Before August ends!

   I realize now that I am lucky if I get it together to blog once a month. And geez! What a month it has been! I started a blog about grad school a couple weeks ago but it was actually interrupted by grad school. HA!

   I have officially completed 6 units of grad school this past Sunday! I felt so stressed and so accomplished. I mean I had to start wearing a mouth guard at night in order to prevent the stress-induced clenching and TMJ pain. You know you are high strung when your body spends the nights clenching your teeth instead of resting. I mean, come on. While I wasn’t feeling particularly stressed out, I was. I am.

Grad school is maybe one of the hardest things I’ve ever taken on. And I have learned so much. I ‘ve written more cumulative pages in the last 8 weeks than in my entire undergrad.

   I also completed a theology of church planting class at my church, signed up for a half marathon and started running, fulfilling my duties as a bridesmaid and daughter and employee, started two new graduate classes, bought a plane ticket to Africa, started dating a real human boy, and have been making an extra effort to spend time with my friends. What? I know right. Hence the nighttime jaw-clenching.

   This morning, I re-read my last 6 blog posts from this last year and marveled at the work God has done in me. I am shocked how He has restored my soul and the joy of my salvation. I am in awe of the ways and people he has used to keep me HUMBLY depending on Him. I am overwhelmed by His goodness toward me. By how He sustains me and provides faithfully for me. I can’t believe how well God loves me and shows His grace in ways that make sense to me, and capture my heart. It’s so incredible how true this statement is: I am more wicked than I’ll ever know + more loved than I’ll ever deserve to be.

   On Sunday, I finished my classes, felt so relieved and accomplished. Celebrated with a burrito and great company and felt excited to start new material. On Monday, I woke up to emails about what the new semester holds..about how I need to complete 20 hours of field experience working with students with disabilities and how I need to have a plan in place in 5 days. I literally freaked out. I had no idea that was coming. I thought I had months before I had to do field work. I started reading options and then things that are still yet to come and had a mini melt down.

Then I went back into logical me and started texting/emailing anyone I felt like could be viable options for me. No joke, within 20 minutes I got responses from all three people that they really could help me and were excited to do so.

  I was flabbergasted. I spent a half hour freaking out and God already had it taken care of. It reminded me that in this moment, in my needs for the week- He’s got my back. He knows the beginning from the end and He wont ever fail me.

   My life is busy and my heart is full, very full. My full heart is sometimes filled with uncertainty more than it is filled with anything else. That is a shame because I do not do well with uncertainty. But that’s life, isn’t it? I realized in my freaking out on Monday that the next two years of my life where unknowably uncertain. As in, I can’t even calculate how uncertain they are because so many variables I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve been in a place before where it felt like the floor fell from underneath me because of how uncertain life was. And this season does not feel like that at all. This season feels like I am changing planes on a layover before the greatest adventure yet. So scary and so exciting and so full of hope and soooo insanely uncertain and I am just hoping to not get stuck in Mexico City like that one time.

   I have had so much less time to process my life because it has required me to live every moment of it. I have seen God developing a passion and vision within me for education. I don’t know what that will look like but I know that He will faithfully develop it as I submit to Him.

I have seen the real need for community and fellowship and been challenged to overcome some of the biggest deterrent from that which is my own personality. It isn’t sufficient for me to keep people that far off for very long, especially at the pace that my life is moving. I wish everything could be slower, that I could savor it more, think it through more deeply and be more ready for each day.

   Alas, it is a very fast paced life. However, it really has forced me to reevaluate my priorities. My quiet time, my “free” time, my friend time, my study time, my work time, my workout time. Time is so important. It is the single biggest gift I could give or receive. And when I long for time spent in any single one of these areas, I am reminded of how desperately God wants to spend time with me. Isn’t that CRAZY? That the God of the entire universe wants to spend time with me?

It really has been so cool to see my appetite for time alone with God increased and sustained in one of the busiest seasons of my life.

   I am so blessed. Not without any confusion or heartache, but so deeply grateful for the opportunity to be here, experiencing life and seeing the gospel exalted in my heart and life.

And don’t even get me started on my friends. They aren’t all cake walks, but they like barney’s craft bag but of blessings. I am continually surprised by how richly they bless my life, how they encourage me, how God is at work in them and using them and how amazing it is that I get any time with them when I am not that very great of a friend.

   I took today off work to help my dad reorganize our crap because our garage flooded and our house is under construction in some highly inconvenient ways. But there was confusion and all our stuff isn’t returned by the insurance company until Saturday morning now. So I blog. I document my thankfulness for this day and this season and now I just want to put the rest of this day to good use.

    May your hearts and hands be full. May your days and friends and commitments lead you to a greater pursuit of Christ. And may we all press on!

Moody Monday's Musing

It’s Monday night. I am at a typical and favorite study spot, a café not too far from my house. There aren’t a lot near me so it’s kind of an awesome spot. I am listening to BB King& Eric Clapton and drinking a heath bar mocha, laughing at this Monday.

If you would’ve asked me twelve hours ago, I would have told you very confidently that I crushed this past week of grad school, and to boot, in time to celebrate America’s birthday all weekend long. The fourth was a great motivator for me to stay on task last week. But then I opened my college email to find a request for me to submit a paper in proper formatting. It stabbed me right in the gut and I cried on the spot. Then I frantically read the stupid APA manual and frustrated myself until it was time for me to pack up and hurry to my guitar lesson, which by the way are still happening.

In like two weeks, it will mark 1 entire year of me attending (mostly) weekly lessons. That is longer than I’ve ever committed to paying someone to teach me a hobby. I don’t regret it, even though I’m definitely not God’s gift to guitar playing (I am MAYBE proficient at best). My G scale still is “haltingly slow” as my teacher puts it. My bar chords still suck and I continue to hold my guitar mechanically incorrect to actually be any good at arpeggios. But if you would have asked me twelve hours ago, I would have only been able to speak of it’s positives like how I am inherently better at math now and how I relate to a larger group of people now, listen to music more intently or how I have a super healthy student-teacher relationship with an old guitar wizard that lectured me on my ignorance of Eric Clapton tonight.

It could be because I am listening to the Blues, or because I burnt my tongue on my stupidly yummy heath bar mocha or because I think “why learn APA anyways?”, but today all of a sudden feels like a kick to the gut. Disappointment is seemingly inescapable at this point in the night and I still need to pull it together to reformat a paper and knock out some reading and laundry.

But I believe it’s because this is the perfect opportunity for yesterday’s sermon to hit home a little closer, in the drudgery, in the areas where I feel (hmm.. felt?) like I’ve got a good grip. It’s a good time to reflect on yesterday’s truths that prepared my heart so very well to take communion.

“Anytime we believe or rely on our performance, it makes us radically insecure. It cuts away our assurance and leads us to pride or despair.”

 The pastor went on to say that two things happen when we “perform”:
1.     We ruin the joy of God’s gifts.
2.     We turn His free gift promise into a business contract.

The truth of it is that God is both trustworthy and true and all His gifts depend on Him (The Giver) not on me as the recipient. The love and GOOD NEWS we receive from Him is a promise that He has made to Himself and He alone will keep it, for His Name’s sake!

My heart melts at this news! I mean, THANK GOD that this is true of salvation! The comfort and hope of the gospel news being all about God is that this is true of every day of life, even in the seemingly insignificant things that become big deals to me! The things that I try to manipulate to show my strength and independence, the things I let overwhelm me or define, even in these areas where I expect myself to be put together—I am a sinner and grace is for sinners. Grace is for me.

The single greatest fact about me remains the same; God has grace on me. His gift IS for me and His business contract is with Himself alone.

The reality is that even on a bluesy Monday night when the struggle is ever real, I have nothing to prove, and everything to gain by believing that there is grace for this sinner in the completed work of Christ on the cross. There is grace for an attitude adjustment and its spoken with such sweetness.

Time to get back to reading and formatting and, eventually, laundry. J

SUNDAY sabotage

"Your voice calmed the wind and the sea. Can you calm these storms inside of me?.... Help me believe that You will be my portion and my strength!"

Ahh I have a growing love for Ellie Holcomb. Her lyrics easily sum up the root issues behind the confusing business of being inside my own head so much. Also, she's fun to sing along with in terms of harmony.

I haven't written in a million months and so I'm just going to start with right here, right now. I have for the most part been living in the present and learning to trust the Sovereignty of a truly good God. 

I love cooking and planning days and trips and learning guitar and now in grad school. They take up most of my time. And Yesterday I crafted for the first time in like a year other than the very few things I've made for my office. And I remembered I love crafting too. Weird that I could forget that, right?

I continue to thrive on alone time. Time to worship alone, study alone, process my heart and thoughts alone, binge watch tv alone, cook alone and not necessarily feel alone but whole.

I can't really explain that to some, to some it sounds like torture.. To me it is relief and safety.

This morning however, I sabotage my own self with my aloneness.I love my community group that meets on Thursdays. I truly am developing community with them and finding a valuable place for them in my heart- slow and steady.

I love the church I am going to, but it still doesn't feel like home even though I've been there for nearly 10 months. I can make a list of practical ways to become more connected but at this moment I dread putting in the effort to get up, get ready, drive all the way there, fight for parking and get inside to find that I truly know no one and will leave right after to go be alone some more. It's Sunday's when my aloneness is actually hard...which is incredibly ironic since its God's day and of all days shouldn't I remember how close He really is to me?

The trouble is that I know it is times like these that I need God's precious word and teaching more than anything. So I am getting up now and hopefully won't look too disheveled when I do finally make it to church. 

Oh God! Help me believe that You will be my portion and my strength! Heal my heart. Make me care and love and friendly again and when I fail at that like right now, please remind me just how Good and kind You are!

May your Sunday be filled with grace upon grace, with hope in a trust worthy God and times of worship amidst His kids.

The past month and a playlist.

It has been about a month since I’ve turned 26 or blogged. It has been a hard month. And a good month. Each day seems to bring its own challenge…especially as far as my goals and hope for both this calendar year and this year of my life go. It was as if the moment I set those goals and aspirations, life set out to switch my steady treadmill to intervals..interval training is the fastest way to shock your system back into good cardiovascular conditioning though. Sweet silver linings, not with out a lot of sweat.

The problem is that I can’t seem to fix all the things about myself that I want to- emotionally, physically, spiritually. It often leaves me pretty discouraged internally. It makes me wonder “why even try?’ and so on. But this last month I have also been reminded of how much gray there is. Everything just isn’t black and white all the time. Which is a shame because it’s primarily how I’ve thought forever now. I’m realizing the extent of that as I confront things in me that I don’t like and want to change. It can be so frustrating.

For example, last week at community group we talked about how we all tend to be people pleasers or self-pleasers and I really had trouble with that. Because I can look back at events in my life and see them directly motivated by my swinging back and forth between those two camps one extreme to the other. When the reality is that God calls me to only please Him. This is vastly different from pleasing other or pleasing self because when I choose to be identified as a person set on pleasing God I am free from both of those labels and tempted to always go back to that slavery of worshipping others or worshipping self.

Freedom is what I long for. To be free from living in one extreme to the next, free from fixing one part of me only to fail in another part. Free from living in my own judgment and criticism all the time. Free from trying to make my own way when I AM HIS CHILD AND HE MAKES A WAY FOR ME. Furthermore, He takes me as I am and the only label that matters is that banner over me that reads “His beloved”… why is that SO difficult to live in when it’s the best freakin news on the planet?

I am hopeless and helpless apart from Christ. I am neither a people pleaser or selfish though prone to both. I am His and He is mine and His banner over me is love even when my heart is trying to intricately craft a banner of fear or shame or discontentment or worry or people pleasing or self indulgence or self wisdom to hang in its place. The banner that matters, the flag that flies faithfully over all my ridiculous attempts is His love and nothing less. I need the gospel each day. I need his new mercies, I need to know his unfailing kindness and ever taste of his great grace.

I wrote the above entry before leaving to church on Sunday morning. I was barely able to make myself go until I had written that out and seen that the funk I felt was more a need to hear the gospel than to sleep or clean or organize my life or do. Then, as we continued through Galatians, which is consequently all about freedom, the pastor teaching said, “ We all need and long to hear the words ‘ you are mine and you will be with me in paradise’ we must stand and live and walk in the perfect person of Jesus Christ. We WILL be crushed if we stand on our own.” I knew in that moment that God was reassuring me of His gospel at work in my heart, of His banner of love flying high over me claiming me and keeping me. This is the truth that keeps me running the race regardless of what I’m feeling. This is my hope through all of these days that someday not too far off, I will be with Him in Heaven and see Him as He is and I will know in that moment the wholeness of all the little pieces I hold on to now.

I am thankful that Heaven is at the end of this race.

“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, power and authority before all time now and forever. Amen.” Jude 1:24&25

This passage melts me. Its so regal, so official and so beautiful and insanely for me and not about my doing anything. Its entirely unmerited. It’s so easy to only interpret the entire world through the inward turmoil I am seeing when the lens God gives, the map He presents me to finish the race with is so much kinder, far more motivating and full of promises that He is going to keep.

So, here’s March’s playlist and cheers to remaining in this heart-melting hope.

 
the month in pictures coming soon.

Presiden'ts Weekend and a Birthday Countdown

I love Mexico. I love the tacos, I love that everyone greets you, I love the summer sun in February, I love where I stayed, the view of the Pacific and the South Coronado Island! I am grateful for this past weekend of tanning and napping and cooking and face masks and movie-watching. I am grateful for the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets though my friends have slept through most of them. I am happy to be here resting and relaxing! And even more excited to go eat lobster in Puerto Nuevo.
I was grateful to go home and do marathon laundry and update my garden and rearrange my room. Four day weekends sure are nice!!

I've found myself journaling more frequently this month as I have been dealing with a lot of delicate and personal things, but a blog is well overdue. For starters, I am almost 26 years old. :) I can't help but get excited for my birthday..I'm just one of those people. And I have always been that way even though I've always shared my birthday with my twin.

I can't wait to be 26! Even right now, I am changing words to Lion King songs to be about my birthday. I am very excited to leave my early twenties behind and forge a new path of wisdom and maturity and growth (Lord-willing).

I am excited for a monumental year that will be whatever I carve out of it-nothing more or less. More than any year before, I am aware how fleeting life is, how important my actions are and that most people are only passing through our lives. We choose to embrace people and places and things and I am making a conscious choice to calculate their value and place in my life differently in my 26th year of living!

Before if you had told me that my closest friend was going to move away in 7 months, I would have naturally found a way to phase myself out of that person's life and be unmoved when they left. I would have quit them before they quit me.Messed up, I know.

I don't really fear that anymore. In fact, I can't wait for Hannah to move away (haha!) because I know she is going to be where the Lord has called her to be and with the love of her life AND I get the go visit her in Africa!I will miss her dearly but I know we will both continue to face adventure and life being sustained by our Savior.

I also never imagined I would value a community group of strange people so much. I never knew that letting someone into my life didn't mean that they had to understand my entire back story or be just like me, but rather that they just had to take me and I had to take them and that's that.

I never imagined that I would be taking membership classes to join a church away from most of my friends and what I have known and be so excited about it even when it means they give me homework AND that I have to wait to eat lunch on Sunday's (dun dun duuuunnnn) ha!

And honestly, for the first time in years, I felt SO happy to not have a Valentine, especially since it meant a long weekend in Mexico. And not happy like "please don't pity me, I really am happy" said unconvincingly..or overly-convincing/desperate or happy just because I don't have to buy into the commercialism. But happy and whole and content. I never even knew that I wasn't fully experiencing the joy of being single. It actually unsettles quite a few people, but I am rejoicing because I know it's truly only because God is sustaining me and healing me and keeping me. And He's the only one who can!

I have great hopes for the work God will do in me at 26. I have great expectations of the world I want to see and experience. Great ideas for the people I'll meet and cherish and send off. And little by little, I see God answering my prayer of taking away my fears& for that I am grateful beyond belief! I know this year won't be all smooth sailing, I am still terrified of so many instances my brain conjures. I know tragedy can hit at any time and I know how much I will have to fight to keep hopeful when it does, but so far my only regret is that I didn't know all this sooner.

One week til my birthday...All in good time ( Who am I kidding I already bought myself a present!)

The view from the bridge

For the past few months, I've picked up my friend every Sunday morning before heading out to church. She lives in Coronado so it means I get to drive the wonderful bridge a couple times that day!

The first trip across takes my breath away and makes me laugh because I think the same thing every single week: 

 "Wow! It's SO beautiful! I forgot! Man it's so clear! Look! there's Mexico and Point Loma and the Dell! Wow the water is blue! Wow it's a beautiful day!"

And then the day goes on. I pick up my friend, we drive back across the bridge and speed on up to church.. Service starts at 10am and I still manage to have to speed to barely walk in at its start. We find a seat. We hear a sermon. We typically share a meal somewhere fun or that we've been craving and then we either make more plans or I drive her back across the same bridge to her island home.

At this point, we're engulfed in conversation or singing along or making more plans and I MAY notice how pretty Coronado is. Sometimes we regroup from there and venture out again and I may even have to drive that curved blue bridge back one more time and that third time I usually don't notice any beauty at all (unless the Dell is lit up for Christmas).

It cracks me up because for as long as I've lived here, while I have and do and will always love its palm tree lined streets and silver sandy beaches and warm sunshine-y days, I tend to forget how pretty it actually is. But when I hit halfway up the bridge on a clear Sunday morning I am overwhelmingly reminded of its beauty.

Too often, this is also my approach to the gospel. Yes, it is a crying shame that at any point I may neglect the beauty of San Diego living. But it's an absolute TRAVESTY if I live all week long forgetting the beauty of the gospel! In fact, my life becomes a big fat wreck if I do that. It's not meant to be a once-a-week visit to the Chiropracter for an adjustment or even more dementedly thought, a one-time vaccination to safeguard me from hell. I positively need its beauty, it's grandeur, it's divine intervention every single moment of all of my days.

I need to be sustained by its good news of grace so that I am not consumed by over-analyzing myself or my day or my surroundings or my feelings. I need its freeing power from debilitating shame that wants to cling to me like the biggest wad of gum you've ever stepped in. I need its truth so that my brain isn't bombarded and overtaken by desire or disgust. I need its hope so that there's a point for being where I'm at doing what I'm doing. I need its kindness to motivate me to love people because they can truly suck sometimes. I need its comforting embrace that assures me that it is going to be okay and that I will be taken care of and that God is who He says He is. I need its empowering to have any chance at all of living a worshipful life of self control and patience and any thing good at all. I need the gospel. I need to preach its peace to myself and experience it every day all day and never grow tired or desensitized to it!

I heard it preached a few weeks back from Ken Sande...I guess he lived in Colorado at one point and said that no matter how long he lived there every trip to the Rocky Mountains blew him away. But he noticed that as he drove home the mountains got small (literally and figuratively). I remember that feeling of awe every time I travel somewhere new. The food, the culture, the architecture or people are this big amazing discovery that we just grow accustomed to til its no longer a big deal.

BUT THE GOSPEL IS A BIG DEAL!

The biggest deal.

So we must filter our lives through the sift of the gospel. How will the gospel be the biggest of deals in _______ area in my life. What can I do to always remember the beauty of the gospel? In this instance, I'm blogging about it. At other moments today it looked like me biting my tongue or even apologizing when I felt I was right.  

In other areas of life, I don't even know what the answer is. My brain actually laughs a little because I see no plausible answer, but I know that Jesus is in the business of making a way for the gospel- His love for us manifested through His sinless life and unfair death and victorious resurrection-- to be exalted. It always finds a way to reach us and our lives and our issues and our perspectives.

Tonight, My prayer is just that no part of my heart or life remains unreached this truth.

One Year Later

This past year has undoubtedly been the most unreal and yet the most reflective of the reality of living in this world that I've experienced so far. This world is broken, as are we. Death and loss and sin and selfishness plague us. Its fallen nature takes a toll on us and if we're not careful, on who we were meant to be as image-bearers too. 

Life is hard. Life is beautiful. A dichotomy that puzzles me regularly.

Today stings a little more than I thought it would having sung "oh death, where is your sting?" So many times.

Reading posts about Tracy and the gaping loss everyone still feels and the fears and sadness with that come with that loss remind me of that dichotomy of hard and beautiful. Life can be so hard you wish you weren't living (I've been there this year too) but the loss of life, the death of friendship and dreams is still harder. Today (and nearly everyday) we remember Tracy. He is the kind of friend that upon remembering, you hope you're making him proud. He's also the kind that you selfishly wish were still here doing life with you even though Heaven is a much better place for him. 

Grieving a loss is crazy because it makes you recall all your losses. It cuts deeply and pulls off scabs quickly without notice and it looks different for everyone. And there's no text book way to approach it. I am glad to approach loss knowing that I have a Great High Priest who sympathizes with my weaknesses.

Something I've also learned this year is that grieving a loss also means to honor its memory. Two sides of the same coin and both must be experienced. Honoring Tracy's memory is easy. Camping, American flags, Norah jones, jon foreman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, house, movie quotes and his random tidbits of wisdom and jokes often bring back an overwhelming memory of how passionate he was, how much he loved life and people and how he sought to be invested and connected to the people around him. He was vivacious and rambunctious and hilarious and outgoing. He was a comfort and a joy and could even be a pain in the butt. He had a way of making me laugh, usually at his brother's expense, that I miss so much!

Today I want to honor his memory and his family too. Man, they have been strong!! and vulnerable and had their hands so full, even though I know many times throughout this last year, their hearts and home have probably felt so empty. They are testimonies of how our God sustains. And we can all join together today to grieve our loss, honor Tracy's memory and look forward to Heaven.

Thank God for the Gospel, the hope of heaven, a time to look forward to perfect relationship, wholeness and a sense of family and agape love that we'll never know here. Thank God for Tracy's life. Thank God for Tracy's memory and impact. Thank God for the Newberry family and thank God for today.

I went to LA for the day yesterday. Accidentally hiked ten miles instead of 3 and had a great time with some very sweet girls who drove rather aimlessly around the shady alleys of Venice Beach at night so I could take this picture for Tracy..

 And one of my facorite decorations in my room...

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18