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.

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

self-centered love

Shouldn't it be an oxy-moron?

I have read this passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together multiple times over the past few months. But every time I read it I see further just how imperfect my love is, how I love out of my own broken cisterns, and how I love selfishly.

There is...a "merely emotional" love of neighbor. Such love is capable of making the most unheard-of sacrifices. Often it far surpasses the genuine love of Christ in fervent devotion and visible results. It speaks the Christian language with overwhelming and stirring eloquence. But it is what the apostle Paul is speaking of when he says: "If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames" (1 Cor. 13:3)--in other words, if I combine the utmost deeds of love with the utmost of devotion--"but do not have love (that is, the love of Christ), I would be nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2). Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ. That is why self-centered love seeks direct contact with other persons. It loves them, not as free persons, but as those whom it binds to itself. It wants to do everything it can to win and conquer; it puts pressure on the other person. It desires to be irresistible, to dominate. Self-centered love does not think much of truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the person loved. Emotional, self-centered love desires other persons, their company. It wants them to return its love, but it does not serve them. On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving....Christ stands between me and others. I do not know in advance what love of others means on the basis of the general idea of love that grows out of my emotional desires. All this may instead be hatred and worst kind of selfishness in the yes of Christ. Only Christ in his Word tells me what love is. Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love for my brothers and sisters really looks like. Therefore, spiritual love is bound to the word of Jesus Christ alone. Where Christ tells me to maintain community for the sake of love, I desire to maintain it. Where the truth of Christ orders me to dissolve a community for the sake of love, I will dissolve it, despite all the protests of my self-centered love. Because spiritual love does not desire but rather serves, it loves an enemy as a brother or sister. It originates neither in the brother or sister nor in the enemy, but in Christ and his word. Self-centered, emotional love can never comprehend spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above. It is something completely strange, new, and incomprehensible to all earthly love.

How much I fall short!

Lord, forgive me for my self-centered love, and teach me Your love, which is so contrary to my human nature and the emotional love of this world.

feeding your inner-introvert

Extroverts are like those huge trees in Florida whose roots lay on top of the ground like monstrous wooded Octopus tentacles, sprawling out for human interaction. The sunshine of people's presences and the mist of retirement communities's sprinkler systems is enough to feed and water them. (I actually know nothing about these trees, so I hope no horticulturalists are reading this, disapprovingly clicking their tongues at me. I can't take disapproving tongue-clicks!) Their roots soak up the environment around them like scaly reptiles in the sun. Sssssssssss.

Introverts, however, are more like trees whose roots are buried deep in the soil. They need gulps of flood water to penetrate the soil, or else the heat of the sun scorches their leaves and leaves them wilted and pitiful.

I am an introverted tree who has been trying to water my roots like a gargantuan Floridian tree, and now my leaves are wilting. I love the sun for its chlorophyll and vitamin D, but without water I'm scorching, and the sprinkler systems of the extroverted world are not enough.

I realized last night that loving people does not mean that I can be around them all the time. All the energy I have I would love to spill onto them, but so many things are taking up my energy that I'm drawing on reserves to give to people until I am slowly being depleted. And this leaves me no time to replenish what I've lost, if every spare moment I'm looking for more ways to BE WITH PEOPLE. It's a balance system I have not mastered, and still don't understand. I hope my future occupation is working with people, so that they can have my energy.

Ways to recover and feed my introvertedness in order to rejuvenate and de-stress:

• My favorite part of the day is walking to class down my street in the mornings. The sky is always so early, unmarred, and glassy, like a cold pool without the ripples of the day in it yet. I need to relish this more and spend it in praise to the God who created it.
• Black Beauty. Ultimate relaxing, everything-will-be-all-right movie. What is more serene than watching butterflies land on pink flowers to the music of Danny Elfman?
• Participating in unimportant - yet not unproductive - things, like watching curling. There is something peaceful about that sport, like golf - except they don't yell at each other in golf ("YUP! YUP!"), and curling is a lot more technical (Team USA: "I'd say you gave it a 7-8. It landed on the button." Me: "Ah, yes, a 7-8. Precisely. You conquered that button").
• Reading, and realizing I'm not missing out on the world by reading. I'm reading The Professor's House for my American Novel class, and for some reason I'm really enjoying it. When I got to class today, Dr. Vincent began it with, "This novel is about someone experiencing a crisis." Oh. Well, maybe that's why.
  
• Spend time with the Lord. Be still, He says. Cease striving, and know that I am God. Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. (Psalm 46:10 NASB & Isaiah 30:15 NLT, respectively.)