learning doesn't end with graduation!

Last night Lydia (my soon-to-be Wooster roommate and partner in InterVarsity ministry) and I watched An Education. It was heavy and full of deceit, yet redeeming at the end. I've also been receiving an education...though, I am thankful to God, nothing like the one Jenny received in the movie last night.

One lesson I'm learning, in-process:

- The Asbury community is a rare thing, even among other Christian communities. Unconditional acceptance and love for people just because they're brothers and sisters in Christ is not a given.
- It's not as easy to show unconditional acceptance and love to others when you're not surrounded by it yourself. Suddenly I begin to see that maybe loving others came so easily to me because I was being loved so much by others. It's not so easy to give out love when you're not receiving it.
- The wise words of my friend Ciara: "Even if you aren't getting that love and encouragement from those around you, don't be afraid to give it anyway. It's worth it."
- The wise words of Paul the apostle: "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you" (Ephesians 4:29-32). Just let it sink in for a moment that hurting others grieves God's Spirit...even if it's something so "small" as words that are not wholesome.
- Back to Ciara: "I think we forget how much power we have over other human beings. It really makes you think about how you treat people yourself. I never want to make anyone feel the way some people have made me feel."

It's so easy to stick with people who make you feel good and love them because they love you. It's even easy to love those who don't love you, as long as you have people who are pouring love into you. But when you aren't being loved by those around you, and those who do love you are very, very far away...do you still love? And how?

- The wise words of Thomas the Domino's Guy: "The Lord is your strength, if you allow yourselves to be vessels."
- Back to Paul: "Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work" (2 Timothy 2:21).
- And to quote Tim Hughes: "Fill us up and send us out."

oh, how He loves us so

Now that the weather's warmer, I've been thinking a lot about last summer. I miss the mountains of Utah. I miss their grandness, their beauty, and most of all, the way I felt God so near while I was surrounded by them. While I pined for the mountains, I realized I was really pining for the Lord.

A couple of days ago as I drove down the street, billowing white clouds sat on a perfectly blue sky. The sun shot beams through the cracks of the clouds all the way to the horizon. It was beautiful. I felt I could be swallowed by the light; I felt completely surrounded. And I felt like God was telling me, "I am near you, no matter where you are."

I love that He hears the cries of our hearts, even when we don't know what we're crying. I love that He provides in the most creative, unexpected ways. He promises and proves His provision over and over again. For example....

"Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds." - Psalm 36:5

just a day

I'm reading a Donald Miller book, and reading Donald Miller always makes me want to write. Of course, when I write after I read something that makes me want to write, I usually end up writing like whatever it is I've just read. It's like when I listen to Doris Day, I then sing everything like Doris Day.

Today Dad took me for a ride in his blue, '85 convertible. I put my arms up in the air, straight above my head, just because I could. "Isn't this nice?" Dad said. "Just being out in it all?" Then we hit a thick patch of manure-infused Wisconsin air, Dad started coughing, and I laughed.

This afternoon I found myself standing on the deck thinking about absolutely nothing but how the warmth from the deck on my feet met the warmth from the sun on my shoulders somewhere around my middle and made me want to take a nap standing up. I like moments like that.

I like Wisconsin summers. I sometimes start to feel a little sad that I won't be here...until I remember that I like Ohio summers even better. Right now I'm drinking coffee and listening to a tractor across the street. Weeks like this one, frozen in-between times, will be rare from now on. I'm going to cherish this one.

story

I spent my early teen years consuming Robin Jones Gunn novels, in which events would happen not to make the novel realistic, but keep the reader's attention. I used to pine for occurrences like the ones in RJG books to happen in my own life. Rereading them as an adult, I would find one of my eyes squinting beneath furrowed eyebrows as I tell the pages, "That would never happen."

This year has proved that opinion very wrong. So many things that have happened in the last 12 months might be considered unbelievable and unrealistic, but I look over my shoulder at them and know that they happened. I have their lessons tucked in my pockets or sprinkled across my heart, some like scars and some merely freckles or pleasantly-colored berry stains. And I know it isn't over. If my story were to end right now, it would look something like this:

"And she graduated single, grateful for all that had come to pass, sad to leave the Kentucky grass she'd walked barefoot in for four years with those she most loved, but hopeful that the Lord would provide for her the way He had so faithfully through the past."

But it doesn't end here. I don't have to end hopeful. Like Abraham who "did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised" (Romans 4:20-21). I know He will provide for me. I know He will give me what I need, even when I don't know I need it. He's done it over the past 12 months. He will continue to do it. Hope does not disappoint (Romans 5:5), because the Lord will fulfill His purpose for me! (Proverbs 13:12)

I think He waits in expectation for certain parts of His plot to be revealed on my journey, like when the author watches a reader get to a certain part in the novel to see his reaction. I know it has not been all sunbeams and yellow butterflies, and will not always be, but I have received so much unexpected goodness out of the unexpected badness that started as unexpected goodness. I'm grateful for the unexpected! I'm grateful for what has been given me that I never could have planned for myself. And it makes me wonder, what if what is unbelievably improbable is the kind of normalcy God wants us to live in? What if "coincidences" are more reality than when life is predictable or even just...believable?

The God I serve is more creative than a cheesy Christian fiction writer. Why shouldn't real life be unrealistic?

my journals remember summer, '07

3/27/07, I have some kind of cyst on my lip that I'm afraid I'll need oral surgery on. :s <-- That's my lip quivering with tears. Pitiful, isn't it.

5/14/07, Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment to get this dumb CYST (cannibalistic yoke of stupid tyranny) off my lip. Oh, I hope they can.

5/15/07, If I were to wish death upon one thing right now, it would be mucoceles, which apparently is what I have on my lip. And after passing the 2-month mark we celebrate our time together by waiting two more months. Two more months with a pea lodged between my gum and lip, because it'll "resolve on its own." Right, and I' am a cow, I love chewing grass, and milking is my FAVORITE time of day, moo.
When the dentist told me to wait 2 more months I almost cried. Maybe I should name it so it'll be easier to bear. Like children. Mucocele, thy name is...Adolf. Because I want it removed from the office of my mouth.

5/16/07, This is me a.) with my new haircut and b.) with Adolf on my lip. My lower lip is being pulled down, you see, so that Adolf is in full view.

6/3/07, Adolf ceased to show for a while after I chewed on him till he was a gaping hole. I had hope he shot himself in the bunker and wouldn't be returning...but alas, he began growing again today. It was pleasant, those few days without him. That's probably how the Jews felt, too.

6/21/07, R.I.P Adolf
March 11 - June 21, 2007
The oral surgeon's words were, "I'm pretty sure it won't come back....." Uh, "pretty sure"? "Yes you have cancer but I'm pretty sure you won't die." Thanks, doc.
I was almost positive he wasn't going to do anything about Adolf today, so when the nurse (?) gave me the glasses and the surgeon fired up his laser, I was surprised. He numbed my lip and I swallowed the bitter-tasting stuff and wondered if my throat would go numb and close up and I'd die. To my knowledge it hasn't.
Then he started cutting into my lip. I felt nothing, but smelled the burning. It was disturbing, knowing they were lasering my lip and it was smoking. A nurse (assistant?) had to stand there with suction so I wouldn't be exfixiated by the scent of my own burning flesh.
Afterward (it only took about 15 min.) Mom took me to the used bookstore downtown and I bought 3 (count 'em: THREE!) Daphne [du Maurier] books for $9. So pleased, despite the gauze puffing out my lower lip and the swollen numbness that made half my lip turn white. (I wondered if the circulation had been cut off and my lip would rot and fall off. To my knowledge it hasn't.)
I regained feeling around 2 and it doesn't hurt very much; only when I move it a lot. It's a black hole and looks a little gross. I prefer not to feel it with my tongue 'cause it grosses me out.

consider the ravens

It's almost impossible to answer people when they ask me, "How was your spring break?" If I answer truthfully, "Incredible," they automatically assume I had a blast somewhere on a beach or a big city or something. "I'm so glad you had fun!" they usually say. Oh...that just doesn't cut it.

One of my professors, who knew my state of being before spring break, asked me genuinely, "How was your break?" I answered, "Great. Unexpectedly great."

I learned a lot of things this past week. I learned that the Lord provides often what you don't even realize you need. Two weeks ago I had wanted nothing but to go home. How was I supposed to give to my teammates and the people of Atlanta when I felt I didn't even have enough to keep myself running? But when I voiced this to one of my team leaders, she said some very simple words that completely dictated the results of my week: "The Lord knows what you need."

Wow. Isn't that silly? I seem to only remember all the times I passionately tell the Lord, "I want to serve You," and forget all the times He tells me, "I will be with you."

This week was an incredible time of giving and receiving, being exhausted and being filled. As hard as the Salvation Army floors were, as early & cold as Atlanta mornings often came, as old as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches got, and as emotionally trying, stretching, and draining the days and nights so often were, I was not ready to be done. I don't know where the Lord is taking me, but if it includes as much true, genuine, and unexpected joy as I experienced this past week - even amidst, and often because of, the hardships - I cannot wait to go.

I love these people.

"Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him." - Matthew 6:8

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.