.how will He not also?.

"God and I,

we've long had trust issues."

-Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

 

Trusting God has been hard for me the last couple of years.

So often our reasoning for trusting God's faithfulness is based on ways we can see it in our past and our present. "He's been faithful before, He'll be faithful again" sings a popular song on Christian radio these days; "Has thou not seen how thy desires ever have been granted in what He ordaineth?" comfort the lyrics of a hymn from the 1800s. I wrote last year about my struggles with that since HNGR: What about if His providence in the past looks like no definition of the word protection, what if none of their most simple, basic desires have been granted?

I love this book and can read it and learn from it, because the author goes there.
I've been soaking in this chapter this week:


"In an empty pickup truck I hear voices scarred- the voices of people I have long loved and their voices cry pain and I honor them with the listening:
When your memories have an old man groping for your crotch, hot, foul breath on your face, and your skin crawls? Give thanks?
And an ultrasound screen stretches still and you're sent home to wait for the uterine muscles to contract out the dead dreams?
Or the woman you lay down with, shared the naked and unashamed, she beds another man, hands you back the wedding albums, and says she never knew love for you, what then?...

The words sear. I know their voices and I remember their faces...
I wait, just wait. In the wait memories blister.
And in the still, Spirit comes and He whispers a name.
Christ.
And I see a world through His lens: "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all- how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?"
He gave us Jesus. Jesus! Gave Him up for us all.
If we have only one memory, isn't this one enough?

 Why is this the memory I most often take for granted? He cut open the flesh of the God-Man and let the blood. He washed our grime with the bloody grace. He drove the iron ore through His own vein. 

Doesn't that memory alone suffice? Need there be anything more?
If God didn't withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need?

If trust must be earned, hasn't God unequivocally earned our trust
with the bark on the raw wounds,
the thorns pressed into the brow,
your name on the cracked lips?...

All gratitude is ultimately gratitude for Christ, all remembering a remembrance of Him.
For in Him all things were created, are sustained, have their being.
Thus Christ is all there is to give thanks for; Christ is all there is to remember.


It is safe to trust."

.the soul can do no more.

"...The constant seeking of the soul pleases God very much
     for the soul can do no more than seek, suffer, and trust...

 the clarity of finding is by His special grace when it is His will.

     The seeking with faith, hope, and love pleases our Lord,
     and the finding pleases the soul and fills it full of joy.

And thus was I taught for my own understanding that

seeking is as good as beholding 

during the time that He wishes to permit the soul to be in labor."

-Julian-my-favorite.

Ebenezer.

One of my biggest factors in deciding to move to Oregon was to be near my cousin Andy and his family. Andy was in middle school when I was born. He took me fishing when I was five and when I was ten brought two cars full of his friends to stay at our house on a road trip. When I was twelve he married one of the coolest women I have ever met. And a few years after that, he and Jodi started going to church regularly and raising their kids to love and serve Jesus. But we've never lived in the same state or except for a couple of years even the same coast. We've never seen each other more than about once every year on average, and it's been less since he got married.

When I came out here for my interview at Fox in 2010, I stayed with them. I loved being able to talk on an adult level with my cousin. I loved that we could connect about our faith, and I loved seeing his and Jodi's dynamic as a married couple and parents. I wanted to get to know my cousin, a part of my family, on a more than occasional-family-reunion and Christmas-day-phone-calls basis. And that desire- that hope, really, because I didn't know for sure if it would happen like that even if I was out here- was truly a deciding factor for me in choosing this school, and this side of the country.

As I've written on here before, my relationship with them is beyond anything I could have hoped. I see them every week, I am permanently invited to sleep or eat over. I babysit and read stories and pick up from practice. Jodi is really my closest girlfriend in the state, and more of a joy and an encouragement to me than I can describe. Their home is a safe place for me, and the unconditional aspect of having family here has made such a difference in my overall adjustment.

Yesterday they had something unexpected come up and called me to babysit- I drove into the city and met Andy at the house. He had some time to kill before he was leaving to get Jack and then meet Jodi, and we hung out in their kitchen talking. I ended up sharing some stuff on my mind and heart that was weighing me down. Last night before bed I texted him, "Thanks for listening, I love you." And this morning I woke up and had this text waiting:

"I love you. You are an amazing person, you have a huge heart, you're really smart and you are a beautiful person... Jesus has a plan for you, whatever that plan is you don't have to figure it out... just let it happen, be yourself and trust Him."

Today I looked back on all the prayer that went into my decision to choose this program, on my moving out here in large part on the chance that my relationship with my extended family would become real and deep and close.
Today I read that text and thought about the fact that I was receiving the kind of encouragement and prayer that only comes from really walking-through-daily-life knowing someone- from my cousin. Who before this year I'd never spent more than a few days in a row with and knew only in a same-grandparents, same-Christmas-tradition-stories way.

And I am just in grateful wonder of how God so above-and-beyond answered prayer.

Five months here.

Lounging around looking ahead at the week, I wondered with some stress why this semester's work seems SO much busier than last! I was clearly going to have to be VERY intentional in mapping out time to finish my assignments and see clients... and I worried that reading textbooks was going to have to be only what filled the cracks.

Then I glanced over my planner:

two coffee dates with girlfriends
and one with a sweet wise woman from church
dinner with the Stanfields
small group at the Stoltzfus'
co-teach Sunday school for the third graders
go out for ice cream with roommate + cohort friends
movie night
community dinner
birthday party for Tyson & Jesi's turning-one-year-old

And of course there's my ability to focus at the coffee shop:
I've been here for two hours and seen (let me count) seven people I know well enough to hug and sit down and have a conversation with. Not including the two babies belonging to some of them who I needed to play with.

Dear Being Completely About My Work,

It was lovely knowing you. Really. I've heard so much about you from friends over the years, and you definitely have your attributes! And I so enjoyed the grades that resulted from you. Really, I'll miss them.

But...

This girl is back :-).

Leaning.

I woke up this morning praying for a friend. As I lay in bed, I sleepily prayed for them first just the word trust, and then a picture: them leaning all their weight on God, letting go, trusting Him to hold all of them.

Within the hour I was still not all the way awake but dressed, backpacked, seated by the window at a small table at Chapters, sipping my hazelnut coffee. My Bible was opened to my current reading for Fridays: Isaiah; today, chapter 10. One verse stood out to me, and I read it over and over. I copied it into my journal slowly, bolding the words with my pen. "In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth." I wrote part of it again: "... but will lean on the Lord." One more time, just one word: "Lean." I didn't think at all about the picture I'd just been praying.

8:40 am and I grabbed a seat next to Jaynie, cracked my MacBook, joked with my cohort as we settled in to start class. The smiling professor began, as she always does, with reading from a devotional book. Halfway through it occured to me what I was hearing. "...Trust is like a staff you can lean on, as you journey uphill with Me. If you are trusting in Me consistently, the staff will bear as much of your weight as needed. Lean on, trust, and be confident in Me with all your heart and mind."

Interesting.

Lean: to rest against or on something for support; to depend or rely upon.

Only when.

Last week I made a friend turn off a rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because there was a torture scene and I couldn't handle it.

They were gracious and a little confused. I tried to laugh and make light of it, but was panicking inside a little bit, and was clear that, sorry, but I need to turn this off, now. Her husband pointed out, "Um, I mean this is from the 90s. I don't think they're going to put anything really graphic on..."

I know it probably wasn't going to be graphic. I know that it, honestly, is a silly TV show, and the fact that it was involving vampires and an overly-dramatic David Boreanaz should have meant that I could continue eating my ice cream as I gave the screen my half-attention and chatted with my friends.

But I can't do torture. I can't do a person looking up at someone with fear- even badly-acted, clearly fake, for-the-sake-of-ratings fear. I can't do screams or grimaces or any visual of knowing someone is about to hurt you and being unable to get away.

Those are real girls to me. Those are real faces, and that is real terror. People I know felt that terror and knew that pain. And so I cannot watch it, or listen to it, or think about it.


I can't watch it or listen to it or think about it unless.

Last night, I sat on the phone with a new, precious friend. We talked for over an hour and it was one of those conversations where you're both falling over each other with excitement and shared passion and ideas and understanding.

And at one point, she started a sentence and I knew what I was about to hear.

I felt the familiar clenching in my stomach- that I feel when a friend suggests watching a movie I know has violence in it, when I know I'm about to be in a group situation where there may be kids crying and I won't be able to physically turn and see: they're safe, they're fine, no one is hurting them, they're just crying because they're kids.

Normally I pay attention to that clenching in my stomach as a sign to get myself out of a situation. But I didn't stop her this time. Because she has held so much more than I have, because it was important, because I took a deep breath and knew, I can handle it, when I really have to.

We talked and I heard the stories. And a few minutes later in the conversation I realized something.

Yes, this makes me sick. Yes, I hate this. Yes, this is everything horrible and evil and full of death and the fall, just like my girls' stories are, just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer's producers' lame representations of someone scared are.


But I knew that I wouldn't be waking up in a nightmare... not tonight.


We talked and laughed (only crazy people who understand what it is to have loved street kids can laugh in a conversation that includes rape, by the way) and understood each other and groaned over stories and figured out how we can combine our resources to get more information, more help, more healing, more redemption, more love, to these kids.

We were talking to heal. We were talking to help. We were talking because we want to use our gifts and resources to contribute to His work of bringing all things right: even street kids, even rape, even torture, even terror, even death.

When I'm hearing it then?
My stomach clenches. My heart races and my skin gets clammy. I want to throw up and I want to scream.
But I don't want to hide. I don't need to leave the room.

Not when it's to, in some tiny way, be a part of the redemption.

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
"Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man...

He will wipe every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning,
nor crying, nor pain anymore,
for the former things have passed away."

And He who was seated on the throne said,

"Behold, I am making all things new."

Revelation 21:3-5

Red Hills Market

I stole my friend Jaynie out on Saturday for a date. We drove all the way out of Newberg, to the next town over (2 miles). Excluding cousin visits, leaving Newberg happens for me about once a month, so it was a big deal.

We went to Red Hills Market, which is everything you love about Oregon stereotypes: local food and wine, wood and natural light everywhere, homegrown-herbs flavoring everything.

And it's super cute. Basically the entire restaurant belongs on Pinterest:

(Wine and decorative birds! How Portland.)    

Our appetizer. I was so happy that our roasted hazelnuts came with a little pine tree in them. (Also known as rosemary, but hey.)

I love this girl. We sat and talked for a long time... it was so good for my heart.

Yay for dates, and cute quirky pretty decorative accents, and friendship.

Views bookending my Saturday.

Morning walk with a friend.

Bedtime with cousins.

Almighty and everlasting God, You are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve.

"O Divine Master

grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love."

-St. Francis of Assisi

Pondering.

You know you're in the right program when the first day of classes feels like Christmas morning.

I don't even know what to title this.

I set down my backpack full of PGRE study books on the couch and walked through the back of the coffee shop, the part full of bookshelves, with notes from the owners marking their favorite stories. I went over to say hi to the group of kids, the owners' grandkids and some other regulars, who were playing hide and seek among the tables piled with books by Buechner, Nouwen, and Lewis.

Aiden, age 8, told me, "I'm freezing you!". He held his arms out straight in front of him, frowning in concentration, clearly zapping magical freezing powers my way. I froze in place, my leg picked up in the air mid-step, my mouth half-open.

Mariza, age 7, told me, "You're invisible!". She waved her arms hazily in my direction, and I crouched below the table nearest me: invisible.

Bridget, age 5, pointed at me but wavered, thinking hard. "You... you..." she smiled with satisfaction as it came to her. "Now you love everybody in the world!".

Without hesitation they all ran to me and gave me hugs.

Hannah Coulter.

I spent the last two days (and all of the ink in a brand-new gel pen) devouring this novel.

I understand that it's highly improbable Wendell Berry wrote this book

for the sole purpose of making me happy;

but it accomplished that task so well it's hard for me to completely accept the fact.

"The living can't quit living because the world has turned terrible and the people they love and need are killed. They can't because they don't. The light that shines in darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into that great room. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones."

"And so an old woman, sitting by the fire, waiting for sleep, makes her reckoning, naming over the names of the dead and the living, which are the names of her gratitude. What will be remembered, Andy Catlett, when we are gone? What will finally become of this lineage of people who have been members one of another? I don't know. And yet their names and their faces, what they did and said, are not gone, are not 'the past,' but still are present to me, and I give thanks."

"Life without expectations was still life, and life was still good. The light that had lighted us into this world was lighting us through it. We loved each other and lived right on. We sat down to the food we had grown and ate it and praised it and were thankful for it. We suffered the thoughts of the nights and at dawn woke up and went back to work. The world that so often had disappointed us and made us sorrowful sometimes made us happy by surprise."

"Sometimes, a haunted old woman, I wander about in this house that Nathan and I renewed, that is now aged and worn by our life in it. How many steps, wearing the thresholds? I look at it all again. Sometimes it fills to the brim with sorrow, which signifies the joy that has been here, and the love. It is entirely a gift."

Finishing it up flying over patchwork farms and pine trees,

heading back into my quiet and joyful Oregon life,

was pretty perfect.

Reflection Questions.

Been journaling/praying through some of these this week: for posterity, and in hope of growth.

Questions gleaned over the last couple of years, from HNGR, Sarah's birthday project, other friends, Celtic Daily Prayer, Mary Oliver, and things I know I need to work through. (And I would welcome any others you think of!)

As I enter 2012... 
How is prayer changing in my life? Am I comfortable with the direction it's going?
What is the most important thing I have learned about myself in the past year?
What helps me feel God's presence?
What are my biggest fears?
What are my greatest temptations?
What do I desire (honest) and desire (godly)?
What have been the times I've felt most alive this year?
What has become more important to me over the last year? What has become less important?
What do I most want to be able to look back on this year and say?
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? 
How am I using my gifts to bless, strengthen, and encourage others? How can I do this better?