Today's been an off day.  An off day is defined, by me, as a day where I spend more hours believing lies than truth.

After work I went to run some errands and started asking God what felt so off.  He didn't tell me what was off, just what was true.  Maybe sometimes the dismantling of lies is done simply by hearing the truth.  For me, this is a season where I feel the need to get aggressive with what is true--intentionally speaking it out and believing it with my whole heart.

He told me to remember the beauty of the Gospel; the price paid so that I could walk in love and be defined by all that is good, pure, lovely.  And where I could see others through that same lens. To think that our very life is ransomed by a love so precious, words can't even give it an adequate description!  When scripture says that heaven rejoices with just one salvation, I think heaven also rejoices when believers start to actually believe.  When they start to see scripture through the eyes of Love and redemption, something changes.  And that change is dangerous to the enemy and all of his plans.  Which excites me.

Tonight I went to church, and it was the first time in probably a few years that I didn't try to escape early or find excuses to preoccupy myself during the service.  That's breakthrough.

During worship, a drum beat carried one of the songs at the beginning, and all I could think about was a story I heard while driving through South Dakota, about the importance of drum beats to Native American cultures.  They viewed the beats as something that spoke of the circle of life, that brought them into a place of almost "worship" and focus.  They were totally onto something.  There is something about how a drum can awaken you and start to realign things just by its sound and rhythm.  As the song progressed, it became a prayer, for heaven to come to earth, where all that is right and beautiful in heaven would become evident where we temporarily take up residence.

There was something about the beat and the words of that song that started to stir my heart in a way it hasn't felt in a while.  Something I've been praying lately is, "Jesus, can you teach me how to love you again" but I always meant it in comparison with past seasons that I've had with Him that have been really sweet.  Tonight I just felt Him say, "Stop trying to make right now a past season.  It's going to be a whole new one.  A whole new way of falling in love."  That did it for me.  I just wanted to stay in that church service all night because everything about His presence was so tangible and sweet, and I felt Him dig in deep and start healing places of bitterness and disappointment I've had with "church".  It was amazing, miraculous, and so good to actually not want to leave church.

Sometimes I want to be super rich just so I can buy an island and have all my friends come visit me at the exact same time, for as long as they want.  How much fun it would be!

Fingerprints are a fascinating subject.  

Earlier this week I went to the Sacramento Zoo to fill a few hours of time.  Everything about that zoo made me feel like I was back in Africa, except this time in the legit jungle.  It was a good for the heart adventure. When I got to the section with the Zebras, a sign explained that their stripes are actually just as unique as a human's fingerprint.  No two are alike.  Anywhere.  At any time. 

It got me thinking of each person's life.  The little details, like the doors we open every day, the hands we shake, the dishes we wash.  Those fingerprints are yours alone, to leave a mark on the world around you that is completely unique to who you are as a person.  Literally and scientifically, no one else in the world will ever be able to leave the exact same mark.  

Not sure where that thought will go, but at the moment, I just find it to be a huge tragedy and injustice that most of us go through life without ever discovering the unique gift to the world that's found in the fingerprint we carry. 

I used to view Psalm 23 as the scripture passage read at funerals.  Over this past year though, the words started taking on a whole new meaning. It's amazing how one day something that you've read/heard your whole life suddenly comes alive, like the words are screaming out, wanting to explode in your heart.  

"You prepare a table before me," has become the visual picture of the Father that's captivated my imagination the past few months. I am constantly seeing this scene of Him setting a table where all are welcome, all are wanted, all are His favorite.  That may seem cliche, but when it becomes YOUR picture, it becomes a reality that changes your life.  For me, it is a reality of protection, provision, total acceptance.  It is this safe place that is constantly available to me, where I can fellowship with Him regardless of what's going on around me.  His love doesn't alter.  That's the revelation of the Father that I want to have consume me.  

In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare seems to have found words for love that I think can be applied to the picture of God that is becoming alive to my heart: 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come: 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

An ever fixed marked.  Never shaken. That is His love for us.  For humanity.  

At the moment, I'm sitting in the apartment, listening to Graham Cooke speak on identity via a free podcast.  It's so good.

It's about 6:30 pm here, and kids are out playing before heading in for bed.  Their noise is distracting in the best possible way.  They are so happy.  It sounds like they may be playing tag.

Earlier today I was reading a book assigned in a class I am taking at church.  The book is about modern day slavery, and as much as I want to believe that the true stories in the book can't be unbelievably grotesque, I am solidly wrong in that wish.  Each story breaks your heart.  And our hearts need a good breaking every once in a while--

I recently read a quote by Mother Teresa,

“May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.”

When our hearts go through a breaking, God is right there, ready to fill them with more of Him, which includes His immense, unlimited love.  If we let Him, He comes and brings wholeness that we can't even imagine.  A shalom that heals the world, shedding His hope, His vision, His character everywhere He sends us.

As I read through the stories, I am thankful for the children's laughter outside.  There is hope.  What a beautiful thing to protect, childhood.  Innocence.  And even if innocence is stolen through tragedy, what an amazing God who loves us, that He knows exactly how to restore what was lost.

Time to sign off, but Graham Cooke just said this,

"You have to run with God.  The best way to run with God is to just be delighted.  you've all been in that place of shame, pain, condemnation.  There's only one way to travel fast in the kingdom, and it's with delight. Get a real sense of joy in your heart.  God is FOR ME.  He's on my side.  Nothing can separate me from Him love.  The way we travel in the kingdom is we travel happily.  With joy, delight."

Bam.  Let's wake up to His glory and majesty.  That changes the course of history, changes atmospheres.

"it's not just about changing your story, it's about changing the way you journey with God.  You should journey with the fruits of the Spirit.  With desire, passion, delight."

"when you come into a place of favor with God, you also come into a place of revenge on the enemy.  The real revenge is that you get so free in Jesus, that you end up getting lots of other people free from the one thing the enemy always made you a victim of..."

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." -Jim Elliot

That's one of the most compelling, uncomfortable, freeing things I've ever  read, and I carried that quote around in my Bible growing up. It's compelling not because it is particularly pretty, but because Jim Elliot lived those words and eventually gave his life for this truth that marked him.  There's something to the words that come out of the mouth of a laid down lover.  They are alive and active.  Transforming.

I read that quote again the other day...now feeling inspired to break out the stories from childhood of men and women who became my heroes.  Jim Elliot, Amy Carmichael, Corrie Ten Boom, David Livingston, John G. Lake, Charles Finney, and of course!  Mother Theresa, Heidi Baker (a more recent hero), Joan of Arc and the Moravians.

Actually, especially the moravians...the happy lot whose joy brought John Wesley into a life transforming conversion experience that changed everything for him.  I want that kind of joy, that kind of surrender. 

So adding to my list of things to be intentional about in this season of life:
reading the stories of these heroes who "wasted their lives" on Jesus, so ruined for any other pursuit because of the revelation they walked in of His incredible, extravagant, generous love.

"The most perfect union with God is the actual presence of God.  Although this relationship with God is totally spiritual, it is quite dynamic, because the soul is not asleep, but powerfully excited.  It is livelier than fire and brighter than the unclouded sun."  -Brother Lawrence

My youngest sister celebrated her 21st birthday yesterday, which in our North American culture carries with it monumental aspects.  (Well, I guess the big deal is just the fact that you can now order a drink in public.  I'm not sure what else happens when you reach that landmark age?)  Birthdays in general are a big deal in my family.  My mom set a standard when we were kids that the act of celebrating a person's life is of monumental importance.  It's taken me quite a while to embrace that attitude and perspective due to the way I tend to prefer minimalist, simplistic ways of living.  For the longest time I thought extravagant celebration was excessive and unnecessary, an enemy to the simple.  Over the years, as I've come out of the shy shell I lived in as a child, I've grown to not only enjoy people and their individual beauty, but also to see just how amazing it is that we get the chance, on this side of heaven, to celebrate the miracle of each other.  If that doesn't deserve extravagance and excess, what does?!  And over the past few months, I've come to notice that the more distractions I remove from my life in a pursuit of the simple and foundational, the more I find myself able to engage in celebration and wonder.  Oh the beautiful tensions we come to realize on this journey.

A 12 mile bike ride through heart expanding, mind blowing scenery was the first order of business to start the celebration off right.  There is something soul restoring and spirit reconnecting about biking through what could pass for an Ansel Adams masterpiece.  For the last few months, maybe even year to be completely honest, I've felt an anxiety settle into my thought life that really shouldn't be allowed to stay, but I lost the energy to put up a fight due to a heaviness that started settling into my heart.  It interrupted my peace and rest in ways I never saw coming, and moving to California was my most intentional way of saying I wasn't willing to live that way anymore, that I wanted peace back, to trust my Father with every aspect of my life despite uncertainties swirling all around me and my family.  Sometimes when I make a dramatic change like that, I expect immediate results...like my world will be turned rightside up and everything will instantly fall into alignment.  Despite incredible blessings and total life giving relationship connections since coming out here, there is still this part of my heart that feels fragmented from disappointments of this past season. I think God knows I need to feel those things out in order to surrender them to Him.    Needless to say, I've had bouts of anxiety and panic worse here in California than before I left...and it is just now hitting me that it has a lot to do with moving away from a place where my heart felt the need to stay numb, isolated in hopelessness, in order to survive.  I came here wanting to feel again, wanting to learn what it means to really worship God with all that I am, heart fully alive, fully trusting, fully His.  I feel like God is pulling specific things out of me so that I can walk with Him in a new way in the season to come...so that I can come to a new place of loving well and without reservation.   What love the Father has for us, to lead us into places where we have to lean on Him, where He covers us with His shalom in ways that we would have never known if He didn't confront the places of mistrust in our lives.

On the bike ride, without even seeing it coming, I felt the Holy Spirit envelop me with such love. The morning started out with the subconsciously present anxiety of how to navigate the future, accompanied by an overwhelming responsibility I have embraced, where it is up to me to figure it all out and have a plan that keeps me safe.  A plan that will make sure I reach a future destination that will be enjoyable and free from care.  How ridiculous, even disgusting, the self-dependence of that lifestyle. What slavery, to think that fulfillment comes from going it alone, from reaching a man-made definition of success and security. Yet, as I started peddling, fear started falling off, and I felt my heart developing a rhythm that felt much more natural and right...much more like it should feel when beating with heaven's heart and thoughts.

Which is why reading that portion of Brother Lawrence's lovely account of learning how to practice God's presence really struck me today.  This journey is so empty without that perfect union with God, and where I've felt the absence of that union over the past few months, there is something in my heart that never ever wants to trade that for anything ever again.

So for all the disappointments and fears that inevitably try to rob peace, may we be wrecked so fully and deeply by the present and active love of Jesus, to the point that nothing can shake us from His deep, abiding joy.

And cheers to Brianna and her 21st year of life!  :)  So glad we took that bike ride. ;)

 ...California dweller for almost a month now.

 The time has been marked by the release of the new Mumford album, the meeting of new people who are becoming friends, adventures in Whiskeytown Lake, a trip to Lake Tahoe, a new church experience and a new Starbucks job.

Transition leaves me at a loss for words, accompanied by brief confusion.  Am I to make this place feel like home?  For me, the connotation of home is more a place of friendship and warmth than a literal dwelling place.  Will the relationships made in this season go deep and last long, or will they be brief, momentary connections to teach lessons that carry into a future time?  And whether they are transitional or here to stay, should the way I live and embrace them be any different?  These questions are some I've struggled to answer most of my life as a pastor's kid, often watching relationships come and go without any official ending, just the sense that you will never see that person again because life just has a way of moving us along in various directions.  However, in the midst of the inevitable transience, I have also come to deeply appreciate and value the friendships that I know in my heart are a knitting together that only God could do.

 This morning I woke up with the realization that everyone I have learned to love in my life thus far, sans my sister Brianna and my mom, lives miles and miles away from me.   And as natural as I want love to feel when it comes to new people and a new place, I think learning to love in a natural way is a process not to be looked upon lightly.  So today I am reflecting and giving thanks to God for the incredible friendships that God has given me, the ones who have taught me so much about being loved and loving.  The process and the journey of that kind of learning is something for which I am freshly appreciative.  To all my beautiful friends, thank you so much for loving well.

It gets so easy (at least for me) to get lazy in loving people, to take for granted the stories that have enveloped me with others in a way that is almost sacred, where without knowing it I caught beautiful glimpses of the heart of another, but also stepped into a revelation of my own heart and wiring.  Today I am just so thankful for friendships which remain present despite distance; for the people in my life for whom I have been given the amazing privilege of knowing in the deep ways that must make God smile so big.  You mean more to me than you could possibly know.

And here's to courage for the present part of the journey--the chance to learn how to love new people well and fully, letting them into my heart, regardless of whether their stay is long or short.