Chris Caine and muddy calves.

Just a quick note today to direct you over to the fabulous blog of speaker, author, founder of The A21 Campaign, runner and all-around fireball, Christine Caine.  She’s doing a devotional series right now that parallels marathon training with following Jesus and it’s been really fun to follow.  Her post this morning nailed me on what it means to wait on God in an active, participatory sense.  Definitely worth signing up to get in your inbox every morning!

Interesting tidbit: Did you know that when you run in mud, if you have tons of mud on the back of your calves, it means you have weak glutes? I had heard this but didn’t believe it (because I always have splatter and like to give myself the benefit of the doubt) but over Christmas break, right after a hard rain in Texas, I ran with Sarah (speedy sister) and she had been working on glute strength for several months.  At the end of the run, my tights were had mud chicken pox and hers were completely clean.

Humbling? Ahem.

After my session with Ian and the subsequent rainy day yesterday, I was interested to see how the old calves fared after my run today.  See for yourself:

Speckly.

banana, maple, peanut butter cupcakes.

that’s what i made tonight with mary, my wonderful (truly delightful) roommate.  you should have the recipe.  the cupcakes were banana maple and the frosting was a thick, peanut butter thing that turned more into caramel than anything.  we used what we had.  and it was amazing!  a delicious splurge on a monday night.

 

 

and i am happy.  laughter is so close to the surface these days.

vineyards in a wilderness.

I’m in the waiting stage.  I’ve tried to jump ahead and push my way through multiple times…

• searching for a place to live
• thinking i found the place to live and practically signing the lease
• wishing i was dating
• running headlong into yet another situation of unavailability (I’m going to learn one day not to like someone who’s in another state, not ready to date, or already dating…I really am)
• wanting things and thinking about it a lot…realignment of my wheels on my car, heels for work, a ticket to LA to see Rachel, a new computer, books about project management…but not having a paycheck yet

 

But the Lord is clearly speaking that He’s allured me into the wilderness and He wants me to just

 

WAIT.

 

No more pushing ahead with my own agenda.  Just wait for His surprises!  He wants me all to Himself right now.  He wants me for His pleasure.  And I want to be His resting place, the one He looks to when His eyes are searching for someone loyal.  I don’t want to be the grumbling girl.  But sometimes I just feel like

• fingerpainting angry colors
• getting in my car and driving fast
• and not caring that I might as well be setting hundred dollar bills on fire.

 

…waiting…

life or death.

Forsake all.

For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

“Father, I desire that they might be with Me where I am…”

The Desire of all nations.

It’s a dance…and right now, I feel like I’m dancing at my own funeral a lot of the time.  Sorry if that sounds morbid.  I don’t mean literally.  I just mean that feeling in my stomach that even my mirror doesn’t understand.  I’m tired, but not in a way that an early bedtime relieves.  I’m sick, but incurable.

I don’t even think apples or raisin-cakes can help. 

I have to lean.  I need to lean.  Bring me out leaning.  My friends and family want to hear my voice, but it doesn’t work anymore.  Only You can hear it.  Only You…

germinate.

I want to farm. 

I can’t help it. 

I want A farm. 

This season is just too much for me…everything coming up green, spring showers, warm sun again.  There’s something in my heart that can’t be content with urbanity.  I’m hungry for the soil.  I’m sick of pretty fingernails.  I miss puppy skin, warm eggs from the henhouse, the smell of a horse, Texas mud, big trucks, bluebonnets, mockingbirds. 

radical.

Reading through Paul’s letters to the churches—that Paul who was the least of the apostles but was called as a minister of the Gospel to make known the great grace also given to him—I am struck by the notable absence of direction concerning  things that take up real time. The battlefield is the mind and heart. It isn’t flesh and blood against which we war. There is little to no direction from Paul or any of the other writers of the New Testament about what we are to do. Their instructions are directed toward who we are to be.

All the exhortations and the high calling of our faith, all the promises and every mystery of God and godliness, can be and must be applied to any sector of society and every occupation within which we find ourselves, whether through our pursuit of God-given passions or the necessity and proactivity of our circumstances. A humanistic viewpoint might assert that we all have to spend our wearisome days doing something to keep us fed and clothed and respectable, and so we might as well do something we enjoy. That sounds a lot like Ecclesiastes, too. Find meaning in your work: but to do that you must kick it into gear yourself and get yours, because no one else cares. There isn’t anyone who’s going to promote you unless it’s you.

And then we encounter our Shepherd. We look up and find there’s a Lover inviting us to a banqueting table. Somehow, some way as we try to catch up with the story that seems like it’s many chapters ahead of us (and we’re dyslexic), the Storyteller Himself smiles up at us through an unlikely Word. He meets us at the kitchen sink, in a puddle of our own tears, or in the wishy-washiness of someone else’s heart breaking ours. He says, It’s okay. I’m here. That’s what He always says. I’ve got you now. I always have. With a Voice that sounds surprisingly like home, He calls our hearts and says, I made you. I delight in the way I made you. I don’t want you to be like this other person. Be you. Let Me love you. And love Me as yourself, fully yourself.

For example, I have a strange love of farming. I don’t know what to do with it. But I love it. For me, there is nothing like being outside under the blazing sun planting seeds, pulling weeds, watering by hand with an unruly hose, and pulling gorgeous, organic squash off the vine. There is no literature more delightful to me than landscaping books full of fresh ideas or books about new methods of bringing sustainable agriculture to Africa. I love the smell of a greenhouse.

I could try to convince my heart that this seed of joy must die and be pounded into the ground and I could go get a job as an accountant. And my friends with expensive accounting degrees that inexplicably love numbers and find the order of perfectly balanced books exhilarating could pound their gifts into the ground. They have to try hard not to shake their fingers at a harsh taskmaster that makes them go into the fields and live the simple life. But what is drudgery to them is almost-guilty pleasure to me.

On a more pointed note, I could try to convince myself that the spiritual, pleasing thing to do—the high calling—is to raise support and spend my days in an auditorium, praying ceaselessly and going into the depths of the unsearchable scripture. It seems so indisputable, that I would find favor with God if I gave up all my loves and personality and relationships to seek Him fulltime. I will do it, if He says it. There is an ache in my heart to be the heroine of my life, and if the heroine is an intercessory missionary, then that’s who I want to be. But, somehow, the more I get to know Him, the less I believe all the mantras I’ve heard so long about “giving up my life” to serve God. However all those preachers meant it, I interpreted this circumstantially.

What it means, I’m beginning to be convinced, is my flesh, my sin nature, and all that which is opposed to God. I have loved sin. I have hated what He loves. So have you. And our struggle is to die to that natural inclination and become vivaciously alive to the Spirit of God living inside us, working mightily within us to will and do His good pleasure. In that way, oh, how I want to give up my own ideas of life to serve this beautiful One who became the Servant of all! Then the radical lifestyle of prayer, fasting, giving, and serving becomes a flow, a true river springing from a pure heart. ‘Radical’ ceases to be boxed-in as a synonym for ‘full-time minister,’ whether that means youth pastor, intercessor, worship leader, or missionary. ‘Radical’ is defined by the interior life, the core beliefs of the heart and the communion with God that takes place where no one else has entrance.

love.

     To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.   [C.S. Lewis]

Dang it.  I hate being vulnerable.