today i cried
today i cried…
for the woman who had a disease that kept her from being able to let go
for the neighbors of that woman who wouldn’t give up
for the sweet older woman who had so much joy even though she lost so much
for the kid who’s drenched buzz lightyear themed room that i helped pick up
for his parents who had so much pain in their eyes
for the self-less people who delivered food, water, conversation, and hugs
for the grown man covered in mud who came to tears when we arrived
for the woman who broke down when we showed up to ask how she was doing
for the same woman who lost her brother, pregnant daughter and son-in-law in the last three months
for all the people who’s pictures we tried to salvage
for the amazing couple who’s pile of trash was much larger than the pile they were able to keep
for the people that served along side me and those that i never met
for the people who have outpoured money, care and love to our humble state
for the red cross saying they are having to give less relief than expected because of the volunteers
for the stories of people who i know that lost so much
for the kids of those people who still played with the same amount of joy today
for all the work has yet to be done
for all that has been accomplished by the hands of exhausted people who worked on energy that came from only God
for hope in what is to come
today i cried with my brothers and sisters as they walk through a time of pain and hopelessness. and while i do not have any physical damage to my apartment, in which i am so blessed, we are called to “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way [we] will fulfill the law of Christ.” [galatians 6:2]. people have helped me carry mine and i am here to carry others, because we are a community.
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i spent tuesday through saturday working amongst volunteers and homes in our devastated city. while i am normally a crier, i spent the week numb, i didn’t have time to cry, there was so much to be done. i knew the breakdown would hit but had no idea what would trigger it. this morning, surrounded by my amazing church family, it hit and i just sobbed during our kids worship service’s (fx) first song. surrounded by hugs and grace (for messing up the song) i knew that there was no better place for me to have that breakdown which continued on and off throughout the day.
i don’t understand why bad things have to happen, they make me angry and full of questions. my pastor said today, “trust is what you need when you cannot understand.” so my prayer for myself and everyone out there is to find that peace that makes no sense…
“always be glad because of the Lord! i will say it again: be glad. always be gentle with others. the Lord will soon be here. don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. with thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. and this peace will control the way you think and feel.” [philippians 4:4-7]
there is one thing that has helped keep me going all week. music has always been a way i decompress and “miracle” by the robbie seay band is a beautiful album. it helped me get ready on my 20 minute drive in and wind-down on my 20 minute drive home. late in the week i went to grab it and looked at the cover and tears came into my eyes, just look at it… if you get a chance listen to “long way home”, it’s absolutely beautiful.
Miracle album by Robbie Seay Band.
the last week has been a whirlwind, and while i have a thousand questions, i have seen about just as many miracles.
breaking bread
i was driving about 45 minutes south to murfreesboro for my assistantship this morning and i stopped to get something to eat at mcdonalds (yes, poor food choice, i know). after going through the drive thru i pulled into a parking spot because i got inspired to throw a bunch of trash out of my car. as i was walking back to my car i saw a man sitting in his car next to mine eating. i ran back into the store to get something and i came back out and he was still there. there was something that pierced my heart when i saw him. i immediately thought about how we’ve cheapened eating.
don’t go crazy on me yet. not that his egg mcmuffin was cheap, but that we have made eating a task, we have made it efficient, we have made it lonely. he would rather go through the drive thru, park his car, and eat it in there… my professor said last semester that there is nothing like building community over a meal. i believe it with all of my heart. you’re feeding your body and your soul.
i know what you’re thinking, if the man had gone inside he would have still sat by himself. yes, but he would have sat amongst people. he would have had more human interaction than he did from a speaker that was placed on a box.
it hit me because i do this, i have made something that i think is a powerful social event, something that has to get done. i don’t chew anywhere near the 30 or so times that you’re supposed to chew. i watch tv and don’t think about the time i spent on preparing my meal. i hardly ever remember to give thanks for it and the people who spent time harvesting the vegetables or packaging whatever it is i heated up. i don’t think about those who aren’t as lucky as i am to even enjoy a meal as many times a day as i do.
call me an idealist, but i see the meal as a powerful thing. the last thing Jesus really did with his disciples was break bread and share a meal. HE WAS DYING THE NEXT DAY, He knew it but still found it important to take time, sit at a table, talk with friends and eat. i love it. so simple, yet so beautiful.
will i still use a drive thru? probably, i don’t want to but i probably will. i’m going to try not to though and really pray that i don’t live a life where everything has to be efficient and convenient, but where i can go eat meal with someone and not think about what time it is and what’s happening next. i have a long road ahead.
hopefully that sweet man in his car just needed a break and was completely content. maybe i just needed to see him and assume so i could get out of it that i needed to not cheapen the experience of a meal.
why i observe lent
Today is Fat Tuesday which means tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Growing up catholic, lent was a time where sweets among other bad things were given up without a thought as to why. When I started not attending catholic churches I gave up on this task for a couple years but decided a few years ago to start back up again, but with a different perspective.
I like to look at these 40 (or 46, because I don’t give myself breaks on Sundays) days as a way to grow closer in my relationship to God and do something to better my life and/or those around me. Last year, I said I would write a note/card to someone everyday for 40 days. While I didn’t succeed in making it through all 40 days (I did, after a few more months make it to 40) it was great to take a few minutes each day to tell someone why they are amazing and how they have been a great part of my life. I told my then small group about it and I know a couple others followed along on this journey. It was great for all of us. So lent doesn’t have to be abstaining from something, it can be adding something of value to your life and maybe someone else’s.
This year I have really felt challenged in two areas of my life. One being time management. I always complain about how I don’t have time for things, I always put off reading my bible or praying but somehow have time to read what all my friends (or internet-friends) tweet or post on their facebook and even update my pages several times a day. I have an iphone and am constantly glued to it, it’s the first thing I go through when I wake up and the last thing before going to sleep.
Lenten promise #1: Say goodbye to twitter and facebook.
Goal: Read more of my bible. Pray more. Have more actual human interaction to see how things are going as opposed to the false sense of relationship that social networking can bring.
Another area is health. It has been a long long road for me. When I graduated from undergrad in 2005 I was close to 50 pounds heavier than I am now. Last year I made huge progress by losing about 20, but with the start of school and my schedule going crazy I can see myself falling back into unhealthy habits. I want to make it to my huge goal of having a healthy BMI, which I actually never thought would be possible just a few years ago. Believe me everyone, it is possible. So I don’t have a weight loss goal but a friend told me a few days ago about something Blood:Water Mission is doing that almost coincides with Lent. 40 Days of water. It’s not fasting or anything but choosing water instead of the 349343984348 other drinks that I can choose. At the end of the 40 days you are supposed to donate the money to them that you would have spent on your cokes, lattes, hot chocolates, etc. This 1) is for a good cause and 2) is good for me. I don’t drink nearly as much water as I should and this will be especially hard when I need to pull an allnighter for a paper. But hopefully goal #1 will help me with time management so I don’t have to pull an allnighter?
Lenten promise #2: Drink only water.
Goal: Save some money to donate to Blood:Water Mission and take a step towards being a healthier person and rid my body of my dependency on caffeine.
So there it is. There were a million other things I thought about doing to become a “better” person but these two things were really on my heart and I felt specifically challenged to do. The next several weeks will be tough, but I know God is bigger than facebook, twitter, caffeine and any of the 168,894 drink combinations Sonic has 
If you are doing something for lent, let me know, I’ll be happy to pray with and for you as you venture on whatever journey you have felt called to do.
for you today…
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. [Marianne Williamson]
hope and fear
tonight i was driving in from dickson (about 40 miles out of nashville) where there are few lights on the freeway and the sky was absolutely clear. during my drive i saw a shooting star, and made a wish
it’s funny that i made a wish. i had just had the conversation that hope can be a scary thing sometimes. i know i’ve written about it before but i remember watching a show where a man once said “hope is my enemy”. how can hope be an enemy? i think hope can be a scary thing when what you hope for you want so badly that if it doesn’t happen, it will be crushing. the fear of the possibility of it not happening is greater than even having the hope for it to happen in the first place. hope and fear have been all over my life in the last few days.
…fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life. [donald miller "a million miles"]
fear really is a crazy thing that i don’t completely understand. why do we allow things to stop us from really going all out?
as i drove home, i couldn’t help but just want to just take a rock, write all my hopes and fears on it and throw it to the sky, give it to God and not worry about it again. but i’m human and that is easier said than done i will continue to hope and i will continue to fear. it’s hard for me to put into words the conclusion i came to on my nice drive this evening. i guess, if i am so fearful that it prevents me from hoping for something then i will get exactly what i asked for. so i guess the cliche is true… aim for the moon, that way, even if you miss you’ll still be amongst the stars [w. clement stone]. aiming is necessary though
i <3 resolutions
as 2009 concluded i had just finished reading “a million miles in a thousand years” by donald miller. i had owned this book for months and never had a minute to pick it up because of school and i’m glad because i needed to read it when i read it, i think, to get the full effect it had on me. if you haven’t read the book, stop reading this, go buy it right now and read it. i finished it on my flight from nashville to la and wanted to stand up in the middle of my flight and just scream because i was so moved by it.
anyways, the book talks about living a great story (you can see his most recent blog post on it here) and i realized the last couple chapters of my life haven’t been all that exciting. i don’t follow through on a lot of my dreams and aspirations because of fear. while i have grown a ton because of the times i’ve relied on faith, i know there’s more.
2009 was fabulous for me. i saw hope come back into my life, i grew closer with the friends i had and gained new ones. i grew in my relationship with God and have learned that cool prayer is. i was reading through my bible a couple nights ago and came across a highlighted verse – but they, our forefathers, became arrogant and stiff necked, and did not obey your commands. they refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. [nehemiah 9:16-17] – it blew me away. i always like to go back to the old testament and look a the israelites post-egypt and see all the amazing things that was done for them, yet when they grew content or whatnot they were angry at God, they kept overlooking all the miracles that had happened to them. i do this all the time and am challenging myself this year to not forget…
i need to trust and overcome fear and not try to control things and just hand them over to God. He’s done a good job so far, and probably will do better than i ever could.
despite what most people think about resolutions, i like them, my last few years have been great for me. in 2008, i resolved to serve more and that brought me some great friendships and amazing experiences. in 2009, i resolved to do even more serving and focus on people and my relationship with God. so this year, i hope to build off the last two years and add a couple extras
1) run a mile without stopping
2) learn to cook, i currently bake a ton but really do not cook much
3) serve beyond what i think i can
4) continue building my current relationships and create some new ones. (if i’m cooking then i should have people over for dinner a lot:))
5) do something crazy during my summer off to really challenge me
so there it is. 2010 is here and i am excited and hopeful.
i hope 2010 is awesome for you!
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related post: let’s throw it off a cliff!
statistics shouldn’t paralyze
Yesterday I got to spend time with some of the most beautiful kids I have ever seen. I had the privilege of spending another amazing weekend (my fourth) in a small town in eastern Kentucky with a group from my church. The big eyes of those little ones were so full of excitement and hope and I literally had to turn away several times to gain composure and do everything I could to not cry. I was so happy for them to get their pictures with Santa, play the festive games and of course, get presents, but after spending a semester engrossed in all sorts of reading on development I couldn’t help but think about the roads ahead for these children.
That little girl with her furry jacket and piercing eyes; the little boy with his curly hair and adorable tie; the little girl in her fabulous snowsuit eating her candy cane; the little boy who REFUSED to sit on Santa’s lap; the girl who was so excited to get her hair done she wanted a picture taken and printed of her new do; and so many more… Each of these kids was crafted by an amazing God. He knows every hair on their head as He knows mine. But, unfortunately, something probably will happen to these kids in the next 5, 10, 15 years that will rob of the hope and excitement that was shining in their eyes this weekend. Statistics are against these beautiful children and that’s what made tears well up in my eyes all day and really breaks my heart. Violence, drugs, and so much more are a part of their lives or will more than likely be soon.
I could have ran and cried and asked why all day but what good would that have done? Nothing. Statistics shouldn’t paralyze you or me from loving on these kids or anyone else in the world. I can’t change an entire city but I can love on a kid, on their family and on the community and hope that love makes the difference. I always look at the story of the disciples and Jesus feeding 5,000 people with two fish and five loaves of bread and know that if I do what I can with my two fish and five loaves, the miracle will happen and the people will be fed. Together with others and with faith, crazy things can happen.
In my life I’ve seen people not do anything because they are overwhelmed by huge numbers and daunting tasks, heck, I’ve fallen victim to this myself at times. We’ve been paralyzed by the idea that we can’t fix everything so we don’t attempt to help fix anything. But, just think… (and by no means do I mean to come off pretentious or like I’m super cool or anything) What if I had let the statistics paralyze me yesterday? How many smiles may have not happened? What if we all (our group of 80 or so people) had been deterred from serving because we couldn’t change anything immediately? An entire community wouldn’t have been able to celebrate Christmas like we did yesterday.
whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me (matthew 25:40)
cliff jumping lesson #1
[lesson one] people
if it weren’t from some people, i wouldn’t even be here in nashville. i would have run away a while ago and sought out comfort. there were two time periods in the last four years where i shut people out, i was so not happy with where i was at in life i felt like i needed to do it on my own or felt as if i were a burden with all my complaining.
the first was when i left my first church here in nashville, i loved those people but i knew in my heart that i was supposed to leave (another story, for another day…) i don’t know why or how it came to that i just knew it was supposed to happen. when i cut it off, i cut out a majority of the people i knew here. i didn’t find a church for another six months and that six month period i was tired of people and wanted to do life on my own. it was horrible. i got comfortable. i had been in the ‘dream job’ for almost a year and maybe i got too big-headed, i had the job, didn’t pray as much as i did prior to getting the job, i distanced myself from a lot of things that would have been good for me, including people. i found my current church six months later and as easy as it is to slide in and out without talking to a soul, something in me challenged me to get involved. week number 2, i signed up to work with one of the kids’ programs and by week number 4 i was in a community group. i had absolutely no desire to do either, but knew it was something i needed to do. (if you haven’t learned by now, i rely (probably too much) on my heart)
the second time was the summer of 2008, probably one of the lowest points of my life, i had lost absolutely all hope in anything. i believed God had brought me from my home to this strange place for a reason and that reason was now blowing up in my face and i was so stressed out my health deteriorated quick. i learned what stress could do to a person that spring/summer and i hope i never let stress take over me like that again. because obviously, God’s timing was off according to my watch, i again, shut myself off from people. this time it was mostly because i felt like i had become this big burden, i was not the best to work with, every prayer request was the same thing, it was like i had become a broken record. the amazing thing during that time, even though i ran, people pursued me… they wouldn’t let me go, they wouldn’t let me give up.
how do these both end? obviously i’m no where near where i was in either situation presently. one word – people. i believe whole-heartedly that we are not meant to do life alone. i can sit here in nashville and know that i wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for the amazing people that God put in my life to help get me through those times. when talking about community i always quote galatians 6:2 which says to “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” it wasn’t until the dust cleared that i really was able to see how many people that loved me surrounded me and i knew that they were there the entire time i ran off on my own. God worked through a lot of people to help me stay afloat and make it to the next chapter He had in store for me.
relationships are so important and it’s also very important to surround yourself with people who will help carry that burden when you need help and also to be that for others…
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related post: i jumped off a cliff 4 years ago today
i jumped off a cliff four years ago today
the biggest leap of faith i have taken so far in my life happened four years ago today when i arrived in tennessee after a three day roadtrip from california.
prior to that day four years ago i had never been to nashville or even the state of tennessee and i knew absolutely no one here! but i knew deep down in my heart that it was what i was supposed to do. there is nothing like that feeling of peace. i would always tell people, i was scared about the move but there was no fear. very few times in my life have i ever had such clarity.
i have grown immensely in the last four years, i can’t believe it’s already been that long! moving out on your my to a completely foreign place challenged me greatly but i am a much better person for it and am so much more faithful.
i won’t dive deep into the details today though… throughout this week i am going to blog about four lessons learned in my four years so far on this crazy journey of trust.
break the cycle
six and a half years ago i lead a spring break trip through my school to go serve the homeless in washington, d.c.. i had no idea what to expect from the experience, but knew it would be one that would help grow me. little did i know that it would be a large contributing factor in this huge change in my heart. before the trip i thought about the homeless, volunteered to feed them and everything, but the trip gave the homeless population faces and personalities, it made the issue a reality and i am forever grateful for the opportunity to work along some wonderful organizations that snowy week in our nation’s capital.
but this entry isn’t about my trip, it’s about breaking the cycle. i start out with my story in d.c. because it was that week that our host gave each of us a lock washer. a lock washer, you ask? yes, a little circle you can buy at a hardware store, or amazon (you can click on the link to get a better picture). she gave us this simple piece of metal to remind us to break the cycle. if you look at it it’s not a complete circle, it sort of twists where there is a break. i wrote in my journal the night she gave it to us we can get caught up in a daily routine and we need to change that every once in a while. i was a bright 19 year old but it’s true, comfort and doing the normal can be just as dangerous as proactively doing something bad. while routines are nice, they lose excitement and don’t challenge.
i hate the thought of living life without challenges and living a life of comfort, but i let it happen all the time. comfort sneaks in, gets settled and just hangs out before i even realize that i am doing nothing to challenge myself or change up the daily monotony that can become a part of life. it is fascinating to me that i can hate the idea of something but live it out so often.
tonight at our community group meeting i talked about how i wonder sometimes if i can even create change in a horribly broken world. i’ve been reading and reading and reading a ton about lots of horrible things that are occurring in the world for school and there are moments where i get paralyzed by the idea of even making a dent in the plethora of problems in the world. but i believe that a group of dudes and Jesus were able to feed more than 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish and i bet you that little kid who had the basket of food initially didn’t think it was possible [john 6], he probably didn’t think he could be used in such a way… i always bring myself back to that story, it’s probably my favorite in the bible. i don’t conduct the miracle, i just need to be there and willing to take the risk to help make it happen. but alas, i will hit a wall tomorrow i’m sure and want to run away from the challenges set before me but i will always have a constant reminder from that little piece of metal.
i wanted to share with you what was given to me six and a half years ago. feb 28th, 2003 – i received that lock washer and put it on the ribbon bookmark in my journal (which i still use today). every time i open my journal i see this little metal thing wrapped in ribbon and take a moment to think am i breaking the cycle?
p.s. this entry reminded me of the song “comfortable” by john mayer. if you haven’t heard it, take 99 cents and download it on itunes now. it’s really a great song and while it’s about relationships, i think comfort applies to all aspects of life.
