You have so much to offer.

Dear You,

You have so much to offer. You may not feel like it, but you do. God gave you all these gifts, all these dreams, all these desires, all of your personality traits and quirks. He doesn’t make mistakes. Yes, you have weaknesses, but in our weakest places is where He stands the strongest. He is such a gentleman, though. He doesn’t just storm into our souls and mark His territory. He knocks first. Gently. Then—when we are driven to the point of despair and desperation enough to open the door to our soul and, trembling, fall to our knees—He walks in, rolls up His sleeves, and gets to work. He takes our weakest areas and turns it into testimonies to inspire others. He takes the things that once gave us shame and turns them into things we can glorify Him with. He takes abuse, physical and psychological illness, addictions, idols, broken sexuality, self-mutilation, and uses it for an intimate relationship with Him that we would have never had without such desperate circumstances. Not only that, but He takes these things and uses them to show love to others. It’s such an exciting and humbling moment when you look at a friend, a family member, a spouse, a child, a ministry, and honestly say, “Yes, I struggled with this. But God gave me strength to overcome it because He knew you would come into my life. It was a difficult sacrifice because I felt false identity and security in it, or felt acceptable for a moment, or was trying to fill a legitimate need in an illegitimate way. But I loved you so much that I gave this up for you.”

You have so much to offer. But you don’t have to offer me anything because I will just love you anyways.

You don’t have to buy me anything. You don’t have to compliment me. You don’t have to start a conversation with me every chance there is. You don’t have to call me or send me text messages or have my phone number memorized. You don’t have to attend every event I plan, or help me with every event I plan. You don’t have to go to my birthday party or even remember my birthday. You don’t have to like every single thing I like.

You don’t have to have my life story memorized, and I don’t have to have your life story memorized. You don’t have to ask me the hard questions I like to be asked. You don’t have to give me advice. You don’t have to ask me for advice. You don’t have to think I’m the greatest person that has ever existed. You don’t even have to spend one-on-one time with me.

You don’t have to have known Jesus for a certain amount of time. You don’t have to hang out with a certain group of people. You don’t have to be of a certain way, personality, culture, ethnicity, gender, age, height, or weight. You don’t have to have sweet possessions or drive a sweet car. You don’t have to be able to buy sweet possessions or to be able to drive. You don’t have to look nice all of the time. You don’t have to look nice most of the time. You don’t even have to be nice all or most of the time. You don’t have to be someone you’re not.

You don’t have to have been “clean” all of your life. You don’t have to have never consumed a drop of alcohol ever. You don’t have to have never struggled with any kind of addiction. You don’t have to have unscarred wrists. You don’t have to have never lusted. You don’t have to be a virgin.

You don’t have to find me pretty, or mature, or godly, or strong. You don’t always have to be strong either. You don’t have to be the person who hands me a tissue box if I cry, and you don’t have to be the one who gives me a hug. You don’t have to be the one that comes and prays truth over me.

You don’t have to worry about me because I am in the palm of God’s hand.

I release you of all of these expectations I may hold over your head. Yes, there will be times when I will. Please forgive me of that, and the Lord will work those things out in my heart as He wishes. There will be times when I will not particularly like you. Regardless, you don’t have to offer me anything. 

There is nothing, absolutely nothing you have to do. 

I will just love you anyways.

Follow the yellow... flowers.

So Hannah and my friend Maddi have both started blogs. If you want to follow them (which you totally should), you can find their profiles in the Followers list on the side. I've mentioned Hannah numerous times and pretty much every single word out of her mouth is pure gold. Plus she's a lion. And Maddi is just plain hilarious and God has given her a strong calling for missions and to stay in Nicaragua with the Kolbs for a year. I'm looking forward to hearing the stories and how God will use her. Just throwing that out there!

Both of them have blogged stories about the past weekend, and so I gave in and decided to do it as well.

There is a youth conference that occurs one weekend every March called Sold Out. We worship, meet old friends, make new friends, go on outreaches, eat, play games, and basically just go crazy for a couple of days. It's always so much fun.

Permit me the luxury of setting the stage here. In preparing for this conference, we had a choice of outreaches to pick from. I usually sign up for street ministry and had signed up for it once again, but we later heard that there was another outreach for an organization called Living Water International, not to be confused with Living Waters which is much more painful and probably more chaotic. Basically it is an organization that focuses on missions. The outreach was intended for making care packages for missionaries. That sounded interesting, so when our group was asked for volunteers, my hand shot up into the air along with Maddi's. Tammy wrote our names down, and that was it.

Friday afternoon, we got to the conference and us leaders had to confirm which outreach we were attending. I was feeling pretty confident as I walked up to the table where we had to get specific bracelets to show which outreach to go on. I peered upside-down at the list of leaders and the outreaches we had signed up for. A frown creased my forehead.

Next to my name, in the "Outreaches" column, was "Street" instead of "LWI".

Well, now, this was unexpected.

I attempted to fix that, but to no avail. The girl with the list asked me, "You're on 'street', is that okay?" No, it kind of wasn't. Fumblingly, I tried to explain the situation, but there were a bunch of other people wanting to confirm their outreaches and I was getting bewildered and frustrated. Finally I just said, "Yes, it's fine," and walked off.

I was not happy. I was quite verbal about it, too. Look, I love street ministry. I do. It's something the Lord has really placed on my heart. It's one of the boldest, hardest things to do, and I love it and hate it for exactly that. Honestly though, I just simply didn't want to do it and I'm not really sure what was up with that. I think maybe I was just bored with it, or I wanted to do something different, or maybe even I was just too scared. Maybe all of them. But if the Lord wanted me to do it, than whatever. Friggin' fine.

We learned about a method of ministry called Treasure-Hunting. You take time to listen to the Lord and see if He has any words of knowledge or anything specific to look for.... like specific names, places to go, articles of clothing, things to pray for, etc. You write it down, and then you take the list/treasure map with you as you go and hunt for the treasured person God is leading you to. It was so scary to write everything down. I was getting some really intense, weird, dumb stuff, and all I could think of was, "Lord, I don't want to pray for this." I was afraid to go, which doesn't make sense because I've had experience with street ministry, but it makes sense when you think about the fact that Satan likes to try and scare us off from amazing things God has in mind.

What made things worse, though, was that we had to break into groups of three or four and compare papers to see if we had gotten anything similar. I didn't know the two girls with me, Elissa and Yasmeen, and it was just so embarrassing to read my words out loud. One of my words was "yellow flower" and one of theirs was "yellow", and they both got "mannequin". Elissa had "mall", and Yasmeen had "park" and "nail salon". We debated on where to go and just decided to start at a nearby mall, as the mannequins Elissa had pictured looked like the mannequins at this specific place.

It took a while to get there so I was joking around a lot to take the edge off of my nerves. "What are we going to do?" I said. "Find a mall inside of a nail salon? Find a nail salon inside of a park? Find a park inside of a mall?" We were all laughing as we walked inside of the mall. It was big. There was an ice rink, man. We were heading deeper into the mall when my gaze happened to fall on a small photography studio, set up in the middle of the mall.

It was set up to look like a park. There was a bench, and a white gazebo, and a background of a park/garden. And I'll eat my laptop with a fork and spoon if there weren't flowers, the majority of them yellow, arranged all over the place.

"Park," was all I could say, weakly. The other girls didn't hear.

"Park," I said a little more loudly. "Park. Park. Park. Park. PARK!"

"Huh?" Their heads swiveled simultaneously and we all stopped, taking it in. Knowing that this was exactly where God had brought us.

Problem was, there was no one in sight. It was completely empty. We stood there for a few minutes before deciding to come back later. We went from one end of the mall to another. Nothing.

We saw a vase of yellow flowers at the mall's information desk, and that a young lady was working the desk. Ah, what the heck. We went up to her and waited for her to look over at us. When she did, the other girls didn't say anything. I figured I wouldn't immediately alert her to the fact that we were on a mission from God, albeit a weird one. I opened my mouth with the coolest, most casual, most subtle conversation-starter.

"Is there anything we can pray for you about?" was what came out.

Okay, time for Plan B.

It's hard to say who was more stunned--the poor girl, or Elissa and Yasmeen. They hadn't done much street ministry before and were expecting a much less abrasive approach. And the girl's jaw was down to her knees. Her eyes were huge.

Yeah, definitely time for Plan B. If only I knew what Plan B was.

The others intervened and we told her what we were doing. At one point she interrupted us and went to finish a phone call. I kind of wondered if she was faking the call, or if she was calling security (which seemed infinitely more likely), but we stood and waited. She hung up the phone and looked back at us. She then proceeded to say that she had turned from her church a year ago, but that she really missed it and being close to God and wanted to go back and have a community.

Ah, now we were getting somewhere. She didn't really want prayer, so I asked "Well, can I pray a blessing over you?" and got the wide-eyed stare again. Note: If someone doesn't want prayer, ask if you can bless them. Generally people find it hard to turn down a blessing. Plus you still get to share God's heart for them.

She did indeed agree to that. It was good stuff.

We headed back towards the photography set and while no one was working there, there was still plenty of people about. Elissa and I persuaded Yasmeen, who is thirteen, into praying for a woman (wearing a blouse with yellow flowers) by herself. It was so much fun to watch her and to see the woman's reaction do a complete 180. We actually thought the woman would be mad since initially she had had a frown on her face, but she ended up having a pretty smile. Also marital problems that Yasmeen prayed for.

We prayed for a couple more people. There was a woman who sat on a bench behind us, and I turned and casually asked if she wanted prayer without consulting the other two. She wanted prayer for good health. Then there was a little girl who ran by with a yellow flower in her hair. She was adorable. We struck up a conversation with her mom (who was wearing a yellow shirt) and found out that she was divorced. Her husband had an affair with a coworker and got her pregnant, so he left his wife and married the coworker instead.

We talked with her for a while. It was so awesome how open she was, and how much she loved her daughter. She spoke about how afraid she was that her daughter would be affected by not having a father figure, and how she hoped the Lord would somehow provide her with that. We showed her our treasure maps and pointed out the words that had led us to the mall, the photography set, and to her. We prayed over her for quite a while, and then I opened up my treasure map once more and showed her some lyrics I had written down that morning that I felt God reserved for her.

You are the mother
The mother of your baby child
The one to whom you gave life
And you have your choices
And these are what make man great
His ladder to the stars

But you are not alone in this
You are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand 
And we'll hold your hand
Hold your hand

Timshel by Mumford & Sons

I didn't see the look on her face, but the others did. Yasmeen said later that she was on the verge of tears.

At this point, we were still hanging around outside of the photography set. Some people had come and were working on it, but we felt God wanted us to bless the photographer and couldn't tell which one it was. Turned out to be none of them. The photographer showed up later, after a long line had formed for children, including the girl with the yellow flower in her hair, to take pictures of them with a person dressed as the Easter Bunny. She immediately began working.

Well, damn.

I didn't want to just stay there forever. I also didn't want to leave. I thought about leaving a note, but none of us had pens or paper besides our treasure maps. After puzzling over it forEVER (praying for the other people in between puzzlement), I stood up and walked over to one of the girls working in the photography stand.

"Do you have a pen and paper I could borrow?" I asked. She gave me a strange look but humored me by giving me a pen and searching for paper. No paper. She handed me the cardboard back of a notepad. Alrighty then, good enough. I sat back down with the other girls and started praying, thinking, and writing. I explained the situation to the photographer, first apologizing for being weird, and then about the words "mall", "park", and "yellow flower" that had lead us to her. I prayed a general blessing over her, and some specific stuff. I don't remember it all. The other girls read it when I finished and signed their names. They had managed to figure out the photographer's name by sneaking looks at her nametag (her name was Paris), and Yasmeen decorated the cardboard note with Paris's name and some girly, nice-looking stuff.

Now for the delivery. I went and gave the pen back to the same girl. "Can you give this to Paris?" I asked, regarding the note.

"You can just give it to her," she replied.

Well. No. I mean, I could've, but she was busy and I felt a little too chicken to interrupt her. I almost did. But then I just set the note down and asked for it to be given to her when she had time.

The girl handed it to Paris right as I stepped away. Paris looked at me. I gave her a huge, sheepish smile, and fled.

We'll probably never hear from her or any of the other people again. Which is one of the saddest things about street ministry, because I'd like to know the rest of their stories. I'd like to hear what God does for them. I'd like to spend more time with most people we meet and to just simply hear them talk. I'd like to hear their struggles. I'd like to share my struggles with them.

It's hard. But it's okay, because God knows, and that is enough for us.

Postcard from 1952 Pt. 2

Somehow, last night's tired, stumbling blog post ended up getting quite a few views and support, more than I'd thought. While I'm not entirely sure how that happened, there are no complaints. Bring on the pressure of making this sequel a good one!

You'd think that I'd learn from previous experience, but apparently I have to go through a trial several times before I learn that... well... it's a trial. Today I had the same meltdown all over again about God's promises and how much I think I DON'T want them. Inside, I know I do. But, as our wise women's pastor told me, as soon as God gives you a promise, you have to immediately give it back to Him and let Him do what He wants.

That's hard. My reasoning is that God gave me the damn thing in the first place, and so I have a right to it! I have a right to clutch it tightly, I have a right to show it off as much as I want, and I have a right to know every single detail of how it will happen. In fact, I have a right to MAKE it happen myself.

Have you noticed that God's reasoning is a lot different than ours?

His plans to make it happen are a lot different than ours as well. Inserting once more the most recent example of the promises God has made about my marriage, I would have never imagined that marriage would be so hard before the marriage even happens. I always thought God just crashes two people together and bam, that's it. Let the problems commence once everything is official. Who knew problems happened before the dang thing??

With all this trouble of determining who's who and handing God back the dream He gave me in the first place, I have to wonder--is this normal? Do all couples go through the same pain of handing their dreams and each other to God? Why must it be that way?

And it makes me wonder about their stories. Not just the story of the marriage, but the story before the wedding too. God has told me that our (meaning my husband and I) story doesn't begin on a date or a proposal or the wedding day. Our story is happening right now at this very moment. He will use those, yes, but He will also use our frustrations and hurt and ranting blog posts that happen before AND after the wedding day. I believe that the Lord wants to use the ugly and beautiful parts of our story to inspire and restore hope, trust, and childlike faith in His promises and faithfulness.

It's just that... well, I'm in just as much need of all that stuff as the people who will hear our story one day. And it's frustrating not knowing what else the Lord has in mind. I feel I have a good enough testimony--just tell the man my ring size already, Lord.

Apparently, God wants to keep adding more and more stuff, with no end in sight right now. Great.

In Living Waters, there is a certain time where we bunch up into assigned small groups and just talk and pray together. During my time to share, I talked about Hannah's conversation with God and how angry it made me. One of the small group leaders mentioned that she once had a similar meltdown to mine. She didn't understand it until she realized it was because she was afraid to trust God. She was afraid of having her hopes be so high, because it puts so much of you at stake and you could truly, painfully, mercilessly, fall.

And that's exactly it. I'm excited for what God has for me, but the very specific promises I refuse to believe. That, or I twist my fingers in my ears, wondering if I heard right or wrong. I'm so afraid of hearing God wrong, because I don't want to get my hopes high all over again. I don't want to crash and burn once more. I don't want my heart to be at risk. I've asked God for confirmation over and over, and I don't receive it because I've gotten so much confirmation yet I ask for more. Because I'm so afraid it's not God and that a lie has slipped in.

Not only that, but I'm afraid of losing my childlike faith all over again. It's a hard thing to attain, yet so easy to lose hold of. I used to be so good at it. I used to be great at having the innocent trust of, "Okay, God's got this, He'll protect me, He won't let anything hurt me, I completely surrender."

I miss having that mindset. I want it back. And yet it's so immensely difficult, because I realize now that God is more interested in our holiness than our current happiness. He wants us to be happy, but it's not something He just gives out all the time.

And so now an explanation of the title. I've mentioned Explosions in the Sky before, one of my favorite bands. There is a certain song called... you guessed it... Postcard from 1952. And I immediately loved it from the start. I had a hard time relating to it at first, but it eventually became incredibly meaningful.

See, the 50's were the years before the sexual revolution. A simpler and less complicated time before everything started getting so screwed up. And I miss the time in my life when things were easier and not hurtful, before the sexual revolution, before everything got messy and before I started questioning God's goodness.

Postcard from 1952 is what that childlike faith sounds like to me.

Postcard from 1952 Pt. 1

So my friend, Hannah, absolutely turned my world upside-down a couple of weeks ago.

Okay, maybe she shouldn't get all the credit. God used her to absolutely turn my world upside-down a couple of weeks ago. How did this come about, you ask? (Or maybe you didn't--in any case, I'm going to answer.)

Hannah texted me, asking "Have you ever had one of those moments where you're doing your own thing, minding your own business and then God pops in and is all like 'Heeeyy, let me tell you something deep and profound,' and you're all 'Oh, coo--wait, what?'"
Yep. I told her so, and asked what had happened.

It went along the lines of this...

Hannah: Lalala, doodidoodidoo
God: Hey, 'sup.
Hannah: Oh, hey God! What're you doing here?
God: I just came to tell you that every word out of my mouth is a promise.
Hannah: Oh. Wait, what?
God: Yup. So everything I have ever told you, even when you were itty bitty baby? Totally fulfilling that.
Hannah: But. Wait. What about--
God: Yes.
Hannah: And--
God: Yep.
Hannah: How about--
God: Everything.
Hannah *being bratty*: What if I don't know it's you?
God: Am I degrading?
Hannah: No.
God: Do I go against anything I have previously said?
Hannah: No.
God: Am I cruel or mean?
Hannah: No. (God was wise to have Hannah relate this to me instead of asking me Himself, because it would've been too tempting to say something... unfavorable.)
God: If someone or something tells you some word claiming to be me, and they are even just slightly one of those things, it's not me.
Hannah: Oh.
God: I'm going to go and let you process that for awhile.
Hannah: .........Well, shoot.

So she tells me all this over text. I received it during a break at work. And at first I thought it was a funny conversation. I was on the verge of lightly teasing her about it. But after rereading it several times and processing it for a while, I started to get angry. Really angry. Furious, actually. And it was so strange because I couldn't figure out why I was stomping around the workplace in a blind rage, slamming things around and fighting with God under my breath. It even got to the point where, in a moment when I was alone, I said out loud, "Lord, you don't know what I want! You don't know me!" I literally said this to my Maker! How retarded is that?

Once I become angry, it's always tempting to hold on to that anger and let it consume me. Fortunately, I've realized that probably isn't the best thing to do and physically stopped everything I was doing, just to ask the Lord what the heck was going on. Boy, He sure was happy I asked.

I know God has promised me things. He's promised me much, but three certain things have been really laid on my heart lately, and they immediately came into mind: the promise I would be a trailblazer, that I would be a wife, and that I would be a mother.

I've mentioned the trailblazer thing before, and so far have no complaints. I LOVE the fact that God has called that to be one of many facets of my identity in Him.

Being a mother is the most recent thing He's called me to be (this happened maybe a couple of weeks ago, I believe). This is huge and vastly uncomfortable, being someone who only likes kids until they start making loud noises. Babies scare me when they are fresh into the world and have no control over their bodies and can't communicate in ways besides crying. I am an awkwardly maternal woman--I'll have to work at it. Luckily, that's something I don't have to worry about for a while. With great relief, I am granted permission to cross that bridge later.

After all this musing and blogging over the past year about marriage, I think you know that being a wife is the calling I am most concerned with at the moment. There are times when I can't wait, and there are times when I wish I could rip this calling from inside of me and fling it off a cliff. I hate that God gave me that calling so early, because it makes me paranoid. It makes me wonder, "Is this the guy? What about this other guy? Or him? Does what he just said mean anything? This person just did something nice, does that mean something? Am I focusing on the wrong person?" I would not have wished that on myself, or really, anyone. It's exhausting. It's awful. It's terrifying.

And it makes me have to lean on God all the more.

Here's the thing. I have talked with God countless times about my marriage and prayed over it and my husband like you wouldn't believe. And I feel He has specifically told me certain things about my marriage and my husband. I feel He has given me promises and that He wants to fulfill them.

He told me a good portion of these promises last year. I wrote them down. I reread them. I got excited. I tried to help out.

And I crashed and burned. This calling on my life, this promise that stirred my heart, ended up tearing my heart instead. And I was devastated. I questioned God's goodness, and I wondered if I'd heard Him wrong, and if I had heard Him at all. And that was the biggest loss, the loss of childlike faith. The trust. I definitely trusted God--I just didn't trust myself to hear Him right. Honestly, I still don't sometimes. I know I can hear Him well because I hear things for other people often. But when it comes to hearing Him for myself, I get suspicious and doubtful and cynical. Especially if God's promise sounds way too good to be true. Especially if it's the same promise I'd heard before. And ESPECIALLY if it's the same promise I've heard before that sounds way too good to be true.

"Sometimes your calling can interfere with your relationship with the one who called you," one of my Facebook friends observed at the beginning of this year. And it's really true. In the Message version of Galatians 3, it says:

"Only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you can perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing?

...Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you?"

Ouch.

I will be the first to say that I am SO guilty of trying to perfect what God has for me. Like I said, I just wish He wouldn't tell me so soon... but then, I guess I wouldn't learn to trust and sit tight.

Anyways, God showed me why I was angry, so I got what I asked for. I was still mad for the rest of the day, though.

I think a lot of that had to do with slight disappointment and sheer frustration. There's a nice young man who I'm friends with, one of the few nice guys I know outside of church. Really, he's super nice. He frequently asks how I'm doing, and we've talked a bit about similar interests and our churches and God. And I admit it's been tempting to like him. It's really tempting to get my heart involved. You wouldn't believe how much my interest peaked after he told me he's twenty--less than a year older than me.

This didn't faze me even with Living Waters; we aren't allowed to begin a dating relationship while in it, but I'm not much of a dater anyways so that's not a huge deal.

It's that darn God of mine that's getting in the way. I'll never forget that conversation the Lord and I had about this young man.

"Hey, God... so, that calling about having a husband... what about him?"
"Who, him? Oh, I know him well. Nice young man. Yeah, no."
"Seriously? Come on, man. He's twenty, he's cute, he's nice, he knows you, my parents know him, he has a good job... and he's twenty."
"Duly noted."
"Good. It would make a lot of sense if we got married."
"You're right. It WOULD make sense."
"Alright, thanks God!"
"...which is why he's not the guy for you."

I was not pleased. That conversation happened not too long before Hannah's conversation about promises, so that was kind of like poking a fresh bruise. 

Okay, this is getting pretty long and I'm kind of exhausted. So I'll finish up tomorrow.

To be continued...

First Breath After Coma

I'm not a musician. I adore music, and can sing/make some music, but I have no extraordinary musical talent. It doesn't come naturally to me; I have to work pretty hard to churn out something decent. So I usually just don't.

However, there is a particular band called Explosions in the Sky who really doesn't need to be excited about their music because I've got enough excitement for the entire band and a few audience members combined. (I have heard that they ARE a passionate band and therefore they are well-known for their live music... it's now on my bucket list to see them live.) Mind you, I don't really think of myself as a very passionate person, but many people have told me that they admire the passion they see inside of me, so I'll just take their word for it. I have, however, figured out clues as to when I'm passionate about something--I study it. I annotate it.

Also, I can't shut up about it. My friend Hannah and I have very deep heart conversations, and I mentioned Explosions in the Sky to her several times because they are so deeply embedded into my heart in the background of some of the subjects we talk about. Hannah became curious, so I recommended a few songs. She was converted after that. I burned a couple of CDs for her and handed them over.

I only have two albums out of six by this band because their music is so complex and beautiful to me that it takes me months to absorb and process each album. Every single song has a purpose and a meaning, and I LOVE figuring out how God fits each song into my life. Explosions in the Sky is how I hear God. It's my worship music. You already know I'm a writer and that I love words. I love song lyrics too. But see, Explosions in the Sky is a purely instrumental band. No singer, no leader of the group, just a bunch of guys all contributing equally. And I like that sort of harmony. And I like that there are no words. Your emotions, your dreams, your experiences... those are the lyrics.

Honestly, I have no idea if any of the guys in this band love God or not. And even more honestly, I don't really care. It would be fantastic if they all do, but if God wants to use people who don't even love Him to make His voice clearer to some people who yearn to hear it... hey, can't argue with that. Their music doesn't bring you down like a lot of music does now--it lifts your head. It makes you look up from the ground.

I would love to write about each song and what they mean to me all in one post, but that wouldn't be fair. It would mesh them all together and take the beauty away from the individuality of the songs. So I may scatter some songs throughout my posts. We'll see.

What is the point of this long intro, you ask? Some background, I guess. Some sharing of the passion I have for their music. I don't need to be a musician--I've got a Musician practically DJing for me. And that's pretty okay.

One of the albums is called The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place (which is always a good reminder). It's the the closest to love songs they've got and will ever get. There is such a celestial sound to this album... it sounds the way heaven should.

The first song is called First Breath After Coma. It's meant to signify waking up from a deep sleep, and the drums create a heartbeat throughout the song. I think of the heartbeat as God's... and then at the very end, the heartbeat seems to expand and beat faster and it merges with another heartbeat--ours after He wakes us up to His existence.

It's also worth noting that Tammy wrote a bunch of letters consisting of things the Lord asked her to write down for the youth. One of my letters stated that the Lord really wanted me to just lay my head on His chest and listen to His heart beat for me. My thoughts immediately went to this song... and so that's what I hear when I listen to this.

Don't be disappointed if you don't experience what I do with their music. Sometimes when someone talks about their passion, we get intrigued and expect to feel the same. It's okay if you don't... we all hear God differently, and this is how I hear Him.

It's long, but it's worth it.

Don't Quit

Carrie found a poem and posted it on Facebook last year. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and copied it down with a word document on the computer I was using at the time.

Unfortunately, that computer broke. I was somehow able to salvage my word documents via flash drive and plugged them onto my personal laptop. Even more unfortunately, I didn't have Microsoft Word on the laptop, and so was not able to read any of the documents I had saved since there were no compatible programs to open them up. It was pretty disappointing.

Until...

A few months ago, I succeeded in downloading Microsoft 2010 onto my laptop, due to the fact that I needed it for school and a powerpoint for a youth lesson that I was preparing at the time. So I've actually been able to open up the old documents and never even knew it until a few minutes ago when clicking around on my desktop.

What I found were memorable papers from senior year, a half-written youth lesson, wonderful quotes from a particular book called Chasing the Dragon by Jackie Pullinger, a book that I'd begun writing about my time in Nicaragua... it was a treasure trove!

And then I opened up the word document with the poem Carrie had shared, well over a year ago. And after reading it, I decided that I wanted to share it too. Because today, a group of people and I began a 20-week class called Living Waters. It's for those who are sexually and/or relationally broken. It originally began as a class for homosexuals, expanded for the sexually broken, expanded more for the relationally broken, and then it was pretty much decided that ah, what the heck, EVERYONE could use some Living Waters.

Because some of us need healing. Some of us REALLY need healing. Some of us want to know how to relate to others better. Some of us just want to hear the Lord better. And just about all of us aren't satisfied with the way our lives are, and have decided that we want more of what God has for us.

Anyways, we were told that the next four weeks of the course are the most difficult, and to stick with it. I can already tell it's not going to be easy... I've heard quite a few comments on how hard it is to discover just how broken you really are and to muster up the strength to come back to another class and be broken open again. Living Waters is known for being a pretty intense course.

Needless to say, I'm a little morbidly fascinated at how things will go.

So I find it to be excellent timing that I found this poem right at the beginning of the class. It's pretty encouraging to me, and even if you aren't going through something absolutely gut-wrenching at the moment, it's still beautiful. And it will probably be all the more frustrating and beautiful when things do get tough.

I already have the ominous feeling that sometime in the next four weeks, I may come back to this post and promptly attempt to delete this post and pretend it never happened. If you're reading this, you're obligated to not let that happen.

And the poem is this...

Don't Quit 

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, 

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

 And you want to smile, but you have to sigh, 

When care is pressing you down a bit, 

Rest, if you must, but don't you quit. 

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

 As every one of us sometimes learns, 

And many a failure turns about, 

When he might have won had he stuck it out; 

Don't give up though the pace seems slow—

You may succeed with another blow. 

Often the goal is nearer than, 

It seems to a faint and faltering man, 

Often the struggler has given up, 

When he might have captured the victor's cup, 

And he learned too late when the night slipped down, 

How close he was to the golden crown. 

Success is failure turned inside out—

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt, 

And you never can tell how close you are, 

It may be near when it seems so far, 

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit—

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

It's okay to have more than one husband. Really.

My good friend Hannah (the writer, the one who let's me critique her work) found a quote just earlier today, I believe. She felt the urge to share it with me, and I am so thankful she did.

"Hollywood has given us two, equally false, notions of marriage. Either it’s the joining of two gorgeous young people “destined” to be together, or as a wheezing and cold institution inhabited by miserable and middle-aged wheezebags, usually meant to illustrate a counterpoint to the love the gorgeous young couple in the film will share once their destinies are realized, and they are able to finally be together against all odds. Yawn. Boring. Wrong…
It’s doing laundry. It’s paying bills. Cleaning the kitty litter. Marriage is a hundred thousand tiny tasks you share. It is peeling vegetables and changing lightbulbs and giving each other quick kisses and wishing for each other 'a nice day'. It is coming home and smelling dinner cooking, and running out on a cold winter night for antacid because she has a headache and cannot sleep. Sometimes marriage is being pissed off at each other for weeks at a time. And sometimes it’s walking into your children’s bedrooms and watching them sleep."

-- Micheal Ian Black

I kind of hate to admit it, but I almost cried. Emphasis on almost. If it was something sappy, I'd be snickering instead. But this is just so honest, and that's what makes it beautiful. Truthfully, I find this view of marriage to be absolutely gorgeous.

I've said this before, somewhere, but I'll say it again--if God hadn't specifically said that He wanted me to be a wife, marriage really would not be a big deal to me. Growing up, those of the male kind were gross. I enjoyed playing kickball with them, but that was about it. Romantic scenes in movies made me cover my eyes. I always wanted to puke when seeing a couple hold hands or kiss. (Actually, the reaction remains resolutely the same--I guess things will be different when it's me that makes others want to puke.)

God bless the man who is to be my husband. Honestly, there are times when I already pity him and when I'm glad I'm not married. For heaven's sake, I'm not even twenty yet, I work at a dog kennel, and I'm not much of a cook. I don't spend time thinking about ideas for dates, and I haven't begun planning every detail of my wedding. (Well, I do know that I want there to be a lot of dancing. The bridegroom doesn't have to dance at all--I'll dance for both of us.)

There are scores of young women out there who look better than I do upon waking up. There are young women who are kind and compassionate and who don't speak in words dripping with sarcasm, and they are usually also morning people. There are young women who are much more spiritual than I am, who speak in a much more appropriate manner than I do, and pretty much every single one of their Facebook posts has something to do about the Lord. Don't misinterpret, there is nothing wrong with lovingly speaking about God on Facebook. But every single post? If not doing that ensures going to hell on a technicality, I may as well just take the elevator down now. I just feel there's something false about it. Like they only speak of how much they love God and how wonderful He is all the time. Personally, I feel a little dab'll do ya. It's more meaningful to me to see a beautiful post about the Lord as opposed to fifty of them in the same week.

Maybe that's just me being critical. But when I read what these women post about the Lord, I can't help but feel bad because sometimes I get angry with God and argue with Him, usually out loud and loudly. How dumb is it to try to argue with your Maker?

But deep down, I know that being furious with God is just a natural part of being honest with Him. It makes the relationship stronger, and it makes us closer.

I guess it's just weird to me that some young women never mention feeling angry, or disgruntled, or annoyed at God. They would never dare say, "That's just sick" to Him when He moves in a way that catches them completely off-guard.

Whereas I have told the Lord, "I love you, and I trust you, but I think you suck right now," to His face more times than I can count.

I was praying last night about marriage. I told the Lord a lot of things, including the above statement. And for some reason, I thought about the promise in Isaiah 62:5, which is:

As a young man marries a young woman,
    so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
    so will your God rejoice over you.

In case you start mistakenly thinking I'm such an incredibly spiritual person, let it be known that I had no idea what the promise exactly was and where it was in the Bible. I had to open up another tab and do some research.

Anyways. I asked the Lord to be my husband.

It just came out of my mouth. I couldn't believe it when I heard it, and I couldn't understand it. But thinking about it more... Yeah, the Lord is our Father and Counselor and Savior and Rock and Prince of Peace and all that stuff and more. We get it. The thing is, though, I'm not really at a stage where I really want any of those things. Or, well... I guess what I mean is, God takes on different roles for us in different stages of life, you know? Some people need more emphasis on the Heavenly Father part. Some people require a Friend. For others, they want Shelter and Refuge. Personally, I usually refer to God as "Lord" because I am arrogant and self-serving and I need reminders that I am a servant, and I am not the center of the world. I also like referring to Him as "Big Guns Upstairs" as an affectionate nickname.

But right now, in this stage of life when I am so longing for an earthly husband, I need a Husband. I need a Husband who loves me passionately, who pursues me and wins my heart and who I love, but who I can constantly fall in love with again and again, more and more, every single stinkin' day. I need a Lover who does things with me, like sitting in a restaurant or driving together in comfortable silence or cleaning out the kitty litter box or listening to live jazz. I need a Marriage where we are both okay with the fact that I am honest or angry or honest about the fact that I am angry, and I need a Marriage that is full of rejoicing when there is growth in the relationship.

Look, I can't wait for my wedding day. If you're reading this, you're invited. But our wedding day should not be the best day of our lives. The day we meet the Lord, the day we discover how much He loves us, the day we fall in love with Him for the first time, and then the second time, and then the twenty-fourth time... THOSE days are the most memorable days.

And maybe I was wrong about asking the Lord to be my Husband. Maybe He proposed to me a long time ago. Maybe He's been in front of me, on one knee, holding out a ring, earnestly looking up into my face as I've grimaced and sighed and considered, and then finally thrown up my hands and said yes after years of Him waiting.

What I'm trying to say is this: I want a husband, but I don't need a husband. I want to be a wife, but I can't be a good wife until I am deeply immersed in my first Love, my first Husband.

"When I have learned to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now."

-- C. S. Lewis