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.

California

(written a week ago. We are entering day 12) 

It is the start of Day #6 in this new California apartment.  Mom and I made out like Thelma and Louise (sans the drama) from Maryland, stopped to visit dear friends in Chicago, and followed 90 West all the way to Washington, where we stopped for a week to spend time with people who are incredibly special to our hearts (shout out to Heather, Stephanie, my cousins!).  Then, we hopped on 5 South, drove through Oregon, and...

here we are.  California. 

 What did we just do?!  There isn’t even a gold rush or small town gun fights anymore, and here we are, convinced that this is where we need to be right now.  (John Wayne, where are you?!) The best solution we came up with to ease the adjustment phase was to shop for new, cheap house supplies and sign up for a YMCA membership.  That way, if we don’t make friends we will just workout and cook all the time!  Starting over emotions are still in need of processing.  To cut down on electric bills, we are keeping the lights off and the air down.  That should work out just fine, right?  And to convince ourselves that we are made of the same stock as those old-time pioneers, we even made sure that our beds arrived late, proving to ourselves that sleeping on hard floor is seriously no big deal. (One bed came yesterday, thank Jesus.  My back is going to need a serious adjustment...so yeah, I am not as hardcore as those West Coast trailblazers of long ago).  

Maybe hearts find satisfaction and fulfillment in adventures we didn’t know we needed.  Just like the body will start to crave something that it is deficient in, maybe the heart is similar.  It craves something, but you don’t know what that thing is until you are right in the thick of the experience.  As we were driving through the Badlands of South Dakota, I started to feel that way.  Then, when our car broke down in the Badlands, I knew the story was developing quite nicely, in an unforgettable sort of way.  Somehow we made it to Wall, South Dakota, a few miles outside of the National Park, where we were forced to breath and take in the “we’re not in Maryland anymore!” reality as the most honest mechanic I’ve ever met started working on our van.  People were kind there, in a slowed-down, not in a rush, everything is good kind of way.  Locals would stop by the shop to say hi to the mechanic, then offer their input on what was going on with the broken down cars. It was beautiful.  We were stuck there with a couple from Connecticut who take roadtrips across the States, often catching good music festivals.  Their RV lost its brakes in the park. They gave us some homemade seltzer water and broke out their banjos, turning a potentially stressful delay into a memorable occasion. 

After that short stop, we made our way to Mount Rushmore, which is located in the gorgeous Black Hills.  We arrived just before the start of sunset, which created a beautiful backdrop behind the faces of the four Presidents.  Then, it was off to Montana, the part of the trip I was most looking forward to.  That state is an experience in itself, with a population of less than a million.  I wish we could have spent a few days there, but I will just have to go back one day.  Especially since I didn’t meet any rich rancher bachelors.  (haha :)

The last stretch took us through beautiful Oregon, down into the north of California, where we were met by beautiful mountains and a perfectly clear sky.  

Now, we are learning to navigate a new city and make new friends.  Several blog posts could probably fall under both of those categories. 

For now, I’ll sign off and try to do some notebook journaling, where sometimes my thoughts flow much more freely.  

The first semester of organic chemistry is officially over!

Now, it's time to pack and come to grips with the fact that I will only be in Maryland for eight more days.

After my final exam tonight, I took a drive through DC, into Arlington.  I'm going to miss our capitol.  It's seriously one of the most beautiful places in the world.  Today, as I was driving across one of the bridges, a lightning storm was outlining the city.  It was incredible.

Prepare yourself: another proton analogy is on its way...
There are these crazy ways that chemists can figure out the structure of a molecule.  One of these mechanisms is called H NMR, where hydrogens in a molecule show up on a graph as peaks.  Each peak represents hydrogens that are dwelling in different chemical environments.  Sometimes multiple hydrogens will all share one peak, as long as they are the same environmentally.  So here I am, on my way home from lecture, realizing I again feel like a little proton, in need of a major chemical environment shift.

So here comes that shift, whether I'm ready or not. ( And to all you counselors out there, no, I do not think that moving is equal to fixing things.  I also don't believe staying stuck and trying to fight through craziness the rest of my life is worth my time or my dreams.)  I've already plotted out the route we'll take, heading straight to Seattle for my cousin's wedding.  Montana is on that list!

Tomorrow I will hit the hiking trails that surround Harper's Ferry, then it's to Virginia Beach this weekend to see some friends before the long distance "see you later!" departure statement has to be said.

I am excited and so scared.

I'm so ready to learn love.