"Middle age...

Is when your age starts to show around your middle." -Bob Hope

I've never been much of a fighter or arguer. I mean, I remember fighting with Ben, but that mostly included hitting him until Mom caught us. (I found out recently that Mom and Dad used to wish, and possibly encourage, Ben to hit me back, the theory being that if he hit me back, it would hurt, and I'd never hit him again. I don't remember if I outgrew it or if he hit me, all I know is we stopped.)

In high school and at YWAM, I didn't argue much... I have an opinion and it is generally fully formed in my brain (though not always... Which is a problem, because if I have to think about it, then that means that people have already moved on to another point before I have my ideas formed and out), but I don't like it at all. I don't like telling someone they're wrong, especially if they're my friend. And I don't like when they tell me I'm wrong.

And, I hate when people talk over me. Sometimes, people are so excited about their opinion that they just talk over everyone else in an effort to get theirs out.

Apparently, I live with some arguers. We got into a discussion tonight about when people are most attractive.

The point of this is not the argument. I was greatly amused by watching them all argue with each other, and actually enjoyed when I was able to state my opinion. (It only lasted about 30 seconds. But it was more than normal.)

I guess I've come to the conclusion that God gave us creative minds and thus the ability to debate and discuss. I have formed views on abortion, adoption, homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, and interacting with other religions; but to discuss said views with someone else brings in their own spin on it, which may or may not alter my views.

I think to become a good fighter is not to be able to argue your point to death, but to be able to argue your point in a way that gets it across to other people, without anyone being offended or feeling like their views aren't being heard.

Winning someone over to your side definitely helps, though.

"Before you know it,

A sense of God's wholeness, of everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life." (Philippians 4:7, the Message)

I think every Christian has "that thing", "that person", "that" part of their past that made, or makes them, think about rejecting Christianity.

Mine was Grace Community Church (name changed for health, grace, and safety...). GCC was the first place my parents had felt accepted in a while, and honestly, I felt accepted there too- for a long time. Our entire family was involved in ministry, my parents had places of leadership, things seemed to fit together.

But there were a lot of disconnects... Places that I saw the leaders of GCC say they were moving in the Spirit, or things that they claimed were being done or heard from God, but weren't being blessed by God, or actually being done.

My family ended up hurt and escaping the whole situation, stopping only to lick our wounds before moving further away.

I rejected everything I had learned at GCC- speaking in tongues, the prophetic, healing ministry, hugs, receiving love, giving love. Everything in the world of the church I had grown up in, had ever been taught about ministry and the spiritual realm and the ways God works.

God, and His awesomeness and power and the things He can do, had become something to fear, not something to anticipate.

I struggled through YWAM as people prayed over me in tongues, encouraged me to discover my spiritual gifts, and seemed to ignore my hurts. I was still licking my wounds, and everyone was telling me to get over them- now, and fast.

I remember one time, specifically, when I felt attacked by those who were supposed to be my supporters. The teacher of the week had us in our small groups, and those who didn't have the gift of praying in tongues were supposed to be receiving prayer from those who did have said gift. Problem was, I didn't want it. I didn't want to touch it with a 22 1/2 foot pole, let alone think about letting it near me.

My small group was very receptive and tried to be compassionate towards the situation, but I still stood there with my arms folded across my chest as they prayed that my heart would get to the point where I could forgive and thus move in the gifts of the spirit.

I was recently at a ministry opportunity where we were in a large group, a corporate worship and prayer session. We were singing the chorus to this one song over and over again, something about being set free. I was standing there, for once actually worshiping instead of watching everyone else and wondering what I was "supposed" to be doing, and I remember thinking, "I am free."

I hadn't decided as I walked into that meeting that I wanted to speak in tongues, I hadn't planned to ask God for that, I did not choose to speak in tongues that evening. But as I stood there, in total peace with God, the words I was singing were no longer English. I caught a glimpse of the healing God had planned for me, the redemption He had waiting.

In the months that have passed since then, I haven't actively pursued that redemption, but I knew it was lurking. I meditated on Joel 2:25-26 ("Then, I will make up to you the years the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, my great army which I have sent among you. You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you; then my people will never be put to shame.") and prayed for the day when shame wouldn't be what ruled my days, but rather the peace and comfort of a loving church family, where I could be myself in my skin, instead of trying to fill the mold I felt placed in front of me.

And I still have my misconceptions and my concerns over the supernatural.

When I started attending our house church, 24/7 church, I had the same experience I've had with churches for the last 3 years- I can settle... After a long while. So I walk in and I check over my shoulder, am on guard for the whole time. After I've been somewhere for a couple meetings, if I like what's going on, I can generally settle down towards the end of a meeting- but I'm still anxious at the beginning.

That was the experience I was having at 24/7 church. I was feeling accepted, and I knew I was welcome. I knew that these were people I could trust, and I knew that they were following the spirit of God. But I didn't really buy that I would ever feel safe there.

This evening, however, I walked in and settled in. I didn't notice- not right away. But as we were worshiping, I journaled:

"Tonight has been one of the first times in years where I've walked into a "church" setting anxiety-free, without doubting if what I was going to find once inside was going to eat me alive. I'm sure that it is partially the people and the place... But I'm almost sure that it's partially me, simply being able to be somewhere, not constantly looking over my shoulder, double checking and super over analyzing. God's got my back, I just have to keep walking forward."

And then the teaching started. And beautiful words about the purpose of prophesy and church and their intended purposes, and our goals in relationships, and the meaning of scripture poured over my ears, and I fell back into old habits- I briefly considered bolting from the room. Although I don't know where I would have gone- we were in the mountains and there's no cell reception. Also, I'm the least wilderness-survival-preparedness-knowledgeable person there is, so there goes that.

I decided I'd wait it out and see how it went. And then we flipped in our Bibles to Joel 2:25-26.

And I settled.

God speaks to me through scripture, apparently, and I've seen this multiple times since my move to the mountains- in the Jeremiah 29:11 thing, and now in this.

I think because scripture is concrete- I can mark it up and come back to it later and it's exactly where it was before, saying exactly the same thing.

But it's also changing. Scripture can mean something totally different when I read it one time than it is another, based on my life circumstance or the teaching being paired with it.

It's like stars on a stormy night. Earlier, hannaHRose and I (eventually joined by Sarah) went out and laid in the driveway. There were only two stars (one of them might have been an airplane) but they were so beautiful. I might not have ever noticed those two stars on any other night, but tonight, because they were perfectly framed by the clouds and dark sky, they were the most beautiful stars I've ever seen.

I'm sick and a little foggy, still, but one thing I know is true:

I have lasted the night, come out of the desert having not just survived, but thrived.

It is a new day's dawn. And it was worth the fight.

I like blogging because it's like writing in a journal with the intent of other people reading...

While being content if I'm the only one. -Kansas Heiskell, Stories are Like Time Machines

2010 was always the year that I looked forward to for graduation of high school and beginning college. Instead, 2010 has become so much more. In the last year, I have:

Packed up my life (first time).
Moved to Texas to begin YWAM.
Met people from Spain/Chile, Korea, the Netherlands, Canada, Peru, and all over the United States.
Spent 36 hours without heat or plumbing, thanks to Texas not knowing how to deal with snow.
Learned that men are like waffles, and women are like spaghetti.
Celebrated my 18th birthday.
Packed up my life (second time).
Traveled to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania.
Lived with little bugs eating me alive for 5 weeks.
Packed up my life (third time).
Moved home, to Pennsylvania.
Graduated (officially).
Finally saw Toy Story 3, after waiting for it for over half of my life.
Watched my carefully laid plans fall to crap.
Got my first (of several, hopefully) tattoo.
Packed up my life (fourth time).
Moved to "hippyville"- I.e., Cullowhee, NC.
Ate my first Bojangles meal (the second one was much better.)
Met some of the best friends I've ever had.
Watched all 6 seasons of the Office in less than two weeks.
Became hannaHRose's personal hair colorist.
Fell in love with the mountains.
Learned to cook for one on a budget.
Used about 500 index cards on the vocab words I needed to learn for my psychology class.
Learned to contra dance.
Threw balloons full of paint at my roommates.
Watched my roommates morph from strangers into friends into something that more resembles sisters.
Helped clean hannaHRose's room- 6 days, 4 bags of trash, 5 bags of yard sale/giveaway...
Found a job after two months of looking.
Took waaay too many pictures of everything that happened to or around me.
Got a car.
About tripled the number of movies I've seen.
Traveled home for the holidays (worst trip ever, but so worth it to be with my family for Christmas).

You know, when you look at that list, it seems as though I've done very little of true consequence. Yeah, I traveled overseas and prayed for people, and maybe influenced a couple of their lives. But, outwardly, it doesn't really look like I've done anything to really change the world.

This year has been more of a year in which God has rocked my world, worked with me internally. This year, I really learned to love passionately instead of passively. I learned to accept love. I learned to listen to God. I learned that sometimes, listening to God means following your heart and allowing Him to work in the situation you choose. I learned that following God means obeying him, being his hands and feet, for every minute of every day. I learned to compromise. I learned what things matter, what things don't, what things are worth stressing over, and which things to let go. I learned that just because a budget looks good on paper doesn't mean it will work out in real life (and that sometimes it will). I learned that God always comes through. I learned to take criticism in a way that helps make me better, instead of a way that ruins me. I allowed some scars to be healed that I had never allowed to be touched. I learned that you give up a few things chasing a dream. I learned that my dreams might be a little different from God's. I began to understand what it means to be in a constant, loving romance with God. I learned to not only make friends, but to be a friend.

This year will not only be remembered as the year that I found God's arms and settled back into them; this year is the year that I stopped being a person, simply one who exists, and began to function as a human, one created by God.

Bring it on, 2011... I can't wait to see what you've got :)

Me and the baby brother in Houston, TX Dec. 31, 2009

Me and the roommates, fall 2010

Combining those two things is like mixing ice cream with manure...

It may not do much to the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream. Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President

I wrote this back in September, but I feel like it fits the "thankfulness for everything God has been doing" deal. So, here 'tis.

So there's been a lot of questions about how I ended up here, why I'm here, and what's been going on since I got here. I'd like to clear that up for myself, and for all of you. So.

Way back in February, my roommate at YWAM, hannaHRose (who is kind of a hippie and rocked my entire world to its core), jokingly said I could come live with her after DTS. At the time I was horrified at the idea and said something along the lines of "Dear God no."
In May, when I got home, all my big plans for my life started falling apart. I couldn't go to my dream school because it cost too much money... My back up cost too much money. My back up to my back up wasn't accepting into the program anymore. I started thinking about North Carolina. Was this something that could really happen? Something that, maybe, would be good for me? I looked into the college here. They didn't have an OT program, but could I take a couple Gen Eds to get out of the way? They weren't accepting anymore freshmen. But then the counselor wanted to work with me and get me into their school. So I was going to take one course. But wait- that cost too much money (if the government wants me to go to college so bad, why does it cost so much darn money??). But I had already saved all this money to pay rent and buy groceries... So it was decided that I would move down anyway. 2 days before their registration deadline, I signed up for a class at RACC. I packed up my things, sucked up the fact that life wasn't going the way I wanted it to, and came down to NC with my tail between my legs. Thrilled to see hannaHRose and be living in the same state as her again, looking forward to the adventure and being on my own, loving the idea of being out of Lancaster again... But terrified of what was going to happen.
Yeah, I had prayed about this- a LOT. And yes, I felt like it was God. But I had talked myself into things before. What if this was one of those things? What if this was me wanting this to be where God was putting me? But on the other hand, this was the only door that had stayed open. This was the only place I had to go, other than sitting at home and being dormant for 5 months. This was, it seemed, my only choice.
I got here and, almost instantly, all the memories came rushing back. The good ones, mostly- the ones that came out in stories that hannaHRose and I managed to get out between bits of laughter. The ones that, for our first 24 hours back together, came non-stop, no matter how much we tried to stop talking about YWAM. But behind those memories were all the harder ones. The ones of what God had done through me during DTS, the ones of what God had done FOR me during DTS. The ones that I had thrown away.
You see, while I was at home this summer, I forgot. I forgot what God had spoken to me, I forgot what I had learned, I forgot what it was like to be in a personal relationship with the one true living God. I threw away all the hard work, all the time and effort, all the blood, sweat, and tears, for a summer of emptiness. A summer of "Well, maybe this is how I'm supposed to live. Maybe I'm not supposed to be relevant. Maybe, I'm supposed to be the kind of Christian who goes to church on Sunday and Wednesday and doesn't think about it for the rest of the week. The kind who gets married and has 2 children, a girl and a boy, and volunteers in the nursery and bakes cookies for youth group." But then I got here.
Here, LIFE is church. You walk in this house and the Holy Spirit is like, WHAM. You forget that you're supposed to say you're a Christian because you're too busy being a follower of Jesus. Everything that was my life for those 5 months at YWAM was preperation for my life here... For self-reflection (which I do a lot of). For ministering into other people's lives (God has me in a place where a friend comes to me at 1 AM and says, this is what I'm dealing with. And it's exactly what I'm dealing with. It's weird, but it's awesome). For having my life ministered into. For being free, released, to have friends, to be friends, to make friends. To open myself up to someone within an hour of meeting them, to hug everyone who walks through our front door, to share whatever it is we have- sweet tea, pie, a movie. To realize that this is where I'm supposed to be, right now, for this time in my life. Maybe for longer.
As I said before, I've had a lot of time for self-reflection. For going back to my hurts and why they're still hurts and not history. Which, for me, means reading. (I'm blessed to be living in a house with people who love books as much as I do and always have a reccommendation.) I read "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller at hannaHRose's request... At first, it was to humor her. And then it became this obsessive thing... This guy came from where I was with God a year ago ("My life had become something to hide; there were secrets in it. My thoughts were private thoughts, my lies were barriers that protected my thoughts, my sharp tonge a weapon to protect the ugly me.") to having all of this book left, which meant God HAD to get better... And, while I'm not to this point yet, I rejoiced when Don says, "To be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously." I rejoiced in knowing that, apparently, God does get better! It's not the end of the story! God knows what He's doing! And, even more than that, I rejoiced in knowing that someone else had been through the same desert I was in! I was not alone!
Then, 3 days ago, hannaHRose handed me "Angry Conversations with God". I almost picked it up a few days ago, but I didn't want to be disappointed by her only being angry with God for the first 5 pages and then getting over it. I couldn't handle it.
I got hooked. And the more hooked I got, the more I couldn't make myself read it. This was way too much like my life. This was this woman saying to her counselor, "Either God isn't personal and I've wasted my time, or He is personal and He hates me." And her counselor telling her, just like so many people have tried to tell me, that there is another option. "God loves you, but crappy things still happen." Yeah whatever. I was halfway through the book. God doesn't get better in this one. But then I got to page 145. And on page 145, I discovered something. I discovered that God speaks into my life even when I want to shove Him off a cliff or slam the door in His face (this was one of those lessons I learned in DTS, but rejected). Susan E. Isaacs says, on her moving across the country, "Perhaps God tricked me into moving here. Maybe he lured me out here with a shiny object and then pulled a bait and switch. But maybe I needed a shiny object to get here, because the real gift might not be so shiny. And maybe I just need to be patient and discover what the real gift is. Besides, Jesus has never let me down..."

I realized... It's true. Jesus has never let me down. And if someone had told me I was coming here so God could get me to look inward and upward, I would have run as fast as I've ever run. The thing is... All the things I have seen in the last 3 weeks, all the things I wake up every morning clinging to and spend my last moments at night rehashing with God, are foundational truths that I would rather not know so that I could keep living my life (which I wasn't really living, anyway.... I was wasting it). This place- Cullowhee, NC- has become the place where I came out of the desert. The place where I found (again), and finally settled into, the arms of God.

To be continued, with where I am at now...

You're never satisfied.

If you get all A's, you wonder where are the pluses. You start out just running away, and you end up wanting to know everything. Wanting to be Joan of Arc, Clara Barton, and Florence Nightingown all in one. E. L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler


When I was writing about thankfulness yesterday, I forgot something. It's one thing to endure your situation and be thankful for it... To thank God for the lessons learned, even though it sucks. It's a whole other animal to be in your circumstance, be thanking God, and enjoying it. I know, enjoy it? My life sucks- that's why I'm in this whole thankfulness rut anyway. But here's the thing- someday, you'll turn around and laugh. So you might as well laugh now, and enjoy it while it's happening. Even if you're enjoying the revelation that life sucks, and there's nothing you can do about it, you can still laugh at the irony and move on, knowing that better days are coming.

I'm flying to my parents house this morning, to be home for Christmas. However, since the airport is a ways away from my house, I'm hanging out with an old friend from YWAM. I had heard that my favorite chocolate, Milka, was sold at Target. Since our closest Target is near Joel's house, and Milka is kind of a YWAM memory, I suggested we go to get some. We had a swell time, even talking to another friend from YWAM who happened to call while we were on this immensely important errand. However, as we started driving back home to settle in, watch a movie, and enjoy our expensive European chocolate, Joel's truck started doing a funny thing. Joel called it "chugging", which amuses me, because I always equated that with drinking a large amount of liquid way too fast. And the more stressed Joel got, the more amused I became. Yeah, I knew the truck was a big deal, but I'm in this spot where whatever happens is totally a God thing and He's handling everything- so I was willing to just move on.

Joel pulled the truck over, at which point I said, "Joel, are you out of gas?" "No, no no... I just filled up." I said "Ok..." right as the truck died.

We sat by the road for about 15 minutes waiting for Joel's brother-in-law to bring us some gas. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience- teasing Joel for not knowing how to fill up his gas tank and just having a grand old time in general.

(An aside: Joel is one of the friends I can rag on and not have any drama, as it goes both ways. The poor kid was stressed, but we both realized it was a dumb mistake. One that now, he'll never live down :D)

Eventually, the gas came and we drove away, no worse for wear and giggling- me at Joel's expense, and Joel out of sheer joy that there wasn't any big issue with his piece of crap truck.

And I realized- In walking in thankfulness, in all things, I've come to enjoy the things that aren't such a huge deal for what they are- small things that show me, on a daily basis, that God is taking care of me.

In a few hours, I'll get on a plane- hopefully after not having any issues with security or with the size of my bag as a carry-on. I might get stuck next to a creepy businessman who snores, or a woman with a mustache who likes to talk too much. But, at the end of it, I'll be in Pennsylvania, with my family, for the holidays.

It will be so totally worth any issues that arise- and I'll enjoy them, and try to take them thankfully, in stride, as they come.