Decidedly

Truthfully, I have not always been known as the most efficient decision-maker.  I’ve wrestled with committing to a decision and then sticking to it confidently.  There have been some pretty important decisions on my radar lately, so given my shaky history in this area and the fact that the last series at church was on decisions, the topic in general has been on the brain.

One of my biggest vices in the process of making decisions is my tendency to make decisions based NOT on my reasons but rather on the expected outcome. So instead of deciding FROM a place of confidence, I wind up deciding TO a place of uncertainty…makes no sense.

Today I was journaling and had a realization once again of how we misunderstand our own nature when we make decisions that way.  First off, projected-outcome-based decisions are fear based in a way, which is a tendency we should be free from in Christ.  But also, decisions made with expectations like that set us up for disappointment.  Frequently we’re seeking fulfillment via a certain thing or person or circumstance and missing the root of the dissatisfaction that pushed us to make a decision in the first place.  This is a disservice to those involved in our decisions and it is a disservice to ourselves as we impossibly seek to be made satisfied by a thing or person that is not guaranteed nor designed to bring about our satisfaction.

Classic example: the ol’ fishing apology.  This usually occurs in a situation where you feel that you have been wronged, so you apologize in hopes of getting an apology in return.  80% of the time, desired apology is not given, and bitterness threatens to set in.

What we’re talking about is assumption-based decision, and it’s a dastardly little thing masked as careful calculation.  But assumption truly makes an ass out of you and me and everyone in between.

So what’s the answer?

Mike Ashcraft talked about clarity versus certainty during the Decisions series.  Clarity is deciding based on what God has made clear already, whereas certainty is along the lines of assumption-based decision– deciding in order to produce a certain outcome that is ironically not always certain at all.  Certainty is based on what is likely in logical terms while clarity is based on what God is ACTUALLY doing.

I just think about Jesus rubbing mud in a blind man’s eyes made out of spit and dirt, how outlandish and even offensive the thought is, and yet that was God’s chosen method of healing.  Or the way God brought Jericho down, after seven days of marching.  Just goes to show that power is in Him, in His timing, and not our ability in the flesh.  Certainty would not have led to vision for the blind or the fall of Jericho.  Clarity, however, an obedience to God’s direction in the moment, did bring those things about.

Obedience, godly decision-making, truly feels like a stab in the dark.  God can in the present moment compel us to do something that seems to work against the outcome we want.  But acting in response to Him is the surest guarantee we have for making decisions that will bring an outcome that makes us more alive, because it is by His spirit, not by the might of our reason, that his perfect will is birthed in our lives.  And when his will is birthed, we are most satisfied.  Really.

Decision-making has been a struggle for me historically but God is showing me the freedom we have to decide from the desires of a renewed heart when He hasn’t spoken clearly, and the wisdom of deciding from trustful obedience when He has spoken.  Because in Him, dirt plus spit can equal restored sight.

I encourage you to decide FROM the place of your identity in Him!

Farther Along

Oh man.  Another entry from the town of Wilmington, NC.  I read entries from less than a year ago when I was planning on closing the Wilmington chapter of my life and I laugh out loud.  I’m still here, very much here.  I am starting to cherish it, though.  I have moments of “What’s the next thing, Lord?”  But then I have a good beach day and I don’t ask again for another week or two.

I never explained why/how the Nashville move lapsed.  No blown up engine this time.  Just a strong check in my heart that it was not what I should have done at the time.  I was in the parking lot at my church and broke down in tears, the heaving kind of tears that give you a headache and make your face look swollen.  I called my mom and told her I couldn’t do it, that I just didn’t feel like it was right, that God was brewing things right here so why on earth would I just leave with no solid reason or rhyme?  The hardest phone call was the next one, to my best friend RL who was to be my roommate in Nashville.  I expected a tongue lashing.  I could tell she was disappointed a bit but she could hear my heart and hear that I really didn’t feel like it was right, so she gave her support.  And with a sigh of relief, after telling everyone in my world here that I was planning on leaving in a matter of a month or so, I settled once again back into Wilmington, this town that has been The Wait of my recent life.

I feel like Wilmington has been and continues to be (at least for the immediate future) necessary preparation for something.  And that’s what has finally given me peace about being here.  Even though I feel like I’m in a holding pattern, I just feel like when the holding pattern’s over, I’ll be a heck of a lot farther along than if I would have went against the Lord’s leading.  It’s a backward way of thinking rather than a forward way of thinking.  The world says X event + X event = a certain success.  Our future really is just the product of “good life decisions” in our past.  But as my dad’s friend Doug told me once, God calls to us out of our destiny, not our past.  In other words, we are being drawn to something and are not merely the product of where we’ve come from.  But in order to make it where God wants to draw us, we have to wait on His voice.  I’ve finally come to realize that it truly is a very small voice.  You have to zero in on it if you want to follow it, because there’s a crap ton of other distractions and opinions out there.

God has shown me A LOT about timing lately.  The timing of events in our lives are as important as the events themselves.  I just read in Acts when God gave Peter a vision of animals and told him to eat.  Peter protested because the animals were unclean and the Lord said “What I have made clean, do not call common.”  And that was it.  That’s all God gave him.  And then the Bible says that Peter was perplexed.  God had offered no explanation, simply leaving Peter with a confusing vision about animals.  Afterward, some Gentiles who had been sent by God came to Peter asked him to go back to their town with him, so Peter went and the Gentiles received the Holy Spirit.  It was then that Peter realized that these Gentiles were who God was referring to when he spoke of the common being made clean.  Social prejudice could have kept many people from having the opportunity to believe, but God had prepared Peter’s heart through a vision that made little sense at the moment.  I can see how God has done the same thing in my life.  He has spoken truths and dreams into my heart that haven taken YEARS to develop into fruition.  Some of them haven’t bloomed yet, but I’ve seen enough to rest in His timing.

It’s crazy how identical circumstances can feel so right or so wrong depending on the timing.  How well you feel settled or not settled in a town (i.e., my life story), or the timing of a relationship forming or growing, or pursuing a certain job.

That’s why success can’t simply be measured by circumstance.  Timing and will, the Lord’s will, has to be taken into account.  He might have you preparing for years and years and years in seemingly low circumstances so he can launch you at the right moment.  But the world’s time table is different.  We want a ladder and we want to climb it at our own rate according to our own understanding.  So we gain success, but we give up our dreams.  The success is limited and shallow.  We miss out on being fully who God intended for us to be simply because we would not wait on Him and His timing.

I think about Joseph, being sold into slavery and being imprisoned after being falsely accused of trying to rape Potiphar’s wife.  All after God spoke to him and told him he would rule over his brothers.  What the hayill.  I see this over and over again in scripture, God speaking an explicit dream or vision to someone but not bringing it to fulfillment until years later.  This fact is at first annoying, but at a closer look it’s reassuring.  If God has spoken a dream to you and if you are willing to wait on Him to prepare you for its fruition, big things WILL happen.  If you insist on success as defined by the world and the world’s timing, well then THAT will happen.  And it will be small.  Tragically small in the realm of possibility and the bigness of what the Lord has destined for you.

I was talking to my brother Stephen about this recently– God already has the conclusion and He exists outside of time, but inevitably we have to live in the unfolding of that conclusion because we are subject to time (or at least the illusion of time…I’m not sure time even exists, but that’s another entry entirely…I love a good metaphysical controversy.)  It’s a relief, to know that we really only have to rest and still ourselves to hear his voice and He’ll bring our dreams to us in His way.  It isn’t logical.  Logic has a formula for success.  But God makes kings out of shepherds, and heals people with mud made out of spit and dirt, and makes a carpenter the savior of mankind.  It’s not logical.  It doesn’t fit into our normal way of thinking.  The fruition of our dreams will only be as radical and big as our willingness to wait on them.  Timing is key.  Timing is bigger than circumstance alone.  We don’t move farther along by following a checklist for successful living– we get there by resting in the risk of waiting.  And the Lord will bring our dreams to us if we wait.

If we believe we are renewed in Christ, that we are ever regenerating once we begin to walk with Him, then that means our life is a constant revelation of the fuller, wholer US.  Though our body is growing older, our spirits are becoming more fully awake.  We walk in the hope and promise of newness.  The world is trying to beat the inevitable decay of this life, which is what drives their career/retirement decisions.  We are being made new though, so we don’t have to be driven by a sense of fear or beating the clock.  Once again, we are being called TO something, not just trying to run FROM inevitable, encroaching death.  No, we run towards newer life, the unfolding of our dreams.

We are becoming more fully alive!

Abandoning the Life Boat

Today I was driving, my thoughts wandering off randomly and unrelated as they often do, when I started thinking about The Spice Girls.  Not one of the better representatives of the British Invasion in America…I thought with bewilderment at their fame gone by.  Then, Oh my goodness…I think I remember trying to convince myself that I LIKED them when I was a kid. First off this was appalling because they were largely underwhelming in all areas talent-related, secondly none of them are role model material, and thirdly (and perhaps MOST appalling) was that I didn’t even enjoy their music, but the power of my peers’ interest compelled me like a magnetic force to at least attempt getting swept up in the catchy beats.  And as I kept following the rabbit hole of my thoughts, I was transported to a time when that was a common feeling– the feeling of wanting to like something so at least I could blend well with those around me.

So many of those kids whom I held on the highest of pedestals have since been proven “jes like the rest of us” in the stark light of reality, and yet held such a sway over me when we were younger.  The kind of shoes they wore, and their fabulous hair, and yes, the wretched music they listened to, floated in my head like a level of enlightenment I should strive to attain.

This pressure is real as a kid.  No wonder we finish our high school years feeling like we might die if we don’t soon “find out who we are.”  We’ve been trying to be things all along we weren’t even sure we wanted to be.

So I wondered which of my genuine preferences throughout life had been stifled as a result of my sworn allegiance to stay in the life boat.  When did I find out what I actually liked and disliked, what moved me and what didn’t?  How much unearthing is left?

I don’t know why this kind of insecurity propelled me a lot as a kid.  And truthfully, it didn’t cause me to conform completely.  Even back then, I knew my soul couldn’t survive full conformity.  But this is a common case– the case of being unsure of even what MOVES us because we’ve been so worried about convincing ourselves to chase after things that don’t interest the core of us.

I don’t want to get too deep here.  I guess I just want to reiterate the importance of drawing conclusions, of thinking, of confidently holding on to a conviction even if it’s the only one like it in a million.  Because I knew it deep down all those years ago that I thought the Spice Girls sucked and the reason for their fame was as unintelligible to me as foreign languages are to a monoglot.  But in order to spare myself from the hells of a lonely lunch table, I found myself singing such phrases as “If you really really really wanna zig-ah-zig-aahhh.”

I hope I can raise my kids to stick to their guns.  Because easy assimilation into a crowd means the world in school for most kids, and even many adults.  But in reality folks, the lunch tables mean nothing.

“There is just one life for each of us; our own.”-Euripides

The Year of Great Gleaning

Oh blog. I wonder who reads this thing. My parents.  My second mom, Mama Debbie.  And other random readers who have found themselves here after a long, bored Facebook carousal.

Well, I haven’t written in a while. A lot has changed in the last few months I feel. I’m a little less existential in my musings these days. In fact, I simply don’t muse as much. I resist activities that might spark too much musing, including the reading of Russian novels, which had previously (as some of you who know me well may know) been a staple on my list of life enriching activities. These days, I am at peace with things like complimenting my girlfriends on how cute their shoes are, or spending half an hour choosing bronzer at ULTA, or reading an article in People instead of reading War and Peace.  These are rather new acquisitions to my person.

I could just be lazy, but I don’t think that’s it. Really and truly. I could be lazy in denial, and in that case I pray for a revelation, but I have just realized that I want to take full advantage of this chill time.

On a deeper level, most of my life I’ve fought where I’ve found myself. And I just don’t want to do it anymore.

Pastor Mike is using Jeremiah 29 in the current series at church and it has really stuck with me. God leads his people into exile and tells them to build homes, families there. He tells them to look out for the welfare of the town and people– their captors! And in looking out for the town’s welfare, they will look out for their own, God tells them. It really challenged me to invest wherever I am. I think we sometimes justify our level of service or involvement in a particular area based on whether or not we want to be there. If we are somewhere we don’t want to be then God must not want us there either, so what’s the point.

The Bible very frequently demonstrates the OPPOSITE! God very often LEADS his people out of their place of comfort! Why do we often believe that his way is that of least resistance?

I embraced Wilmington with some trepidation after feeling with almost 100% certainty that God directed me here in the Fall of 2009. But I embraced it. Now a year and a half later with a move to Nashville just a few months around the bend, I am so glad I was willing to make Wilmington home. I feel that I have grown here because I have put down roots here for the first time. I’ve been unsure about whether or not I am really ready to move to Nashville, but over the last few days I feel an urgency to do it and do it soon, because the word that keeps coming to my mind is “accomplish.” And not in the sense that I hope to accomplish certain things when I go, though that is certainly the case. It is because I can see things that have been accomplished in my heart during my time here, and I can also see ways that God has used me to accomplish things in other people here. I feel that if I leave, I have finished my “exile” well (as much of an exile that this beloved beach town can be). I had no idea what the objectives were in my coming here, and now by accident, it seems I’ve accomplished them. I have seen my community grow, I have seen my own faith go through growing pains and coming out on the other side of them, I have seen friendships change, I have seen my gifts develop, and well…frankly, I’ve grown up.

I have tons more confidence, a trait which I will need the more that the “real world” rears it’s ugly head.  I feel better equipped to rear an ugly one right back.

I had a pretty bad faith crisis not too long ago.  It’s incredible to think about it now that it’s over because I remember wondering what it would feel like to trust God again.  I’d forgotten what surrender felt like.  I wanted to seize full control of my destiny.  I wanted freedom from authority, particularly invisible authority.  And it was terrifying.  I sat in my car crying, feeling desperately alone.  I asked a friend to pray for me.  Asking her felt like planning my own intervention.  I felt like it was that important.  And as she prayed the light changed.  It was incredible.  I felt my mind change.  I woke up the next morning feeling totally restored.  It was amazing.

Things like that make me excited.  Excited about what God has recently done, what I expect he’ll do this year.

I get insecure sometimes and become a little afraid of failure.  Little things can trigger it.  I read an email from an old college professor telling him of my plans to move.  ”So I guess you didn’t get into grad school?”  he more or less wrote.  It was like a needle prick.  But only a needle prick.  That’s an improvement.  A year ago, a simple question like that could have sent me into a tailspin.  Same with seeing certain relationships paraded on Facebook.  Oh the beautiful family.  Oh the trophy wife, the handsome husband, the perfect marriage, the dream jobs.  I don’t compare myself to people like I used to.  In fact, I’m able to be happy for them.  I still have to stop myself from scoffing at comments left by girls on the walls of old flames and would’ve-beens, both because that’s creepy and also because it does tempt me to spiral into a ruthless self-critique.  But I’m done feeling like the red headed step child.  I make myself feel that way.  God hasn’t made me that way.  He wants me to have his fullness more than he wants me to get the things I want when I want them.  And this is a truth that is finally being imprinted in the fabric of my heart.

I feel very blessed.  I am part of an incredible team of musicians at my church, Port City, people who are excellent at what they do but also care about how Christ is developing us individually and as a team.  I have amazing friends who will still be around in ten years.  I can see a dynamic God working daily in the lives of those around me.  And so I can feel good about closing this chapter of my life in Wilmington soon.

Though the Wilmington chapter is only gonna be on hold temporarily I expect.  I will always come back here.  Wilmington has truly gotten into me.  An Ode to Wilmington blog soon to follow.

So that’s where I am.

A few days ago, my mom used the story of Ruth to demonstrate a lesson about Providence.  Ruth gleaned in a field, to her a field of no particular significance, and it happened to be the field of Boaz.  God pours out incredible provision in the midst of our seemingly insignificant details of out life.  So she told me basically to go out and glean and expect something great, just as God gave that field great significance.

2011!  The year of great gleaning!

Hier’s to

I just want to lather on the gratefulness good and thick for a moment. Here’s to:

caffeinated beverages.

friends that are truly like surrogate family.

the right music at the right moment.

fall weather and it’s corresponding wardrobe.

electricity.

toothpaste.

the sovereignty of God.

down comforters.

scrambled eggs with hot sauce.

opportunity.

being given two and three and nonillion chances.

divine appointment.

all things flowing.

pumpkin spice flavored anything.

the occasional enjoyably awkward circumstance.

knowing we have been made for the EXTRAORDINARY.

sleep.

Big Tempin’

My alarm went off at 6:15 this morning. It felt like my first day of high school or something comparable. An exciting, ominous unknown. I walked to the bathroom in the partial blindess of my contact lensless eyes and decided I should kick the day off with the shower. Though I could not predict much of what the day would unfold, I COULD exercise control over my hair.

You see, I have only once before had a “real job.” And then I was over my head. I was a middle school teacher for three months, and collapsed under the weight of the realization that it wasn’t the career I wanted. Not even for another day. Three months after a daily fight with that realization, I quit.

Today, as I showered and packed my lunchbox– yogurt, a peach, an almond butter and raspberry preserves Ezekiel sprouted grain wrap, and curried rice with, ahem, burnt cashews and raisins– I wondered about how this phenomena would feel again. To feel gainfully employed with a full time schedule. Like a woman on the cusp of falling in love for the first time in years.

Except no love for me. Just the glory of being a temp. A temp assisting in medical records at the UNCW Health Center, that is.

I was not really nervous at all today as I walked in to meet the Health Center supervisor. The office was more or less what I expected. Women with names like “Sue” and “Tammy,” buzzing like bees between piles of papers and telephones, while doctors in white coats studied charts and strolled from patient to patient. “Baby,” “Honey,” and “Precious” were often drawled to address coworkers and patients. This is cute I suppose, but it became confusing. I would have to turn often to see whether or not I was the “Sugar” needed in certain cases or whether the generic salutation was intended for one of the other women. I’m all for the sweetness, but an intonation system in which changes in pitch change the word’s meaning, like those used in certain Asian languages, would be helpful.

I wasn’t too nervous when the supervisor showed me the polychromatic walls of medical files that would be my job to pull from and replenish. But the nervousness finally did set in when I was given my first real task. It seemed so simple: To find twenty medical charts and stuff them with corresponding lab reports. Only twenty.

I started in the medical records room. Found about four. “Ahem, [Supervisor], I didn’t find very many.” “Did you check in the nurse’s station?” “Oh my, well no I didn’t!” Found two more. Six out of twenty. That seemed pretty good. I brought them to the supervisor to be processed, but before I could even hand them over she said “No no! I’m not going to process them until you’ve done them all.”

Then the panic started to kick in. “Um, is there anywhere else the rest could be?” “Check in the doctor’s offices.” The doctors intimidated me, floating through the halls in white coats. The supervisor showed me their offices. She even drew me a map. Cautiously I walked from office to office, map in hand. It felt strange rummaging for folders in a professional’s office. One of the doctors mistook me for a student. Another seemed taken aback when I walked into her office to check for folders. I returned only a couple folders richer.

I walked past the offices probably three more times. With each new lap, I grew increasingly nervous, as I remembered the supervisor’s words– “No no! I’m not going to process them until you’ve done them all.”

I finally gave up and admitted it to her. “Listen, I don’t know where else they could be.” She asked a staff member to help. I watched in disbelief as she found almost all of the remaining folders in places I’d already looked. “Oh wow…I looked there! Man! I just…I mean…I can’t believe I didn’t find them!”

I felt miniscule. It’s finding folders, Glo. Not earning your M.D.

But I pressed on. I knew that if I made it through lunch, I could do this thing. I was asked to do all sorts of small tasks. I don’t mind being a gopher. I think I like the burdenlessness of it. You are told what to do, mostly, so you don’t have the pressure of deciding.

I sat outside on a bench eating my lunch, grateful I’d survived half the day. I’m a temp. I’m a temp. I’m an OFFICE TEMP, for crying out loud. So strange. My creative brain was in uncharted territory.

The remainder of the day was spent entering data and an hour and a half’s worth of putting away cards in alphabetical order in the appropriate rolodex. By the end, I was literally talking to myself outloud so I could pull through.

It doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people probably. A temp position in an office. But for me it was pretty big.

It reminded me of what I can and can’t bear doing. I wondered if God created people to do what I did today. Like, if that’s what he purposed for them to do. Not saying there is anything wrong with that. But it’s hard for my mind to wrap around, and even harder for my heart.  Maybe the question of vocational purpose and “what we are meant to do” is mainly a western one.  Certainly the boy in India who sells corn and grows up to marry his niece doesn’t squabble with those questions.  Or maybe he does.

I don’t know.

But whether or not it’s a life reality or just a western reality, it is, in one respect or another, a reality.  So to finish addressing it, I realize that there are a lot of wonderful office jobs that don’t include staring at rolodexes.  But I suppose that today just reminded me to stick with my dreams.  It’s easy to give up, to work for thirty years in an environment different from what you want, simply because it comes with more predictability.  I’m tempted to do this.  Days like today help me snap out of it.

I think the job lasts a week. And I’m grateful for it.  And by the end of the day, I cheered at the increased speed with which I filed away folders.

So I’m happy, just so long as I’m a temp at this.

Life As Usual and the Treasure In A Field

Well, I feel like a lush. Drunk on the sounds of a jazz playlist on shuffle. I can’t explain how it soothes my soul. Seeps into all the crannies, like butter on a hot biscuit. Oh my goodness. I took a long bath WHILE listening to Billie and Thelonious and others. I used a loofah to exfoliate dead skin cells. I soaked. After my bath, I took the time to moisturize. I didn’t hurry, I slowly and satisfactorily put lotion on, removed trace bits of eye makeup, and made my way to my room. I picked up my phone…”In bed before midnight…this is GREAT!”

Good day today. Sang for student ministries at church, middle and high school. I really enjoy leading worship, but sometimes more than others God seems to place a stronger burden on my heart for the kids. Tonight was that way. I really just thought, “Man, I wonder if their parents show them Christ?”  Not tell them to go to church. But the ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was a stranger and you invited me into your home’ kind of example of Christ. The Kingdom of Heaven, so said Jesus, is like a man who sold all of his possessions so he could buy a field with a treasure in it. It’s an extravagantly all-in kind of a deal.

Today as we sang “The Time Has Come,” I felt my honesty being tested, especially on the bridge– “All we are is Yours, all we’re living for is all You are.”

We sing that a lot. And I’m a seasoned Christian. Heck, I’m a preacher’s kid, which kind of makes me a pro. But it’s easy to fall into a pattern of life as usual rather than adventurously living for Christ. Taking time to love the least of these, have a conversation with an awkward stranger, showing mercy to an undeserving person.

“Today, today, it’s all or nothing” the chorus starts. All or nothing. I want to apply this idea to the parable. Why buy the whole field? Why not just buy the treasure? Now there’s probably an answer related to cultural dealings back then that I am unaware of. Either way, though, I truly think the message here is the idea of whole-hearted commitment. It’s not enough to just have the treasure. Oh no. I’m gonna sweep up all the land around it. Maybe even build a fence around it. This treasure requires desperate measures. An entire displacement of life as usual. That treasure holds the keys to radical love and the deepest depths of contentment. Nothing else can possibly matter aside from my possessing it and all that it entails.  ”All we’re living for is all You are.”

I feel like a kid hyped up at a youth rally writing about all of this. “Radical living for Christ! Woo!” You know, when kids get psyched up and hand out soup cans and tracts door to door. That is one way to live radically.  I guess. But the commission Christ gave, so central to the Christian mission that it’s called the great commission, is to make disciples as you go.  I’ve found that as you go acts of love and kindness often take a backseat to less personal, more global (and glorified) efforts.  We scoff at the homeless man with a sign standing by College Rd. while gladly purchasing multiple pairs of Toms.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love it when social justice and fashion mix. It’s a beautiful thing of which I am a consumer.  And there’s a chance the homeless guy will buy beer or drugs or something else we wouldn’t approve of.  But this reason for not giving is both terribly judgmental and purblind. It pays to ask for someone’s story rather than assume things based on their appearance.  And ironically, we worry how a few dollars might be squandered if we give it to them while we justify unnecessary and often irresponsible purchases of our own.  ”Well, it’s my money to waste if I want to.”  Whoa there Tiger!  We are MERELY stewards.  Managers.  Our money is to be stewarded for the kingdom.  It goes back to the selling everything to buy the field.

I didn’t mean to go on a rant about giving to homeless people.  I’m not saying it’s wrong to not give money to homeless people.  In fact, I confess that I struggle that homelessness is even an issue America, simply because it seems hardly justifiable given all of the helps and opportunities here.  But the point is, as we go there are opportunities to show kindness and draw men to Christ.  We don’t have to swipe a credit card for a cause halfway around the world for that to happen.  In fact, a truer test of Christlike love is taking care of one’s neighbor.  Those people that daily life dumps on our lap.

All of this is serving as a reminder to myself as well.  Just thought I should make that clear.

My jazz music is still going.  I’m in such a strangely hopeful mood.  I think it’s the combo of music, the bath, being comfy, and the Holy Spirit.  I know I’ve got a lot to do.  Gotta make room for that field in my life, get rid of clutter.  But I just feel like something big is coming.  I just think we are going to see change in the community of Believers here.  A new level of passion.  A deeper dissatisfaction with cultural norms.  A desire to love extravagantly.  I want those kids I led today to get rocked.  I want each of them to know they were created for more than life as usual.

Oh man.  Happy Sunday night world.

Destiny and Things Remembered

Well, I came out on the porch to talk to the Lord and instead I’m updating my blog.  Go figure.

Most blogs seem to have a consistent theme.  Travel.  Food.  Fashion.  Mine is erratic.  A public journal of sorts.  Just like the quote at the top of it from my Grandma Josephine, her simple yet poignant observation of foliage, I guess this is a shameless declaration of how I look at things.

Life right now is grand, what with all its uncertainties.  And I’ve changed, a lot.  It’s weird how memories make us, how some richly identify us and others are stranger than fiction.

Baby Glo was chunky.  They called me Thunder Thighs.

Toddler Glo woke mom up in the middle of the night asking for cheese grits.  They called me Grits Gloria.

Little kid Glo was asthmatic and took off her shirt to play football in the yard like her brothers.

Middle kid Glo found a bunch of antique bottles in the woods and broke them against a tree for no reason.

Bigger kid Glo wrote songs and listened to music in her bedroom during her free time.

Middle school Glo was chunky again.  And awkward.

High school Glo was bone thin, then chunky, first preppy then emo.  And awkward.

College Glo was leveling out.  Read Kierkegaard in her free time.  Put her dreams on a shelf, though.  Some awkwardness still lingered.

Post college Glo was lost in the search for legitimate adulthood.

As the current Glo, I’ve let go of identity crises altogether.  And I’ve divided my awkwardness into two categories, almost like good and bad cholesterol.  Bad awkwardness continues to abate in my life, but I’m realizing good awkwardness as a way of helping me get the upper hand in otherwise boring social situations.

I’m just done trying to be certain things.  I’m trying to be real about my interests, real about my desires.  And it’s cool to see God working, bringing my dreams to fruition and tweaking them.  Insecurity has all but vanished, and it’s a beautiful thing.

So, a summary of current Glo’s life:

I still feel called to do music, so I’m pursuing it, but in baby steps.  It’s been a passion– calling, I dare say– of mine indelibly  since I was a kid.  And it hasn’t unfolded at a pace or in a pattern I would have chosen, but I have an assurance that God is brewing something up.  I’m itching so much to record I can hardly stand it.

I’ve moved into a new house with three amazing girls, all with a passion for people and community.  We want to steward our home and hospitality.  We want people to know our door is always open.  We have big things planned.  I don’t want to spoil anything, so that’s all I’ll say.

I’m loving my city more every day.  I remember driving away from Wilmington after graduating from UNCW, just thinking about how glad I was to be out of that place.  I think my disillusionment stemmed from being jaded by pretentious academia, not by the city itself.  I have a newborn love for the people here and excitement for my part in the community.

I don’t get a kick out of reading philosophy and poetry and smartsy things like I used to.  I’m really starting to appreciate simplicity.  Real life.  Though oddly enough, I’m writing more poetry these days.  I’m writing lots of songs, my pen is always at work.  New melodies are always surfacing in my head.

I’ve started enjoying domestic things, which is near miraculous.  I was always the laughably non-domestic of my friends.  I actually LIKE cleaning now.  Vacuuming might be my favorite.  I’m cooking, organizing, and even (this one’s REALLY impressive) making my bed in the mornings.

I’ve started exercising, which is also a gasp to those who have known me for a long time.  Not like P90x or Crossfit or shakeweights, oh no.  I do Jane Austen style exercising.  I go “out for a walk” or take a run.  But still, historically exercising had been for the birds from my point of view.

I’ve started to enjoy the company of annoying people.  Annoying people pose a challenge, a challenge I’ve started to welcome.  I’ve also found that a lot of them are in dire need of something, usually identifiable within the first several minutes of talking to them, and it presents an opportunity to practice compassion and brotherly love.

Jesus continues to be real in more and more ways to me.  He is changing people’s lives all around me.  He is infiltrating more and more the details of my life.

I’m addicted to caffeine, but it doesn’t make me crazy like it used to.

It’s an interesting life phase.

I remember something my dad’s friend Doug told me the day before I attempted to drive to Austin, TX  last Fall, with my clothes and my keyboard in my car.  He said “Time isn’t passing you by,” and “Stop measuring yourself according to the world’s standards,” and “Most people give up on their dreams– don’t give up hope.”

Those words were truly prophetic.  They were meant for now, for these lingering uncertain days, for these days crammed with what feels like barely justified expectation.  I feel like anything could happen tomorrow.  This mystery is growing on me.

I guess it makes sense that we take some of who we were with us and leave a lot behind.  Doug something else the day I talked to him– “It is from our destiny that God calls out to us, not our past.”

It is through the lens of our destiny that we get to see how the fragments all start to fit together.

Amazing.  I love this journey.

I Shouldn’t Be Alive

A few weeks ago I read Psalm 40 while burning a Timber wick candle and listening to Baroque music.  It was pretty righteous.  Two verses particularly resonated with me.

5- You have multiplied, O LORD my God,
your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
none can compare with you!
I will proclaim and tell of them,
yet they are more than can be told.

and

17- As for me, I am poor and needy,
but the Lord takes thought for me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
do not delay, O my God!

“You have multiplied…your thoughts toward us” and “But the Lord takes thought for me.”  Incredible.

I’d written that the time I spent with God that night was really needful.  I’ve been sloshing through the gamut of human emotion.  Psalms are great for that.

I was on the ball as far as reading/praying journaling about a month ago.  After only one day of missing it, I felt totally deprived, malnourished.

And I started thinking about Jesus being like water after watching a show called ”I Shouldn’t Be Alive” that depicts stories of people who have nearly either frozen or starved to death.  On one episode, a man is lost in the West Australian outback, facing death by numerous threats not limited to dehydration and/or being eaten by wild dogs.  In the middle of his trek, he is insanely thirsty and decides to drink his own urine.  Now, it’s a rough illustration, but it works magnificently I think.  I was thinking about how this relates to life with Christ.  The man said that every time you drink your own urine and as it repetitively cycles through, it becomes more concentrated and potent and less satisfying.  And of course, it only sustains you for so long.  Trying to live without the Holy Spirit keeping us in tuned with the Father through Christ is the same way.  We resort to our own methods and fix-its, comprised of our own leftovers.  They become less and less effective.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to say its like settling for urine above spring water.

What are we thinking?  Why do we do it?  An obvious answer would be that some people simply don’t believe.  But I’m talking about the people who say they do believe.

I feel like I’m in a desert in every way possible.  My brain knows it’s going to be fine, but I don’t feel convinced of it.  I know truth about God cerebrally but I’m not in a stage where those truths are in every pore, surrounding every step and decision with a sense of peace.  I’m not failing morally or anything, I am simply once again at a loss to feel full, and to feel a drive to chase after God, to consume His Word.  It’s laborious to have a good attitude a lot recently, much less have the humility to still myself and soak in God’s presence.  I have the same malnourished feeling I had when I was missing days here and there, but I lack the motivation to do something about it.  As usual when I feel like I’m in a drought, I start to think of causes, and very often I begin to distance myself from God when I feel like things aren’t going my way.  Particularly when it comes to music and my passions in general.  And I’ve realized that this sense of God owing me is connected to a misconception I and probably most of us have about his will.

I get the idea that God’s will is almost like this big mysterious cloud, and I want it to envelope me, or come to me while I sit and wait for it.  I read an article recently pointing out the fact that very rarely in the Bible does God tell someone exactly what His will is for them.  Or even if he does, it often takes years for it to come to fruition.  I think I’ve let my idea of God’s will paralyze me from acting, which in turn makes me blame Him for not making things happen in my life.  This article pointed out that in the looming question of “GOD, what is my GRAND PURPOSE?!” we could very well be ignoring small, daily movings of the Holy Spirit.  That concept went straight to my core.

So when I’m in a drought like this, when the fruition of my dreams are so far away I can’t see them, when God’s word seems like a quagmire, when life is in a weird stage, it once again comes back to that daily refreshment of the Spirit.  Jesus’ deeming Himself the living water was brilliant.  Unlike air, which is also essential for our survival, the need for water has to be consciously fulfilled.  And throughout the day.  Every day.  Too long without it and we literally die.  Too long drinking substitutes, and our thirst only grows.

A myriad of questions have kept me company for soooo long.  I’m so over it.  Over the questions.  I’ve resisted Christ as the answer to all of them.  That’s just too easy, right?  My pride resists such a simple solution.  While we are battling our flesh, debating whether or not to crawl back up onto the altar, God has multiplied his thoughts towards us.  He stands to be our help, our deliverer, as the Psalmist resolved thousands of years ago.

My head rests in Jesus’s declaration, that He is the living water and ONLY through partaking in His nature will we keep from ever thirsting.  Without it, the soul withers, the spirit dies.

Golly gee willikers– Not only my mind, but I want my whole being to be baptized in it!

The Runner

Well, the symptoms have been as follows: getting stir crazy, feeling like the slow polk in the race of life, thinking for the first time “Oh crap I’m a year older,” looking up flights.

Could it be that I’m…..a runner?

I was thinking about this– I love to travel.  I get urges to drive or fly far away.  I used to think it was merely a case of a travel bug bite.  But today it occurred to me that it might be more than that.  Every several months or so, I get bored and want to dive headlong in a new milieu.  I noticed a trend, that my desire to visit a new place is often tied to disappointment or an anxious feeling.  Something small can trigger it and suddenly I just want to embark…which (I’m starting to think) is just a euphonious way of saying get the heck out.

I start to feel caged in.  Like I’m kissing the man’s gluttonous tail.  Like I’m treading water with all my might in a square foot of space.  That somehow when tickets were passed out for the Normalcy boat, I was elsewhere, maybe staring at a tree or drinking coffee.

So I’ve been almost literally itching to get out of Wilmington just for a few days (or indefinitely) as of late.  And back in the Fall I’d felt the same way.  So I packed my car and set out for Austin, TX, when God let me know in a few ways, my car ceasing to accelerate not being the least significant one, that I wasn’t supposed to go.  So Wilmington it was.  And I’m glad I’m here, but I just wonder how long the holding pattern will continue.

Part of me wants to pick up and leave, just leave.  Without even a destination, to literally just drive from one town to the next, trying to keep a step ahead of my questions.  Things aren’t terrible– in fact, they are great and exciting.  But they aren’t the things I’d hoped I’d be able to be excited about by now in this stage in life.

I’m a dreamer.  I guess that’s largely the issue.  What’s more, I don’t think my dreams are vain.  I feel like most of them are going to come to fruition.  Maybe like if you saw the Taj Mahal in a book and didn’t know it was real, but felt like it should be, then one day after a long journey, you finally get to see it with your own eyes.  That’s a poor analogy, but hopefully my meaning is somewhat clear.  So I feel that my dreams are God-given.  But he’s been dragging their fulfillment out for years now.

So today I started planning a soul retreat.  ”Well, here could be fun.  I would even have money from my tax refund to spare.”  And then I thought, “Why do you do this, Gloria?  Why do you start planning your escape every 8 to 14 months?”  Sometimes I’m amazed that I actually completed four years of college.  I feel like a lightning bug, that constantly emerges in different spots on the horizon.

But I don’t know that I would want it any other way.  I can’t see myself ever having a “normal” job.  I don’t care about cars or houses.  I see myself with a family, but not just so I can grease the American Dream Machine.  I read in Hebrews 11 recently, the “faith chapter”, where it’s outlining different ways that the faith of  men and women were exemplified.  Verses 37b-38 read “They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”  The image of these men and women living nomadically encouraged my heart.  Stability in our culture is based on getting what you want and keeping it.  This trait, part of the doctrine of American society, was not characteristic of the faithful people in Hebrews 11.  They suffered, and they were wanderers.

Reading that part in Hebrews made me feel better for not wanting to have  Betty Crocker existence.  It pushed me to live for so much more.  To be willing to DIE for so much more.

But I don’t want to simply run when things get hazy.  I want to proceed with purpose.  With divine calling.  Today as I prayed and journaled,  I started to wonder if I should just start moving, or wait until God tells me where to go.  So far, your guess is as good as mine.  I’m hoping for clarity soon.

The good news is that my trust in God has grown exponentially over the last few years.  So it’s not that I don’t think He’s going to bring me good things.  I just forget momentarily.  I fail to enjoy the present, to see it as providence.  And I start to let regret creep in.  Oddly enough, I don’t regret things I’ve done.  On the contrary, sometimes I wonder if I’ve imposed way too many arbitrary restrictions on myself all these years, restrictions I’m just now letting myself be released from.  I was pretty squeaky clean growing up, sometimes it feels like it’s been to my detriment.  I’m old enough to know that some angsty rebellion isn’t the answer.

In my anguish today, the anguish of fleshing out this whole running business, I decided I’d better chase away all my speculation with some truth.  So, I simply made a list of truths that I believe.  They are:

• I am loved by God.
• I was made by God.
• I am destined for greatness in Christ.
• God’s plan is best.
• God is my portion and my joy.
• There’s nothing I can do to earn more of or take away from God’s love.
• God is all I need.
• God’s plans for me are prosperous.

Holding pattern or not, running or not, I decided that these and similar truths should be the only factors bearing on the questions I’ve had.  Easier said than done….today has been tough.  I’ve been fighting off feelings of failure all day.  But as I read over how God has been dealing with me even in the last couple months, I was pulled back somewhat to a place of security.

I still want to take a soul retreat.  And I don’t know when or if I’m leaving Wilmington.  I still am not sure to what degree I’m a runner.  Not sure to what degree it matters as long as my motives are in check.  And I know Who I’m running toward ultimately, so I’m trusting Him to establish my steps.

Ah yes.