustration and pain have erupted in what I imagine are rather hilarious outburts. Well, hilarious to God. When I scream I am the child who finds what she is being subjected to absolutely the worst thing in the world. And just like her parent who understands where she is coming from even though the fact that she can't have that cookie before dinner isn't the worst, most heinous, egregious, cruel act of parenting in the world, I think God understands my emotions and my outbursts. And thankfully He won't change His plans for me simply because in a moment of pissed-off, petulant rage I tell Him, "I'm not talking to You at the moment." Or drop the "I'm not going to do anything more in this area You have called me because I'm pissed at how it keeps turning out badly" bomb threat. Yeah. I've been just DELIGHTFUL to Him these past couple days. Just a gem. The icing on His cupcake of humanity.

But honestly, when I do look around at my life all I see desert behind me and desert stretching forever in front of me. I know God has brought me here and has directed every step of this last year and a half, but SERIOUSLY?! I feel like He keeps leading me into deaths of everything I ever loved and wanted, helping me make these temporarily-shattering decisions with the help of what seem at the moment to be deceitful bursts of joy and confidence. He's tricksy. He gives me just enough faith, trust and joy to make the decision in that moment, and then that confidence dissipates. I'm not saying He takes it away; I think rather He overwhelms my human doubt and fear with His joy, faith, and confidence in order to help push me into the decision. And then, because the doubt and fear are still there (like the dirt we cover up with a rug for a quick fix), He has to expose them, often through desperate and hopeless circumstances, in order for us to see them clearly. Only then, in the midst of what feels like complete desert, can we truly work through and reject doubt and fear. YAY.

So I have two options in this time, seeing as how this desert is real and is exactly where God has called me for the time being. I can surrender to God and let Him carry me through the desert, making myself compliant and receptive to His direction, discipline, correction, and protection (certainly shedding more than a few tears along the way). Or I can let Him drag me through it, kicking, screaming, swearing (there's a sailor in my head), and resisting. But what's the point of the latter? Resistance implies that I think there is something better for me in a different direction. That's entirely false; the only thing apart from Him is desert. A very, very different kind of desert, but a desert nonetheless. So I guess I do have a third option: go through the desert without God's leading hand. However, I'd probably just end up collapsing in dehydration, needing Him to carry me back to the "right" desert anyway, so if I have to suffer a desert no matter what, I may as well let Him carry me through the one He has prepared for me. That way I won't burn my red-hot Guess slingback stilettos on the hot sand (yes, that is what I imagine I wear in my spiritual journey. They give me confidence and height).

PS-- I am NOT happy to write this. I'm still pissed. I even Turbo Jammed the crap out of some nebulous, vaguely-shaped "God's will." Hey, Chalene told me to think about something that gives me passion in order to finish a particularly hardcore punching session, and the thing that gives me the most passion (ANGRY PASSION) right now is where God has led me. So I Turbo Jammed it. I Turbo Jammed it good. And God shook His head, laughed, and graciously refrained from smiting me.

second families

2010-03-01T12:50:00.005-05:00

Oh my word, we (the Wilsons and myself) just survived what will be known from hereon out as THE most hellacious moving experience known to the free world. The two days leading up to our Saturday move, the following difficulties required immediate and consuming attention--attention away from the massive moving job at hand:

1. Staph infection of a chin (causing the chin to swell up so much and demand so much attention and bedrest that the possessor of the chin proclaimed him--yes him, as only males can cause such unremitting, stabbing, annoying pain--to be a separate, sentient, malicious entity).

2. Dental emergency/gum infection (of the only other man we knew would be able to help move heavy things. Had I known him better I would have helped him name his swollen cheek as a separate, sentient, malicious entity, but in a rare bout of wisdom I figured in-laws are probably off-limits to my mocking sarcasm).

3. Land Cruiser unfixable break-down (the very vehicle that was going to be depended upon to haul crap. Well, crap and goats).

4. Arm-in-a-splint (similar to pigs-in-a-blanket, except that it accosted, again, one of the few men available to help load up heavy stuff, leaving the women bereft of male help and wishing they did more ChaLEAN Extreme in preparation for moving).

5. Rain. Lots and lots of rain (READ: all previously and strenuously cleaned carpets thus required more strenuous cleaning).

6. Hen attacked by stray dogs (now lame and partially eaten. An indestructible hen, as it turns out, who is still surviving in her box, but stinks like a dying sack of poop and requires much more space and attention than Sarah had available. Staring at the wounded hen, as we realized its right leg was permanently useless, Sarah cocked her head and commented: "Maybe it will fall off." That was the best case scenario we came up with).

7. The most vile-smelling jar of rotten garlic ever (Seriously. I thought the corn syrup factories in Indiana were bad. Oh no. This. Was. Like. Smelling. Evil.).

But miraculously (yes, I really believe God leant us His helping hand) we made it to Mountain Home and to the house Sarah has designated as the place she hopes to spend the rest of her days, if only to avoid further hellacious moving: "I HOPE I DIE HERE."

Yesterday she was again out for the count (infections are nasty little creatures that refuse to go away) so I decided to go back to Emmett and clean, pack, finish up some nitty gritties for her. At the end of the day, before I went to bed back in Mountain Home, Sarah told me: "Jana, I'm really glad you moved with us." Before when she'd say things like that I always kind of thought they were just kind words. Not that I doubted her sincerity--she is deeply honest, sincere, and all-things-wonderful--but for some reason last night I realized, "She really means it." I mean, Sarah is actually, deeply, sincerely glad that I moved with them to Mountain Home. She wants me there. And that's when the lightbulb went on:

This family loves me. I mean, they deeply love me, for exactly who I am. Not only do they love me, but they want me with them. They desire my presence in their home. They've seen my worst sides, have seen my struggles, have forgiven me for hurts, have held my hand through tears and pain, have laughed with me (yes, probably more times at me than with me, deservedly so), and have always protected my heart, feelings, and life. And they still love me.

I've never been truly loved before, by people other than my family (and yes, sadly, this does include my only, and long-term, relationship). When I was thanking Brad (police officer of awesomeness) for taking me in and letting me live with them for so long, he replied as his 'you're welcome,': "You're family." I never thought it was possible to love another family as my own, or to be loved as a part of a family I was not born to.

So that was my big awesomeness yesterday, realizing that I am loved by this family and that I love them more than I ever thought I could. God is so amazing to give me a family, this family, as my own in order to show me deeper levels of His own love for me. I can't believe, sometimes, how happy I am, and how lucky. My life looks nothing like I thought it would by this age, and probably looks a little weird to outsiders (I mean, seriously? Moving with a family to Emmett then to Mountain Home? A family who keeps humping goats as pets? And where I sleep on a couch?), but I honestly wouldn't change a thing. I hope I can live with this family for another 6 months and keep them in my deepest, dearest, closest life forever.

hurt

2010-02-15T01:44:00.006-05:00

This week God uncovered a huge gaping wound in my life that I have tried for years to ignore, cover up, and somehow not understand so that I could heal without actually having to face into the actual pain. This week God made it impossible for me not to face into it. And as I screamed and cried and cursed and said all those things Christians are not supposed to say (who knew I had such a sailor's vocabulary?) I suddenly saw myself as a cornered, wounded wild animal. I saw God reaching out to heal and comfort me, and, like the animal who only understands aggression and self-protection and does not understand the proffered hand of a compassionate human, I lashed out at Him, at one point even telling Him I didn't want Him "near" me anymore (OUCH). Thankfully God knows the real source of my anger better than I did, and refused to grant me my ever-so-sweetly-phrased-and-humbly-delivered request. He kept His tight grip on me though I pushed, screamed, and kicked the whole time. And today, driving down the mountain from a beautiful day of skiing, I realized something:

At some point we all have to choose to trust a God Who has allowed, and will continue to allow, us to be in pain.

In early October 2008 I made a huge leap of faith, one that I am 100% sure God asked me to make, one that ripped my heart apart (though not at the time). And after that decision (which, in my mind, sealed me for God for the rest of my life), a million other parts of my life crumbled. Like waves on the beach I was drowned by deeper and darker times of pain than I had ever experienced before. Ever. And this was after I had chosen to trust God, during the time I was making the most concerted effort to draw closer to His heart and be more submissive to His will.

This week as God sort of forced me to face into a bunch of that hurt I suddenly got so mad at God for allowing me to experience that pain--as well as getting mad at Him for actively bringing me into a spiritual pain like I'd never imagined--that lashed out at the only One Who was around. I knew that the pain was absolutely connected to my surrender to Him. And let me tell you. I. Was. Pissed.

And the worst part was that I didn't know how to trust Him anymore. Who was He to me? He keeps bringing me from death to new death, and I didn't (and still don't) know how to reconcile that with a hope for a better future. What if this is simply the way my life will go from now on? It's possible. I have no idea what God wants for me. I do know it's what is somehow "best," but heavenly best doesn't mean a whole lot when you're crying, panicked, and despairing in the middle of the night as you grapple with gaping loneliness, looming homelessness, and an incapacitated future. My attempts to somehow manufacture or choose hope in Him actually burned inside. It was painful and crushing. How could I trust a God who not only has allowed me to experience pain, but will continue to allow me to be hurt, wounded, and crushed? How could I possibly hope in that, in a way that encourages and strengthens me in the midst of the pain? If I can count on new pain for the rest of my life, how does that reconcile with hope for my life?

I think maybe, on a really basic level, I just need to accept the pain. Accept it, embrace it, understand that it is real, accept that it is sometimes devastating, and then allow myself to be devastated and to let God give me the space, time and relationships to heal. Part of embracing this current pain (without dwelling in it) entails me allowing myself to get what I need to heal. And because God is a God of salvation and redemption, He is ready and willing not simply to heal me (though that would be more than enough and more than I deserve), but to take every ounce of my pain and actually use the devastating pain to accomplish something amazing in my life. Accepting pain is a choice, as is trusting our God Who allows us to be wounded by others, by life, by He Himself. Trust is not a feeling, but a choice. And, because it goes against what is now natural to us, sometimes choosing trust in the midst of pain hurts more than the pain itself.

death

2010-02-10T12:02:00.004-05:00

Dying is the consequence of sin, straight up. Adam and Eve were never supposed to experience dying, but were supposed to live a blameless and holy earthly life in perfect communion with God, and somehow make a deathless transition to heaven. Or maybe God was intended to live with us on this earth in the way He will now live with us on the New Earth (Revelations 21:1). (Why God decided we should start on earth and how a transition to heaven would have looked are two entirely different issues that continue to perplex me.) In any event, dying (the process of decay) is the ugly consequences of sin and is man’s greatest self-inflicted curse. Through sinning we gave up a blissful immortality for a sin-filled mortality.

But what if death, a release from the slow process of dying, is one of God’s greatest examples of grace and mercy? I mean, consider the situation. After Adam and Eve ate the apple, God could have said, “Wow, that was an unfortunate move. Now you have to suffer an eternity of battling your sinful nature and an eternity of dying and decay, the consequences of your sin. Dude. That’s a total bummer.” God could have chosen to let them and us retain our initial intended immortality, but that immortality would have been one irreparably marred by sin and our separation from Him. How does that amount to anything other than an eternity of hell?

By allowing, and in fact demanding, that we experience death, I believe God is saying “I love you too much to let you stay in the sin you’ve brought upon yourself in this world, to let you suffer an eternity of dying. I will make it so you have to experience the physical death of your chosen sin-self so that you can enjoy an eternity as your perfected self, in My never-ending presence.” He releases us from what we made, an eternity of sin, in order to give us an eternity of Him. Part of the way He saves us from our sin is by making it so we have to suffer death. In reality He loves us too much not to let us experience the end of this broken life we have chosen. He loves us so much that not only would He let His own Son, would He let Himself, be put to death for our sake, He would let us, His beloved children, temporarily succumb to death. And this is not a defeat at the hands of death, but it is rather a release from our bonds of sin-imposed dying, because it is only through death that He can be with us again in the way He most deeply desires and in the glorious way we were created to be.

allowing God to be "it"

2010-02-05T12:03:00.006-05:00

I'm convinced that Jesus will be anything and everything we allow Him to be for us. Concerning the satisfaction, joy, peace, and fulfillment that He is able to bring into our lives, He is only limited in the level He brings to our lives by what we choose to let Him be. And He's only limited in that way because He established free will and knows that we are only happy with receiving something we, on some level and in some way, already desire and want. We choose according to what we want most. If we choose to sin, it is because we want something that sin represents or something we think that sin will get us. If we choose to obey God--even if we don't want to do the particular action obedience requires--our strongest desire in that situation is to obey God. That is what we want to do, either because we recognize the intrinsic value of the obedient action or because we believe God deserves our loyalty and efforts. Demonstrated and lived belief in most (maybe all?) cases has a huge want- or desire-driven component.

So God and Christ is (I use the singular purposefully) able to be anything we allow Him to be, He wants to be everything we allow Him to be, but He will only go as far as we let Him. This is in part because He wants us to want Him that much. He wants us to recognize that He has and is everything we will or could ever want. Our satisfaction is tied to His in a way I don't think we ever really understand. And that simply reflects the reality and truth of who God is and who He has made us to be.

So much of my worry, anxiety, and stress comes from the "lacks" I perceive in my life--relationally, vocationally, monetarily, etc. And I am in a constant (though not consistent) state of surrender, continuing to offer those desires and situations up to God while asking that His will (not my moment's will) be done. I think, though, that there is a deeper surrender requiring more than that. I think that deeper surrender includes me asking God to literally be those things for me. In doing so I give Him permission to be even more of Himself in my heart and life, to expand, to stretch out into and fill all the dark cracks and corners that I had assumed were "earth-bound" needs and not something God could be for me. (I realized He could provide fulfillment for them, but I didn't think He could be the fulfillment.)

Trials are often the only way we realize how God can be our fulfillment in a way that we had only preserved for worldly satisfaction. For instance, security. I fall into the trap of assuming that the combination of enough money, a steady job, and a place of my own brings security. And today God really convicted me that even though I have none of those three things, I am no less secure than when I had them in the past. And in that moment I realized that this is a perfect opportunity for me to give God permission to be Security in my life. I asked Him to be that for me and for Him to show me in some way how He is my Security, how that looks in the way I live my life and how it helps me move through the deep, dark waters. But I had to be without that security before I could realize just how much God can be that for me. I had to want it, not have it, give up my demand for it, choose to let God choose when to provide it, realize God is it, realize that God needs me to give Him permission to be it, then ask Him to be it in my life. FUN PROCESS.

So this morning I just really like the thought that God will be (and is ready to be) anything and everything I allow Him to be. That's kind of exciting.

scars

2010-01-25T17:48:00.003-05:00

"Why are you so troubled, and why do doubts raise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet." ~Luke 24:38 - 41

Upon hearing reports of people seeing the risen Jesus, Thomas replied: "'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.' A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you!' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.' Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God!'" ~John 20:25b - 28

We are a doubting people. We crave scientific proof, evidence which we can see/touch/feel/hear/taste. We want whatever it is we believe in to have some sort of sensory certainty. Jesus knew this about us and that drive was amply demonstrated in Thomas. As a side note, I think Thomas often gets a bad rap. I don't see anything negative in his insistence on touching and seeing Jesus for Himself--we should all be that passionate and insistent about meeting Jesus personally, not simply through the eyes of others. But I digress.

Jesus' scars proved that He was the risen Lord, not some desperate imposter who was posing as Jesus to make people believe the prophesies had been fulfilled. The scars of the Cross are specific, unique, distinctive, and fatal. There is no denying the signs of hanging from a cross, and there is no way of surviving the cross. Jesus is infinite, but his physical body was not. His body was not perfected at that time, even though he had conquered death. Those scars were not the scars of a survivor, they were the scars of a Conqueror. They are the scars of Someone who had been put to death but had not surrendered to death.

I love that Jesus had scars. And the thing is, we all have scars. All of us Christians who have been brought into new life still bear the scars of our past sins, behaviors, pain, wounds, addictions. And the fact of the matter is, we continue to wound ourselves with our sins even after being saved, and Jesus continues to heal us. But we are finite, and the healing often comes with a beautiful, distinctive "scar" that proves God has done a work in us that we couldn't do to ourselves. Because we are healed from that sin and pain, sometimes our scars are the only things that demonstrate and "prove" the work that God has done in us. They are the only proof of the saving grace of our Lord. They are the only proof that our God is one Who can and does restore the broken into rich, redeemed wholeness.

But we are strangely reluctant to show our scars. We only want people to see our wholeness and we only want to tell people about our scars. "Oh, I used to be a slave to sin, but thankfully Jesus saved me from all that. But don't touch specific areas of my life. Jesus redeemed it. That's all you need to know."

Obviously we shouldn't tell just anyone about our past pain and failures. There are safe people and unsafe people, and it's important for our own well-being to be aware of who falls into which category and keep that line drawn. But sometimes someone needs to touch and feel those scars in order to believe that that healing is even possible. They need to see for themselves the effects of the nails, the devastation of the sword. And we, in turn, then have to relive the pain and humiliation of death on the cross.

Take me, for instance. When I was at Purdue I was going through such pain, darkness, and desperation that I cut myself. I only did it a couple times, and only on the most surface of levels (think wussy paper cut) but that's the depth to which I had fallen. I'm embarrassed by that fact, especially because I don't know how to understand it in my own life. I wish I had a way to present it to show that Jesus redeemed that area into something beautiful, but I don't even have that right now. I don't even have an answer for how I thought it would help. I do know that He saved me from that particular desperation. I do know that He healed that part of me and that He brought me into one of the most loving, grace-filled, beautiful times of my life with the Wilsons. Sure, right now things are all wobbly again, but I hope that when this is over I can show these new scars and let them tell the story of my redemption better than any blog entry could.

praise

2010-01-22T00:54:00.004-05:00

I don't really have much to say tonight, just kind of life updates for my one reader. (Hi mom! I'll call you tomorrow, I swear.)

So far nothing about this year or these past six months (since deciding to leave Purdue) have been easy, predictable, or stable in any sort of way. I feel like I'm in a permanent state of transition, and that that transition is filled with struggles, pain, joy, laughter, tears, and fear. It's crammed full with a bunch of chaotic stuff, basically. And right now it looks like things are going to get even more uncertain, crazy, and anxious, at least for the next month.

The Wilsons found out they are moving in thirty days, which gives me thirty days to:

1. Find full-time employment

2. Find an apartment that is affordable with the full-time salary I find first

3. Move into said apartment

But NO PRESSURE. Of course the Wilsons are the most wonderful people ever and would let me move with them in a heartbeat, but I just feel God leading me out. They need to make that adjustment on their own without trying to support a 27-year-old female with occasional hormone imbalances. Ok, frequent hormone imbalances. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT, I'M SINGLE AND PRONE TO DEEP MOODS. I read philosophy for fun, for pete's sake.

Anyway, I was thinking the other day about praise and what it means. Sometimes praise is about giving someone more credit than what they deserve. For instance, in poetry. How many times have moon-faced poets given their beloved credit for being more beautiful than the moon, than a summer flower, than a morning sunrise, barf blah blah barf? Unless that beloved is Giselle Bundchen, chances are that person is not, in fact, objectively more beautiful than a morning sunrise. Subjectively the beloved is more beautiful, because the poet finds her to be so. His love for her makes her so in his eyes. In this sense praise is about acknowledging or recognizing the subjective value of a loved one, though that recognition or even the value itself may not be universal and thus not true in an objective sense.

Other times, however, praising a human is about recognizing the objective quality or value of a person or his/her accomplishments. Saying "great job!" when someone aces a test or makes the winning basket is simply acknowledging the great job he or she did. Such praise gives people the recognition they deserve for the truly exemplary job performed. Such praise acknowledges the fact that those qualities or accomplishments are reality. Such praise is merely descriptive. It gives voice to reality.

Our praise of God falls into both those categories, with, of course, modifications. I've been reading St. Anslem's Monologium and all about apophatic/cataphatic praise (thanks, brudder, for the awesome book!), and thus have been thinking a lot about the qualities of God apart from this world. Who and What is the essence of God? Who was He before there was my experience of Him? Before (if we can even coherently use such temporally-bound language) He created? In a word: everything He has ever been, everything He is, everything He ever will be. God simply Is and Is Unchanging. Who is He is in my life (whether I see/recognize it or not) is Who He has been forever.

So right now when I'm not seeing (recognizing?) evidence of His love, strength, care, protection, provision, etc. I can still praise Him for being Who He is. I can be objective and literally describe Him to Himself: "Lord, You are Holy, above all others, the Light of the world, my Savior, my King, my Glory forever." I can acknowledge--to Him--His objective attributes. Holy. Pure. Perfect. Loving. Gracious. Truth. And I can and should acknowledge Him for being Who He is, even if my subjective experience doesn't give me that moment's recognition of Him.

Sometimes, though, I praise Him for Who He is in my life, for the qualities of Himself which He chooses to display to me and through the events of my life. Those qualities and their connections to my life are always going to be beautiful and worthy of praise. They are also going to be very emotionally motivated and deeply felt, so the praise is different in that way. In a sense, it is an objective description of my feeling towards Him and my relationship at that moment to Him. So because He is never changing and thus He is always everything Good, all my praise of God is objective. It is objective in different ways, but never is it hyperbolic, fake, forced, or insincere. That's why people can still praise Him in the midst of their terrible circumstances--circumstance does not change God's character and despite all the pain and suffering in this world He is above the world and still infinitely worthy of praise. At every moment He is worthy of never-ending praise, adoration, and worship.

For some reason that really comforted me in an abstract, detached sort of way tonight. It's reassuring to know that even if (worst case scenario) my life never improves or if it even collapses into itself that He is still the same God, with the exact same Goodness and Perfection. I'm not sure why that's comforting, but it is. There are things more important than my experience of God, and one of them--perhaps even the only one-- is God Himself.

anticipation awesomeness

2009-12-28T22:24:00.008-05:00

"The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting." CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy

(Lewis defined Joy or Sehnsucht as the "inconsolable longing" for "we know not what.")

Everyone is aware of the tendency to feel letdown after Christmas. Or the tendency to feel letdown after any exciting event, like when some brides get really depressed after their wedding, or girls get all excited for a date and then get all bummed when the guy turns out to be less than they hoped for (if not a total douche). For some reason the events almost never live up to our expectations. The anticipation and longing for the events are (at least for me) always more delicious than the events themselves. And because I usually focus so much on the post-event disappointment and how to ward it off, I've gotten used to trying to "tone down" my anticipation. Sort of like trying to make an emotional preemptive strike.

I wonder if that's a little bit backwards. In toning down my anticipatory excitement I'm believing that the event is more important than the anticipation, that the experience of the event is more fulfilling than the experience of the longing and anticipation. If CS Lewis is right and the best of life--our Joy--is longing and anticipation for the awesomeness of heaven, then maybe the best joy we can experience is in anticipation and longing. Maybe I've been trying to tone down that which is the most exciting, thrilling and sublimely heavenly part of life.

If you don't want to go that far, you have to admit that at the very least there is real excitement, joy, thrill, and fulfillment in anticipation because it's the closest experience to heaven we can get. Every earthly experience is literally nothing when compared to what we will experience in heaven. I mean, heaven is going to be AWESOME! One unending party and endless adventures. Certainly there are a million and one awesome things to experience in life (little tastes of heaven), but I think our delicious anticipation that is always about more than whatever earthly thing we're excited about, is more akin to the joy we'll experience in heaven, the absolute, overwhelming, thrilling deliciousness that is heavenly experience. So maybe we should be more open to enjoying anticipation and longing, while being conscious not to put all our hopes in the events we're excited about.

I think that's the difficulty: enjoying the anticipation for itself (and only for what it is) rather than putting our hopes for happiness in whatever it is we anticipate or long for.

I think anticipation and longing are beyond awesome in their own right and are the clearest glimpses of heaven that God gives us, precisely because of their inability to be satisfactorily fulfilled on earth. So I'm going to let myself be excited without being carried away by the object (or person!) it points me towards. Not getting caught up in placing my hopes in the object (or person!) is the most effective way to tone down certain types of depression and disappointment, and gives me the freedom and awesomeness of a brighter life enriched by delicious anticipation. Yum!

lessons learned from 2009

2009-12-28T16:58:00.004-05:00

In case you were wondering about certain lessons I learned from my 2009 experiences, here's a synopsis. I highly advise you to print it out and tape it to your refrigerator so that you can avoid listed mistakes (#1) and incorporate listed awesomeness (#24). Happy 2010!

1. Ask God for humility and He’ll make you walk around downtown Seattle with your pants unzipped.

2. Making any effort in a dating relationship will condemn it to certain and irreversible implosion. (Although this could be specific to me and my effect on men…)

3. Emoticons are dangerous tools and should be wielded with extreme caution.

4. Proofread before sending thank you notes. Always. Proofread. And keep spare cards handy should you accidentally hit on someone’s husband.

5. Goose legs are remarkably easy to hit with golf balls and the results are beyond hilarious.

6. Per #5, golf is a highly underrated sport.

7. There are few things funnier than watching a Pekinese get wacked in the face by a Labrador tail.

8. Oh my gosh I need to get a chocolate lab immediately.

9. There are few sadnesses that can’t be assuaged with Labrador, Pekinese and beebee love.

10. For all other sadnesses apply Sarah and wine. Liberally.

11. JD Fischer is one of the funniest people in the world and I’m kind of pissed that he got good looks, excessive brains, musicianship, and a hilarious personality. He could have left something for me, the bitch. I got… uh… great taste in philosophical theology. Guess we knew who comes out on top of THIS sibling pair. BOOYAKASHA.

12. Nothing kills a casual conversation quicker than telling someone you were going to grad school to get your PhD in Philosophy and Literature.

13. Except maybe telling him/her you live in Emmett on someone’s couch.

14. Goats can hump and walk at the same time. Actually they can hump and do a lot of things at the same time.

15. DO NOT, under any circumstances, try to watch “I Love You, Man” with a 17 year old boy and one of his friends who happens to be a student at your school. Instead just kick their butts in Mario Kart. On a Friday night. Since you never have anything else to do, as we established earlier by #2.

16. Hell froze over and it relocated to the Midwest winter.

17. Teaching middle school is basically fighting every natural impulse in your body to pick up adolescents and throw them against walls.

18. Forever 21 is addicting and shopping there garners you the respect of emo middle school girls. Your target demographic, I’m sure.

19. Michael Weatherly is the hottest thing ever.

20. Are you listening? Michael Weatherly is the hottest thing EVER.

21. Resistance training rocks my world and my infraspinati.

22. I am practically a man. Beer, football, resistance training, occasional golf, and an uncanny ability to tune out when Renee is telling me about her day. HOO BOY that woman can chatter.

23. When I make my Chicken Run face a massive vein pops out on my over-sized forehead. COWER BEFORE MY VEIN.

24. Watching a man hunt and destroy a rooster is awesome.

25. Bella Swan is the most annoying “literary” character in the history of “literature” and should be “shot.”

26. You are never attractive when you vomit.

27. Despite occasional (even prolonged) appearances to the contrary, God knows exactly what He is doing, and it’s beautiful.

28. Kind of a lot beyond beautiful.

Anything you learned that I could apply to my 2010, in my desperate attempts to make it even a smidgeon better than 2009?

the excitement of holiness

2009-12-23T02:29:00.003-05:00

This early, early morning I was kept awake thinking about what it means to live a holy life. I think we as Christians have been influenced by the current social climate (aka, critics of religious thought and/or culture) into approaching holiness as the utmost of isolation, tedium, irrelevance, pithiness, detachment, holier-than-thou, legalistic boredom. Oh my word is it ever something much more radical and amazing.

Living a holy life means living a life of risk.

Living a holy life means laying everything we have and are on the line.

Living a holy life means that every moment has the potential for greatness beyond what we can imagine.

Living a holy life means surrendering our pitiful efforts and sinful hearts to the One Who is powerful beyond measure, loving beyond belief, and merciful beyond comprehension.

Living a holy life means exchanging the limited for the limitless.

Living a holy life means living the best, most exciting, most fulfilled life we can imagine (and the best, most exciting, more fulfilled life He knows).

Living a holy life means living to the fullness of who we are, who we desire to become, and what we bring to this world.

Living a life of unholiness, no matter how "insignificant" the unholiness in your life is, means living a life where sin is allowed to be in control (no matter how small that part it controls is). And God cannot work unfettered in any area that we have given over to sin. The Limitless cannot be wed to the limited, just as electrons cannot be bound to protons (HAHA YES I JUST WENT THERE, NERD ALERT). Sin is everything He is not. Sin is everything that is limited, hateful, weak, blind, trapped, caged, decrepit, dying, bound. But to live a holy life--to reject sin and thus to REJECT ALL LIMITATIONS!--means living a life where the power of the Holy One, the power of the Infinitely Loving, Infinitely Powerful, Infinitely Wise, Infinitely Good God does His Loving, Powerful, Wise, and Good work in us, and in through us into the world.

In choosing to live a holy life, we choose to exchange the bondage of sin and worldly satisfaction for the limitless, loving, powerful freedom of Christ. I can't wait to live a holy life! I can't wait to show others--even Christians--that holiness is so much more than monotonous prayer and the shunning of sin. It's an emptying of everything empty, it's a filling up of everything--EVERYTHING--wonderful, beautiful, satisfying, joyful, exciting, risky, profound, limitless. Living a holy life means living a life wherein God has the complete freedom to direct and work through. Do you realize what that means?! Do you really, I mean REALLY, grasp that potential?! It's amazing!

If we had any realistic concept of the wonder and glory of His Holiness, we would never, for a single moment, wish for anything else to be exhibited in us.

I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions, but I'm too excited tonight not to make this my own. It is the one I will never stop making for the rest of my life, though I know I will fail many times. I choose holiness this year, and in doing so I choose to surrender to God's Power and Love, as well as His purifying, purgative, merciful work to help me let go of whatever keeps me bound in impotence. It's scary--but I love adrenaline. It's uncertain--but I love a good mystery. It's begun in a season of darkness and frailty--but I love a good rescue story. It's lonely--but the best romances are the ones with space for a hero. In certain ways it's dangerous--but there is no opportunity for heroism in times of perfect peace.

One thing I know: I'm in love with the Creator of my heart, the Creator of the universe, and I want to live a life that brings me so close to Him--the Creator of the earthly beauty that makes my heart and breath catch in awe--that He literally becomes the lifeblood in my veins. So close that I literally cannot imagine taking a single breath without Him. I want the One Who is All-Powerful, the One Who is All-Loving, the One Who is All-Knowing, the One Who is Perfectly Good, the One Who is Everywhere at Every Time, to be the One working through me.

Honestly, can you conceive of a more exciting way to start a new year and a more exciting way to live life? I DON'T THINK SO!!

contentment with the unseen

2009-12-04T12:47:00.003-05:00

Anything God allows He intends to use for good.

Anything God prevents is for our protection.

When God allows us to undergo suffering, He always has a “redemption plan” for that area of our life. And sometimes He allows terrible, awful things to happen: the death of a child, the loss of a home, the loss of a job, the consequences of someone else’s sin on our lives. While none of those things are good in themselves, God always always always has a plan to use them to produce a good. We can never know exactly or fully why He allows terrible things to happen, but we can rest in the knowledge that He will use them to produce a good. He can “redeem” those things and even transform them to whatever extent He chooses in our lives and in the lives of others.

Similarly, anything God prevents is for our protection. And sometimes He prevents good things from happening: the receipt of a job, the pregnancy of a hopeful-wife, the fulfillment of a desired relationship. While those things may be good in-and-of-themselves (although specific instantiations of those things being qualified as good apart from their being God’s will is nonsense) He only prevents them so as to protect us from something else unforeseen. We can never know exactly or fully why He prevents good things from happening, but we can rest in the knowledge that He prevents them so as to bring about a greater good than what those other perceived good things would bring about or what good they represent in our feeble understanding. He can redeem those areas of loss and emptiness to whatever extent He chooses in our lives and in the lives of others.

The wondrousness about our lives and these two realities is that there is an incredible depth of unseen beauty, grace, and intricacy that we can never know. It’s so easy to rejoice and feed on the apparent, visible beauty. I am thrilled and awed by the visible signs of God’s provision, mercy, love, and will in my life. But I have a very difficult time being thrilled and awed by the provision, mercy, love and will that I cannot see and may never see. And even in those times when I am, I have a difficult time being content with being thrilled and awed solely by the provision, mercy, love and will that I may never see. I always seem to want an expression of it in my life (which is completely natural since we are incurably earth-bound and thus made up of the physical--i.e., the visible). In the immortal words of Cuba Gooding, Jr.: "Show me the money!" (Or whatever it is I desire at the moment)

Will I allow myself to be wooed by the unseen beauty of my circumstances? Will I allow myself to be fall in love with the beauty I cannot see, by the beauty that is completely hidden by the pain and trials of life? Because if I’m not, what amount of apparent, visible beauty is enough for me to be satisfied? And isn’t my being satisfied only when I have visible signs of God indicative of my love for evidence of Him rather than love for Him? The unseen is so much of who God is to us, and to be thrilled by the beauty I can’t see or understand is to be thrilled by God Himself.

coffee shop turds

2009-12-01T12:54:00.002-05:00

Lady to me at coffee shop: “I thought my computer was plugged in.”

Me: “Well, I think a girl tripped right here so maybe it came unplugged.”

Lady: “I just thought it was plugged in the entire time.”

Me: “Do you want me to plug it in for you?”

Lady: “I just thought it was plugged in. I didn’t realize it had come unplugged.”

Me: “Well, you can plug it in.”

Lady: “I plugged it in when I got here and just thought it was still plugged in.”

Me: “AUGH! YOU’RE RIGHT! I DID IT! I UNPLUGGED YOUR COMPUTER SO I COULD USE YOUR OUTLET EVEN THOUGH THERE’S ONE RIGHT ABOVE IT I COULD HAVE USED! I AM A RUTHLESSLY MANIACAL BEEOTCH WHO ENJOYS UNPLUGGING COMPUTERS USING THE OUTLETS AND THEN LYING ABOUT IT FOR SPORT! NOW I WILL GO EAT THAT BABY."

Ok, *part* of this dialogue *may* have been made up. But it is definitely what I would have said had she kept up the flow of her oh-so-subtle accusations. I know that tone, lady. I have 1/5 of a PhD. I know exACTly where you're going with that incessantly repeated observation about the assumed-plugged-in state of your computer. And somehow I think you and your computer will survive the unplugging, accidental or no.

Sometimes I really loathe people. Or maybe this is yet another opportunity for me to exercise patience and grace. Watch me kick it in the pooper.

additional thought on entitlement

2009-11-30T14:20:00.002-05:00

I think some of our assumptions of entitlement come from our claims (right though they may be) that God wants us to be happy, successful, provided for, etc. The truth is that yes, He absolutely does want us to have and be all those things. Take happiness, for example. God wants--and in fact intends--us to be happier than we can possibly imagine. That He desires happiness for us does not entitle us to any specific circumstance or behavior that we imagine will make us happy. And in fact the path to happiness may be paved with sorrow, pain, and suffering because of the way the world is and because of our own sinfulness. Oftentimes our best happiness must be preceded by this moment's deep unhappiness. And the reality is that we really don't know what will make us happy. At least, we certainly don't know better than God. He created us and knows every inch of us, every desire, every minute longing. He put them there because He intends to fulfill them (all of them) in His time and in His way.

But the bottom line is that we cannot assume or derive entitlement from God's desires and intentions for us.

That's all. Back to scraping fruit roll-up off my face (yes, I did wake up with strange blue smears on my face that I can only attribute to my late-night habit of rapidly consuming fruit roll-ups and then falling asleep before brushing my teeth. Think cavities and blue clogged pores are in my future?)

claims of entitlement

2009-11-29T21:37:00.003-05:00

I wonder how much my sense of entitlement affects the way I perceive my circumstances, people, and life. I was thinking the other day about how irritated I get with people and my life, how incredibly impatient I can be, and I think a good portion of that response is due to the fact that I feel entitled to a variety of things. I feel entitled to spend my time the way I want, entitled to use my talents in a way that I feel they "deserve" (if that makes sense), entitled to a certain mode of treatment, etc. And granted, I am entitled in a certain sense to those things. on the human-to-human basis, we all deserve certain standards of treatment: respect, grace, etc., because we are all equal on a fundamental level.

But as far as my relationship with God goes, I am entitled to absolutely nothing. I have no entitlement because I have done nothing to deserve anything, nor do I truly have anything that is "my own." God created me, saved me, and purified me; what is there in my life that is perfectly mine? What have I produced? What can I lay ownership to or claim creator-ship over? My time is His--I owe Him my time, and it is already His because He has given it to me first. My talents are His--He created me and gave me these specific abilities (I didn't produce them in myself by any means) to use in His own way, time, and purpose. My life is His--He saved me and has called me to be His follower and disciple, going wherever and doing whatever He wants of me.

The longer I am a Christian and the more I grow in my faith and relationship with God, the more I see myself clearly for the sinner I am. It's humiliating (and humbling), but it also slowly erodes my sense of entitlement. How can I, dirty, broken, wretched mess that I am, demand ownership over my time and tell my Almighty not only that I deserve it, but that I deserve it more than He does? How can I continue to pout over the job God has provided for me when I know He has a purpose for everything? I am not entitled to claiming my life's purpose, either. Only God is entitled to assign purpose, and everything He calls me to has a purpose. I need to surrender to that.

Giving up our claims of entitlement is difficult and painful because they are innate within us, a part of what makes up our human (finite and mortal) nature. Was entitlement not the motivation for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit? I think all sin and disobedience is rooted in a sense that we are entitled to spend our time the way we think we should or the way we want to spend it.

The good news is that, while it is difficult, giving up those claims of entitlement is also incredibly freeing. Everything we have is revealed as a gift from God, and the way we view our circumstance is transformed. Sure, I may still hate my job (and oh boy do I some days), but when I acknowledge and really, really believe that my time and life are not my own, that even my gifts and abilities are for God to use in His way and not the way I think they would best be utilized, I don't get caught up in anger, frustration, or resentment at the way my life seems to be turning out. I can even celebrate His purpose (though I can't see it yet) in the seemingly mundane, trivial, or downright distasteful. I can obey Him with joy rather than grudgingly or with resentment. So surrendering my claims of entitlement betters my emotional life, my relationship with God, and my relationship with others. God will provide for all my needs, and I just get to enjoy the unexpected ways He does so.

a safe heart for God

2009-11-13T13:05:00.004-05:00

We often think about the relationships in our lives (or at least I do) in terms of who is a “safe” place. And different people provide different safe places for different aspects of our lives. My brother provide a safe place for me to talk about the difficulties of being a pastor’s kid or a conservative radio host kid; Renee provides a safe place for me to talk about a million and one things, especially relationships because she is beautifully honest and loves me dearly; Sarah is a safe place for me to talk about simply being who I am and the ways God works in my life because her wisdom, love, understanding, and hilarity coincide so closely to my own beliefs and the ways in which I process and/or respond to situations, and she is beautifully honest about her struggles and the ways she continues to grow and mature in her trust of God; my parents provide a safe place to talk about spiritual and life matters because, well, they’re my parents, they’re incredibly godly, incredibly wise, and love me more than life itself; and God provides the safest place (though it doesn’t always feel that way) because He knows me inside and out and loves me more than I can possibly imagine.

I think what it means to find a “safe” place in a relationship is to find someone who accepts you just as you are and not only provides understanding for what you’re going through, but provides a way to heal. A safe place is a place of rest and a place of healing, and is found in a person who does not put any conditions on who I am “allowed” to be, think, or feel. As soon as someone puts those kind of demands on me, that safe place is lost for me. A safe person lets me be who I am even if that "who I am" is uncomfortable or is somehow inconvenient.

But in order to find a safe place I have to be a certain way, too. Finding a safe place requires that I be open to being vulnerable with someone, open to receiving his or her honest observations, open to facing my own faults and sins, open to change, and open to loving that person with the same mercy and grace with which they love me. More than that, it requires me offering them the same love and mercy Christ offers me.

So if you know me at all or read this blog as religiously as I’m sure you do (have you been absolutely dying, parched from being denied the nourishing water of my prose?), it’s obvious that I believe God to be the safest place for my heart. But the other day I found myself thinking, “Am I a safe place for God?” And at first I laughed at that thought. I mean, He’s God. He doesn’t need a safe place, a place of rest. The concept of God having a safe place is almost laughable at first. But while He doesn’t need a safe place, I think He wants to rest in us, and I think He adores finding hearts that allow Him to be everything He is, unconditionally and delightfully. I think having a heart that is a safe place for God means having a heart that lets God be Who He is, in all His glory, Awe-someness, Holiness, Righteousness, and in whatever work He wants to do in my heart. It means loving God unconditionally—loving (choosing, often, to love) Him no matter what He chooses to let me go through, no matter if I don’t feel or understand His presence, no matter if I don’t want to do what He wants me to do (obedience kinda sucks sometimes). Do we let God be all that He is, even if it is uncomfortable or inconvenient for me? Or do we put conditions on Who we think He is “allowed” to be and thus not offer Him a truly safe heart where He can rest?

I think King David was a safe place for God (made even more beautiful because of the sin in his life—as Renee said to me recently, “God can make anything beautiful”). I think many contemplatives were safe places for God (making them beautiful in His eyes though the world considers them utterly useless. Kind of like philosophy/lit PhD students. Except contemplatives were actually more useful because they tended to write books that actually helped people. BURN ON MYSELF). Part of what I love about being around Renee, Sarah, JD, and my parents is that they adore and love me. I feel so happy when I know that they enjoy me, partially because I love them so much, too. God’s love is waaay bigger than mine, so I am sure He feels the same happiness and delight when we take a moment to adore Him.

I think one of the most amazing things about God is that we can delight Him. I mean, just think about that for a second. It’s kind of mind-blowing! I can delight the heart of the God Who created the far-reaches of the galaxy, the God Who created a system of life so complex that the smartest minds in the world still don’t understand how everything holds together at the most intricate level. The God Who is so infinitely Glorious and Perfect that the thought of standing before Him in my sinfulness terrifies me is delighted by my delight in Him! All the delight I derive from life and creation (snowy mountains, sunsets, laughing with Renee until I can’t breathe, hearing Him speak to me through Sarah as she shows me unhealthy patterns I had been living that I never realized were keeping me from forming healthy relationships, working out so much that my muscles tingle in bed hours after I’m done) are His attempts to delight me, and every delight I take in them I take in Him. We just resist making that transference, for a multitude of reasons. But my relationship with God, with Christ, can be one of mutual delight and adoration, and I honestly can’t imagine any better way of living life than finding that my God, the One I love more than anything in the entire world, is delighted by my heart being His place of rest.

God's purpose in awesomeness

2009-10-27T16:27:00.006-04:00

“God still speaks to us today as [H]e spoke to our forefathers in days gone by.” ~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, pg. 1

To seek only God is a bit of a scary thought at first. Such an all-encompassing and singular search requires us to abandon all other searches. It necessitates no longer looking for a career, a relationship, a home, a friendship, money for bills, our next adrenaline rush, insert-anything-that-we-look-to-in-order-to-satisfy-us. So on the outset it feels like in order to seek only God we have to abandon everything earthly we love, everything else that gives us pleasure and fulfillment, everything else we desire. It also feels like it would necessitate abandoning the practicality of maintaining our daily lives, and abandoning the responsibility that God has given us to act (in order that He might have actions to act through). That’s painful, scary, and—let’s be honest—feels almost foolish.

But to seek only Him actually means to seek the best of all that. Seeking Him firstly and only is to surrender completely to Him, and by extension surrender completely to His plan for us. And He won’t let anything in our lives fall through the cracks. God reminds us to do things and God inspires us to take actions. Do we trust Him with all that? God will direct every moment we give Him, and each action He calls us to has a specific moment for a specific purpose (no matter how seemingly insignificant that purpose is). To seek God firstly and only is to seek only Him, but in seeking only Him we also find His will for us (which is His best for us). Seeking only God means abandoning the desires of our heart on the strength of the absurd.

Seeking Him first also breaks open our concept of “God’s purpose.” How often we think of God’s purpose in heavy or dogmatically pious terms: serving the poor, reading the Bible, praying, fasting, tithing. But man it’s SO MUCH AWESOMER YES I JUST SAID AWESOMER than that! God gave us an earth with awesome pleasures and thrills. He created mountains to ski, waves to surf, fields to run, wine to drink (oh yeah, I just went there), music to listen to, books to read, kisses to thrill us, rocks to climb, sunsets that still us, etc. etc. etc. And part of His purpose for us is for us to enjoy those things, because through those activities we are refreshed and energized, and because in them we find new expressions of His beauty, majesty, and love. To seek Him first is to be open to all of life and to all of His creation and to be ready to enjoy everything to its fullest because through them we find pieces of Him. Call me crazy, but I think sometimes God’s moment-purpose for me is to rip a mountain to shreds on a sunny powder day or watch a movie that makes me laugh till I cry. He’s in all that.

To hear God is to respond to those urges He puts on our hearts—urges to read a book, hike a mountain, pay a bill, make a note to drop off the dry cleaning, call a particular person, or sit down and spend time absorbed in Him. Every good thing is from Him and He is ready to speak to us through everything we do. We simply need to learn to discern His voice from all others, and that is why we seek Him and Him alone--so we can learn to distinguish His voice and respond to it immediately, and through that response find everything awesome He has designed for us (although sometimes that awesomeness is deeply painful).

So yes, in order to seek only Him we do have to give up the search for everything else that is significant, practical, desirable, and fulfilling. But the amazing part is that it doesn’t mean that we abandon all that “everything else.” We simply abandon the search. When we seek only Him we actually find everything else. Even more awesome is we find a better “everything else.” It’s the “everything else” directly from God corresponding to the specific desires He put in us, it’s the “everything else” minus the pressure and stress of feeling like we need to figure it out or have it all under control. To seek only God is to find Him in everything at every moment. It’s wild, messy, exhilarating, and ridiculously peaceful.

OH MY GOSH IT’S SO AWESOME!!!!

desperation

2009-10-22T01:14:00.002-04:00

A song I can't stop singing lately is "Breathe," because the words pretty much sum up my internal life right now:

"This is the air I breathe,

This is the air I breathe:

Your Holy Presence living with me.

"And I,

I'm desperate for You.

And I,

I'm lost with You."

Lately I have felt more than ever just absolutely desperate for God and desperate for His grace. Again, I think it has been one of the most real (as well as the most deeply painful) times of my life, because I just don't think we as Christians realize how desperately we need His grace and His presence. Most of us, myself included, don't fully understand how thoroughly incapable we are of righteousness by our own effort alone. We fallen human beings simply are desperate for Him, whether or not we know and feel it.

As per my usual, I decided to google define "desperate." For me, in praying, "Lord, I'm desperate for You" I always meant that I needed Him and had no other avenue of grace, strength, love, hope, and value than Him. Google provided some other slightly different definitions that made the concept of "being desperate" for God so much more interesting:

* "arising from or marked by despair or loss of hope"

* "showing extreme courage; especially of actions courageously undertaken in desperation as a last resort"

* "showing extreme urgency or intensity especially because of great need or desire"

* "fraught with extreme danger; nearly hopeless"

* "a person who is frightened and in need of help"

To be desperate for God is to have lost hope in everything else but Him (to have lost hope even in His promises). It is to feel passionate urgency in searching for Him and an intense desire to bow before Him in humility and supplication. It is to feel the weight of fear, the weight of danger, the weight of frightening neediness, the weight of complete inadequacy. It is extreme courage in following Him even though the path He is on--though the only path left--leads right into the heartache and danger other paths attempt to avoid. It is to allow myself to be utterly emptied, broken, and helpless for as long as He knows is necessary for me to see Him and His grace for what they truly and deeply are.

To be desperate for Him is to be real before Him.

tales from the lpga

2009-10-21T19:29:00.003-04:00

So as you can probably tell from my previous post, I have taken up golf. Not only taken it up, but CRUSHING THE SPORT TO A MILLION LITTLE PIECES WITH MY RAW POWER AND BRUTE STRENGTH.

Today I got a set of golf clubs from my friend Jeff Baker. This made me happy for two reasons: a). I used to make fun of him for liking golf because I thought it was an "old man" sport and now he's helping me get into it and making me eat my insults, b). these were clubs he had bought for a now-ex-girlfriend, clubs she left over at his house and never reclaimed. It made my heart happy to know that I was redeeming the wreckage of a broken relationship. That's the power I wield--if you send me the leftover stuff from your last relationship you, too, can experience my redemptive power.

Sorry, Jesus.

Anyway, I've only been hitting buckets of balls with the occasional course outing, but decided today that since I got my very own set of clubs (rather than the pretty purple ones I'd been stealing/borrowing from the very nice GM at Warm Springs) I should venture out onto the adult course and actually play a couple of holes. By myself. I am so lame.

Things were going quite nicely until hole 6. I wanted to kill hole 6. I shanked it left into the trees and then on subsequent shots kept hitting it back into the same dang trees. Then I finally got it slightly out in the open and I just had to hit it slightly right so as to avoid the big grey electrical pole and the little tree right next to it. Slow back swing... THWACK THWACK rolled right back to me. Stupid electrical pole. No biggie, just try again. The odds are stacked against me hitting it in the same general area twice (especially if I actually aim towards that place). Line up the shot... slow back swing... THWACK THWACK ROLL RIGHT BACK TO ME. I hit the frigging tree standing ONE FOOT AWAY from the stupid electrical pole. I officially hate this game.

Third shot has me going severely right next to the pond. NEXT to people, not in. Oh but the next shot I did sink right in there. Right in the water. But then on the green, put put put and in da hole. Ducky go down da hole.

Now we come to hole 7. First off, the tee box is covered--COVERED--in goose poop. I took about five minutes getting set up trying to find three spaces (one for my tee and one for each foot) that didn't have twirly loopy goose turds splattered everywhere. Finally set up... slow back swing.... THWACK PLOOP. Right in the water. Same pond as before. Second shot on the fairway, in the middle of a big group of turd-laying geese. So I saunter right in their midst, line up my shot... slow back swing... and hit a "worm burner" right into a goose's leg. So he's flapping around, can't fly, can't get off the ground, and I'm switching back and forth about every thirty seconds between laughing hysterically and calling out apologies to the poor struggling goose (keep in mind I'm golfing by myself and at this particular hole people on the Green Belt can and did see and hear me. I saw two old men just stop and stare halfway through my laughing/apologizing-to-a-goose dance). So finally the goose manages to flop himself into the water and then oh my freaking pie he starts swimming in circles! That's when I lose all control and am doubled over laughing, crying, and still trying to yell out apologies because I realize that he is now some coyotes dinner later. Oh man. Finally I compose myself just enough to line up another shot.... slow back swing... THWACK PLOOP. Right in the water. Again.

I gave up that hole.

One hole later a regular at the course saw me, waved me over to hole 5 with him, and we golfed five holes together, including the black hole 6 and the poop-covered hole where no goose is safe from my burner of a swing--7. Things were going just great (and I was improving!) until the very end when he told me he had had a dream about me and I was yet again reminded why I don't talk to these people except in one minute increments. It's much harder to sexually harass a woman when she is driving out of your reach and out of ear shot.

I blame the cursed clubs of a broken relationship.

conversations with my father

2009-10-20T10:45:00.004-04:00

Inside every woman is a little girl in a floofy dress, twirling around the living room trying to capture the attention of and enchant her daddy.

Me: "A golf pro at Warm Springs told me I have SERIOUS potential to be an awesome golfer."

Dad: "Was his name Dorf?"

Me: "I hit a 180 yard drive. BOOYAH!"

Dad: "In what direction?"

Me: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA STRAIGHT!"

Dad: "Remember this moment. It will never happen again in my lifetime."

Me: "You wish. Watch how I become awesome and you loathe yourself for having a daughter beat you in golf."

Dad: "Ok."

Me: "I hit a 210 drive today. Eat your heart out."

Dad: "Whoa! Was that in feet or inches?"

And my personal favorite:

Me (emailing Dad after he hung up on me and never called me back, even though he PROMISED): "Thanks for hanging up on me and then not calling me back. That felt real good. Kind of like a giant hug."

Dad: "I got hungry and decided eating was more important. Actually I had to go to work--I'd agreed to do a radio interview for AFA and that was them on the line. I decided talking to a person I don't know and will never meet was more important than talking to you. Don't worry though--you're still in the will and she's not."

Later, after he tried to give me grief about texting mom something important and not ccing him in on it so he could offer his sage advice:

Me: "I only listen to people who call me back and are interested in talking to me rather than someone they don't know."

Dad: "Then you should call my show and pretend to be somebody else."

Yep. My daddy adores me.

sin acts, sinful natures

2009-10-15T16:58:00.005-04:00

In normal relationships, actions determine and affect closeness. If I am consistently harsh to Renee, she will never want to enter into a close friendship with me (actually, that’s a terrible example. Insults are our love language. Ok, insert name of every other friend I have). If, on the other hand, I am consistently kind those actions will draw us closer. In relationships with people, sins separate, love draws together.

When it comes to our relationship with God, while our actual sinful acts affect our closeness with God, they do not affect His relationship with us. Our sins do not add condemnation that doesn’t already exist, nor do they make the sacrifice of His Son any more necessary on the level of God's relationship with us. It would make no difference if we didn’t perform a particular sinful act than if we did. For three reasons:

God knows every sin we are going to commit before we even commit it. He has known from the beginning everything we will do and thus cannot be “let down” by us doing something unexpectedly awful. It’s not like He’s looking down on me from heaven saying, “Man, I really thought Jana was going to tell the truth there, but she lied. That little harlot lied. Son of a--. I’m super disappointed and don’t want to talk to her for a while.” Nope. He’s up there saying, “Ah, 2:52PM, Jana’s going to lie… right… NOW. Yep, there she goes. Maybe one day she’ll see how I have always had a plan to use this particular sin in her life to produce something good.” He knows every sin I will commit and still loves me.
We cannot earn His love or earn His favor, as the very fact that Christ came to fulfill the Old Testament law screams. If we could earn His love with our good actions (i.e., earn His love by refraining from doing the things forbidden by the 10 Commandments) we wouldn’t need Christ. His death and resurrection would be superfluous (I cringe even writing those words). The Old Testament laws would be sufficient unto themselves for our admittance into God’s favor and relationship. But, in RPG terms, “GIGANTIC PEOPLE FAIL.” We cannot do enough good to become close to God; only through Christ can we enter into close relationship with Him. And because of Christ He’s already there. He is always close to us, regardless of good behavior or bad.
The sinful act is simply evidence of a sinful nature that would still exist in us even if we did not commit that particular sin. It’s like situationism ethics vs. character ethics (which I won’t get into, but trust me, it’s awesome). Basically, even if I didn’t go into a store and steal a shirt –say I had gone to get coffee instead—the sinful tendency in me to steal would still exist in me even if it weren’t expressed in a specific act, behavior or situation. The sinful tendency would still be a part of my makeup, my heart, and my soul even if it were never expressed. God is in a relationship with our hearts, not our acts, so He still considers me a thief (a forgiven and redeemed thief) even if I never steal something, because there is a sinful nature in my heart to steal in some situation, though I never actually enter into that situation. Though I may never steal, I am still a thief.

Taken exactly for what it is, this is incredibly freeing. God is not looking to my actions; He is looking to my heart. This is why purgation can be so incredibly painful. We can think that just because we are obeying Him we shouldn’t be in pain or feel so condemned. But it’s the deeper sinful natures that may never be expressed in behavior, and God wants to purify all of us, not just the sinful parts we can see and recognize in our behavior. And though He sees me for who I really am (much worse than I even understand my wretchedness to be) He loves me more than I can possibly imagine and only purifies me so as to help me feel even closer to Him. My sins do not separate me from Him now that I’ve accepted and surrendered to Christ.

Of course I am not saying at ALL that it doesn’t matter if we sin or not. It very much matters. It’s simply that our external sinful acts destroy our external relationships with people, not our very internal relationship with God. Part of why we don’t want to sin is, of course, to honor God and love Him that way, but also so that we can draw others to Him. People are drawn to holy, loving lives, not unabashedly sinful, unhealthy ones. I can attest to this, as I have never been as sought after (in friendship and in romantic relationship) as when I have been loving people through Christ’s power and not my own, through holiness and forgiveness rather than worldly affection or desire for fulfillment.

But God is not people. We relate to Him on a spiritual, internal level, not through earthly or physical means (we can express our relationship to Him in earthly, physical ways, but those do not comprise or characterize our relationship with Him). Because we relate to Him so internally, it is the nature of our heart that determines the closeness of our relationship with Him, not our actions as with our relationships with other people. And our hearts are incurably sinful. There would be eternal separation were it not for Jesus Christ paying for our sins and closing that gap between God and those who have chosen to follow Him and love Him forever. But because of Christ’s blood our sinful acts do not damage our closeness to God.

two levels of relating to God

2009-10-11T20:19:00.003-04:00

“Now the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator[.]” ~CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pg. 88

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” St. Paul, 1 Timothy 1:15

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means or takes to “love” God. I think our relationship with Him is twofold, if I can break it down that simplistically for a moment. On one hand we respect and worship Him for His perfection, power, holiness, and majesty. We revere Him because He is holy while we are sinful; He is the Creator, we are the created; He is infinite, we are finite; etc. So on one hand we follow Him and commit our lives to Him because we recognize Him as Truth and recognize the perfection of His commandments. Obedience is an expression of our respect, but it can also be an expression of our love.

I’ve noticed how little people seem to truly love God. The love that people have for other people in romantic or familial relationships is so vastly different from the kind of love they have (or exhibit) for God. I think when people say they love God, in many ways they actually mean they respect Him and don’t quite understand what it means to love Him. In many ways respect and love are intertwined (especially when it comes to God), but nonetheless they are still distinct motivations for obedience and relationship with Him.

We respect God for His holiness; we love Him for His grace. His justice and holiness are quite distinct from His grace (though, again, inextricably connected). Reading Jerry Bridges’ Transforming Grace opened my eyes to ways in which I have not understood the all-encompassing nature of God’s grace and the ways it is continuously working in my life. There is not a single moment in which His grace is not operating in my life, and He is always ready to extend it to me. Always. And He extends it to me when I don’t even realize it.

God’s holiness separates me from Him while His grace draws me to Him. His holiness makes my relationship with Him distant and respectful; His grace makes my relationship with Him intimate. How odd and beautiful that the Christian’s relationship with God is that continual and simultaneous separation and drawing together between Him and myself.

Recently I was absolutely overcome with despair concerning my sinful nature because of particular choices I have made in my life. I felt utterly wretched and it was right I felt that way. I truly recognized how dark I am and how incurably sinful. I felt like it was right that God should abandon me because I could not be anything other than someone rejecting His sovereignty. It was one of the most real and terrifying moments of my life.

And it’s hard to describe, but God used that moment where I was intensely aware of my sins to communicate with me in a way that was so loving, unconditional, and affectionate that I immediately started crying when I realized just how gracious He is in His relationship with me. He used that moment to deepen my love for Him by showing me how His love and grace cut through anything I have done and everything I will do. It’s His grace that makes me, that makes all Christians, fall in love with Him. I began to want to follow Him not just because His laws are Truth and He, as God, should be obeyed, but also because I deeply, deeply love Him and want to please Him through my self and my actions as an expression of that love. There is a feeling of love for God that is entirely due to my deeper awareness and experience of His grace. Only a God so gracious and loving is a God we could love, in the relational and intimate sense of love.

I wonder if more Christians were more deeply aware of His grace if they would fall in love with Him, too, instead of being only “in respect with” Him. But maybe being more deeply aware of His grace necessitates us first being more deeply aware of our sinful nature. Maybe Paul’s intense awareness of his sinful nature (I don’t think when he claimed to be “the worst of sinners” that he was being hyperbolic. I think it’s truly what he believed because he saw himself for what he was) made him even more aware of God’s grace, and therefore he was drawn closer to God in love. Maybe at some point everyone needs to feel like he or she is “the worst of sinners.”

Christ as Mediator

2009-10-06T23:40:00.004-04:00

I came home tonight, after my last shift at Warm Springs (which has turned into a hellhole of sexual harassment from golfers), and saw a basketful of my laundry that Sarah had sweetly put upstairs for me. Don't ask me why, but I suddenly knew that it is approaching time for me to leave and get my own place. And then, of course, I started crying. Propping myself up on the counter, head bent, tears pouring down my cheeks crying. I don't know why.

Actually I do. I'm so incredibly discouraged, inside and out. These past few weeks have pretty much taken all my emotional strength to get through without a single cryfest. I've had to deal with the panic of approaching unemployment, the terror of bills come due I can't afford, the violation and trauma of what seems like constant sexual harassment (to the point where even the slightest attention from a male stranger makes me want to curl up in a ball and/or kick him in the nee-nees), and the sometimes-suffocating pain of loneliness. I realize this isn't a ton of stuff and that other people are going through much worse life circumstances than I, but every life change--and there have been several this year and half--requires a strength I'm rapidly running out of on my own.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship he talks about Christ as our Mediator, the Mediator of every aspect of our lives:

[Christ] stands between us and God, and for that very reason He stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through Him and unto Him, He is the sole Mediator in the world. Since His coming man has no immediate relationship of his own anymore to anything, neither to God nor to the world. Christ wants to be the Mediator. (106 - 107)

I wonder what it means to ignore Christ as Mediator. A mediator settles conflicts, "translates" the needs and desires of both parties to each other, and (according to Princeton's WordNet) "intervenes to bring about a settlement." So basically once I accepted Christ as my Savior, He began continuously and thoroughly intervening in my life to bring about the purpose or end He chose for me when creating me.

I wish I could see Christ in everything, not just as my Companion and Strength in life's circumstances, but as the way through to every relationship and circumstance in my life. Through Him I come to my world and to my reality. He's not just a "part" of it.

I think maybe God is allowing me to feel helpless, weak, and broken in order to show me how He is my Reality, my Mediator between myself and everything else. Only when I don't understand the other side (whether God, my future, or my purpose), or feel like I can't "do it alone," do I recognize my need for a Mediator. It's not about inviting Him to be in any particular situation. He's already there. He is the one working in my circumstance. I am not working in my circumstance, at least, not in the deeper sense of the term (He has still given me work to do, but He accomplishes His work through my efforts, not because of my efforts). My goal for my life is nothing less than what God's purpose for me is, because I believe He wants nothing less than my happiness, joy, and best (in Him, not in anything less. And why would I be happy with anything less than Him and being the epitome of what He has created me to be?). But I can't know what His plans for me are--who can know God's heart and mind? Only Christ, who is both man and God and resides in the deepest part of my being.

Wow, that just made me start crying. Christ is working in me and in my life to accomplish God's purpose in me, which is ultimately my highest and best happiness because in it I am surrounded and deepened by Him. Surrendering is painful at times, but it is so beautiful. My Mediator, Christ my Lord and Savior, wants that happiness for me.

So to refuse to see a particular relationship or situation through Him is to assume either He does not want the best for me in it or that He expects me to know something I can't or don't. It assumes that He expects me to be strong in a way that is apart from Him. And God never expects me to be strong apart from Him. In fact He expects the opposite--He expects me to weak and empty when I am not relying totally on Him.

God doesn't expect or demand I be anything good, holy, and strong outside my surrender to Him. In fact He expects nothing from me other than my complete, desperate need for Him. Thankfully that's exactly and only what I have to offer.

purpose in weakness

2009-09-26T00:51:00.004-04:00

One thing that I've clung to these last couple months is the truth that God is not a wasteful God. He doesn't give gifts and abilities to people arbitrarily--He always has a plan to use them for His kingdom and glory (assuming, of course, that we are surrendered to Him and willing to let Him use those gifts and abilities in the way He has intended, not according to how we think they should be used).

So often I think of my "purpose" in terms of what strengths God has given me. What am I naturally inclined towards? What do I love doing? What am I good at? It seems to make sense to think of career and ministry in terms of the strengths God has given me. He designed me, designed everything about me, with and for a purpose. He didn't just throw in some extra scraps of, say, musical ability He had lying around because He had some gaps He needed to fill in the "Jana Marie Fischer" mold and was too lazy or tired to come up with anything new and different. He gave me the gift of musical ability for a reason. He has made me exactly, exactly, this way for a variety of big and small-seeming reasons.

Today during my "lather-rinse-repeat" routine I was struck by the thought: "What if God gave me specific weaknesses? What if He gave me those weaknesses to accomplish His specific purposes, just as I know He has done with my strengths?" If He is not a wasteful God, if He has given me everything I have and has a plan for all of it, then He has purposefully given me certain impulses or weaknesses towards particular sins. Don't get me wrong--I am not in any way saying God makes me sin or wants me to sin. Absolutely not--the concept of Christ-ian grace is predicated on the expectation we are to live holy lives--with, of course, the charming addition of our complete and utter inability to do so (and many times to even want to do so) on our own effort. I believe that He "knit me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13) and significant parts of that whole person He knit together are the weaknesses I have towards certain sins: pride, fear, anxiety, sex outside of marriage, etc. (sorry to be so blunt, but I figure this post deserves my honesty about certain areas in which I struggle to be holy). In creating man--who is not-God and therefore not-perfect--He created beings who are finite, who are inherently limited. Weakness is inherent to creaturely limitation. But God is not limited by that fact. God endowed me with certain specific strengths; I now realize and believe that He has endowed me with very specific weaknesses. So what about them? Are they just things to work through, endure, survive until I'm in heaven and perfect in, through, and with Christ?

I've been reading Jerry Bridges' Transforming Grace and in the chapter I read today Jerry (yes, we're, like, super tight, home skillet) drew my attention to 2 Corinthians 12:9: "'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I [Paul] will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

I think God has a specific and amazing purpose for my weaknesses if I am willing to let Him use them and to continue His perfecting work in me as I give Him those areas of sin in my life. If Paul is right that God's power is more evident when seen through my weaknesses than through my strengths (both of which He has given me), then what amazing things does He plan to accomplish with or through my weaknesses if I believe He has big plans for my strengths? For instance, maybe He wants to open doors for me to minister to others struggling with those sin areas--how could I reach them if I didn't know that struggle intimately? But just thinking that way has helped free me a little bit from the bondage of my imperfection. What I want most in life is for God to be reflected in my work, my countenance, my speech (yikes) and my life. If, in my continued reliance upon and surrender to Him, He is most clearly seen when I am weakest, then my sinful tendencies are not just things to be endured, confessed, and continuously struggled against. They are opportunities for the Lord to show Himself to be gracious, loving, forgiving, redeeming, and powerful in HUGE WAYS. HUGE WAYS, PEOPLE! God is excited to use everything we are, exactly what He has given us, in amazing ways, and that includes our weaknesses, ugliness, and "bad dark stuff." That is the reason I can join Paul in saying I "boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses."

Only a perfectly loving, good, powerful, and just God would do this. He totally blows my mind.

prom nostalgia

2009-09-18T09:56:00.010-04:00

When my mom was cleaning out the basement of the Mountain View house (where JD and I were forced to make our rooms. Here was my window:

Yes, I lived in squalor and poverty) she found some of my old prom invites from high school. Now, at Capital HS we didn't just ask someone to a dance. Oh no. We went all out, devising scavenger hunts, filling lockers with all sorts of glitter and streamers and crap, and generally just trying to be as creative as possible. Imagine a high school full of peacocks trying to show off their feathers for a bunch of ditzy, giddy women. So when my mom found my old prom invites, she didn't find little pieces of paper with "Will you go to prom with me? Circle YES or NO." She found posters. And it brought me back to the time when I literally had a fan club (the Jana Fischer Fan Club, or the JFFC for short) and was actually desired by boys-to-be-men. Ah, the glory days.

This was the invite to my junior prom:

It reads :"JANA, I may not be HARRISON FORD, but would you go with me to prom anyway?" This was from Dave Phillips, my high school best friend and the man I'm pretty sure I would have married at age 20 if he hadn't been Mormon or I had been. Luckily Dave is married with a one-year-old baby boy, so he's doing much much better not having married me. Unless he really wanted to crash a couch at an Emmett goat farm at the age of 27. In that case, SUCKS TO BE HIM. But I digress. Junior year he clearly knew me well enough to know that the way to my heart was via pictures of Harrison Ford, with at least one of Harrison in a speed-o. But Dave never put his name on the poster, and my favorite part of this poster is the back:

As "clues" he put all the little phrases we used to say to each other and UNNNNNGNGUUHHH it makes my heart happy to remember that boy! We used to use such gems as:

"I LUFF you!"
"Where have you been all my life?"
"But not as fine as YOU. Ohohohohohoh" (said in a French accent)
And of course the ridiculous plug hug where he'd put his hands on his hips and I'd straighten my arms and run into him. So stinkin' barfably cute.

Then, as you can see, he scrambled his name at the bottom. Lipshipl still slays me.

Oh, and he gave me a dozen roses, too.

So that was junior prom. But the best, most creative way I have EVER been asked out EVER was by this boy

(a mister Michael Spiedel) to senior prom. On a side note, I kind of sort of might have married him, too. Apparently I was serious about the quality of my prom dates. But anyway, this is the poster I found on my bed after coming home from school one day

next to a jug of milk. But when I got closer to the milk I saw little flashes of orange through the cloudy white. Yes. There were freaking GOLD FISH SWIMMING IN THE JUG OF MILK. Apparently he found out that goldfish can live up to twenty-four hours in 1% milk (but don't quote me on that and/or try it at home because I do not want to be the cause of a wide-spread and sudden goldfish accidental slaughter). So as the word nerd that I am I adored and was cracked up by the "Fisch"-goldfish connection, the Michael-Mikl-milk connection, and the combination of the fish in the milk. It became too much. Oh, and he gave me cookies as well, but I ate those without drinking the milk. And we saved the goldfish, but they died about three days later. Probably from milk gill-inhalation.

(Now that I think about it, Michael's poster may have actually been a response to me asking him to the girl-ask-guy dance... but who can remember these details. I still went with him to senior prom and it was awesome and I'm sure he did something equally creative and weird to ask me then. And I probably did something awkward, shy, and uncomfortable in response because hey, that's what I do.)

So those are my prom date invite stories. I love love love that my mom didn't throw out those posters, because who doesn't love to recall the shy and endearing awkwardness of dating in high school? Especially when you realize you're no less awkward at it 10 years later?

what i get to come home to

2009-09-16T22:30:00.017-04:00

So I'm movin' up in the Emmett goat farm world. This week I deflated my air mattress and moved onto the cutest yellow-striped pull-out sofa bed ever. This means that I don't have to wake up to this face (and breath) every morning:

Genevieve has a problem. She thinks she's a lap dog. And she also rolls over onto her back and grins at you expectantly whenever you so much as look at her. I think Ryan said it best: "If Genevieve was a real woman, she'd be a slut. You spend most of your life on your back, don't you?" Yes, yes she does and yes she would. But oh my gosh there is no other yellow lab in the world that will make you want a dog more than this sweet, skunk-smelling girl (she rolled in skunk a while back and despite repeated baths hints of skunkiness). I'm seriously stealing her when I go. Which may not be for a while because I totally want to keep mocking this big guy:

Yeah, Jack doesn't look much like he merits mocking until you do this:

I love that buggy, wonky eye. And I also love it when Officer Brad Wilson picks him up and tickles him until he starts growling and grinning like a gremlin. Jack, not Brad.

But if I were being completely honest, the real highlight of my day is coming home to these:

Kiley is on little pixie on the left, Lauren is the angel on the right.

"Take my pliture!"

"Hey Jana this is the scary part take a picture of the movie! I'll pause it."

Me: "Strike your best rock star pose!"

Such divas. Yes, I did buy them those glam sunglasses. I bought each of them Hannah Montana performance kits. They each got fake blonde hair, sparkly sunglasses, a microphone, and hair accessories. I'm pretty much the best fake-big-sister ever. EVER.

Kiley is probably the cutest five-year-old ever. EVER. Not only does she look like she could be MY kid, but she loves cleaning up my room with (read: for) me. Seriously. She'll actually come up to me and say "You need to clean your room, little missy," or "Maybe we should tidy up your room." Then she'll run around putting things in organized piles. She especially loves organizing my jewelry, and picks out what I wear almost every day. This girl has seriously good taste, although she does love to overload me with the (fake) gold stuff. But after she's done she always looks at me and says "Awwwww!" so I can't help but wear all of it out of the house and wait to take off one or two pieces in the car. She asks me to play princess dolls with her, tells me she loves watching movies with me, tells me I look "booiful" and tells me: "I knock your socks off."

Lauren is a silly, serious, adorable girl and every time she says "Um Jana um you know what" I want to hug her. She loves telling me the plots of movies, bringing me pretty flowers or leaves from the yard, telling me all about her friends at school (apparently two girls that don't like each other want her all to themselves and she's having a hard time keeping them both happy), and telling me when my outfit does or doesn't work. She's really good at picking out shoes. She told me I was "adorable" the other day and it was all I could do not to run out into Emmett to find a man to help make me a baby right then just so I could try and make a Lauren of my own. Today when Kiley came into the living room wearing a scarf and said "Jana look!" I said, "Kiley, you look--" and Lauren chimed in with me when I finished with "FABULOUS." Then she laughed uproariously and said "I know you so well!" Oh my heart!

Oh how I love these girls. Sarah is not giving me many reasons to move out any time soon.

On a side note, I am tragically addicted to the Jordin Sparks' song "Battlefield." I know. Please withhold judgmental comments--believe me, I'm thinking them about myself. But here is me rocking out to a portion of the song, for your viewing enjoyment.

So that's what's going on with me these days. What's up with you?

answer to a question i should never, ever, ever ask again

2009-09-13T00:47:00.004-04:00

Today I thought a lot about my last (only) relationship and asked that question you should never, ever, never ever neverevernevereverneverever allow yourself to ask: "What was the point of that?" I started to wonder what the point was of first getting into that relationship only to have it end sadly and then for me to fall in love with him retroactively when there is no chance of us ever everevereverevereverever getting back together. I've been a little angry that my desires have only recently become so overwhelming for a man I used to date but now have no chance of dating. So to deal with my anger and longing I started concocting different possible purposes for why God could be doing this in my life and heart, considering the fact that I surrendered that area of my life to Him (or so I thought. Dun dun duuuuuuun).

As I was thinking about this in my hour-long drive back to the Wilson goat farm in Emmett, God really stilled me when He asked me, "Are you willing to let Me use the things and people in your life in the ways I want, for the purposes I have set up?" (Sarah said I should have said "NO." Ha!) But I realized that while I may not be happy with the use to which He is putting certain things and people I love in my life (with the seeming reasons--or seeming lack of reasons--behind events and even desires of my heart), a large part of my surrender to Him is letting Him use and allow things in my life for purposes other than what I wish at the moment. At this moment I wish that this intensifying desire means that this man and I will get back together; but in my surrender I have to be willing to let go of that "end" and let God intensify that desire if He so wishes for whatever purpose He has set up.

Quickly following on the heels of that convicting A-bomb I also got the sense that He was asking me, "Are you willing to let Me do whatever I want or deem necessary in order to accomplish the purposes I have set up for your heart and your life?" Sigh. Of course, Lord. I realized just how conditional my surrender has been; so conditional that I wonder how much of a surrender it really has been (thankfully God is infinitely loving and gracious and does not insist on working in and through me only when I am perfectly surrendered. He can even make use of my non-surrender surrender).

True surrender requires me throwing away all my conditions. It's weird to realize I have been putting conditions on things in my life without even realizing I was doing it. And is it just me or are those the ones that are hardest to throw away? But man it feels good--though simultaneously painful--to rid myself of the bondage of those conditions.

desiring, desires, and God's will

2009-09-10T17:34:00.004-04:00

I hope you're sitting down and strapped in because this is a long one. With no accompanying pictures of formerly-alive-now-oozing-carcass roosters. My apologies in advance.

I’ve spent a lot of time this past month trying to figure out how to pray, because I haven’t quite understood what to think about my desires. I’ve been reading a lot of Christian mysticism, and the defining characteristic about Christian/western mysticism (as opposed to eastern) is the belief that our individual wills can be united to God’s will. I recognize intellectually that God’s will is perfect and better than mine (as my understanding and love are both incurably limited), but I also recognize that there are things I deeply desire at the moment, things I feel a stronger desire for than the abstract simplicity of “Thy will be done.” So do I really want to ask for specific things, knowing they may not be His best? Shouldn’t I just pray for His will? But what do I do with the specific things I desire, things/careers (!) I desire? Hasn’t God said that we should come to Him with requests? You know, the whole Matthew 7:7 “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find” bit?

I used to worry that some of my desires were bad, were pushing me towards things “out of His will.” I think that I was wrong. Desires can be misplaced and misdirected, but there is never a desire the root of which and the deepest part of which is bad. Desires happen to us. We don’t create or choose desires, but rather have been given desires by God. They are part of His creation. Not only has He given me the talent of rocking the piano like Liberace (snort), but He has also planted the desire to play the piano within me, as a way of propelling me towards making music He always wanted me to make. Our desires are driven by a lack we recognize in ourselves and in our lives and they drive us to seek out wholeness and completeness.

What we really desire is completion (God, essentially). But what objects, people, or purposes we deem would complete us vary, and are sometimes incorrect because our knowledge is imperfect (thus our reasoning capabilities are limited). Those misdirections are inevitable. The bottom line is that many times we simply don’t know what we want. We think we do, but we don’t. That’s why we are instructed to give Him our desires in the prayer “Thy will be done.”

But what does it mean to give our desires to God like that? I don’t think it means denying the desires like I used to think. I used to view that act as a purely ascetic, self-denying move. But He is showing me that giving my desires to Him is actually so much more than that, even though that self-denial is, in a different way, part of it. In giving my desires to God I admit that I may not know the root of my desires; I may be misplacing or misdirecting my efforts towards whatever it is I think will be a completing puzzle piece in my life. So in that sense it is a self-denying move, or rather, it is me recognizing that I’m limited in understanding my desires and that what I desire now (what I assume at the moment will fulfill some lack in my life) may not be what truly will fill that void. It may not be what I truly would desire if I knew more, so I deny the object of my desire on some level. But I don’t deny the desire itself. I need to recognize the difference between the object of desire and the desire itself; they are not inextricably linked every time (though in His perfect will they are).

Offering my desires to God gives them their rightful place and celebrates them. That act communicates to Him that I know He has built these desires into me, that they are inherently beautiful and good, and that I believe He wants it to be fulfilled in the way He has always designed them to be fulfilled and the way He has designed me. He has designed me with desires in order that I may enjoy more deeply the boundless blessings He is excited to bestow upon me.

Recently (yes, desiring has been a huge struggle of mine lately!) I’ve been frustrated because several desires I have surrendered to Him have deeply intensified, even though their fulfillment is still far from certain or clear. The act of “giving them up” made me feel them so much more deeply! That frustrated me, because I had been viewing the act of giving them up to Him as only ascetic—I expected to be emptied or purged of the desire when I gave it to Him.

It’s so clear to me now that giving my desires to God does not have to be a purely ascetic and defeatist movement, but in its best form is a joyful and hopeful one. On one hand I need to recognize that He may have to prune away, cut away, burn off some of the impurities that I have assumed where a part of the completed “whole” I desire. But above that I can—and should!—recognize that He has promised to do more than I could imagine. I can—and should!—get excited when I feel a desire more intensely after having given it up to God. That intensification is no guarantee that I will get some specific object/person/career that at the moment seems to be the only thing that will satisfy that desire, but I can be excited by the intensification because the intensification means it is a desire given to me by God for a beautiful purpose and that He will—someday in some way I probably can’t imagine—satisfy it.

There is no safer, more hopeful, more exciting place for our desires than in God's care.

elegies for roostie

2009-09-04T21:29:00.007-04:00

Take a good look, cuz this is the last you'll ever see of him.

Now some poems to commemorate his brutal, hilarious passing. I have video, but cannot post it in order to protect the innocent.

Limerick style:

There once was a rooster named Roostie

Who liked to hump hens, slip them roofies

One day he attacked Lauren

Her tears came a-pourin'

So Brad made Roostie caput-sy.

Haiku style:

Beautiful Roostie

Your once alive eye, now

Oozes on concrete

Sonnet style:

Upon a hen I saw old Roostie hump

The squawks rang out like cats in humble heat

Such life could not go on, a sexual speed bump

Came quick to end the smorgasbord complete.

One morn dear Lauren went to gather eggs

And found herself ablaze in Roostie's gaze

He attacked, ferocious, vile, with crooked legs

And fixed his forlorn fate with scant malaise.

The hunt was on; the hunters' giggling glee

Warned the crap bag of his armageddon

The shots rang out and with hilarity

We watched the bastard flail about then deaden.

But Roostie got his dark revenge at last

As his rotting carcass stunk up the freaking garage which attracted untold number of flies and eventually oozed dead rooster guts all over the concrete.

Stream of consciousness style:

That rooster was kind of pretty, but man he sure attacked the wrong family. Officer Wilson took care of that vile bird, that's for sure. It reminds me of another "get rid of the roosters" story I heard this week while wakeboarding: a guy was being charged by his rooster, and even though he DROP KICKED IT TWICE the demonized bird kept coming. So he shot it. Then he had two other roosters, and he put duct tape around the legs of these two, threw them in the back of his truck, drove out to a field, and threw them out. I almost cried when I heard that. That's just mean, even to little crowing spawns of pure satanic villainy. The Wilsons are so much more humane. I really like living here, and feel much safer knowing that evil glinting eye will never be fixed upon my trembling knees. Bye bye, Roostie. Your life was well-lived, and your death profited many. I will keep the video close to my heart. Cock. A. Doodle. Doo.

Free verse:

rooster

dead

oozing

rotting

stinking

maggoty

peace

Epic:

Are you kidding me? Did you seriously think I'd waste my time, talent, and intelligence writing an epic poem for a stupid evil rooster? I have waaaay better things to do on a Friday night. So many awesome things. Like... laundry.

so. many. changes.

2009-08-19T22:27:00.034-04:00

Holy butt nuggets this summer has been crazy. And by crazy I mean my head is still spinning from so much internal and external change. While they've all been good changes (I'm confident...), some have been pretty painful and/or stressful. I'm still waiting for Michael Weatherly to make "us" official and thus effect a good change in my relationship status and life. But apparently that change is still forthcoming.

But back to my actual changes. To what changes do you refer? some might ask. By "some" I mean YOU since you clearly don't have anything better to do and I like pretending that we're having a conversation, especially because this particular conversation revolves entirely around me. Those are my favorite kind. But again, back to the changes. First of all I said goodbye to this (and the two most wonderful people in the entire world who made it so hard to say goodbye to):

My childhood home, what I always listed as my "permanent address" through my not-so-distant wanderings, my port in the storms of life (you had to know I'd sprinkle some cheese over this). I always felt a certain security in knowing my parents would always be here and that here was a familiar place for me to stay, take a breath, rest, and evaluate WHAT THE CRAP IS GOING ON WITH MY LIFE?! I still have a place to do that, but now it's in Tupelo, Mississippi (not Texas as "some people"--read: Colleen--think). That's a little weird. But sure to be good. My parents are there so it will always be warm, welcoming, and peaceful.

Second of all, I went from this:

to this:

[This is me miming my future (there's not much to do out here).]

via this:

[ Me miming how I feel about higher academia at large research universities.]

Bye bye Purdue, hello (hopefully) graduate-program-in-a-subject-I'm-passionate-about-and-professors-I-can-look-up-to-ideologically. At the moment Biola looks very much like the place for me. So perhaps there are even more changes ahead. I guess if I had to move down there it would make it very easy for Michael Weatherly to come find me. His TV and being gorgeous schedule doesn't allow a ton of time for Idaho weekends away.

Thirdly I went from this:

to this:

Renee transformed my outer appearance to help me forget about the train wreck that is my life. Actually, she just wanted to get me out of my man thongs:

because she thought I'd be happier in these:

I'm not going to lie; that girl was on to something (although I do still wear my man thongs because I heart them. She's just too masculine to be able to pull them off and still look cute. I, on the other hand, rock the bad-a$$ feminine like nobody's business). She also swears that with these shoes and my new clothes I'll have a man by Christmas, thus affecting yet another transformation of my sorry life. Unless she's referring to the guy driving the tractor down the residential street every morning at 6:30, I think she's a lying poopface.

Speaking of driving tractors down residential streets, because of my change from bland graduate student to fancy drop-out, mid-August I left here:

And took up residence here:

With this:

And this:

And these:

As for pets, I exchanged this:

For five minutes with this:

and then several months with these:

And these:

And this:

(rumor has it this cat is not quite "all there")

And this:

(this cat is unbelievably beautiful)

And how could I possibly overlook these lovely ladies:

Oh, and did I mention the fact that I fell head over heels in love this summer?? With this:

To be more specific, I fell out of love with who I was pretending to be, and more in love with the One who saved me from who I really was. Michael Weatherly just happened to stumble in as the meaty spice to my jambalaya summer.

So that's the summer of my changes in a nutshell. Bye bye Indiana and academic death, hello uncertain future, couch crashing, and heroically holding up any freshly laid eggs I gather:

Tragically only three of the four in the picture made it into the house unsplatted onto the back patio. If I was the monkey in The Lion King I would have dropped Simba and the Circle of Life would have been the Line That Ends in an Anti-Climactic And Horrifying Yet Hilarious Point of Abrupt Death. That just doesn't flow quite as well lyrically, so I guess it worked out well for Elton John that they cast the other guy instead.

My positive outlook doesn't mean I'm not still ragingly bitter about it, though.

(un)natural goodbyes

2009-08-11T00:46:00.004-04:00

I think the pain of goodbyes is one of the most telling and convincing signs that there is a God and that we are meant for something deeper and more lasting than this world. That we feel such pain at separation from loved ones demonstrates that we were never actually meant to say goodbye. When God created Adam and Eve He intended them to stay with Him, literally walking with Him, in the garden forever--not even to experience the separation of physical death. The concept of separation wasn't a part of the world until Adam and Eve brought sin into the garden. When Adam and Eve chose to listen to and adhere to the words of someone other than God, essentially they introduced separation and death. Thus they left the garden. Can we even comprehend the agony of having to leave God behind like that? How many of us could actually bear that goodbye?

It may seem cruel of God to send Adam and Eve out from the garden into the harsh elements, unprotected (except for some awesome leafy undergarments). But the reality is that God cannot be united, in the unhinderedly intimate Edenic way, with sin. He is perfection; sin is perversion. There can be no unity between two such diametrically opposed forces (think matter+anti-matter). In a similar way, separation is not of God. Connection, communion, eternal companionship: those are of God. Those are what He created us for, and those are what He longs to enjoy with us, both on earth--though very few experience it to such a degree--and in heaven.

Feeling pain at the prospect and reality of a goodbye, then, signals to me that we are meant for, and those who accept Christ are destined to experience, such eternal communion and togetherness. Not only with God in Three Persons but with the entire family of believers. If separation were fundamentally natural, we wouldn't experience sadness at its occurrence. But every tear shed at a farewell is a signal, "This is not the way things are meant to be," on a deeper level than we can most times imagine.

Yes, goodbyes have become "natural" to our earthly experience (as I prepare to say two particularly painful goodbyes this week) and many goodbyes are used by God to strengthen us, or are the product of Him working in amazing ways in our lives. The way the world has become, the stuff in it and the way it operates, make goodbyes inevitable. But goodbyes are nonetheless painful. And knowing they are painful makes it abundantly clear to me that God is never separated from those who have committed their lives to Him. If goodbyes were introduced through sin, and if God is the opposite of everything sin embodies and accomplishes, then separation has no part of my relationship with Him. He is always with me, always working in my life, always ready to comfort me, always preparing my heart for the way in which He has called me. And that is just a taste of what incredible eternal companionship awaits in heaven.

exposing lies

2009-08-03T11:29:00.005-04:00

The more I come to know God the more I see what limitless blessings He brings out of our difficult circumstances and our pain. I've been thinking a lot this summer about emotions and what drives them, and how we can respond to or work through them. I came to the conclusion that (many) emotions are based on beliefs that we hold, many which are beliefs we may not even know or realize we hold. For instance, if I'm angry, it's because I believe the standards of justice and fairness I believe in have been violated. When I witness or perceive that violation I feel angry.

With depression my feelings relate more to what I believe about God and His power, grace, and love. My feelings of hopelessness exposes a rather hidden and deeply rooted belief that God will not or cannot produce good for me in the midst of my circumstance, simply because He loves me (which ties into the belief I have already come to hold--through previous difficult circumstances--that I am powerless without His grace and strength moving in me).

I think one of the many things God does through our pain and struggle is expose those hidden, damaging beliefs, those lies we believe. For instance, right now I'm constantly fighting fear over my future. I know that God has called me out of Purdue, but as of yet He has not called me directly into anything else. Because my future is so uncertain, I am quite often afraid. Recognizing my fear has made me realize that I harbor disbelief concerning the true depths of God's love, provision, and goodness. But I never would have known that I believed certain lies about Him had I not had to face a completely uncertain future, the only kind of circumstance in which my deeper doubts would come out. There is a reason God has called me out of Purdue before calling me into something else, and I really think that part of that reason is to expose my fears, bring to light the lies and beliefs generating those fears, and graciously and lovingly correct them by guiding me into deep peace that comes from a more perfect knowledge of Him.

philosophical treatise on an ice cream peppermint patty

2009-07-22T12:01:00.006-04:00

Note plastered across packaging on a York ice cream peppermint patty:

"As always, 70% less fat!"

Since the meant-to-entice-me-to-eat-the-patty phrase does not identify that it is comparing its fat percentage with another brand of patty (noticeably missing the "than the competition!" modifier), I have to assume that the phrase is purportedly describing this particular patty in contrast to its former fat-laden version, a previous instantiation of itself. The "always" and the "less," therefore, don't jive. If it always contains and has always contained that particular quotient of fat, then there is no way it can now contain less fat than it previously contained. If the product now contains 70% less fat than it used to, then it has not always contained that particular quotient of fat and the package lies to me again.

I have outsmarted you, peppermint patty.

most helpful text note ever

2009-07-20T09:38:00.004-04:00

Judges 12:13 - 14a "After him, Abdon son of Hillel, from Pirathon, led Israel. He had forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode on seventy donkeys."

NIV Study Bible text note on the verse:

"12:14 forty sons and thirty grandsons. A total of 70"

Phew. Thank goodness I have my NIV Study Bible text notes to do addition for me. Forty.... plus thirty.... carry the 9.... uuuuuhhhhhnnnnnngggg. Unfortunately it fails to mention why it is so freaking important to note that if you add forty to thirty you get the magic total of 70 (a total which, I would like to add, the verse already gives us because all these impossible-for-the-lay-person-to-calculate numbers of sons and grandsons are riding on 70 donkeys. On a side note, this would make an amusing family portrait, particularly if they used sepia tones).

Thus concludes my reflections on a Bible passage for Monday, July 20. Go forth and be holy.

my (new?) essential nature

2009-07-15T22:06:00.005-04:00

In the last 48 hours I have:

* worked two full days

* mowed the lawn

* trimmed the edges of the lawn

* pumped iron until I wanted to throw up

* discussed house financial matters with and offered financial advice to Mrs. Fischer

* been enlisted to lift the "heavy boxes" into the garage

* had dinner and breakfast made accommodating my particular tastes and requests

* belched impressively (though not according to my mom)

* drunk whiskey on the rocks in a Laz-Y-Boy

* fell asleep in said Laz-Y-Boy

Pardon me for bragging, but MAN I am an awesome man. Throw in some memorized sports statistical analyses and I am pretty much your dream man. Yes, your dream man. You heard me. YOU. You try to resist my masculine charms, but they are simply too testosterone-laden and magnetic to escape. I pull you in like some fascinating pop star gossip column you read only when all coworkers are on lunch and your monitor is facing slightly away from all cross paths where someone could sneak up on you and see what exactly you find valuable to occupy your mental life. Just. Like. That.

Even Michael Weatherly would surrender before my superior manliness.

Now that would be saying something.

suffering and understanding

2009-07-08T23:48:00.002-04:00

Today as I was driving I was, somewhat ironically considering the hours that followed, overcome with tenderness concerning the sorrow and suffering in my life. I almost took a strange delight in them. This didn’t last terribly long, mind you (sadly I slowly let old sorrows edge out my peace), but it lasted long enough for God to give me a glimpse as to why a journey to deepest intimacy with Him is accompanied, almost the entire way, with Sorrow and Suffering (you MUST read Hinds Feet on High Places).

We often (at least I often) comfort myself in my suffering by reminding myself that Jesus understands every moment of pain I endure. He felt it; He survived it; He conquered it. Add that to His constant presence in my daily life and I feel comforted and confident that He will carry me through whatever circumstances I wander into (Him always directing more than I realize). His understanding of my suffering makes me feel closer to and more secure in Him.

But today in the car I was struck by what a beautiful reversal is hidden in there. What if, through my sufferings, I am able to understand Jesus better? What if my sorrow, my hurts, my pain, my difficulties actually grant me deeper access to His heart because through them I understand His own sufferings? After all, isn’t intimacy formed and deepened when two people, even in just a moment, realize that the other has gone through similar difficult circumstances and therefore understands the particular pain the other is feeling? In relationships I think we’re always hoping for someone who understands us. Is it crazy to assume our relationship with Jesus is the same, to see our pain and suffering as also opening the door to a deeper intimacy with Him?

Now clearly I’m not being abandoned and rejected to the extent He was, nor am I being beaten, mocked, and nailed to a cross. But every suffering I undergo is a small piece of something He felt. Every suffering is a smaller piece of Christ that I can connect to, and a small piece of deepened intimacy I can dwell in.

It continues to amaze me what beautiful things God brings out of our darkness.

small bite of meat to balance out the whipped cream

2009-07-08T10:47:00.004-04:00

Just imagine for a moment, will you, that my blog is a traditional English trifle and this post is the sauteed beef, peas, and onions that Rachel from 'Friends' layered into it to balance out the whipped cream. For those of you in the 'Friends' know, that means my blog tastes like feet.

Anyhoodle, my internal life here in Boise has been a bit chaotic and rough, which would explain my foray into the ridiculous and, let's face it, creepy. I take a break from the struggle by focusing on Michael Weatherly. But today as I was reading Renee Schwab's facebook quotes (HI-larious, and not just the ones I said), I came across a quote from Ravi Zacharias that hit me again, especially hard this morning. It really stilled me deep down.

"Turn all your loves, your attachments, your affections over to Jesus Christ, and He guards for you what He wants to bless you with. By delivering into His keeping all that is important to you, you will find that He preserves for you the beauty of your loves and protects you from the illusion of autonomy."

If I don't turn ALL my loves, attachments, and affections over to Christ, then He does not have the authority to protect them for me, to protect and guard those that He truly wants to bless me with and through. If I refuse to turn them over He also does not have the authority to protect me from the loves and attachments that are misplaced in things and people that will bring me pain (the bad kind, not the good kind). God has given me passions and loves, and sometimes I misdirect them, often through small steps that may not even seem connected at the time. But the point is that I am not truly protected, that my heart is not truly protected, unless I turn everything I love and desire over to Him. I've been struggling A LOT this summer with entrusting into His keeping and/or His purging all my desires (two in particular). This quote reminded me of why I want to entrust them into His very capable and loving hands.

Thanks for the reminder, Ne.

you know you're a great couple when you have so much in common

2009-07-06T23:30:00.014-04:00

Just look at us:

Every time he wears his NCIS gear I go weak in the knees and give him this come-hither look.

We crack each other up and have the same sense of humor.

We enjoy working out and going to baseball games on weekends (although we get into adorable play fights over who rules more: Dodgers or Giants. He lets me win because he's adorable. And because Giants do rule all).

We practice our seductive looks; him for promotional photos, me because I love self-promoting self-portraiture. Whatever gets things started (wink wink).

We both wear glasses and every time he wears his adorable glasses I just can't help but gaze at him adoringly. So much four-eyes-ness and so much adorableness.

Seriously. Have you ever seen two people more perfect for each other?

I think not.

the rest of the story (rip paul harvey)

2009-07-05T19:38:00.005-04:00

While I would LOVE for everyone to think that whore-eyes-hair-did-skanky-tank-top Jana is the normal Jana, the sad truth is that only 1/3 of that is normality. And since it appears as though I am in danger of alienating my meager readership and losing what few friends I have (DIANE DON'T GO I LOVE YOU SO COLLEEN YOU ARE MY SECOND FAVORITE INTERNET FRIEND IN THE PORTLAND AREA AND ONLY HAVE TO KILL ONE PERSON TO MAKE IT TO NUMBER 1!), I thought I should, in the name of journalistic integrity, come clean.

This is me. And my hair-- not did.

This is me without whore eyes. With just... well, eyes. Eyes with two (not just one!) coats of mascara. See, I put effort into my appearance. For about thirty seconds.

This is me with stretchy eyes--ooooooo TUNNEL! And I would like to point out that my eye color is AWESOME, not some poopy one color like Renee's. Mine change with what I'm wearing. BOOM.

This is trailer-park Jana. Look, I have a mullet and only one front tooth. Rawr.

This is... well, this is just ugly Jana.

OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH DON'T I LOOK LIKE THE VILLAIN FROM 'THE INCREDIBLES' ONLY HAPPY AND WITH HAIR THAT LAYS DOWN NOT STRAIGHT UP?!

Sorbet for your eyes.

Next hard-to-digest course: twirly-face Jana.

I look like some cartoon character again.

And now for my personal favorite: Cro-Magnon Jana.

Huh. Me want man. Me want Michael Weatherly (who, should he ever happen to google his own name and some combination of awesomeness that frequently appears on my blog and happens to find what is fast becoming my constant declaration of undying love for him, will also read this post and then all chances I used to have of wedding and bedding him in lifelong bliss would be destroyed. I do this for you).

Next up: Fat Arm Rat Face Jana.

Time for another palette cleanser.

If I were a poster, I'd be this:

Satisfied? Can we still be friends?

And Michael Weatherly, if you're reading this, I promise to always wear whore eyes and not get a mullet and to keep both my front teeth and to not get forehead or jaw elongaters/amplifiers and to give you sweet, sweet lovin' every night. I PROMISE.

Bye. For now.

oh, no, she di'int

2009-07-03T00:30:00.017-04:00

It has come to my attention that things have gone disastrously awry with my blog. The second of two events confirmed the suspicions raised by the first event, so that is where I shall begin.

Today a friend from Purdue told me that he came across my blog for the first time. Since this was via text message, I was unable to discern whether this was communicated with a tone of concern for my mental state or with the elation proper to witnessing the perfect unfolding of brilliance and marvel that is the outpouring of thoughts from my head (angels sing... moving on). When I asked him what he thought he replied that it was an "interesting combo of deeply introspective Christian reflections and a superficial focus on men's bodies." Now clearly this is just exactly what I've been going for as of late (Michael Weatherly ... drooooool) but I was alarmed at what was clearly missing from his experience. A BLATANT, IN-YOUR-FACE, UNABASHED PROMOTION OF ME. ME. ME. ME.

I was already hyper sensitive to this national crisis when a Miss Rn SchwAb and a Miss Colln H... uh... (?) [insert last name here. HEY. I've never met her in person] decided to promote themselves and THEIR HAIR right in my face on their respective blogs. Oh no. No, they didn't. They did NOT just go there. They think they can out-self-aggrandize ME?! WHO HAS "SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT" IN THE TITLE OF HER BLOG?!

Drastic measures clearly needed to be taken. So I took one for the team: I did my hair (first time in weeks), put on my whore eyes (first time in months), put on a skanky tank top (first time in... uh, that's about the norm), and this splendor is what emerged. You will notice the lack of perspective weirdness. I simply couldn't be bothered to take the time to mess up such pristine photographs of ME.

Without further ado,* I give you..... ME. AND MY HAIR.

This is my hair.

WOW--SO LONG!!! Totally past the ladies and the books that sit nearby.

I'm like the mean beotch in the blogosphere that just realized someone else was trying to out-self-aggrandize me.

My expression is pissed (or maybe more wistful) but I'm really just thinking about how long my hair is. It's long. If it was a person, it'd have long super model legs.

Getting burned by intense solar raysAAAAAAAAH!

Oops, how'd that impossible awesome shot get in there?

I'm a chicken from "Chicken Run" with a creepy vein popping out on my forehead! PS--look how blonde.

I would make a terrifying lover in Negative-Land.

Taking advantage of whore eyes. You have to squinch up the skin underneath your eyes if you have bags and dark circles (dammit) to make your blue/green/grey eyes sparkle. Look how shiny and spaaaaahkly.

Oh, Michael Weatherly.

I wasn't expecting you.

Yes, I will run away with you and bear all your children and wrap myself in your impossibly muscular arms.

Me and my hair.

I feel soooo much better now. As should you. Once again, you are most deliciously welcome.

*You may notice the delay with which I responded to Rn's and Colln's attempts at superior self-aggrandizement.

The reason is two-fold: 1). It took me over a week to actually do my hair and makeup for once, and 2). I had four zits

on my chin that needed to disappear so it would not appear that I have any blemishes. Of any kind. Ever.

surrender

2009-06-30T23:39:00.006-04:00

“If the thing we like doing is, in fact, the thing God wants us to do, yet that is not our reason for doing it, it remains a mere happy coincidence. We cannot therefore know that we are acting at all, or primarily, for God’s sake, unless the material of the action is contrary to our inclinations, or (in other words) painful, and what we cannot know that we are choosing, we cannot choose. The full acting out of the self’s surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, or inclination. How impossible it is to enact the surrender of the self by doing what we like.” ~CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 99

Lewis isn’t saying that in doing what we like we are not surrendering our self to God; just that we can’t know for sure in those times that we are doing it purely to obey God, because our motives are impossibly difficult to dissect, particularly when it comes to our desires and inclinations. We can only know we are fully surrendered to God when we do His leading even when everything in us (rationally, emotionally, physically, sometimes even spiritually) compels us to do the opposite.

Today I had the opportunity to surrender my full self to God, and while I’m so thankful to be able to say that I did surrender, I’m ashamed by the dejectedly angry attitude with which I did it. Yes, I demonstrated my trust in Him by taking the action I had been resisting for over a month now, but it was a terribly grudging trust. Thankfully He was, again, beyond merciful and helped me obey Him when my strength gave out and left me empty.

A mere four hours after doing what I knew He wanted me to do (and five hours after a particularly intense bawling, yelling, and angry prayer session), I am so incredibly thankful I obeyed Him and humbled at His love. Don’t get me wrong – I still absolutely do not want to do what this little action I took seems to be leading me to do. Everything within me still screams out against it, everything except that small voice of God’s that I had previously been ignoring. But I know now, I know for sure, that I am surrendered to God. It may not be a joyful or easy surrender (I’m sure His ears are still burning from my expletives), but it is surrender nonetheless. And I firmly believe that in these instances whatever ground we gain spiritually and relationally with God is ground we have forever. We never have to reclaim that; it is won from the world, from our self-conceit, and from the evil one. It’s locked up. Of course there are a million other ways we are still vulnerable, but we gain and retain significant strength with every battle won, even the "small" interior ones (that feel like the Gettysburg of our souls). So I gained something today that I can carry with me forever and that will help me overcome in the next battle.

And now a message from my future husband and saucy love-toy:

Brilliant, isn't he?

flattering... I think...

2009-06-27T10:16:00.010-04:00

Three men my dad has recently encouraged me to date:

1. Shepard Smith

2. Bradley Cooper

3. Michael Weatherly (NCIS hottie)

While I'm flattered my dad thinks so highly of me that he sincerely believes I could snare a national news anchor and two unbelievably gorgeous actors, instead I'm thinking this is evidence of his increasing desperation on my behalf and is considering any single man, any single man, as a potential mate for me and encouraging me towards that end.

Although if desperation increases my chances of making Bradley Cooper the man whose clothes I get to rip off his body every night, color me desperate. And throw in a big dose of pathetic, just to make sure.

Oh, and here's Michael Weatherly. Oh. My. Word. I would gladly embrace my inner desperation and patheticness for this man, too.

Excuse me while I go take a cold shower to start my pathetic and desperate day.

different kinds of mercy

2009-06-24T11:04:00.004-04:00

We often think of God's mercy in terms of what He saves us from, that His mercy is displayed when He acts to somehow turn the tide of normal, expected outcome and bring in unexpected blessings. But I think there's a deeper kind of mercy, one that feels incredibly painful (may feel very much like God has abandoned us), but a kind that is nonetheless just as much a blessing as when He rescues us from pain.

I think there is definite mercy involved when God allows us to experience the consequences of our sinful actions, habits, decisions, and behaviors. If He always stepped in with what we short-sightedly think of as the only kind of mercy God displays (rescuing us from certain pain or consequence), then we would never have any reason to follow His good laws and commands in instances where the right path is the more difficult path. If we never experienced the pain we bring on ourselves and on others through adherence to purely worldly ways of living, we might never realize the deeper (and infinitely better) joys of adhering to His law of love despite the immediate pain and difficulty that way of living entails. By mercifully allowing us to experience such pain He lovingly turns us toward Himself and away from a deeper pain that living apart from Him will automatically entail. He shows us reasons why living for Him is far better than living for ourselves. In essence, He very mercifully does not demand we trust in Him blindly (because He very well could and is within His right to do, being God and all) but rather allows us to experience reasons why we would want to follow and love Him.

I think there is also definite mercy involved when God allows us to experience unexpected pain even after we have followed His obvious leading, after we have obeyed Him and yet still get crushed by the world in ways we thought He would rescue us from because of our obedience. I think when God allows us to experience, and thus refrains from rescuing us from, allowing such pain is merciful in that through that pain our faith and trust in Him are challenged, tested, and strengthened. The painful experience of obedience allows us to see just how deep our faith goes, and how willing we are to follow and trust Him even in those times when all worldly signs (and all feelings) seem to indicate that God has abandoned us despite our obedience.

One purpose of His mercy, I think, is to draw us deeper into some aspect of Him, whether that is a deeper understanding of Him as a Savior and rescuer, a deeper understanding of the pain of sin and the overwhelming benefit to us in following Him passionately, or a deeper faith in His sovereignty and eternal love (a faith that does not depend on continual external demonstrations in our own lives for its strength and veracity). That God would draw us into any of those, through any means, is always an act of His mercy.

Right now I'm stumbling through a bit of a fog concerning the next step for my future. A lot of things have been turned a bit upside down for me this past year, and things that were clear and motivational last summer are muddied and draining this summer. It's easy for me to be frustrated with the difficulty of these decisions and the fear of an uncertain future, but when I'm reminded that this is, indeed, a time of His mercy displayed in my life and that He will direct every step of my path (Isaiah 30:21), I'm comforted.

the fates are definitely smiling on me

2009-06-18T12:25:00.005-04:00

My weekend is going to ROCK. I'm never going to want to go back to Purdue (although that really wouldn't take much at this point--just a discount card at Moxie Java or an incredibly low-paying job would suffice).

Today I have a day off so I get to work outside, go for a long bike ride, workout, and generally enjoy the new sunshine we've been having.

Tonight my brother comes into town! I haven't seen him in months and it's our last weekend in Boise as a family. I'm going to bawl like a baby when he leaves, and probably when he arrives. I'm so ridiculously excited to see him.

Tomorrow I am working a golf tournament ENTIRELY MADE UP OF FIREFIGHTERS. Oh. My. Gosh. Thank You, Lord. There will be 100 of them, drinking, playing golf, and probably looking dead sexy. I will be the blonde drooling mess running the beverage cart into trees while staring on the buff blonde ones. I told my mom that for the first time in months I'm going to do my hair and makeup. Oh yeah, baby. The tournament is called the "Light My Fire" tournament. Insert obvious innuendo here.

Saturday we're going to the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. I love love love love love the ISF.

Sunday is Father's Day and I don't know what we're doing, but I'm pretty sure it will involve delicious steaks and wine.

Monday my Dad and I go on our last (for a while) Idaho day hike up to the Sawtooths. That means gorgeous mountains, awesome cigars, fun wine in little bottles, Lunchables, and awesome deep conversations. I'm going to bawl like a baby when we finish the hike.

I'm so ridiculously excited for all of it, though will be so sad to see it end. Hope you reader (hi Mom!) has a fabulouso weekend, too! And she will cuz her weekend will involve me. That's locked up.

note to self: sarcasm not appreciated by the stressed

2009-06-15T00:40:00.003-04:00

After a sadly blunderous afternoon of me folding the curtains to pack up in boxes.

Mom: "I'm going to fold these a little tighter."

Me: "Oh, you wanted me to do this well?"

trimming the rose bushes

2009-06-08T14:46:00.004-04:00

Trimming roses fascinates me. Since I’ve been home and because of the upcoming parental move, I’ve been gardening a lot for my mom, mostly trimming her flower bushes. I’ve never been good at (because I’ve never actually done much) gardening, so for me trimming rose bushes has been freakishly spiritually profound. READY?!

My mom instructed me to cut off all dead blooms down to the closest cluster of five leaves. She told me that to identify if a bud is dying and deserving to be lobbed off, even if it still has petals, I need to lightly tap the blossom with the shears and if petals fall to the ground, it’s time for that bloom to be removed. I think that’s how difficult situations also work in our lives. Oftentimes God uses trials and painful circumstances (life's pruning shears?!) to identify dead areas of our life and literally knock the "attractive-seeming" off of the sinful areas of our lives, or to show us what areas of our life are hindering our growth, and then ask us to make the effort to cut them out of our life. Many times those dead blooms are blooms that look relatively healthy. On the outside they may appear robust, healthy, and even to be evidence of the brilliance of the entire bush/soul. But, as we are finite and essentially dying creatures (cheery, eh?), those “pretty” blooms may be dying and corrupted. It happens sometimes in our lives. Many times. We have to be ok with letting go of certain formerly or deceptively beautiful aspects of our lives, and be ok with cutting them off ourselves.

When I first started trimming the bushes, I was amazed by how far down the stem I had to cut some of the blooms in order to find the five-leaf cluster that marked the healthiest part of the stem. Sometimes I almost had to cut the entire stem off, and the plant itself shrank with every clip. Some started getting so small that it seemed like I was killing the plant, not making it healthier. Such is the process of the purification of our souls. If there is a sin in our life that needs to be cut, it may be so deeply rooted within us that it seems like we are cutting out our life in removing the sin. It feels like we are being annihilated at the soul level. Maybe they are not even sins that are deeply rooted, maybe they are simply dependences or hopes placed in things and beings other than God that hinder our growth. Eliminating those may seem to cut off everything that is good, beautiful, healthy, growing, and essence-tial to who we are and to what we perceive as a flourishing life (materially, spiritually, emotionally, etc.). Trimming away the dead blooms and the dead areas of our life can look an awful lot like killing the plant and killing ourselves.

And now for the obvious comparison: if I didn’t cut off the dead blooms and if God doesn’t trim away the dead and dying parts of our soul, the truly living, healthy, flourishing parts of the bush and our souls would not have the freedom to become as beautiful as possible. Clearing away dead stuff leaves open the possibility of living stuff. And of course, in trimming the bush, a couple days later the rose bushes were blossoming beautifully and the plants looked more alive than ever (apparently I’m a gardening rock star).

Lastly, a week after the first trimming I had to go out and trim again. Certain blooms on the bushes had died and there were just as many dead blossoms as the week before. Such with our souls. We are incurably human, incurably finite, and incurably sinful. We need to guard our souls constantly and consistently clear away anything that is dead, dying, and keeping us from complete dependence on and freedom in Christ. And God in His infinite mercy will lovingly show us what is dead in our lives and will help us clear it out (though the way may be painful) because He loves us and knows that the only way we can truly be happy, beautiful, peaceful, and flourishing is in Him.

Thus endeth yet another cheesy spiritual comparison. But as I am now a gardening rock star, I can’t promise there won’t be more as my mom slowly surrenders to my impossibly green thumb and lets me play with more of her plants. Wheeeeeee!

perks of the job

2009-06-05T18:57:00.002-04:00

I love that I get paid to get a tan and drive a golf cart. My summer job pretty much rocks.

My favorite part, however, is hiding behind trees in my golf cart, jumping out erratically when the golfers are sauntering by and freaking them out with my high-pitched, desperate shriek: "CAN I GET YOU ANYTHING?!"

It's gonna be a good summer.

ah, social desperation

2009-06-03T13:00:00.002-04:00

I flirted with the exterminator at work today.

I need to get out more. Even I am dismayed by the new level of patheticness I have reached.

SOMEONE PLEASE HANG OUT WITH ME! I'LL BRING BAKED GOODS AND/OR WINE TO MAKE IT WORTH YOUR WHILE! I CAN'T BASE ALL MY HOPES FOR SOCIAL INTEGRATION ON A MAN WHO KEEPS TALKING ABOUT 'ANIMAL GORE'!

undeserved love

2009-06-02T23:37:00.002-04:00

Today was a rough and sucky day for several reasons, most of which I won’t go into here. BUT I had a thought about God’s love that really put my heart at peace amidst the heartache.

I’m such a perfectionist, such a people-pleaser, such a type-A-first-child personality that I always have to be doing something. If I’m not working on something I feel like I’m not valuable or desirable. I don’t feel worth much, basically, if I don’t have a big goal or project. I definitely feel a need to be earning something at every stage of my life, be it a paycheck for basic necessities or a graduate degree or some new workout routine.

God’s love does not work that way, however, and I think that’s always been a difficult reality for me to accept deep, deep down. I accept the fact that I didn’t do anything to deserve His love and sacrifice in the first place; I recognize that as deeply as I recognize the depths of my sinful nature. I also realize that not only did I not do anything to deserve His love and grace, but I also cannot do anything to earn it or deserve it. That is beyond my abilities, no matter how hard I work at it.

As I was driving in the rain today I realized today that the root of my intense work to try to “earn” or feel like I “deserve” a place close to God’s heart is simply because I’m afraid of losing His closeness, grace, and love. Then He quickly spoke to my heart and assured me that just as I can and did do nothing to deserve His love, there is nothing I could do that would make me lose His love. No matter what I do and no matter what I don’t do, His love for me remains constant. Since desert has nothing to do with it, His love is simply and purely for me, for my heart and being just as I am at every moment. Because He loves me for me (isn’t that a Blessid Union of Souls song?) and not for what I do for Him, deeds and earning have absolutely no relevance in His love. It’s such a simple and recognized truth in the Christian faith, but one I never fully absorbed. Hey, it's tough putting two and two together sometimes.

For this perfectionist, this is one of the most freeing realizations I’ve had in a long, long time. And every time I come to know God a bit deeper, I find even greater freedom and peace. It. Is. Awesome.

deep down she's glad i'm home. deep, deep down.

2009-05-27T20:13:00.004-04:00

After a sadly blunderous day of external housework:

Mom: "I don't like doing big projects with you and Dad."

Me: "How come?"

Mom: "We do things differently. You're like your father: you break and destroy things while improving other things."

Me: "And that's not helpful?"

Mom: "No."

To be fair, I think she was just suffering mild heat stroke from the rays of the hot Boisean sun. All I did was break the lid to a decorative jar and hose-wash dad's office window while it was open, and all Dad did was dump a bucket of paint on her flowers while crushing the Behr-tsunami-surviving flowers with his ladder.

We got the trim clean, didn't we?

faith and impossibilities

2009-05-26T00:49:00.002-04:00

“God does not keep His child immune from trouble; He promises “I will be with him in trouble…” (Psalm 91:15). It doesn’t matter how real or intense the adversities may be; nothing can ever separate him from his relationship to God. In all these things we are more than conquerors…” (Romans 8:37). Paul was not referring here to imaginary things but to things that are dangerously real. And he said we are “super-victors” in the midst of them, not because of our own ingenuity, nor because of our courage, but because none of them affects our essential relationship with God in Jesus Christ. I feel sorry for the Christian who doesn’t have something in the circumstances of his life that he wishes were not there. […] Can we not only believe in the love of God but also be ‘more than conquerors,’ even while we are being starved?” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, from “Out of the Wreck I Rise”).

I love how this directly addresses seeming impossibility. While I don’t wish turmoil on anyone, on the level of developing deep faith I want every Christian to be thrust into impossible circumstances. Only in the midst of the awareness of impossibility (finally and fully acknowledging impossibility) can we see the way God is more powerful than we imagine. Only in impossibility can we (can most of us, because of our pride) fully trust Him, not just because we have to fully trust Him, but because trust in the midst of impossible circumstances requires a complete surrender of all pretense of human ability and control. It’s a tender, loving place He brings us, this place of impossibility.

If faith is truly “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1, NIV) then if we could see all results and all outcomes we would never really develop any kind of faith. If everything were visibly determined, clear, easy to predict, probable, even possible, there would be no need for faith in the biblical (and true) sense. And God delights in faith, because He delights in showing us deeper levels of His provision, love, and grace. But in order to enlighten us He leads surrendered hearts into impossible-seeming circumstances (hopeless, despairing, even) so that when all things work together for good we can definitively say that it is solely by the grace and hand of God, the One in whom we trusted even when all earthly evidence pointed to things contrary to His nature and goodness.

Faith is not an afterthought. How often we assume that faith is developed after God has come through for us, when in reality He waits to “come through for us” until after we have developed faith. Faith is developed when we believe and trust in God despite the seeming hopeless reality of our circumstances; faith is rewarded when God provides for us in ways we could never have imagined. And faith rewarded is one of the most exhilarating experiences man can experience here on earth. But it takes those dark hopeless nights to develop deep faith so that one can experience the incredible reward of faith fulfilled. Faith, in a loving and real way, requires dark impossibilities.

new addition to the fam

2009-05-23T22:02:00.005-04:00

Welcome to the Fischer fam, Emma. You're the only "grandchild" Debbie will have for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time, so you better be good.

And so far, she has been.

grace and shame

2009-05-15T00:58:00.001-04:00

I was thinking about grace today, and I realized that all these years I have been refusing (or missing) the complete freedom God offers through His grace. I have always accepted the fact that Christ’s death atoned for my sin and that He paid—in full—whatever debt I owe for my transgressions. Because of Christ’s death the debt my sins produce has been covered and is no longer an obligation I must pay—and my eternity with the Lord is secure. That His death freed me from the debt of my sins is enough for me to love Him and devote my life to serving Him and promoting His glory. But that’s not quite the whole story.

Though I accepted Christ’s death as fulfilling the required punishment for my sins, I nevertheless always walked around under the weight of deep, intense, dark shame. I couldn’t allow myself to think of my past sins because I felt so guilty for them, even though I had asked God’s forgiveness. And on some level I thought that I should feel that way because I am such a sinner, and to not feel shame for my sins would be disrespecting God is some terrible way. I’m not going to lie, it was awful. But today as I was reading Practice of the Presence of God and listening to an awesome mix made for me by an awesome friend, I started weeping because I realized that Christ’s death fully eradicates my shame. He died not only to free me from the debt I owe, but to free me from the shame, guilt, and weight of my past sins. There is absolute freedom in His grace. I am freed not only from the punishment I deserve, but from the shame I deserve, as well. My past sins are still there, of course—I certainly still recall them with uncomfortable clarity—but instead of shrinking in shame when I think of them I now recognize them as altars signalling the depth of God’s grace. Not feeling shame for sins forgiven does not disrespect God in the slightest; in fact, that attitude celebrates the fullness of His grace. Now in thoughts of my sins I can praise Him in peace and joy. And I love Him all the more desperately and joyfully for that.

I don’t know why it took me so long to understand that Christ’s death freed me from shame. And I can’t believe how unbelievably freeing and wonderful His grace is now that He has opened my eyes to deeper aspects of His grace. It is so much bigger than I could possibly imagine (I feel like I say that a lot when I write about God, but it’s true every time. He continually breaks out of every box of understanding I place Him in). There is absolutely nothing better, bigger, freer, and more beautiful than God’s grace. And I get to live in it every day.

addendum to the purpose of the moment

2009-05-15T00:57:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about what I posted yesterday and thought I should add an addendum to my thoughts.

The reason I can see the purpose in every moment is because I am practicing (though incredibly imperfectly) the presence of God. When I am overcome with emotions or the situation, I still my heart and focus it upon God, asking Him, “What are You trying to teach me through this?” Sometimes just focusing on Him (and away from what is going on at the moment) is enough to still me and transform the situation in my heart. But it is that constant surrender, that constant opening myself up to His will, plan, and love that transforms everything and infuses the moment with His purpose. Granted, He may still have a purpose for the moments where I don’t surrender to Him (and perhaps His purpose is not fully realized at that moment because of my resistance to Him), but through my continuous surrender to Him I give Him the freedom to transform my moments and work something powerful through them, even if that moment’s purpose is simply to prepare me in a distinct way for His larger purpose for my life. But it’s the Christian’s surrender to God that makes that (tangible) transformation possible and evident.

purpose of the moment

2009-05-13T22:56:00.002-04:00

I was starting to get concerned with myself and my growth when today I rediscovered some incredibly deep loves and hurts that apparently I can’t seem to get over. I thought that maybe I was refusing to give Him something, or refusing to let Him get me to “the place” where His will could be fulfilled in my life and His purpose for me could really blossom. I had thought of purpose as relating only to the more global areas of my life: career, family, education. I always thought God was preparing me for something in the future, and that what I do and am right now either helps or hinders, either fosters or restricts, the fulfillment of His purpose. As a result I thought this moment was not, in the most significant sense, a part of His purpose.

The Lord’s purpose is so much bigger than what I had originally thought because it encompasses every single moment and part of my life. Every moment has a purpose. God has orchestrated and allowed every detail of this moment right now, and there is some distinct purpose in it. It may not have the largeness of the purpose of, say, me getting a PhD (only 2/5 of a decade to go!), but there is a purpose nonetheless. No moment is superfluous.

I then realized how that extends to the state of my heart and the pains and grief I feel at this moment. For some reason, God has not performed healing in those areas of my heart yet. He has not brought me to the place where I can or do let go of all of that. He will call me to let go of those eventually, of that I’m sure. And He will heal me. But for now I find my heart torn in pain and grief and I know there’s a reason for it. God has a purpose for this moment where my heart is in this broken state. He allows my sometimes-overwhelming emotions for a reason, to accomplish a specific something. I have no idea what that is, but I am confident and hopeful (really, aren’t they the same thing?) and I love Him for that. I finally understand how people can say sincerely they have peace in the midst of pain, grief, despair and shame.

Every moment, every experience, every joy, every pain, even every inconvenience is carefully orchestrated by my Savior and my God. Once I realized that, absolutely everything in my life was transformed, and I know how hyperbolic and exaggerated that sounds. But it’s the absolute truth. Everything has been transformed, and my new peace has literally eradicated my anxiety. God is working in every moment of my life and allows absolutely everything in that moment for a specific reason that, should I surrender to Him, will serve to increase His glory. All that matters is my continued intimacy with and surrender to Him. He gives me everything I need to survive and to do His will: direction, courage, love, comfort, peace, even my own will.

He has orchestrated every moment of my life and heart in order to teach me something about Him. Every moment is a moment in and of Him. Every moment bears of the weight and joy of His presence and glory.

you know you're an english nerd when...

2009-05-07T14:58:00.002-04:00

I realized last night, after posting the latest entry and long after I could access the internet, that I called my flower comparison a metaphor not a simile. It's been haunting me all day until just now when I was able to correct it.

I feel like a giant weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Phew.

spiritual growth and revelation

2009-05-06T18:37:00.004-04:00

I realized today that I am trying desperately (in certain areas of my life) to ward off suffering, to walk around it or simply not face it. Sometimes I perceive pain and struggle to be indicative of me falling away from God and me regressing in my spiritual walk, because it seems that falling into darkness means I have stepped out of His light and forgotten the beautiful things He has already taught me about Himself and my security and love in Him. I feel like my struggle indicates that I’ve abandoned the beauty of Him for the smallness of my fear and distrust, and I start to long for the spiritual “growth” of being filled with His joy and insight.

Then I realized that my times of suffering are my times of greatest spiritual growth. My suffering actually produces the beauty of my times of spiritual elation. (WARNING: CHEESY SIMILE AHEAD.) It’s like a flower blooming—when a flower bursts forth in beauty that means the growth has already happened. It’s in the dark times, in the times when the result of beauty is uncertain (and, at times, seemingly improbable) that true growth is happening. Without that often-lengthy time of dark struggle, the flower would not be as strong or as beautiful. Real, deep, authentic, effective growth happens in the struggle deep down in darkness. That’s the true beauty of flowers: that they are growing in beauty when we can’t see them.

Similarly, our times of spiritual revelation and elation are not our times of spiritual growth. Rather, they are the beautiful products, the results of the work God has already done in our hearts. That’s why it is so dangerous to cling to those moments and assume that they are where we experience growth and should “try to stay.” If we do that, if a gardener were to do that, the inevitable death of that time (and flower) would devastate us. So, too, if we cling to a particular time of spiritual elation, assuming that’s where we grow and try desperately to keep that time alive and (so to ward off suffering), then we will inevitably be devastated when even the insight God has given withers and falls apart. It cannot be sustained simply because it isn’t God Himself. The beauty of a garden is not in the bloom of a single flower, and the beauty of a Christian heart is not in the bloom of a single spiritual revelation. The beauty of a garden is in its continuous growing, and in the marvel that every year beauties spring forward from that dark time. To place the value of the garden on that flower places value and purpose on something that will wither and die.

So we should (joy)fully embrace those moments of spiritual insight and elation, recognizing them as glorious evidence of the growth God has already produced in our hearts. And when we approach the times of spiritual insight as evidence of growth, not the growing period itself, then we can embrace the times of sorrow and suffering in a much different way. Christ’s greatest, most transforming work on earth came in His time of greatest suffering. The beauty of His resurrection would not have been powerful were it not for the dark time of His suffering and death. To accept the times of spiritual elation and intimacy with God as the end result of the growing process allows God to continue to deepen us and grow us in new (though sometimes painful) ways. What we perceive as growth is often the state of “having grown,” and so much indescribable growth happens when we don’t feel as though we are making progress.

i. am. hardcore. and underwear.

2009-04-29T19:59:00.005-04:00

Today I pretty much dominated the entire WORLD. Today I tried CrossFit for the first time, after being invited by the Purdue Graduate Senate Government President (yeah, I'm officially on the Executive Board of the Graduate Senate Government. I am also officially more important than you). He's also in the English department, so I have to play super nice because he's higher up on the food chain and could get me flunked (even though he is a medievalist, and thus way behind the times. Oh, I'm funnier than you, too). Anyway, so Monday he invited me to work out with him and three other guys on Wednesday, and I had to think about that for about three seconds. Work out while being surrounded by four buff, sweaty guys? Um, yes please. So he told me to google "CrossFit," cuz that's what they do, and when I googled it Tuesday I almost cried. Oh. My. Pie. It's billed as "the principle strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operation units, champion marital artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide." Yeeeeeeaaah. I mean, I know I'm ready for tactical operations teams and military special operation units already:

But seriously, when I read it I was all, "that sounds super duper intense."

But of course I'm stubborn and prideful, so I couldn't back out. I had to DOMINATE. But oh my word was it ever super duper intense. As a freaking WARM UP we did 2 rounds of 10 sit-ups, 10 air squats (don't ask; I don't know), 10 pull-ups and 10 push-ups. I was already sweating. Then for the actual workout did 3 rounds of SPRINTING FOR A HALF MILE, 35 back extensions, and 35 sit-ups. We were not allowed to stop. Then Richard (PGSG El Presidente) decided it would be a good idea to do 400 sit-ups after that. Then I killed him.

My triumph? I totally kept up with all of them. BOOM. I wussed out on the abs at the end (my back hurt, and those were not the most effective/safe way to work on your core--that's my excuse, anyway), but they all were like, "Dude Jana, that's incredible that you kept up with us." And I was all, "Dude, I know. I'm, like, totally hardcore." Then we did some chest bumps and slapped each other with wet towels. No we didn't. But I had so much freaking fun, and working out surrounded by four sweaty buff men was everything I had hoped it would be. They didn't even smell! This could be the start of something beautiful.

On a side note, I had a weird underwear memory pop into my head. Ashley used-to-be-Smith-now-Schneekloth got married (thus attaining "Schneekloth" status) last November, and I was in the wedding. Of course I wanted to get her something racy for the honeymoon so I went to Victoria's Secret to select just the right item. I'm of the opinion that lingerie never looks the same on the body as on the hanger, so I decided to try on the options then get her the hottest option at least one size (or two) smaller. So there I was, in the dressing room, trying on lingerie and trying to imagine what Ashley looked like in them. So creepy, I can't even tell you.

Also, today I was wearing underwear that had claymation Rudolph on the front. It was a weird underwear day.

fear and knowing God

2009-04-28T09:07:00.002-04:00

Lately I've felt overwhelmed by fear. It's like a heavy blanket I can't seem to throw off, and I've been judging myself very harshly for fearing because I've always seen fear as an indication that I don't trust God to be all I know Him to be. When I let fear run my mental life I refuse to recognize God as He is, and as a result I insult Him on some awful level.

I think God's helping me to revision my fear. I realized this morning that I can no more talk myself out of fear than I can talk myself out of being in love. Those are feelings, feelings that are not deeply rooted in logic or knowledge or any of the tools that I would use to try and "talk" myself out of them. And trying to address my fears directly at all is actually pointless. My fears are not about fear; they indicate something lacking in my knowledge of God. If I knew Him completely, there would be no logic or reason to fear. I wouldn't fear because I would know (on deeper levels than simple cognition) that He is trustworthy, powerful, and good in every way. Rejecting fear does not eradicate fear. Coming to know God in a deeper, fuller way is the only way to get rid of fear because I need to replace my fear with something True.

What my fear does, then, and the reason God allows me to experience it in such an overwhelming way, is bring to light a part of God that I don't know. It shows me the limitations in my awareness and intimacy with Him. So then I can joyfully (not in the "happy!" sense but in the longing and holy sense) acknowledge my fear and ask God to show me deeper aspects to Himself that will abolish that fear by making it obsolete and powerless in the light of some revealed aspect of His Being. Fear--in the light of my imperfection and the awesome desire of God to draw me closer to Him--is thus kind of exciting. I know that if I surrender my fears to Him they will not last long in the light of His glory. And once He gets rid of them I'll be able to know Him better than before! It makes me all excited and tingly.

I used to judge myself for fearing, and now I'm starting to break free of that (as long as I keep submitting my fear to His mercy and love and not holding them "above" Him). Fear is a natural response to and indication of my incomplete knowledge of God. I need to acknowledge my fear and let God use it in my life to reveal Himself to me in a new and deeper way. My fears can be the vehicle for my deeper intimacy with God. He can transform them into something beautiful. I can look at my fears now not as simply evidence of my weak faith, but as joyful and necessary steps along the road to getting to know and love Him more deeply and His perfecting work in my heart.

what to "do" with my shame and broken past

2009-04-24T12:34:00.001-04:00

Today I feel the weight of everything I wish I wasn’t and everything wish I hadn’t been pressing down on me. Today I have been reminded, in random and various ways, of things I have done to cause significant pain, and it’s so … painful. Heartbreaking. Overwhelming. For several weeks I’ve been at a loss as to what I should and can do with it all. I don’t know what to “do” with my broken past and with everything I wish I wasn’t, everything I wish I hadn’t broken and been. I recognize such newness in my life and heart these days, and feel peaceful and sure in ways I’ve never felt before. But the question keeps lurking in the shadows of my mind of how to deal with that part of my life that is behind me, that part of my life that exists as a reminder of what pain I am capable of inflicting upon myself and upon others.

Seriously, what I could possibly “do” with the brokenness and shame of my past? Increasingly God is showing me that the only thing I have to “do” is let go. Simply and thoroughly let God take it. Because the miracle of His work in my life is that He will. I have a God Who is a Redeemer and a Transformer. Dude, I just got really excited thinking about God like an actual robot transformer, and thinking of my past as a transformer. On a side note, I think I’d want it to be a motorcycle-turning-into-big-guns-coming-out-of-his-hands robot. But in a sense, that’s totally what God does to our past. He takes the material stuff, the substance of our past failures and shame, and re-forms/re-shapes it such that it has a new purpose, a new function, and way cooler abilities (GUNS coming out of its HANDS). His redemption doesn’t get “rid” of the past; the pain is still “there,” but now it is “there” in a vastly different sense than before.

How amazing that we have a God who redeems and transforms. My broken past and my shame are fully, gloriously, and wondrously redeemable—if I surrender them to His hand and His will. And I have to be willing to let Him use that pain in my current life as a reminder of His saving grace. Am I willing to let Him use my brokenness and shame to accomplish His purpose in my life today? Am I willing to let Him use whatever He wants in me, not just the “happy” gifts He has given me? Am I willing to let Him use my shame and brokenness, not in condemnation, but in the glory of His purpose, even if that means that I will be reminded of that pain? Maybe that’s the most blessed way to live. Because when I let Him use my brokenness and shame, that is when they are redeemed in my life. That is when they are given and fulfill a new purpose, a beautiful purpose. They stand not as monuments of my failures, but as monuments of God’s grace, love, power, and incomparable worth. My sins can stand as monuments to God’s glory. That thought is more heartbreaking and overwhelming than any thoughts of my past and my shame.

being, not giving: a different kind of prayer

2009-04-23T10:27:00.004-04:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what it means to have Christ in my heart. That's a pretty radical concept. Often when I pray I am thinking of Him as somewhere external to me. Close, of course (even holding me or my hand through difficult times), but definitely distinct from my self. In the grandest, fullest sense God is clearly beyond me. He is infinite, He is perfect, He is beyond the world as we know and understand it. But on some fundamental level He is also within me, transforming my heart to be more like His. I have literally received His Holy Spirit into my heart and He has become part of my very essential self and soul. The Bible is abundantly clear on this point. In 1 Corinthians 6:19 Paul asks, "Do you not know your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God?" John 14:17 says "He is the Spirit of truth [...] you do know Him, because He remains in you and with you." And Romans 8: 9 - 11 says: "You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God lives in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through His Spirit who lives in you." The saved and growing Christian has the Holy Spirit within himself, a Spirit who is working to transform the dead and lifeless areas of sin into His glorious righteousness and peace.

Thinking on this has changed the way I pray in a minor, albeit significant, way. When I used to pray for a virtue or fruit of the Spirit--such as courage, patience, love, obedience, peace, even intellectual acuity--I used to pray that God would give, grant, or bestow those upon me. Then I realized that if He is in me, if His Spirit has already set up shop in my heart and is working through me, then I already have those qualities. All virtues are a part of His essential nature, and if He is in me, then I have those qualities. I don't need to ask to receive them. I merely need to ask that they be manifest in my heart and life. And the only way that I can manifest anything good or holy is if God Himself works through me. So now instead of praying that God give me those qualities, I pray that He literally be those qualities in me. I ask God to be my love, to be my courage, to be my patience, to be my righteousness, to be my peace.

What that does is radically alter the way I perceive of myself. Instead of struggling to acquire and display God's virtues I simply open up my heart, mind, and life and let Him work through me. I am only the instrument; He is wholly the player. It's like I used to approach Him as my Composer, and I was the pianist asking for a concerto. But now I recognize that He is not only the Composer, but the Player and even the Piano Builder. He has lovingly designed and built me for His purpose, and has given me all the notes, the keys, the strings, all the abilities to play His song of redemption and glory. My goal in prayer now is to ask Him to be everything He already is through and in me. In receiving His Holy Spirit into my self I have already received everything I could ask for; He merely wants me to let Him be those things in me.

What a magnificently more blessed way to live, anyway. Would I rather have God's gift of mercy, or would I rather have Him in me, displaying His mercy through me, using me as the vehicle of His mercy? The more I simply allow Him to display Himself through me, the less I focus on His qualities and the more I focus on Him. God working through me is so much more beautiful than me trying to work through the virtues He has already given me.

she's finally out of diapers and into pull-ups!

2009-04-21T08:41:00.006-04:00

Tragedy has befallen "the self-aggrandizement of jana (and sometimes renee)."

(sometimes renee) has abandoned our blog. It is now simply "the self-aggrandizement of jana." It looks so much more pathetic and desperate. I find myself suddenly alone. All. Alone.

But do not worry, dear faithful reader (Mom), we parted blogging ways affectionately and on exceedingly good terms. I think I just wrote too damn much for her ever to get a word in edgewise (she compared my writing to diarrhea. That's the Renee we know and love), but in my defense I only did that because she is constantly interrupting me when we talk on the phone. And perhaps this is a good development. Maybe now this blog can truly flourish because it is now ALL ABOUT ME. The way God intended all of life (yours included) to be.

So without further ado, I give you: tales of a middle school boy.

Enjoy, but please don't abandon me for her entirely. I don't enjoy sharing the spotlight, nor do I like losing popularity contests. I'LL SEND YOU COOKIES IF YOU READ MY BLOG!

On a side note, you know that one definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results? Yesterday morning I tried for THREE MINUTES to screw the wrong lid onto my travel coffee mug. In my defense, I hadn't yet had a drop of said coffee. But then that afternoon I went to the laundromat and tried TWENTY-TWO TIMES to put a quarter in the machine before realizing the quarter was Canadian and therefore valued at about $.02. And completely useless. I'm just really glad I live alone and the laundromat was empty.

I feel like there's an analogy for sin to be drawn from this, but I'm too emotionally exhausted from my blogging break-up to be deep and profound. But don't forget:

I'LL SEND YOU COOKIES IF YOU READ MY BLOG!

when we have nothing else to give

2009-04-19T18:59:00.003-04:00

“[A]ltars are built of whatever materials lie close at hand at the time.” ~Hannah Hurnard

The life of a Christian is (or should be) one of continuous giving to God, continuous offering of all that we struggle with and all that we love. Because the Christian life is made full and rich through continuous giving, the Lord gives abundantly in order that we might always have something to offer Him in sacrifice and praise. Every time God gives us something is an opportunity to offer up a sacrifice to Him and to draw closer to Him.

While God wants us to give Him our sin and joys, what He wants most is our hearts. But we are not always ready to give Him our entire hearts. How amazing that God does not judge us for our unwillingness and fear; rather, He recognizes our frailty and tenderly draws us closer to Him with blessings and reassurances that make us stronger and make us love Him even more.

But then there are times when it seems like God withholds His blessing for reasons we don’t understand. There are many reasons for this, but I wonder how often one reason is that we have finally come to the place where we are willing and able to give Him our entire heart. If we have other blessings to give, however, we may not feel the “need” to give Him our hearts. We may be more motivated to give Him back His blessings, because they are the obvious and easier gifts to give. This is certainly a beautiful attitude, but we don’t want it to get in the way of giving God our hearts in complete love and surrender.

Perhaps when we feel that God has withheld His blessings it’s because we are (though unknowingly) finally ready to give Him our entire hearts, and by taking us through the desert place He has given us the opportunity to do so. Perhaps sometimes God takes away everything so that all we have to give Him is our heart. That is the most beautiful gift we can give and He desires it above everything else we could offer. When we give Him our entire hearts He is able to be with us more intimately and bless us more richly than ever before.

We can use our dark, dry, and lonely times as blessed opportunities to give God our hearts completely and joyfully, in sacrifice of praise. We can use them as times to bring greater joy to the heart of our Savior, Lord, and Friend than ever before.

When we have nothing else to give, that's when we can give Him everything.

what is a dreamless sleep? i want one

2009-04-18T11:05:00.004-04:00

I realize that hearing about someone's dreams can be like listening to Fran Drescher sing Jonas Brothers on karaoke, but these are some dreams I've had in the last three days that will not leave me alone. Seriously, the memories of them haunt every moment of my waking life. You will soon see why.

Here are three exceedingly vivid dreams I've had over the course of several nights.

1. My dreaded cocktail waitress dream. This is probably the only recurring "nightmare" I have. I'm assigned to a table and I cannot get to them. I walk past them, I see them, I try to go serve them or bring them their drinks, but I can't. I'm completely impotent. This time I was serving a private dinner party in the yacht storage/garage space of some country club and I had no other tables. Their young (!) daughter ordered a chocolate pina colada (vomit) and I tried so hard to get one to her. They ended up getting up to leave because I sucked so bad, but then they sat down again and the patriarch of the party said to me, "I bet you thought we were leaving, didn't you." Creepy and stressful. I don't recommend this dream.

2. The dreaded worms-in-the-bra dream. Years ago Ashley used-to-be-Smith-now-Schneekloth showed me this article of a woman who never washed her bra, and how these worm thingeys had first taken up residence in the bacteria-infested upper underwear and then decided to burrow into her boobs. That was years ago, when we were college roommates, but every so often I still have dreams that it happens to me. This particular dream had an interesting devil-cat spin on it. I take off my bra in my dream and these black worms come out of the underwire part. They crawl to the floor, and I notice that they are cylindrical with red on the inside. Then their "faces" start morphing into ears and all of a sudden they turn into cats. But not just any cats. Black cats with red eyes and a little bit of red hair on their backs. Strangely they were the sweetest cats ever. But then they changed back into worms and I hated them. I only semi-recommend this dream.

3. I've been taking drastic steps to get rid of some emotional pain and baggage (by drastic I mean modifying my Facebook account. This is serious, serious stuff) and I found myself needing to unfriend two people. I've never unfriended anyone and felt a bit mean (though recognizing its necessity) for doing so. Apparently this act of "unfriending" haunts my subconscious. Last night I had a dream that people were unfriending me in droves and my number of friends dropped, within the span of two hours, from 298 to 220. Seventy-eight people unfriended me in my dream. And I had been so close to achieving Renee's Facebook bliss of 300 friends.

So that pretty much sums up the recent course of my nighttime hours. My days are infinitely more boring, but I could talk about the graduate papers I'm writing, if you want. Anyone want to hear about the problem of the exemplar in situationist ethics, or the tension between the Nietzschean poles of the Apollinian and Dionysian impulses in James Joyces's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? Anyone?

Hello?

somebody play misty for me

2009-04-15T15:21:00.008-04:00

Nope.

Bye bye, Buddy.