.10,000 reasons for my heart to find.

Will I ever ever ever understand why I get these kinds of friends in my life??

Such a sweet week.

"...for all Your goodness i will keep on singing

10,000 reasons for my heart to find..."

That song's been on repeat for me this month. Looking at these faces I love so much, I gave up keeping count. 10,000 sounds about right.

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I love:

Instrumental Christmas music.

Christmas lights.

Professors who care about me as a person.

My cohort all laughing together (even when it's at me...wow what a new group dynamic for me.)

The fact that I have a cuddly cohort. Thank God.

Text from Mere: "Happy Friendaversary!"- it was the annual Rez volunteer breakfast, where last year we sat and talked for two hours.

Email from Josh: "Hi friend! Just wanted to send some encouragement your way this morning..."

Watching movies with my roommate in her bed at night.

Bugging Chet on gchat.

Night runs under starry Oregon skies (I take a buddy when it's afte dark, Mom, don't worry).

My assigned upper-class mentor- she's the best.

Text from Christine Will: "I had a dream that the three of us met at a Panera somewhere in the middle of the US. There happened to be a chalkboard, so we drew friendship maps and talked about how different people have blessed and influenced our lives this year."

Telling a professor who just had her first baby, "He's so beautiful!", and her excited reply, "I know, isn't he?!"

Brilliant sunrise sky shining over a low layer of fog over the vineyards.

Little girls running to hug me when I walk in the coffee shop.

Raspberry syrup in my coffee.

Psalm 139.

Girls' night with cohort friends, and an afternoon with all of us lying talking on my bed.

Cuddling and reading Christmas stories with children.

Newberg Friends Church.

And the kids being adorable in the Christmas pageant last weekend.

Coffee dates with wise older-than-me women in my small group.

The strong women in Wendell Berry's fiction.

Justin McRoberts's version of O Little Town of Bethlehem.

An email from Lindsay ending in, "Okay, time to go feed the baby!"

Baking Christmas cookies with an almost 3 year old.

Lessons learned from baking cookies with an almost 3 year old... if you tell a toddler that eating raw cookie dough is bad for her as you sneak a bite, it does not have the effect you hoped for. And no matter how stern she's being, it is still funny when you hear your cousin-in-law scold her child for throwing a piece of the nativity scene, "You need a time out! That was NOT nice to the baby Jesus!!"

Twenty-two hour whirlwind Seattle trips.

The familiarity of beloved faces I've been looking at for years.

Two-minute mid-work-day phone calls from across the country asking for prayer.

Feeling known and so happy here... and realizing I'm not leaving anytime soon.

Feeling sad after finals because it means the semester is ending.

A gift in this year: Meredith.

 

"We cannot tell the precise moment a friendship is formed.

As in filling a vessel drop by drop there is at last one which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over."

-James Boswell

Girlfriends are basically my favorite thing. And I have a lot of them. I have a lot of awesome ones.

But there have only been a very few of this particular type. Where someone is completely not in my life one week... and then somehow we end up sitting down and having a real conversation. And maybe it takes one more coffee date.. but by the next week, I just know they are going to be in my life, in a deep way, for a long, long time.

And there are all of a sudden text messages, and secrets, and needing-to-tell-each-other-things, and if I stop to actually count length-of-time-of-friendship it's bizarre to me how short it is. Because they are in my heart in a way where it just feels silly and completely ridiculous to even imagine what it would be like without them.

That happened with Mere this year. And it has been such a gift.

This is just some boy she found lying around in the park...

A little bit of the context for our friendship... most of the fall, though I was soaking in beautiful friendships and community in many ways, I was Very Very Dedicated to not having "a person". It's a long story (and will be another post soon). But I basically was very sure that I had heard from God that I needed to be in a season of more intentional solitude- not just in terms of physical space but emotional, too. And the way the fall unrolled, this was not particularly difficult to achieve.

But around Christmas, I started, well, pretty much yearning for some closer, more daily friendships.

("But I'm supposed to be lonely right now!! I'm supposed to only have Jesus be my Best Friend!!!!")

Around the same time, I was assigned to a Rez prayer group- the same one as Meredith. We had mutual friends so I knew she was great. But I decided I didn't have time to do it since I was already meeting with two small groups. It was a good decision, but Steve moaned when he heard she'd been assigned to mine.

"But you have to be friends with MEREDITH MALONY!!!! That would have been PERFECT!!!! Do you KNOW her?? She's AMAZING!!!! And you guys would have been SO WONDERFUL for each other!!!"

But... I couldn't do the group! But bummer, because she did seem cool.

Long story (notthat)short, when I was in Maryland over Christmas break I had some helpful and insightful conversations with wise friends. They spoke into my life in a lot of ways, including the areas of community, and solitude, and the decision I'd made to intentionally not pursue closer friendships for a few months. And they encouraged me that maybe I had learned what God had wanted to teach me in that season, and it was okay if I felt ready to move out of it.

And that happened to coincide with when Mere happened. We ran into each other at the Rez volunteer breakfast, and sat down with our paper plates to chat. We looked up an hour later and everyone else had left- we were sitting on the only two folding chairs still out in the middle of the almost-completely-empty auditorium.

She put it recently as "God answering prayers we didn't know we were praying". I'd agree with that statement.

I am so grateful for the gifts of this girl and this friendship.

I'm grateful for how it happened... the existence of our friendship and its formation taught me much about His character this year. My friendship with Meredith, and its timing, is a sign to me of God's intentionality, of His knowledge of what we need, of His "delighting in doing good" to us. Those were lessons I needed- need- to learn. (And really, could you think of a lovelier way for Him to show them to me?!). I'm grateful for what I've learned through this friendship about the role of community and doing life together in faith.

I am so grateful for the depth of our friendship.

I'm grateful for a kindred spirit. I'm grateful for our conversations about desiring to be settled, about "hanging up curtains" where we live, about Rez, and relationships, and how (...and where, and with whom) to live after college.

I love our long walks through Wheaton and Glen Ellyn, meandering through the neighborhoods with our arms linked, pointing out the cute houses we like, rejoicing at coming signs of spring and now delighting in summer sunshine and green.

 I love that we lay on the grass by the playgrounds and at the lake behind Rez spilling our hearts. (...Or talking about what foods we craved when we studied abroad. Which is also important.)

I'm grateful for cuddling under a blanket on her couch, staying up late talking.

I'm grateful she came over to help me pack and brought packing tape and plastic bags and was absolutely firm in making me get rid of stuff I needed to get rid of.

I'm grateful she'll call me when she has extra soup in her fridge she wants help finishing off.

I'm grateful that when I sent out on email jokingly asking for chocolate, she immediately arranged to take me on a date to a chocolate freakin' restaurant.

Sheee's just adorable. Ooh- and look at our chocolate-covered strawberries!!

I love hearing her heart. I am so grateful and privileged by her intentionality in sharing it with me. I'm so appreciative of how she receives mine.
I love the role we play for each other, I think, in being consistent prayer-and-processing friends.

I am so grateful for a friendship in which we can talk for hours and still have plenty to say.

I'm grateful that it is perfectly normal for a date to include both laughter and tears- and usually plenty of random tangents, even in the midst of something intense.

This was taken tonight! What is a movie-and-pizza-night without a Photobooth session?

I'm so grateful for who this beautiful girl is.

I'm grateful for her silliness. (Friends who make funny faces and weird noises are my favorite.)

I'm grateful for her empathy.
And her great kindness.

I'm grateful for her deep desire and striving for honesty with herself and others.

 I'm grateful for her deeply committed faith.

I'm grateful for her loyal heart.
I'm grateful for her intentional vulnerability.

I'm grateful for what I learn from her maturity, wisdom, and nuance.
I love how she loves her family and the way she talks about her mom.
I love her sense of humor.
I love her up-for-adventures! spirit.

I'm grateful for and learn soooo much from her attention to and faithfulness in small things.

I just love her so much.

 

Look- it's that same guy from the park! We found him in her apartment, too! What a coincidence!

"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."

-Charlotte, Charlotte's Web

E. B. White

(for some reason that quote just made me think of her as soon as I read it. Charlotte is a wise spider.)

Thanking God for giving me Mere this year.

.15.

A gift in this year: Rez.

I cannot begin to say how much the Church of the Resurrection has meant to me this year.

But I will attempt to do so.

 A few months ago at a HNGR dinner where sexual abuse was discussed, a guest asked, calmly and innocently, "Wow, so how do you cope with hearing stories like that?". I think I let someone else answer; my quick response was silence, and if spoken would have been along the lines of, "Um, you don't cope, you learn to function.".

But there are things that you do- that I did- that kept me... more than functioning. Later, chewing it over with a safe person, I found I could name a few of them. And one of them was attending Rez.

Rez was such a gift from God to me this year.

I am grateful that it kept me engaged with the Creator in a way I'm not sure I could have gotten to on my own.

I am... oh man, this is just a hard one to write. There are just too many.

I am grateful that I went to a church that believes in lament.

 I remember so vividly sitting in the Holy Week Wednesday night service last year. We sang Psalms to the tune of Plainsong, softly and somberly, for over an hour. "Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck... I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched... the Lord hears the needy and does not despise His captive people."

There is room in this church and its theology, for what happened to my girls. 

Suffering, deep suffering that does not always get better,

is not mutually exclusive with what Rez teaches.

Thanks be to God.

This year at Rez,
I could praise God and seek God and believe in a good God,
within the context of a world where little girls get raped.
They make room for that. They do not preach the prosperity Gospel. There is room in their praise services for "I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched." There is room in their worship for "Streams of tears flow from my eyes, because my people are destroyed."

Because I felt freedom and validation to lament, because I was seeing examples of people who were seeking God with that lament,

I could, over time, find my way to the ultimate purpose of lament:

"I called on Your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit.

You heard my plea."

But I had to do that lament, first. I am still doing that lament, so much.

I honestly, want to and think I should always be, lamenting, in some part.

Acknowledging before God that things are not how they were supposed to be,

and that that sucks, can and should be an important part of the Christian faith.

(Oh man... this is turning into a whole other post...)

-this world is broken. And we need to lament that.

And Rez does.

And I am so grateful for that.

I am so, so grateful I was immersed in a liturgical service and community. I wrote this on liturgy exactly one full year ago, and though prayer feels easier for me now, this still stands.

"...Prayer was and is, in an incredible gift of grace, the liturgy. It is going to church and saying and singing the same words every week, and in recent months being blessedly able to affirm them more and more. It is the gratitude that rises up in me that, in my inability to tell God these truths about Himself out of any spontaneity or warmth or even sense of friendship, I can sing them and raise my hands for an hour on Sunday mornings and get to tell Him them in that way. That I can find myself more and more knowing that I do believe these things, and that this liturgy, this church, is providing a way for me to affirm them before my own emotions or abilities are going to let me do so on my own. Oh, how grateful I am to get to praise God through words others have written and songs others are singing when my own heart is so confused and cold."

I love the liturgy.

I love what I've learned about church history. I love being on a calendar with Christians throughout the world. I love praying the prayers Christians have used to worship our same Lord for centuries and centuries.

I'm so grateful for how crazy prayerful this church is.

 I am grateful for the prayer ministers who line the sides of the auditorium every service, every Sunday, and who I make my way over to so often. I've never felt comfortable doing that at any other church but I do at Rez.

I'm grateful for the prayer services held twice a day six days a week at the ministry center. I'm grateful just for the fact that they happen and what that says about this church's dependence on prayer; and I'm grateful for all the times I went. The people are lovely and often it is fun and refreshing...
but also, often, that was a way I could meet with God when I still felt unable to pray alone.

I'm grateful for the kind woman I met in my membership class, who despite the fact that she barely knows me has sought me out on more than one occasion to inform me that she'd been praying for me that week.

I'm grateful for the prayer circle upstairs before every service.

I'm so grateful for the prayer-for-the-sermon ministry, which I got to be a part of... every single service every single week, there are people sitting upstairs praying for the pastor and the congregation as he gives his sermon. Isn't that cool? Does every church do that? I don't know, but I love that ours does. And I loved doing it once a month.

 

I'm grateful that I got a random phone call from one of the main pastors last week, telling me I'd been on his mind and naming some gifts he'd seen in me and asking me how I was using them for the Kingdom (seriously. That happened. On a Wednesday on my lunch break. It was pretty much wonderful.)

I'm grateful that homosexuality is not a taboo word or subject in our community.

I'm grateful for the warmth of the people. I'm grateful for the families I've gotten to know. I'm grateful for the sheer amount of beautiful babies and children everywhere.

I LOVE how they love that there are babies and children everywhere and they are never treated or thought of as an inconvenience or better "out of sight out of mind".

I'm grateful we take Eucharist every week. I'm grateful they make such-such-such a big deal out of the Eucharist. I'm grateful it in many ways feels like what the whole service points to.

I'm grateful for what a huge deal they make out of Easter. As well we should! And how much that has taught me about what the weight of sin is, what the hope of the Cross is, and what joy there is in the empty tomb.

I'm so grateful for the leadership of Rez. I'm grateful that they take care of themselves and each other. At the membership class, Karen said "Without a healthy staff we cannot have a healthy church". I believe that, and I have seen it in other situations. I don't know tons of details of how that's done; but I know that it is a priority for our church to take care of the staff and to be healthy in how they lead. I'm so glad for them; and I'm so glad for us. I feel secure in coming to church knowing that the leadership is taking care of itself and we can pray for and support them. There is a stability inherent in that which brings blessings which are felt throughout our community. And their evident care among themselves for each other is a beautiful model of community for all of us.

I'm grateful for how many Wheaton students go there. I'm grateful I got to worship with some of my closest friends.

I'm grateful for the music. I love the music.

I'm grateful for how there are places for every person with any gift to serve and be needed and appreciated.

I'm grateful for how gravely they take divisiveness and how strongly they work against it.

I'm so grateful I became a member. I didn't know how different I would feel, having made that commitment to a church body. I took it seriously and I feel it. When I am in that community, when I even think about that community, I know it is mine, and that I am theirs. And I want to give to it like that.

And as sad as it is, I am grateful for what it says about how much God blessed me with this church this year-

that the hardest factor for me in deciding to attend grad school out of state,

was leaving it.

(As Mere put it once,

"Rez really complicates post-grad life.")

Oh my goodness, I just love this church.

Thanking God for giving me Rez this year.

.16.

I Love Meredith.

"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."

-Charlotte, Charlotte's Web

E. B. White

cause i think beauty is sequential.

I woke up this morning with warm sun on my face and Ryan plucking hymns on guitar in the living room.

And my plans for Saturday are a long date with God, a long walk with Mere, Iglesia, and going into the city for a double date with Steve and Tamara.

Happy Saturday.




Pics:
Wheaton morning, by Chet
A favorite of me and Mere (and her bf)

and sometimes my life is game nights, chocolate fondue, wine and good friends.