i have a job.

you heard me.  i am employed.  actually, they offered it to me and told me to wait until monday to accept.  which i will do, but i had already accepted the moment i saw their number pop up on my phone.  actually, i accepted when i shook his hand and left the interview on tuesday.  actually, i had accepted before that, so long before that that it is useless to even try to go backwards in time and try to figure out when.

 

honestly, though, this day has been a little emotional and definitely not drama-free.  i don’t like drama.  at all.  so it wore me out and kept me from being as excited as i might have been about the fact that I don’t have to pore over craigslist job postings anymore, i don’t have to keep my resume with me anymore, i don’t have to write any more thank you notes to prospective employers, i don’t have to iron my interview outfit again, and i don’t have to worry about if i won’t have enough money to buy my mom a birthday present.

 

i may write a book about this experience.  it will be entitled Get A Life: What to Do When You Lose Yours.  because basically every college graduate loses their life.  and people think they KNOW how to invent a new one, but they don’t.  we don’t.  we just fish around for one until something latches onto us, and then we pretend it’s what we were looking for all along.

 

it’s different though when Jesus is with us and we know it.  because He really gave me this job.  HE IS MY HUSBAND.  and such a stellar one.  so i keep plugging along, nose to the grindstone, trying to find housing and friends and church and schedule and new hang-outs, and then look up!  and He’s walking right in front of me, leading the way, by quiet waters and green pastures.

 

i went to cafe caffeine on Mary Avenue today with jana, whose soul i love.  it was a green pasture.
i also ate taste tests at whole foods with jana.  more green.
tonight, mom and i sat on the front porch and looked at a magazine.  quiet waters….

and tomorrow, fireworks!

river.

My prayer room today was a river.  I dare you not to sing another song about the river of God until you’ve gone swimming in a river.  There’s something about the current of a river that will wash your soul into a place of peace that is much more than my puny rhetoric.  Try it.

 

I went for a long, hot walk and then just jumped in the Brazos River behind my mom’s house.  Despite all the silt and sticks, it felt clean.  I laid on my back and my Chacos made my feet float and before I knew it, the current had carried me farther than I meant it to.  I stood up, but the river pushed and prodded me, trying to sweep me off my feet again.  I started thrashing my way back to my entry point, but made no progress.  The river was insistent that I go where it wanted me to.  I swam against it with all my might for what seemed like forever, and then I took a break and stood up again.  The water was only up to mid-calf.  I laughed–so did He–and spent the rest of the afternoon stomping upstream and then floating back down over and over.  I could only sit still if I dug in my feet.  And even then, crouched underwater, I would find my arms floating into the current, pulled by the river toward a destination it was sure they would want to go toward, also.

 

I’ll let you draw all the parallels.  For me, they were profound.  I felt like Jesus was flirting with me.  Don’t get weirded out.  If you had heard the fish jump that I heard, and turned and seen nothing there, you would have felt flirted with, too.

 

 

 

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…

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.

let’s go to the hop.

i can’t seem to sleep past 8 these days.  even though i’m up til 12:30 or 1:00 every night, i feel like i’m  missing something if i wake up with the sun shining in my eyes and still stay in bed.

yesterday morning, i got up, got ready for our 10 o’clock dodgeball game, and went to the prayer room.  i walked in and justin rizzo started prophesying.  i just sat there and soaked for a while…

but this morning, i just came to the coffee shop.  i don’t really feel like calling anyone.  i’m actually hoping no one i know comes in and wants to sit with me.  but i just feel a little stale.  we’re all about to head into the prayer room for a couple of hours, and then later we have “family groups” for the first time, and then after that we have church, then more prayer room.  somewhere in there i need to go to the grocery store.  mostly, i don’t want a new family group in a new home with new people to get to know.  [honestly, i'm sure i'll love it, but on this side of it] i just want my own family and my own home.

it’s hard to believe i’ve been here a month.  sometimes it feels like i’ve been here a lifetime.  and then i look up and feel like i just got here.  it’s a rollercoaster.  the other night in the prayer room, i couldn’t stop smiling, feeling so loved and pursued by Jesus.  but that was right after a couple of hours of feeling as confused as i’ve ever felt in my life.  through it all, i truly feel Him transforming my heart.  bit by bit by bitty bit. 

i wanna be found faithful
i wanna be found steady
i wanna be found faithful
to the end

i wanna live before Your eyes
i wanna stay before Your gaze
just keep me steady here
[rizzo]