blessed is this life & I'm going to celebrate being alive

Sometimes I see jobs that I never, ever want to have, and I start thinking about how horrible it would be if I was forced to have them, if I didn't have a choice. Yesterday I was looking at the fashion section in the Wall Street Journal and I started to panic, because what if I was forced to be a super model on the runway? What if I was forced to wear makeup on my eyes like scary space raccoons, grease my hair onto my head like a skullcap of snot, and wear a swarm of fake butterflies around my head to complement the runway's "nature" motif? Then, when I saw these shoes, I started to hyperventilate:

"Help us! We are trapped in giant mole heads!" - Feet

I had to close the newspaper and watch the Weather Channel to get my mind on something else. I would never, ever want to be a runway model. I like my hip bones softly enfolded in revolt of the vegan lifestyle, and not protruding from my body like permanent javelins.

I had a what-if-I-had-to-have-that-job panic attack a few days ago, too, when I starting thinking, What if I had to work in a daycare for the rest of my life? I have loved a few small children in my life, this being one of them:

"William, can you do Down Dog?"

But in mass numbers, little tots are not my favorite thing. People like to tell me, "It's different when you have your own." After watching several episodes of SuperNanny, however, the only difference I see is that, when it's your own kid, you're allowed to lock him in the basement after he's colored on the walls with a permanent marker because you told him he couldn't have more animal crackers, whereas if you were just the daycare provider, you'd get fired & sued. (Note: Locking in basement has never been a Super Nanny approach. I myself do not recommend this approach on a human, but it works very well with demon cats.)

I have actually been thinking a lot of jobs recently. I've been thinking about the talents and gifts God has given us, and the ones He hasn't. One of the RDs at Asbury spoke this in chapel a couple of years ago:

Don't you know that I have made you in my image? Anytime you degrade yourself, you degrade me. Anytime you deny or misuse the gifts that I have given you, you are no better than the one who hid his talent in the ground and waited for the master's return. Will I not bestow on you the same fate as him? Why do you compare yourself to others upon whom I have given other talents? Don't you know that all that I have is yours if you will just open your hands, heart, mind, and soul to receive them? When you hide the ways I bless you, you fail to expose me. No amount of false humility or religious jargon will hide these facts from me. You honor me by living life to its fullest. You honor me by speaking truth about how I have kept you. You honor me by being who I have created you to be, and I called you to be you, not [anyone else]. It doesn't matter how much you have felt you messed up things or failed in the past. You fail to humble yourself when you refuse to acknowledge how I have redeemed you. You refuse to be humble when you meditate on your insufficiency, and not on me.

I have learned this, and it has made all the difference. For the longest time I thought I had to try to be someone who would please the Lord, to change myself into someone who could be a servant of the Lord. But now I see He is most pleased when I live in the fullness of all He has created me to be, and I serve Him best when I use the very talents He has given me.

This week I am getting ready to begin a new job at one of my favorite places on earth. I feel incredibly blessed and humbled to be a part of the VCC team. And I am thankful that, when we give everything to the Lord in surrender, He gives right back to us even better.

"This morning was...great. We went to the Vineyard again, and for the first time I lost self-consciousness and felt longing to reach God. See, the sermon explained Jesus' purpose and what he did in a better way than I've ever heard, and when we began to sing "Jesus Paid it All" I felt engulfed in praise to Jesus....Wow. I simply walk into the sanctuary and I feel the presence of the Lord. I don't know if it's I who's changed...or is it the church? But Jesus seems so much more real...alive...close." - journal entry from Sunday, December 2, 2007

And 3 1/2 years later, I get to work there. :)

Vinefest, 2008

just a few standards for my next relationship

After spending the past nine weeks with two-through-14-year-olds, I have made note of a few qualities in the younger generation of men that I would like in my own future and potential soul mate. In my marriage to come, I would like it if my husband:

1) Responds with a whispered “Yes!” of achievement when discovering that I will be staying with him at the rock wall and not departing with the other kids to the game room. (Translation: Desires to spend quality time with me and enjoys my company.)
2) Gives up his swing on the playground for me when another little boy gigglingly steals the one I was going to use. (Translation: Looks for ways to protect me and sacrifice for me.)
3) Lets me into the “No Wimin” fort made out of chairs in the corner of the classroom, even though I’m definitely a wimin. (Translation: Desires my presence at his football-game-viewings on Sunday afternoons, even though I’m a girl, and for more than just the cookies I will bake him.)
4) Scours the campsite for wood to start a campfire, without being asked. (Translation: Provides for me.)
5) Not only requests to sing Justin Bieber, but is my backup singer while I play it on the guitar. (Translation: Supports my gifting and talents, and is my partner in using them.)
6) Tells me about the times he’s climbed his uncle’s rock wall with only his arms, then proceeds to try 3 different times to climb the rock wall with only his arms, and only when I’m there to coach. (Translation: Is humble, strong, and desires to share his accomplishments and struggles with me.)
7) Buys me a fake, stick-on mustache from the gift shop. (Translation: Surprises me with little things to let me know he thinks about me.)
8) Calls me “Dinosaur Lady.” (Translation: Shares my affinity for Jurassic Park.)

I think I’ve had more 10-year-old crushes this summer than I ever had when I was 10 years old. Sometimes boys under 10 know better how to treat a lady than boys over 20. Then again, sometimes they don’t wear underwear for an entire week and think pooping in the lake is cool. Maybe I'm just turning 23 soon and feeling a little undiscovered....

first week of camp

These are a few things I've learned so far:

1.) Asbury cafeteria food is not that bad. ...I'm serious.
2.) When you find a toilet seat without grass, hay, and/or sand on it, give thanks.
3.) Mosquitoes are little satans that need to be destroyed before Jesus' second coming.
4.) I am terribly, terribly out of shape.
5.) 6:15 comes very, very early.
6.) Sometimes 11-year-olds know more about what it looks like to be like Jesus than 21, 51, or 91-year-olds.
7.) When there are huge waves in the lake, do not go tubing if you want to keep your teeth, your nose, and/or your arms.
8.) Going #2 is a luxury that not everyone can afford.
9.) Sonic lemonade slushies with real strawberries and lemons. I have learned these and I am thankful.
10.) When you pray, God hears and answers. Thank you, God.
11.) I'm not kidding about the Asbury cafeteria food.

Week one, almost complete. Chug, chug, chug chug chug....

hair, and the people who cut it

I got my hair cut today. It was not exciting. I played with a 4-year-old girl named Kaylee who wanted me to try her can of Minute Maid orange juice. "You'll like it," she said, nodding coercively. (This is the most peer pressure to drink something I've experienced since high school.) I told her I wasn't thirsty, even though an hour beforehand I had just consumed a plate of sweet potato fries and was, in fact, thirsty. We put together a puzzle of the United States, and, try as I might, I could not get her to understand that the Atlantic Ocean did not fit between Texas and Colorado. We looked high and low for Montana until I gave up and told her that Montana had gone on vacation. Then she got up to get something and I realized she'd been sitting on Montana the whole time.

While the hairdresser was dressing my hair, I thought about my past haircuts. My favorite, by far, was done by none other than my roommate's mother, in my laundry room, one night when I told her, "Just do whatever," and her "whatever" turned out better than any selectively styled, celebrity-mock-ups I'd ever attempted in the past. She lives in Virginia, however, and I can't afford a 1oo-dollar haircut in gas money to drive there and back again (a Haircutt's Tale, by Heather Kraussins).

Over the summer I got my hair cut at a salon in Salt Lake City where everyone wears black and looks chic. They played oldies music and my hairdresser and I chatted about Doris Day most of the time. I didn't particularly love the haircut, but not only did my hairdresser message my neck and scalp as she washed my hair, but she gave me hand messages with lemon oil while the conditioner conditioned my hair. You might guess by this description and the salon's wooden flooring, and that even their light looked like it cost more than regular light (and that everyone wore black), that it would've been an establishment for those rich people who live in a canyon and have heated driveways and waterfalls in the middle of their living rooms. In fact, it was $19. I would definitely go there again, if it didn't cost me a round-trip ticket + $19.

oh, for grace to trust you more

My mom often tells me how very "strong willed" I was as a child. I also got 10 times as many spankings as my brothers. (Once I told my oldest brother to "go to hell" while we built a dam in the creek behind our house. He thought it was funny and couldn't wait to tell my mom. (I confessed before he had the chance to revel in tattling and was punished by doing his share of unloading the dishwasher for a week.))

When I was about six years old, I got a dress that I would probably think was hideous now, but that I adored at the time. It had a black satin slip underneath a sheer, long-sleeved cover with red and rust-colored flowers on it. Um, how does that even sound appealing at all? Except for the fact that it swooshed when I walked.

The only problem was, it was a little too big for me. My mom wouldn't let me wear it to church, and I was angry. I remember putting it on and sitting at the little plastic Play Mate table in my room, in the dark, being angry. Brooding. Wishing I had my way. Wanting something I couldn't have. And all because my will wasn't my own, but my mother's. Not fair.

Today I was thinking about the similarities between my childhood relationship with my mother, and my relationship now with my Lord. The difference now is that I choose to surrender my will to replace it with God's, because He knows when the dress is too big for me to wear (so to speak). But I laughed somewhat pitifully at myself today as I realized how often, in my attitude, I sit at my Play Mate table in the dark, being angry because I'm not getting my way. I realized that here I've been praying "I want what You want," all the while hoping that He wants what I want. It doesn't work that way. The followers who tried to mix their own wills with Jesus' were the ones He told to go away and rethink their devotion. The followers who left their everything to follow Him became His disciples.

What would it be like to be completely and wholly surrendered to the Lord, mind, body, and spirit?

"Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground." - Psalm 143:10

just from Jesus simply taking

I babysat a 3-year-old boy on Tuesday. He slept most of the time, but at one point he began to cry out. I went into his room and sat on the edge of the bed.
"What's wrong, Cesario?"
He just kept crying. I rubbed his back and asked again, "What is it, buddy?"
Then he stretched out his arms to me and said, "Uppy." I lifted him up and he completely melded into me, without hesitation, his head on my shoulder and his arms on either side of me. He just lay there, and I began to sway. I hummed the only song I could think of: "Nothing But the Blood of Jesus."

As I rocked this little boy in my arms, whom I held so close to my chest, I thought about how completely safe he felt. He was completely dependent on me. Maybe he'd had a bad dream, or maybe he'd just opened his eyes and been afraid of the dark and quiet. Whatever it was, while he was by himself, he was scared. But in my arms, he could rest, because it wasn't up to him. I was there. Cesario trusted me with his entire well-being, which allowed him utter rest.

What would it look like to be like a 3-year-old child in Jesus' arms? What would it be like to trust Him so much, that all fears and worries completely disappear in His presence, and we realize, "He's here. It's okay now"? What would it look like to rest in Jesus? I want to know that complete lack of fear that comes with trusting in the Lord. I want to rest in Him.

"Let the beloved of the LORD rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders." (Deuteronomy 33:12)

I asked Cesario, "Are you ready to lay back down?"
There was a pause before his little brown-haired head shook "no" against my cheek. I didn't expect him to think about it, then say, "Why, yes, I suppose that is sufficient. I'll lay back down now." And, in fact, I preferred he wasn't ready. I wanted him to feel safe forever.