To My Fellow Christians

"Come, Lord Jesus."

I think I'm starting to hate this phrase.

I get it.  It's about hope.  And I believe in hoping.  I believe in believing that one day this world will be made new.  I believe that when it happens I will be there rejoicing with my King.  I believe that everything will be good then - no pain, no suffering, no brokenness.  And I want that, really really bad.  I long for that so deeply that my soul aches.

But there's more to it than that.  Jesus's return is more than just the happy ending for Christians.  Jesus's return is also the sad ending, the terrible ending, the only ending for those who have not accepted Christ.

Do you get that?  Do you realize that, when you're begging Jesus to come back right here right now?

When He comes, it will be too late.  For every soul that has not known His love, there will be no more hope.  No more chances to meet the grace that you and I know.

That's why my soul aches.  Because this world is broken.  And I want every last person on this earth to know Him and be mended.  Begging Jesus to return so that my problems are all solved, while there are people in this world who have never even heard His name, is probably the most selfish thing I could ever do.  And it's the most selfish thing I have ever seen others do.

I know it's not intentional.  I know you want redemption in full.  I do, too.  But not yet.  I want to see God, yes.  But I want to be able to stand before Him and tell Him I did everything in my power to save His lost sheep before coming Home.  I want to know that I was out in the field for as long as He let me stay, looking, coaxing, longing for them to come Home with me.

As my Christian university sang that phrase on repeat this week, all I could do was sit down and pray:  "God, not yet.  Please, not yet.  Please let more people come to know You.  I'm sorry I don't want You yet, but please.  Don't come yet."

And I know that neither my prayers nor anyone else's can really dictate Jesus's return.  He's God.  He does what He wants.  But I strongly hope that a humble prayer, asking Him to use us well until the last possible moment, would be on our lips more often than the request for Him to just come back already.  No current suffering, whether yours or someone else's, is bigger than the suffering faced by a human who comes to the end of their life without ever having known God.

So, my friends, please stop asking Jesus to come back.

I challenge you instead to ask Him why He hasn't yet.  Ask Him how He wants to use you to bless others.  Ask Him to equip you to serve Him well until the time comes.

Heartbroken: Thoughts on Faith in a Broken World

I know it's been a long time since I've blogged here, but I'm back to process life a little bit more.

I've been thinking a lot about brokenness lately.

I'll give a little context:  I challenged myself mid-August to spend this year learning to love people better.  In the beginning, I thought it would be about mindset.  I thought it would be about intentionally loving people that I care about, and forcing myself to simply be kind to those I did not like, "for the sake of love".  Well, I was wrong.  Because along with that, I asked God to challenge me.  I asked Him to guide me and to give me opportunities.

The "problem" is, God didn't just show me how to love.  He opened my eyes to something beautiful.  A world I was already deeply in love with.  The people, the places, everything about this earth is wonderful and amazing.  But it is broken.  And now I seem to break down in despair every other day because of that brokenness.  It is so badly broken that no matter where I look, I see something terrible.  Truth does not reign, peace is not abundant, beauty is not appreciated, health and life and joy are scarce at best, and it is not okay.

I am not okay.

Because ever since I realized I was in love with creation, I realized that every single part of creation is hurting.  And I don't like it.  I want everything and everyone to be okay.  To be healthy, beautiful, wonderful, joyful . . .

We live in a broken world.  I've known this since I can remember, but now I am finally, in my heart, aware of it.  And now I waver between these two things:  Anguish - deep and terrible despair, mourning for the total depravity of man; and apathy - absolute uncaring, ultimate surrender of an irresponsible and defeated kind.

I'm a perfectionist.  I'll own that.  I'm a perfectionist.  And I want so badly to believe that anything I could possibly be a part of or have some influence on is perfect - must be perfect.  I'd like to think I have an impact on this world.  But this world is far from perfect.  So what do I do?  I walk away.  Just long enough to think I don't care any more, because perfectionists would rather give up, not try, and walk away uncaring than face the truth that they may have failed at something.  The problem is, I know I'm a failure.  That's what sin is.  I fail every day.  But God has forgiven and redeemed me - and I can't stay away, because I am a part of this world.  I see, feel, hear, know the pain and the brokenness, every single day.  I can't escape it, even when I try to.

So though I waver, I always come back to that first feeling, that despair for this broken world, our broken lives.  And I don't know what to do about it.

It seems that daily I find myself asking God to use me to fix something.  I like fixing things.  I like helping people.  Anything that would bring some form of harmony into this dark and shattered existence.  But I haven't really gotten any answers.  Daily, I ask God what he wants me to do with my life.  What the heck is a poor, young, female, Creative Writing Major in her sophomore year of college going to do to help this world?  God, what do you want from me?  Am I doing something wrong?  Is there something else I could do that is right?  Why don't I feel led to do something?  Why won't you guide me?  Why won't you use me for good?

And more importantly:  Why won't you fix what is broken?

There's a definite tension.  Because I know in my head that it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better, and I'm waiting for that to happen so that Jesus will come.  But I also want so desperately to keep that badness from coming altogether, because then everyone I love so dearly will be protected from final judgment.  I want Jesus to come back, to make things right again, but I'm also terrified that He'll come - too soon - and there will be broken people who I could have saved, helped, drawn to loving Him.

But who am I to make those calls?

God is in control.*  And despite the pain, the brokenness, the fear, and the worry, I know He is good.  I don't understand a lot of this world, but I choose to believe that He is good.  He is the one who knows what is best, and He is the one with the power to save - not me.  Do I wish he would give me some answers?  Yes.  But I will always keep trusting Him and trying to follow His lead.

I pray that He will save those people that I cannot save.  I pray that He will use me when the time is right - or someone else if they are better suited to His use.  I pray that brokenness will be mended - at the proper time.  And I believe it will.

"This would be my comfort;
I would even exult in pain unsparing,
for I have not denied the words of the Holy One."

*I would write more about surrendering, but I don't think I could articulate it any better than this article by a friend of mine, which I was challenged and blessed to read the other day.  If you're curious (and I hope you are), I recommend that you read it as well.

Redemption Thinking

Today, a thought occurred to me.  It may be common knowledge to a lot of the people that I know, but I think it finally just clicked in my head, so I'd like to type it out so I don't forget about it.

I analyze people.  A lot.  I observe how they act and I come to conclusions, whether correct or not, about how they think and what makes them think that way.  Oftentimes, I'm right.  But that isn't always a good thing, because it leads me to judge people.  Instead of accepting a comment at face value, I analyze and judge the motives behind it, and discover or decide that a person's motives are less than pure.  And though sometimes I might be right, and I do seem to have a knack for picking out people's issues and downfalls, it is not my place to judge them.

I struggle with this.  I struggle with loving those who I see as fake, insincere, or just plain bad.  It is the part of me that naturally favors truth over love.  Why should I be kind to someone who does not merit any kindness?

Enter:  Redemption Thinking.

Today I was thinking about New Heaven and New Earth, and how they are free from sin.  That means I won't be flawed any more.  I won't have baggage dragging me down.  I won't be self-conscious or insecure, or trying to impress anyone or even face the temptation to be selfish.  It will be great!  I won't have problems any more.  And those around me won't have problems either.  We will live and work in joyful harmony.

That is pretty amazing.  That is the power of redemption.  God loved us enough to send His son to die so that we could be His heirs, and one day be free from sin.  One day.  That means that here and now there is still sin, and no one is perfect - myself included!  So I'm really not very different from the people around me that I feel tempted to judge, am I?  We are all sinners.  I know that.  So why should I be kind to someone who doesn't merit kindness?  Because none of us deserve kindness.  Not a single person on earth is that righteous on their own.

So today I learned that the only way to look at others kindly is to look through the lens of redemption (or as I now call it, Redemption Thinking).  My friends who are Christians may have sins and struggles, just like I do - but they have accepted God's grace and will one day be made new.  What place have I to judge?  They are awaiting that perfection the same way I am.  And my friends who are not Christians have sins and struggles too, but more than anything else they are in need of God's grace, so that they can one day be made new also.  Again, what place have I to judge?  Not only that, but why would I waste time judging them when I could be reaching out to show them love and compassion, and be God's tool to lead them to Him?  When I look at others through the lens of redemption, there are only two ways to see people:  Free from sin; and in need of freedom.  Why would I not be kind?


I still think there is value in the way I analyze others.  I can see where people struggle and it helps me know how to advise them and point them in better directions.  Having an idea of how someone thinks also helps me know where to be cautious in relationships, and who to trust.  That is good - healthy, even.  There is a difference, then, between observing and learning from those observations, and observing and judging.  The first can work together with Redemption Thinking, the second leaves no room for it.  So when I analyze, I must always do so with caution.

And when I interact with others, whether analyzing or not, I want to interact using Redemption Thinking.

An Apology and A Hope

Because I can't make any promises.

Well, it's been a while.  In fact, it's been almost three months since I last posted on here - almost immediately after promising a weekly posting system.  Well, I take full responsibility for that.  Obviously.  It's my blog.  I can blame my lack of writing on school, on social life, on lack of inspiration - whatever was stopping me on each individual day.  But the bottom line is that I stopped blogging, and when I did, I stopped taking the time to sit down and process my own ideas.  When I did that, I effectively lost a little bit of myself.  Not a lot, but enough that I realized I miss it, and I want it back.  I want to be my full self, and that includes writing about stuff.  Yeah, stuff.  I never quite know what I'll be writing about, but I want to keep writing.  I'm still discovering myself in a lot of ways, and I know blogging helps me to do so.  So here I am, back in the blogsphere.  Begging forgiveness for my absence (not that anyone noticed, or cared, but I'd like to think it's still worth apologizing) and presenting my current hope.

My hope is that I will get back on track with blogging this week, and continue on that track when my second semester begins next week.  I'd like to post at least once a week, like I said I would back in September.  Staying true to the original format of this blog, posts will be random and inexplicable, and cover a plethora of topics.  All I can say is, they will be me.  I present this as a hope because I prefer not to make a promise on which I cannot deliver.  I have no idea what this next chunk of my life will hold.  I can't promise that I'll always be able to post.  But I hope that I will.  I want to.

And with that, I begin the re-entering.  And bid Blogger a wonderful night.

Southern Wisdom

Once again, I come sheepishly to the blogsphere to admit that I was unable to write anything substantial this week.  But a bit of inspiration did strike a few days ago at least enough for me to have something to offer.  So, minuscule readership and inanimate publishing space, I offer you a short story from my life as a middle-schooler . . .


The summer before my seventh grade year, I went to West Virginia with my brother’s Boy Scout troop.  And please don’t stop here to make fun of Boy Scouts.  They get a bad reputation for a lot of really good things, and I respect the way they have shaped my brother into an independent, resourceful, and mature young man.

My parents had decided that this “high adventure” trip would be a great way to sneak in a family vacation, so me, my brother, and our mom and dad piled into a rental car and drove to West Virginia.  We camped there for about a week total, in a tent with a leak during a very rainy month.  My mom backed the rental car into a ditch, and the Boy Scouts provided the meals (Ramen noodles were in excess).  But it was a very enjoyable time.

On one of the first days, we went duckying.  Duckies are, essentially, blowup kayaks made of rafting material.  It was so much fun to paddle down the humongous New River in a tiny little one-person ducky.  I enjoyed my time immensely, and paid no attention to the plethora of somewhat obnoxious middle-school boys surrounding me.

Our guide that day was a large, grizzly man who called himself Squirrel.  He was middle-aged and had obviously been a river guide for a very long time.  He was rude and loud, but in a friendly and hilarious way.  It was immediately obvious to me that he really cared about the people he brought here, but he showed it in a mocking and playful way.  I really enjoyed listening to his stories and just laughing at his sarcastic wit.  I spent a lot of time listening to him as he told us all that he knew about the river.  We all felt very safe based on his knowledge of the rapids.

At the end of the day, we all loaded our duckies onto the trailer and piled into our bus for the drive back up to the camp.  Before we left, Squirrel paced up and down the aisle to give the boys one final lecture of sorts.  When he seemed to be wrapping up his speech about being a man (or just not being stupid, I can’t really remember which), he stopped, standing right next to my seat.  “Finally,” he boomed, and then muttered “where is she?”  When he saw me next to him, he turned so that he could look me straight in the face.  He stood completely still in front of me, pointed his dirty, calloused finger at me, and said in his intense southern drawl, “BOHS LAH.”  It took a second, but I quickly interpreted it to mean, “boys lie.”

And I will never, ever forget that moment.

At the time, I thought I understood what he meant.  Especially because my dad seemed to be so entertained by this whole encounter.  I thought he meant to caution me, to protect me from getting hurt.  And he did.  But every day I am learning that there is so much more to that phrase.

Squirrel was right in more ways than he knew.  Boys do lie.  Boys lie for a lot of reasons.  Sometimes those reasons are good, and sometimes they are not so good.  Sometimes they know they are lying, and sometimes they don’t.  And I think that’s the part that I’ve most had to remember.  Because it’s easy for a “good girl” to convince herself that because she spends her time around “good boys” then those boys will honor her and avoid lying to her.  And maybe that can be true, maybe they really are good boys and they will try to avoid lying.  But what Squirrel taught me, which I must never forget, is that boys lie.  He didn’t say “boys lie when they are trying to deceive you,” although that can definitely be implied.  He said “boys lie.”  They lie to themselves and they lie to each other and they lie to girls.  They might not be trying, but they might lie.

So I have learned to be cautious.  And maybe sometimes I am a little too cautious, but personally, I think that’s better than the alternative.  Lies are powerful, and they are dangerous.  Especially when the liars don’t know they are lying.  I have adopted, over time, a philosophy of suspicion.  Yes, that means I don’t trust very easily.  Yes, that might sometimes be a bad thing.  But when I look at the pain that girls face when they experience heartbreak from the boy who lied to himself and her when he said he loved her, I hurt for her.  And I am reminded that we, as humans, do not know ourselves perfectly.  And that’s okay.  We are, inherently, imperfect.  But it’s still something to be aware of.

I wish I could say that boys are the only liars.  I wish I could say that girls don’t lie.  That boys grow up to be men, and real men don’t lie.  That real women don’t lie either.  But if I said any of those things, then I, too, would be lying to myself.  Because the epidemic of untruth-telling is not age- or gender-specific.  And the greatest danger that I have learned to find there is not the danger of the intentional lies, but of the unintentional lies.  So I caution myself, and I caution others.  We are complicated beings.  Don’t make the mistake of believing your lie or someone else’s so deeply that you are blinded to reality.

Squirrel, you were more right than you knew.

Warm ashes; faintly-glowing coals

I have a confession to make.

I have no blog post lined up for today.  I’ll admit that for at least a day or two, I completely forgot about publishing at all.  But the other days that I did remember, I just didn’t bother to write anything.  Which is entirely my fault.  But in my defense, my grandmother died Monday night.

Jeez, that’s weird.  We’ve only known about the cancer for a couple of months.

But I’m not going to talk about that.  There may or may not be a memoir of sorts published at a later date, but there’s no way that writing one tonight would do her any justice.  I’ll save that for when I can actually form coherent thoughts.  The point in saying that at all is that I haven’t been doing a lot of “deep thinking” lately.  That or I’ve been doing too much and I’m just sort of burnt out.  Either way, I’ll write more about that later.

This post isn’t about her.  It’s about . . . well, nothing in particular.  Not yet, at least.

This post is about all that random logistical stuff that I didn’t bother address when I started this blog . . . over a month ago.  So here’s what’s up.

I’ve been publishing, or attempting to publish, one post/article/rant every five days since the kickoff post.  It worked fairly well when I wasn’t in school, and in the first few weeks of school, because I didn’t really have a large workload yet.  Well, I am finally entering into a routine where I don’t think the every-five-days style is going to work.  Because, A) There are seven days in a week, not five.  Therefore the actual day of the week on which I would post is not consistent.  It’s hard to build a routine around a moving target.  And B) It’s just a little bit too often, considering my current workload.  I have spare time, but I have to be careful about how I spend it.  And frankly, making new friends, catching up with old friends, attending church, etc. all come before blogging.  Sorry, inanimate publishing space.  Oh, and C) I don’t always have ground-breaking ideas (or other . . . randomness) to share every five days!

So here’s the plan.  I’m cutting my blogging schedule down to once a week (I know - such a big change).  As of right now, my plan is to publish something every Saturday, although that may change if I decide another day works better.  HOWEVER - and this is important - I will not limit my writing to a once-a-week pattern.  If I have thoughts or other randomness to document, then I will write smaller posts or share random things throughout the week as well.  Basically, I’m obligating myself to write independently from academics at least once a week, but I am not limiting myself to one post per week.  I hope that makes sense.  I think it does.

So, anyway, there’s that.  That’s all I can think of at the moment.

Now, enjoy a few terribly-written newbie haikus I've written over the last several weeks (really though, I’m working on my poetry skills) . . .

Lake Michigan winds
I left my heart behind there
When can I go back?

We are so broken
Where is there a place to hide?
Waiting for the light

The newness of dorms
Is the greatest adventure
In the smallest space

There’s no place like home
If home is where the heart is
But my heart can grow

Not a fan of school
Education is much more
Than jumping through hoops

As you can see, I need to keep practicing on that front.  But they’re still really fun to write.  My friends got me hooked.

Now.  I have homework to do.

[Insert clever less-abrupt blog post ending here]

Faith, Meaning, and Tough Answers

Another rambling about college life, with a partial plot-twist.  Read at your own risk.


I’m two and a half hours into my first college reading assignment, and I’m already questioning the meaning of my own life.

What.

Wait a minute.  Calm down.  Let me explain.  Even though there really isn’t a lot of explaining to do.

I’m going to college because that’s what people do.  Because that’s what my parents wanted me to do and because I didn’t really have any other post-high school plans.  I’m majoring in youth ministry because bringing Truth to students is one of my passions.  So is serving.  So it just made sense.  I don’t like the idea of traditional education.  As a wise friend of mine once put it, though much more eloquently than I can capture, “I don’t want to put my life on hold for four years just to be stuck in college.”  And I would add to that, “for a degree I may or may not actually need.”  Because, let’s face it, my life will not be a “traditional” life.  If I get married and my husband is able to support our family, then I probably won’t want to get a job anyway.  And if I do, it won’t be full time.  If I don’t get married, I’ll probably spend my life writing books and doing mission work.  Yes, some of these college classes might be helpful in either outcome, but not at a make-it-or-break-it capacity.

Anyway, so I’m sitting on my stereotypical-college-girl fuzzy purple blanket on my top-bunk more-like-a-rock bed, reading from my hundred-dollar textbook about nothing in particular, attempting to write a response to the vague prompt in my 8-page syllabus on the castrated Macbook Pro that the college bestowed upon me at orientation . . . AND I WANT TO THROW THE BOOK OUT THE WINDOW AND WALK OUT THE DOOR AND NEVER COME BACK.  (I would have said I want to throw the Mac, but that would just be a bit too cold, even considering the mutilations this poor computer had to go through)  Why?  Because, well, this guy said it better than I can:

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.”
(Ecclesiastes 1:2)

The work I am doing today, the work I will do on Monday, the work I did this week, the work I’ll do next week.  It’s all meaningless.  Because it’s not growing me.  And maybe at some point it will be beneficial, maybe it will grow me and teach me in unexpected ways.  But as of right now, all I want to do is get up and go somewhere that I can actually be useful, and use the gifts God has given me to actually make a difference in this world.

Yeah, I know that’s a cliche, but it’s still my desire.  I want to do something that matters.  And right now, I feel like nothing I’m doing matters.


Now I’ll take a step outside of that thinking.  That was my thought process last night.  And by the time I finished that assignment, I felt like I had wasted three hours of my life.  But the story changes a bit.  Because I had to take a break for a mandatory residence hall meeting.

And then . . . my floor went on a “sneak”.

Floor sneaks basically mean going out with all the people on your floor and staying out past curfew and not getting in trouble because you went with your RA.  Simple enough, right?  So we all piled into a few cars and drove down the road to Applebee's, and ate appetizers and talked until about midnight.  And my faith in college life was restored.  I got into a discussion with two girls in particular about God’s call.  I’ll spare you the details, but what I walked away with was something like this:

1.  Upon being asked why I chose this college, I realized that I don’t actually know.  It just sort of happened.  And I could look at that in two ways:  That I’m making a huge mistake, or that God is working in my life in greater ways than I know.  I am choosing to look at it in the second way, because of the people I have met and the growth that I have already experienced.  I know He brought me here for a reason.
2.  I may not like the classes or the busy work, or the way this school presents its theology, but in all of those things, there are opportunities for me to observe and to learn - to read between the lines.  I might not learn what I was put in the class to learn, but I can choose to make the best of the place I’m at and teach myself through these experiences.
3.  It’s okay for me to feel like I’m wasting my life.  Because in some ways, I am.  We got talking about a book called Kisses from Katie and the story of the girl who gave up college, marriage, and a normal life in America in order to move to Africa and care for the people who touched her heart there.  She adopted children.  She made a life.  She followed God’s call.  And for her, that didn’t mean college.  Sometimes, I feel like that’s what I should be doing.  BUT, this story and the responses of the girls I sat with give me confidence in another Truth.  The Truth that God uses us all in different ways, at different times, and obviously right now He wants me here.  Whatever reason He has, it must be good.  When the girls told me to read Kisses from Katie, and I said I would, “but after I do I’m going to want to move to Africa,” they confidently told me that they would not let me leave.  I don’t think they realized how powerful that was.  Their innocent faith in God’s plan gave me hope that college, after all, is not meaningless.  It isn’t what I expected, and it isn’t my first choice, but it’s where God wants me.  And He will keep me here for as long as He knows it is necessary.

And that’s what it all comes down to.  We all experience times in our lives that are rougher, harder, more monotonous than others.  And we will all wonder at some point if this is where God really wants us.  We’ll ask Him outright:  “Why am I here?!” because we don’t see the sense in it.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t sense.  God’s plan is good, all the time.  I believe that to be true.  But He is God, and I am only human.  Of course I don’t know everything.  It would be ridiculous for me to even think that I could know everything He has planned for me.  His purpose for my life is much more intricate than I can fathom.  What may seem dull and wasteful to me now will likely make perfect sense a few years down the road, when I’m in a different situation, experiencing a new set of challenges.  Then I might be grateful for the time that I spent here.

My prayer now has become a prayer not of discontent and pleas, but of peace and obedience.  I pray that God will use me, teach me, and grow me where I am.  That He will give me the patience to accept this phase of life.  And that He will keep me here for as long as I need to be here, and make it clear to me when He wants me somewhere else.

I believe with all my heart that if I am in a spirit of humble obedience, then there’s no way I can stray.  God will put me where He wants me to be.  It is when I take matters into my own hands, believing that I know better than Him, and go off on my own to “do something meaningful” that I truly stray.  Because, as I’ve said before, it is not what I’m doing that matters, but why I am doing it.  I am at college because God wants me to be, and I want to obey Him.  And if that’s all He’s asking of me right now, then my goal is to do it as well as I possibly can.  It’s the least I can do.