Let it go.

I know I'm about a year late getting onto the Frozen blogpost train, so please forgive me.  I have to be honest, I don't get Christians hating on Frozen.  I'll be the first to admit that Elsa doesn't act very heroic in the movie that she is marketed to be a hero in.  But I think that the movie is something that Christians should watch and learn from because I've watched it play out before inside of churches.
Elsa is a beautiful talented young person who has been blessed with an incredible gift.  The problem is that the gift, if used without maturity, can harm those around her.  Those around her have never seen it before, they don't know how to react or how to help her; all they know is that while she uses her gift she is dangerous.  So they teach her to "conceal, don't feel"; to hide her gift, to hide parts of who she is, to shut down to everyone and everything around her.  So she does.  The problem is that she isolates herself because she has been taught that parts of who she is are completely unacceptable, only that doesn't weaken her gift, it's part of who she is so separating herself out cannot remove it.  Enter "Let it go".  Was this reaction to her isolation and fear of hurting others wrong?  Yes.  And no.  *Shocked Silence*  The truth is, it was right for her to let go of other people's opinions of her.  It was right for her to let go of the man-made rules that had been imposed on her.  It was right for her to explore the beauty of the way she was created to be.  It was right for her to finally receive the wonder of who she was.  Incredible.  Beautiful.  Unique.  Strong.
Does this narrative sound familiar?  It did to me.  There are so many beautiful and unique people walking through our church doors and so often we don't know what to do with them.  Perhaps they're so loud that they're disruptive.  Perhaps they border on controlling.  Perhaps their imagination runs away with them.  Perhaps they are just too emotional.  Or perhaps we are meeting future evangelists, administrators, prophets and seers that have not yet learned how to operate in maturity.  Instead of trying to shut down what we see as a problem perhaps we should be celebrating the God-given gifts within them.  Perhaps you have been Elsa.  I have been.
Luckily, running off and wreaking mayhem or isolating submissively for our whole lives are not our only two options.  We have rock trolls (bear with me), people who have lived and experienced many things and can teach us how to navigate what we are experiencing.  These people have the maturity we need; and often to reach a point where we can operate in our gifts in a way that uplifts our whole community we will need to submit ourselves to their guidance.  We also have our family in Christ, brothers and sisters like Anna, who will fight for us and fight with us.  These people will love us through our flaws and failures, many times they will accept us even before we accept ourselves.  They will show us one of the most important things we  will ever need to walk in our giftings and our lives: love.  And we have one more amazing resource that Elsa never had: the Holy Spirit living inside of us, the very voice of God to lead and guide us, teaching the way we should go, creating life for others through our humble movements of obedience.
So be yourself!  Each part of you was fashioned by God.  You were fearfully and wonderfully made.  You are altogether beautiful.  There are good works that were created in advance just for you that you can simply walk in.  Just remember, love is key to walking out your gift.  "Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling" 1 John 2:10.  And the God who created you and your gifts leads you by the hand as you make this incredible journey called life.
...Oh and those things that were holding you back...let them go...

Fire with Fire

Fight fire with fire is a phrase I often hear people say, but I don't think they understand what it means.  You see, in fire prone areas sometimes to prevent a devastating wildfire people use controlled burns to keep flammable brush under tabs so that if wildfire does break out it won't be able to spread since it won't have the fuel necessary.  I personally have never seen a firefighter out at a house fire with a flame thrower trying to tame the flames.  But that's how we use the phrase often.  If you don't believe me just take a look at the body image debate currently occurring.  It saddens me to hear body shaming going on both ways, overweight and underweight, too much make-up and too plain.  Inasmuch as it is true that no matter what your body type you are beautiful, I think that this is still missing the point.  The point is that we cannot defeat body shaming through focus on the body, fighting flesh with flesh.  The only way to defeat it is to look beyond the flesh to the true nature of each person, the God-given, intricately woven beauty in the depths, once you catch sight of that beauty you cannot help but see beauty in every body you see, skin and bones or extra curvy, pimpled, short, tall, mediocre, short hair, frizzy hair, no hair, each one will exude beauty to you and when you catch this beauty you transmit it to others through your words and actions.  Another contemporary example is the ISIS crisis, people who spread fear, anger, and hate so vehemently that it cannot help but touch the depths of our souls.  The response I have seen has sadly often been fighting fire with fire.  Articles posted left and right about the danger of Muslims in America, hate spewed forth against these men and women, fear about how this is the end of time and we will be destroyed gruesomely by them if we do not first destroy them.  Fear, anger, hate.  But we are never told to take an eye for an eye, we are told to forgive as our Father forgave.  We are told to love.  We will never defeat hate by hate, we will only replace it, we will never defeat fear with fear, we only strengthen it, we will never defeat anger with anger, we will only multiply it.  But we can love.  Love is the antithesis of hate and fear.  We can forgive, anger cannot occupy a space that forgiveness inhabits.  We can listen to the words of our Teacher, who prayed "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" even as he died at the hands of evil men, and we can pray for our enemies.  Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers, principalities and powers of this dark world, so why do we continue to try to fight with fleshly weapons?  Today I challenge you, and I challenge myself, to ask what is the spiritual response to the fleshly circumstances that are rising against you today.  And I challenge you to fight fire with water, with a fire extinguisher, by smothering, by kicking dirt, by whatever means necessary, but for goodness sake, stop trying to fight fire with fire.

Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust

I've been chewing on a thought for a while now and I think it's time to share it with you my friends.  In Song of Solomon it says that "He has brought me to His banqueting table and His banner over me is love" and in Psalm "He prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies, He anoints my head with oil, my cup overflows".  But to be honest, I don't always feel like I'm at a banqueting table, a lot of times I just feel hungry.  As I pondered this phenomenon one day, I remembered a picture of another banquet table.  In the movie Hook, after Peter has had a long hard day of  trying to remember how to be Peter Pan, he sits down at a huge banqueting table, but to his dismay it is covered from end to end with empty dishes.  Like Peter we are often brought to the banqueting table but see nothing but emptiness.  It is only when we begin to believe in the truths God has spoken, when we begin to trust that He will fill us, when we choose to live in joy and love in the moment in which we are, that we, like Peter, suddenly see a table filled with every delight imaginable, a table filled with enough for everyone at the table with more to spare for whoever we could desire to invite.  And every time we believe, we hear that same sweet voice in our hearts that says proudly "You're doing it, child!"  So don't wait to see the feast set before you to dig in today, take a huge bite of that ribeye or cake or donut and you will find that it is indeed there and that it will fill both your need and your desire.  Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!  A good practical step to start with?  Pray this, "Lord I thank You that Jesus Christ came to be the bread of life, I thank You that He gave His life that I might be filled with the goodness of God.  I believe that You are more than enough for my every need.  I believe that You are good and that You give good gifts to Your children.  I believe that You provide for me and I place myself in alignment with Your word that whoever hungers and thirsts for righteousness will be satisfied and that whoever believes in You and eats Your words will never hunger, and I say that I am hungry for You and Your words and Your righteousness."  Dig in.  This is the best meal you'll ever have.

Two are better

For my first post-wedding blog, I think it is only fitting for me to talk about a lesson learned from marriage.  You see, I haven't been willing to write for a while because I've felt like such a mess.  For the past 5 months or so I've been slowly picking up the pieces of my heart that have fallen around me due to various circumstances and each time I can't help but wonder how I got to a place that circumstances could break me like that.  I consider myself a strong person.  I consider myself a grounded person.  But the past two years have felt like a crushing weight to my soul.  So much loss.  So much fear.  So much loneliness.  So much that didn't go according to plan.
And then I got married.  You see there's this little thing in marriage called proximity.  If you get overwhelmed or peopled-out during the day, you still get to sleep next to a person.  You're around this person 24/7, and the funny thing is you care about them so you don't really want to give them crap just because you feel like crap. The first few months we were married, I was about to be done with myself.  I was trying so hard not to let all these negative emotions out on my husband and my feeble attempts failed.  I tried to deal with everything at once; again fail.  But little by little, day by day, my anguish was washing away.  Each time, I saw where these hurts came from and I asked myself, how did it get so far?  How did I fall like that?
And to be honest, I started to get a little scared.  If I could fall like that once, what was to keep me from falling like that again?  And to be honest, it could happen.  But God is faithful to pick me up and brush me off and set me back on the path of righteousness.  Along with that though, God spoke to me again one of the passages from our wedding vows, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.  For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.  But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!" (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 ESV).  I have found it a lot harder to fall now that I have Josh.  First off, he calls me out when I have something against someone, and I may not acknowledge his call out at first but I do end up dealing with it.  Second, it is a lot easier to tell when something in me is off when I'm constantly around another person and when isolation for the sake of isolation is so glaringly obvious.  Third, I love Josh too much to let him take the brunt of my bad moods because I need to deal with something, so I just deal with it.  Yes, it's a lot more work than I may have bargained for.  But oh yes, two are definitely better than one!

Enough of Enough

One question has seemed to plague my mind since my arrival back from Zambia.  In fact, it is the question that has plagued me for quite a while: Am I enough?  I have no doubt that we have all asked this question in one form or another.  Am I good enough?  Was that kind enough?  Did I do enough?  We complete an assignment and we ask if we tried hard enough.  A relationship fails and we ask if we loved enough.  Someone rejects us and, if we are insecure, we ask if we are good enough.  When I returned to the States I found myself asking if I had done enough while I was gone.  I quickly dismissed this since I knew that I had given my whole heart while away.  But then another was raised, am I doing enough now?  In fact, is who I am good enough?  Do I somehow have to prove my worth by what I do or say or how I love? It is easy for me to dismiss this question with the ingrained truth: of course I don’t have to prove anything.  But still, in the depths of me it nagged, pulling at my heartstrings incessantly.  Do I love people enough?  Do I love God enough?  Am I enough?  Then one night I heard that gentle voice (oh I love that voice!) whispering a variation of the ever popular phrase “enough is enough!”  Instead He said, “Enough of enough.”  Enough asking if I am or ever could be enough.  Enough saying the words not enough or more than enough.  Instead speak the word: complete.  Full.  Scripture says that in Him we have been made complete.  Have you ever noticed that if something is complete there is simultaneously no lack and no space for addition?  It is not more than enough, nor is it not enough; it simply is complete.  In Him I am complete, lacking nothing, full; take your pick; I’ll take any of those any day of the week.  But the awesome part is that I am all of those, every day of the week!  There is rest for me in completion.  It takes the work out of, well, everything.   I pray that you also find rest in the completion/fullness Christ gave you through His work on the cross.  And with that, dear friends, I do believe this post is…well…complete.  ;)

Grace and Peace

More to Come

Even though I graduated from college four years ago I still remember that day clearly.  We all sat in the gym which they had converted that day to be a sort of a stage for us and we listened to the president of the SGA quote Dr. Seuss, "Oh, the Places You'll Go!"  I still remember the atmosphere filling with a slightly sarcastic air; we were graduating from community college, what places would we go?  We were from a tiny town in rural Maryland, what things would we see?  To be honest, not many of us had grand aspirations, most were just there to get a slightly better job and live a quiet life, not a bad thing, but really what people would we meet?  Even then her proclamation stayed with me, "Oh, the places you'll go!"  I've thought of her words many times recently, of how right she was.  Who would have expected the beauty or the wonder of the places God has graced me to go or the people he has honored me to meet?  Oh, the places I've gone!  The urban center of Cape Town with the beauty of Table Mountain and the bright blue ocean always in view.  The breathtaking Zambezi flood plain, painted in hues of blue and green and wrapped in the golden light of the rouge setting sun.  The pulsing city of Belgrade with its amazing Eastern European vibe.  Oh, the people I've met!  What an honor to meet such and amazing and eclectic group of people all over the world with a heart to see God's Kingdom come no matter the cost to themselves!  The Van Collers who gave up their lives in South Africa to speak the gospel to the hurting and unreached in Zambia.  The teachers at the VOH school in Mongu who lay down their lives everyday to see the most vulnerable children in Zambia protected and taken care of.  The pastors and members of New Horizons Church in Belgrade who fight the spiritual battle everyday for their city and their nation, who seek out the most hurting and addicted in their community rather than shying away from the pain they know that it could bring to their own lives.  The leaders at my own church in Christiansburg and all those around them who willingly lay down their lives to help anyone who asks them.  These are the people I've been privileged and honored to meet; and that's just been in the four years since I graduated from college.  And my question in this is always, "God how could you be so good?"  His answer comes softly every time I look at the words carefully pasted on my journal: But my child, just wait, there's still "More to Come."

Hope and Humility

I once heard humility defined as seeing oneself in proper perspective to God and man.  To me that fits.  What could be more humbling than knowing how desperately you need God or how much you need your fellow man?  When I see in proper perspective I see how utterly hopeless my life 
would be if it was not for God's moment by moment intervention.  This revelation brings me to my knees, sometimes it puts me on my face in tears.  But it does not end at how hopeless I would be without God; no, this perspective carries on to how much hope my life contains because God is in my life.  He has said, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."  As I look at the situations and circumstances in my life, my need for grace is so apparent.  The sadness of leaving my friends and students in Zambia; the strange circumstances I found upon my return; and now the search for a job, not knowing what direction to look.  Yes, grace is what I need in this moment.  But here is my hope, that God's grace is sufficient for my every need.  That I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  That He will give me the grace I need even as I humble myself to ask for it.  That though I cannot carry on in Zambia, there is no gap left by my absence because God cares for those He loves.  Those are the thoughts that cause an inadvertent smile to begin to form on my lips even as I ponder the decisions and paths before me as well as the things that I have left behind.  And so I hope in humility that God's plans and purposes in this time will prevail.  And I hope and pray that you too find hope in whatever circumstances you find yourself in today.  God is faithful.  His love will never end.  Selah.