Mary W strikes again

Tonight I got home and logged on bloglines and read a post from Mary W., my beautiful mentor (who I wrote about here) on worry. I wanted to post some of it here, because it spoke to my heart so much. (She does that a lot.)

When I really look at my heart in this area, I am pretty surprised and freaked out by what I see. Because if I am honest, my inner life doesn't reflect what I claim to believe.

I say, to others and myself, that I believe God is involved in the details of my life. I say that He is all good. I say that He is all capable. I say that He is in charge of everything, and that He works everything together for His glory and His purposes. I say that He loves me. And I say that He can do whatever He wants with my life, and I will trust Him.

Yet I find myself worrying that if I do something wrong, even trying my best, I could mess up "God's plan". I worry that maybe His plans for me aren't really good, or that maybe the rest of my life is not really a "plan" at all, but more like accidents or coincidences. I worry that He's not using me. I worry that maybe He's not really at work in my life or heart.

That is CRAZY to look at straight on! Every single one of those statements, I am positive is untrue. Yet those are real, active issues for me... sometimes on a daily basis.

The best antidote for something that's not true is truth. God always speaks His truth to me at exactly the right time. Most importantly, through His Word. Through a memory of His faithfulness in the past (remembering reading Mary's post tonight will be one of those!). Often, through the writings of those wiser than I (thank you, Henri Nouwen and Elisabeth Elliot, for starters). And so often, through amazing friends who over and over, will lovingly and patiently remind me of His love, His presence, His forgiveness, His sovereignty, whenever I need them to.

Oops... I was going to just post what she wrote! Oh well, yay for external processing. Mary's words totally were exactly what I needed to read tonight, and I'm really praying God will help me remember them in a deep-down sort of way. THANKS MARY!!! I love you so unbelievably much and am so thankful for you. I'm praying for you, Wolf, and your beautiful baby. (Emphasis' are mine).

"...Here's the thing. God is in control. He is the only one who knows if my baby is ok or not every second of the day, He is the only one who is in control of that beautiful little life inside me... I will fight to find peace in God who has more than proven that He is able to handle whatever may come my way. I can instead focus on what God is actively doing in my life, where He's leading me, what He's teaching me, and who I can encourage and love on." (from me: Ouch. Who I can encourage and love on. Right. Sounds good.) "Do I know if in 6 months I will have a healthy baby after labor that was a breeze? Nope. I just know that regardless, I have a good God who's gonna provide all that I need whenever I need it.

Jesus says it better than me, so I will leave you with Matthew 6.:25-34

25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life^[b]?

28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

(the rest of her awesome post is here and I highly recommend reading it!)

Thankful.

Sometimes I worry that my gratitude lists are a result of uncreativity; but I want to be thankful over and over...

for my roommates

and my mother's touch;

for quiet times in my kitchen, by the glow of Christmas lights

and the laughter of friends

as we enjoy each other on a night out

(or in).

For complines

and forgiveness

and direction

and voices I love

and mutual understanding.

(Aannndd... maryoliverhenrinouwenmadeleinel'englehotchocolateframedphotos
dancepartiesteaHNGRknittingsagafireplacessnowdidimentionfriends
latenightsandbakingcookies!!!)

More Celebration

This time, we celebrated the fantastic David William Thornton. Specifically, the 21st anniversary of his birth.

What? A 21st birthday, and a bunch of college kids? Well, there's really only one way THIS could have gone down, right?

Absolutely. Bowling and Chinese food. How'd you guess?

(Oh, those Wheaton kids. How will we ever keep them under control?!!)

The poor kidnapped victim.

Now we're happy at Joy Yee's (best Chinese food ever).

Followed by what was clearly a really competitive game of bowling for me...

Yes, Matt's and my combined scores still lost to David and Chet (who conveniently forgot to mention to us that he took a bowling class in high school. What the heck?!!)

The Strikemaster.

Beautiful bowler.

We had fun.

Everyone after I finally got a spare!! (OK, I did make them retake it, but that was pretty close to how they reacted. Actually, the first one was pretty hilarious because David had his hand over his mouth in shock...)

Me and beautiful Elise!

I love my friends.

And for his birthday, a few reasons why we love David...

*He gets up at 6 every morning so he can go to Gold Star Chapel to read his Bible and pray before he starts the day.

*He's an incredible RA. He prayed for his guys for months before they even got here, and he joyfully goes above and beyond in how he cares for them, makes himself available to them, and basically does everything he can to make their time at Wheaton as fun and spiritually effective as possible. (This includes letting them duct-tape him and drop him on his girlfriend's doorstep...)

*He loves the church in general and his church specifically... pouring himself into participating in its body, passionately learning from the sermons, "singing out", and getting to know other college kids and families alike.

*He's obsessed with the Yankees. Depending on who you are, you may view this as a positive or a negative, but either way his ridiculous passion makes us all laugh.

*He comes over on Tuesday nights and drinks tea and does homework with our suite.

*He was the main navigator for our week-long road trip to Canada and did it perfectly.

*He is a freaking amazing person to do a road trip with for more reasons than I can even fit in a blog entry. Let's just say... card games-kindereggs-hiking-crazy pictures-niagara falls-late night walmart trips-putting up with matt and me-long talks-lindy's beach-hilarious times.

*OK, I'll actually tell one story from the road trip. We were all trying to sleep on Julia's trampoline at 2 in the morning. And I was in a bad bad mood like I only get in when I am sleep-deprived and cold and I DID NOT WANT TO SLEEP on that freaking trampoline, I wanted to sleep inside like a normal person but there was no way I was going to be the one who made everyone go inside. And David, knowing me (and what it means when I am that forcedly cheerful) announced that actually, HE was really cold and HE was really tired and would it be okay if we went inside? He was so not cold or tired. He's just nice to me. (And also probably knew it would be a really long day the next day if I was still that crabby).

*He loves his family and is concerned with getting to know them better all the time.

*He has the Matt Maloy-esque quality of being able to know people's "scariest parts" without excusing sin, but always extending unconditional love, acceptance, and grace.

*He leaves me voicemails like this (I transcribed this one from the summer because it was SO HILARIOUS):

“Lightning is sooo incredibly cool. Like really, really cool. Especially when there’s not that thunderous rain, I mean, the rain’s awesome too, I love running around in the rain, but when there isn’t the rain and so you can just sit on your deck and watch lightning strike the Hudson River and the thing right across the Bay because the Yankee Stadium’s been turned off due to the emergency broadcast sytem being on the TV because of the severe wind and thunderstorm, um, it’s really fun. It’s really fun to watch lightning. Like, especially- this is the biggest storm I’ve seen since the Wheaton flood, minus the rain, we’re having lightning strike probably every second- whoa! Holy cow, that was close. That was cool. Anyway. But yeah, it’s really really exciting. Annnd I miss you and I want to talk to you and whooaaa- that was an awesome one too. Ah! This is so much fun. Sorry. But yeah. So, I just wanted to call and say hi and see how you’re doing and let you know that I’m having fun watching lightning. Um… yeah. Cool stuff. All right. I hope you have a good night, or day, whenever you get this. I love you and have a good time. All right. Bye.”

*He's a great listener, hilarious story-teller, and loyal friend to Jenny, the Tuesday boys, all of his guys, and my roommates and me (and his myriad of other friends), and we are all happier and better people because we know him!

We love you, David! Happy birthday!

Two Basically Unrelated Prayer Things...

One, I really loved this post's response to "What is it like to hear an answer to prayer?". The author, Jen, just writes a little bit about what her experience is communicating with God on a daily basis. I'm absolutely not saying it's the same for everyone or this is one thousand percent theologically sound on every doctrinal cross-reference form ever or anything. But, it is very similar to what my experience has generally been also, so that was fun to read and connect with; and I really enjoyed and appreciated the articulation of such a personal and beautiful thing.

Second... if yall can, I would reeealllly appreciate prayer for health right now. I have had a bad cough for about a week and a half and it got pretty terrible over the weekend. Monday night I woke all three of my roommates up with how much I was coughing in my sleep. I went to the doctor on Tuesday and they ordered some blood work done, which I did this morning. About an hour after I got back to campus, the health center called me and told me very urgently that the labs showed really high levels of some protein that was not good, and I needed to go to the ER right away for a CAT scan and an EKG and a lot of other stuff... Matt took me and he was an amazing trooper the whole day, AND, the ER staff was freaking fantastically kind and efficient, AND happily everything looks fine (ie, I don't have cancer or a blood clot, hurray!!!). AND my friends are amazing and encouraging and supportive, I had like 5 offers of people to come be with me and when I ran into my friend Alex right before I was going to leave for the hospital he immediately prayed for me right in the middle of the library... AND my parents are amazing and really cute, my dad interrupted a meeting with a patient (which almost never happens) to call me twice and my mom of course immediately booked a plane flight :-).

So all that is so much to be thankful for. However, I am still coughing a lot and am kind of exhausted. So if you could pray I would really appreciate it :-)

(Update: Nurse Heather is rummaging around trying to find some concoction of substances that will help me stop coughing enough to fall asleep. I just heard her say to herself, "Hmm, now what do we have in this kitchen that we can use as a narcotic? Oh, I wish we had some alcohol!")

Thanks friends!

More engagement celebration...

On Saturday night, Laura took us all out for chocolate fondue at Ethel's and asked us if we would be her bridesmaids! (I guess we passed the tests :-))

Heather, Jenny (our "5th roommate"), the beautiful bride, me, and Christine celebrating!

Of course, we said YES!

I love weddings. And my roommates. I'm so excited.

Dr. Vlachos Stories

I'm almost done with my current journal and I was paging through some of the entries from last semester. In November, I went to the WCF Jubilee communion service and one of my favorite profs, Dr. Vlachos, was speaking.

I had Dr. V for New Testament last spring and it was one of my favorite classes. He was a pastor for several decades and it's pretty evident- in his wisdom and the way he cared for every student. A couple of us had lunch with him once and he informed us that once you were "in the club" (ie, had had him once) you were in it for life- if we ever needed anything from a letter of reference to someone to talk to, even years from now, he would love to help. Um, Dear Wheaton, thanks for having the best profs ever, love Emily.

So, he spoke at Jubilee communion and, as usual, it was really encouraging. Dr. Vlachos makes ALL of his points through stories. I wanted to share some of my faves.

• He told a story about giving a book away to a woman when he owned a Christian bookstore. When he tried to give her a Bible for free she wasn't sure what to do, because she said she was Mormon and she was raised that you earn everything you receive. "I offered her the Bible, she debated whether or not to take it. She finally took it in her hand, and she said, 'Thank you'. What marked the fact that she had accepted it- that it was officially hers? When she said thank you. If you're not sure where to start with God, if you feel overwhelmed by following Him- start by just saying, 'Thank you'. That's what signifies the transaction is complete."

• Someone asked, "How do you know God's will for your life?". He reminded us to try not to think too much about the future but to focus on the present- loving one another NOW. In terms of "God's will for our lives"... "The chief of staff sending you into battle, that takes a second. Giving you the order of where you're supposed to go is just one moment. But boot camp- training- that's what takes awhile." (I love that analogy).

• And this is my all-time FAVORITE Dr. Vlachos story. I heard it in class last year and he told it right before we took the Eucharist... When he met his wife, he was a grad student living in a gross and empty bachelor pad. He had little but mold in his refrigerator. And he had a whopping pile of student loans. His wife was a few years older. She had been widowed and received money monthly from the life insurance policy. She owned a beautifully furnished house. She had a refrigerator filled with delicious food. And she had two little girls. "When we got married, her house became our house. All that food in the refrigerator became our food. And her beautiful daughters, they became our daughters. I got the love of my life and two little girls calling me Daddy, and she got my student loans. That's what the Gospel is like." I think he's being modest. But I love the thought.

Pure. Joy!

On Friday night, something VERY EXCITING  happened.

A wonderful man named Andrew asked MY ROOMMATE LAURA LEE to marry him.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh-the-joy. Andrew (who is currently serving as an RA at Blackforest Academy in Germany- the MK boarding school he and Laura both went to) posted the full story of how it happened

on his blog here.

And it is truly worth reading. Andrew and Laura are two of the most prayerful, loving, and God-seeking people I know. They had a fairly difficult month prior to this engagement (rumor has it it was worth the wait), and in my opinion God used the last weeks so much to deepen their trust in Him and their selfless service towards each other. We are all so amazed and proud of them for the ways they each determine to love the other, to honor their families, and most of all to trust and obey God and only make decisions in His timing.

Laura is, obviously, one of my best friends and most influential people in my life. Living with her and being her friend for the last 2 years has been such a formative experience.

I am grateful every day of my college experience for the "familyness" our suite has, and so much of that is due to her efforts to structure time together and her faithful commitment to loving and praying for us as individuals and a group.

She is the textbook definition of "loyalty" and "thoughtfulness". This summer, even though she was camp counseling 24 hours a day, she continually sent all of us care packages and letters- I would literally keep her notes in my purse for days so that I could pull them out and reread her encouragement and prayers.

Andrew is also unbelievably unconditional loving, serving, and committed. He is a dedicated friend to many, an incredible RA to his guys at BFA, faithful, loving, and encouraging to Laura, and has been an amazing friend to Heather, Christine, and I for years, pursuing us not just as "Laura's roommates" but truly as sisters to care for as well. (Needless to say, he's set the bar for "roommate boyfriends" perhaps frustratingly high but... :-)).

I could not be more thrilled for them or excited about all the love, joy, trials and adventures they will have together- I know they will exhibit that same prayerfulness and patience to allow the years to bring them closer to each other and God.

Side note- the Grand Bridesmaid Games are on! We're all workin hard to show her JUST HOW HELPFUL AND DEDICATED WE CAN BE. She's enjoying using that to her advantage... I'm pretty sure I've seen some under-the-table swapping of chores for promises of a place up front. (But did you notice how I wrote a whole BLOG POST about you, babe??! Points! Points!)

:-) Congratulations, guys. I love you both so much!

Whisper my name

for I want to hear You

Whisper my name

for I want to know You

For Your sweet breath

I need to listen

Speak to me now, whisper my name

Oh, Lord

Humbled,

we stand in Your presence

So happy to stay close by Your throne

Walking each day in the light of Your mercy

So happy to gaze upon

Your face

forevermore

Junior Year, Semester Two

It was a great break... and I am SO glad to be back!

(This was actually taken last semester, but it's a good picture of six of the biggest reasons I love being here so much.)

Shopping With My Mother

(Modeling a potential purchase): "Should I get this purse? No, actually, I don't think I like it. It looks like something someone's mother would get!"

She also just came in my room and informed that "You know you can tell me anything, right... because we really are BFFs."

I know. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Breaktime Cooking!

So, I (quasi-re)discovered something this break: I love to cook!

I always love the IDEA of cooking, and I had grand aspirations for our apartment's kitchen. But limited time, funds, and confidence has resulted in my main uses of the stove/oven being contained to Campbell's or just-add-eggs cookie mixes (which, I must say, have still been quite satisfactory. And have been known to persuade several would-be studiers out of their apartments at the wee hours of the night...).

However, the first week of break it occurred to me that I, 1) didn't have homework or class and 2) wasn't on a meal plan, ie no guilt over not just going to Saga and eating for free. So when I happened upon a delicious-sounding recipe on one of my favorite blogs right when I was getting hungry, I decided I was going to go for it.

And that night this SUPER GREAT thing happened, where, while enjoying delicious Cheddar-Bacon Corn Chowder together (thanks Megan!) my mother and I made the happy connection that... *She LOOVVESSS to have people cook for her. *I love to cook, but don't have the financial resources to do very much of it. *She's happy to financially back my potential disa- I mean... culinary experiments if she gets a (possibility of a) good meal out of it. Holler! I love my mom.

So, I've been excitedly looking up recipes and trying things out. Some have been delicious and some have been... not. Mostly those have been my fault (did YOU know "simmer" doesn't mean the same thing as "boil"? Also, reading the WHOLE recipe before you start turns out to be kind of important. You might notice things like, "Defrost for eight hours before basting". Whoops.)

But, something about cooking from scratch is like... really, really fun. And relaxing. And the food tastes better than frozen mixes. And I feel like the time together with loved ones eating it is more exciting and appreciative and fun too. So basically, it's been great. AND... I feel like (hopefullyyy...?!!) now that I've tried some recipes out I'll have more confidence to actually make some easy-but-good real meals at school. At least on Sundays. Who wants to come over for dinner?

Here are our favorites so far:

Cheddar-Topped Corn Chowder- I absolutely LOVED this. It's a perfect winter meal- the combination of bacon and corn was great. I am a corn fiend so I think next time I might add another 1/2-1 cup. I accidentally only used one leek, because I didn't know what they look like so I thought one was two. Yeah. And then I burned it. Oops. BUT, it was still really good. I am a texture person and I thought the consistency was just right... you puree two cups of it and mix it in with the rest. And then you crumble bacon and grate cheese on top. Filling and tasty and great.

Fun Salad- I was trying to recreate the excellent one Heather made for Laura's birthday, which consisted of spinach leaves, strawberries, maple-glazed walnuts, and rotisserie chicken. However, two grocery stores were out of strawberries and I couldn't find the same kind of nuts (which was a bummer, cause those things were FANTASTICCC). But, here's what I ended up with:

1 bag spinach leaves

1 carton blueberries

1 carton blackberries

1/2 a package of (plain) glazed walnuts

1/2 a package of pecan-pie glazed (?) pecans (THESE WERE SO GOOD. Safeway.)

Almost a whole roasted chicken, pulled apart.

Um. So. Good. I thought I could have done without the blackberries... they're so expensive and the blueberries accomplished just as much. The chicken made it a full meal, and spinach is good for you, and I had mine with poppyseed dressing. I realize it would probably be healthier without the glaze on the nuts but... I don't care. It melts off a little bit and is delicious. Next time I'll probably just go for a whole bag of the pecans, I liked them better.

Cheesy Potato Soup- My mom liked this even better than the chowder. I didn't, but still thought it was great. The fun thing with this recipe is you can use it as a base and then add pretty much anything you want- I added one chopped sweet onion and three slices crumbled bacon. I also subbed half and half for the cream to make it a little bit healthier, it was still really creamy. I think next time I'll add even more bacon, and maybe corn (yay for corn). The au gratin mix was good, the purist in me (ha) wants to just look up the ingredients and do it all from scratch. But overall this was easy and very filling, and it would be really easy to personalize for a group too (everyone could add what they wanted)- I'll def be making it for any roommates who want some.

Salmon Bake with Pecan-Crusted Coating- This wasn't anyone's favorite, but that could be due to a variety of factors... we ate it after the potato soup, so we were pretty full. This also would be the aforementioned Defrosting Incident- we managed to pull it off with the microwave, but the salmon was a weird texture. It was definitely still good, though, and I think it might just be a matter of personal taste- if you like your meats sweet and/or are a big mustard person, this would be great (the sauce is one part butter, one part honey, and one part dijon).

So. Yay for cooking. And trying new recipes. I'm really excited to try out some of the recipes in my Mennonite cookbook (that I haven't used yet)... they look delicious and are globally-friendly, inexpensive, and healthy. Yum.

Reminder to take smaller bites.

"In His presence, in His power, live a moment at a time: live that moment fully. To try to live a holy life is to be crushed by the enormity of the task, but a whole life consists of a series of such moments."

-Finan reading for 1/3. So exactly what I needed to read right then.

The January Finan readings are reflections on each line of Be Thou My Vision... I think that hymn will mean a lot more to me after this month.

Reflection Questions. And it's 2009!

Happy New Year, friends!

No idea when I turned into an old fogey... but despite the hoppin' parties being thrown by two excellent groups of friends, after work I went home, happily curled up under the covers, and read Mary Oliver (thanks, Mayr! Perfect Christmas present) until I noticed that it was 12:05. Uh, Happy New Year! It was pretty perfect, actually. And Emilie came and slept over after her (more exciting) event, so my New Year's Eve was officially lovely and wonderful.

One of my goals for break is to do at least some sort of written processing/reflection on the past semester... for posterity. And because I think it's important. And in order to help me set good goals for the spring.

The lovely HNGR program assigned Summer Goal Writing to us at the end of last semester, and they provided a list of "Questions for Reflection" which helped me ENORMOUSLY. There were a bunch, on everything from family to schoolwork to spiritual life... "How is prayer changing in my life?" "Who does my family need me to be this summer?" "What ushers me into the throne room of God?" "Who knows me, really knows me? Who knows me well enough to know if my soul is in distress, and have I invited them into a relationship deep enough that they can speak honestly into my life?"

One of the absolute best and most important parts of the road trip for all of us, I think, was the morning we all spread out with our journals and that list of questions and thought/wrote for a couple of hours. We didn't even talk about them at the time, but it prompted some amazing discussions for the rest of the trip and definitely was a huge highlight of the summer for me personally, relationally, and spiritually. Those questions and the thoughts, conversations, and prayers they prompted gave me a lot of clarification on things to think and pray about and areas of growth I needed to focus on.

So, I spent most of my quiet time today brainstorming some questions to pray through and ask myself before I go back to school.

Here's what I've got so far (with the help of HNGR and some Celtic Daily Prayer readings):

*What are my biggest fears?

*What are my greatest temptations?

*What do I desire (honestly)?

*What do I desire (godly)?

*What lies do I hear/am tempted to believe?

*What are the struggles, fears, temptations, burdens of the people I love? Am I going the 2nd mile in understanding them and caring for them? How can I do this better?

*In what ways/areas am I inclined to selfishness? Laziness? Bitterness?

*What do I most want to be able to look back on the semester and say?

Anyone have any other ideas?

(Here's one goal Mary Oliver provided me with... to be able to say:

"Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

     keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

     astonished..."

Standing still and learning to be astonished sounds like a good goal.)