stories

It never ceases to amaze me that everyone has a story. You know?? I mean, most of us go through life just experiencing our story, but then there are times when other people let you in on their experiences and it just hits you that they have a different history....different experiences...different thoughts.....different views...

Or sometimes this hits me when I'm sitting in a traffic jam or when I'm walking through a mall -- you see people all heading in different directions -- some on their cell phones, some in a rush, some deep in conversation, some arguing, and someone's eating a Whopper from Burger King, and it just hits me -- everyone's involved in their own story.

Everyone's going somewhere.

Everyone has their own schedule.

Everyone has their own worries.

Some people are frustrated, some people are laughing, others are lost in their own thoughts, and some people don't have a care in the world...

Everyone has a different story. And yet it all fits together. And no matter how well you may know someone, you will never know what it's like to be them.

It's amazing.

And yet even more amazing than that is the fact that the message of Christ meets everyone where they're at, you know?? No matter what someone's story is or how differently they view life, the one message -- the one story of Christ is just as relevant to the guy sitting in the traffic jam frustrated because he's not going to make it to work on time, as it is to the woman crying in the minivan next to him because she's on her way to her dad's funeral, as it is to the college student five cars ahead of them laughing on the phone with his girlfriend, as it is to the road worker 2 miles down the road who started the whole traffic jam in the first place.

The gospel of Christ is the master key.

It just makes me think of that verse in Ephesians: "When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth."

It's overwhelming.

And it's beautiful. :-)

Broken Lullabies

round and round,
singin that same old song,
broken lullabies
floating along.

somewhere sweet
meets somewhere sad
when roses bloom
though thorny clad,

when rainbows shine
through darkened skies,
when for a moment
eyes meet eyes.

and in my head
when dark meets light
and dawn now fades
though night is bright,

when colors mix
and right is wrong,
when I hear again
that familiar song,

I remember roses
and skies
and eyes
and thank my God
for broken lullabies.

The Shallows

willow branches dragged from the waters,
blackened, leafless, lifeless...

...groaning...

rotting contortions clawing vainly at the soft sands,
desperately fighting to hold onto the comfort
of the muddy, mirky shallows.

their twisted stems stripped bare,
mere remnants of glory faded --
now beauty lost,
and death the heir!


So last summer I worked at a summer camp here in Grand Rapids, but before the kids came, the staff had some cleaning/repairing/readying to do, so we spent the first 2 weeks on the job preparing the grounds. Part of our job those 2 weeks was to clear the fallen branches from the lake beachhead so the kids could swim there once camp started. Anyway, on this sandy shore there were two HUGE willow trees, and over the course of the seasons, they had dropped many of their vine-like branches into the shallow water by the shore, thus causing the whole beachhead to be littered with dead branches.

Needless to say, we spent several hours cleaning off the beach itself, and after that, spent a day or more searching through the shallow water, pulling out all of the half-decayed, mud-covered, rotting branches that now lie on the bottom of the lake. It was kinda gross. lol. Anyway, an image has stuck with me even now, almost a year later, of looking behind me as I drug a handful of these 10 ft long black, tangled, whip-like branches behind me to be burned. So I wrote a poem about it. It's a powerful image, really -- an image of these lifeless, decayed branches, somehow still desperately clawing at the sand -- resisting this sudden change... clawing desperately to return to their "comfort zone" in the dark murky waters at the bottom of the lake...

Not remembering what it was like to be full of life.

To sway in the breeze on a summer day and feel the sun and drink the nutrients from the earth.

It was as if they were content to live in that state of perpetual lifelessness at the bottom of the lake.

.......content.....

life was easy down there... no changes, no storms, no growth, no risks..... but they couldn't even see rotten, twisted contortion they had become -- not because of any "sinful" choices they had made.... but because they were content to "live" that way... to sit. to take the easy way. to give in.. to sleep...

until one day.....without warning...these were suddenly uprooted and burned...

"He who has an ear, let him hear..."

"...You put a song in my soul when You made me!!"

Alas, that time has come, and spring break is over... ::sigh:: but, thank God, I had an amazing break - with plenty of rest and good food - and I made it back up to GR safely a few hours ago. :-) PTL!!

Anyway, on Saturday I had a couple hours to kill while I was waiting to pick up my grandpa from dialysis at the hospital, and I found myself over at Hastings (a Barnes and Nobles type store) browsing through the books. I could spend days in bookstores... Days. lol. Well anyway, I came across a copy of Rob Bell's Sex God, and, having heard a lot of good things about this book, I picked it up and started looking through it. After about an hour I couldn't put it down, so I decided to buy it. To be honest, I've never been all that impressed with Rob Bell (never did get into Velvet Elvis, and his sermons, though solid, have never seemed like anything too special to me...), but this book has blown me away. I'm about 3/4 of the way through it right now, and every new page impresses me more. God has really just spoken powerfully into my life over this spring break through several people and circumstances, but this book has definitely been the climax -- I don't know if it's just because of where I am that I've been so impacted, or if it's just that good of a book, but either way God has used it to shake me up some and really speak some truth into my life.

Much of Rob Bell's argument is similar to that of Don Miller in his book Searching for God Knows What, but Rob Bell explores some different possibilities with the material. He makes connections between the Fall and man's deep need to be sexual (as Rob would define it: man's desire to be whole, or connected, or complete - both between God and to fellow man - as he was originally designed to be in the presence of God), he focuses on Scripture analogies that paint God as a faithful lover (rather than Great Judge, Father, King, etc.), and explores the spiritual importance of gratitude and contentedness in the Christian's walk with God. Obviously I could go on talking about all this for hours and hours, but I'll spare you the time and instead just say, "If you haven't read this book, take a look at it, and if you have read this book, read it again." haha. Good stuff. :-)

Anyway, that's been me. This week I guess it's back to the chopping block - back to homework and practice and routines and schedules, but hey, that's life, right? May as well make the most of it! :-D Even though I'm not thrilled about starting school again, God really just has done an amazing work in my heart this week, and I've been so encouraged, so that I can honestly say that, in spite of the circumstances, I am alive and well, I've been refreshed, and I'm excited for another new day -- "it is well with my soul." :-)

....Great is THY faithfulness....
"Tú me perdonas,
Me impartes el gozo;
Tierno me guías por sendas de paz.
Tú compasión y bondad nunca fallan,
Y por los siglos siempre serás.

O, Tú fidelidad; O, Tú fidelidad,
Cada momento la veo en mí.
Nada me falta, pues todo proveés --

Grande, Señor, es Tú fidelidad!!!" :-)

Down in K-Tuck

Life is good. :-) Got down to KY safely last night (and all the snow is MELTED!! WOOHOO!!!), got caught up with the grandparents a bit, took a much needed shower, and went to bed. Woke up this morning to the smell of homemade biscuits and gravy (grandmother knows me WAY too well, haha), sat around the table talking for a bit, and then headed outside to help grandfather with some house work in the beautiful 60 degree sunny weather.

Grandfather's now working on adding an extension to the gazeebo over the pond, so I volunteered to help him load and unload a couple truckloads of rock from the neighbor. And let's just say that maybe it was God's plan that I actually start working out regularly at CU over the last month, because we quit working at 6 and it's 10 now, and my legs STILL feel like jell-o... lol. We only worked for about 5 hours, but some of those rocks are close to 150 pounds, and they're all laying flat on the ground, so you have to squat down and use your legs to get them on the truck -- basically it was like doing squats......for 5 hours straight. haha. But it was good to get dirty again (the ground, and rocks, were still really muddy from the snow melting), and it always makes you proud at the end of the day to know you worked your butt off.

....Unless we're talking about homework........ ;-D

Anyway, then my cousins came over (haha, I had to laugh - the two boys, 15 and 13 yrs old, both walked over from their house a mile away, brought their dog, and both of them were carrying their guns -- "you know you're in K-Tuck when....." lol) and we took the motorcycles out for a spin, so that was sweet - the weather was perfect.

Came back, had dinner with the cousins and fam, played some games, and now I'm just chillin' before bed again. Probably a similar routine tomorrow, except they're calling for 70 degrees. :-D Then I'm heading down to Richmond to see my other grandparents on Friday, and I'll be down there till Sunday, when I head back up.

Oh, spring break: I love you. :-)

I just keep coming back to what Don Miller has to say about human personality since the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Basically, his theory is that before the Fall, God existed in close, intimate relationship with man, and that the intimacy of His love and care affirmed His creation, and both God and man lived and loved and were completely content. But when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it was no longer possible for the perfect, holy Creator to exist in such close relationship with His now fallen creation, and that relationship was broken, and the peace and affirmation that man and woman once received from God was now gone. And Moses paints a perfect picture of the implications of this change when he makes the casual side note in Genesis 3: "At that moment, their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness." Adam and Eve could no longer receive the affirmation from God that they had previously received, and in the absence of this affirmation, for the first time in their lives, they looked to each other for that affirmation, and it was then that they realized their differences and were ashamed.

And this simple concept still affects us SO deeply today: we humans are OBSESSED with comparing ourselves to each other! We constantly, often subconsciously, look at others and judge -- we judge them by the way they dress, the way they speak, the activities they take part in, the friends they have, their sense of humor, their intelligence (or lack thereof), and the list only goes on! We are obsessed with ranking ourselves, and even in this supposedly free society of America where we believe that all men are created equal, we are constantly finding ways to create classes and hierarchies among our peers. And we derive our self-image and self-esteem from how we rank on the charts. And this is SO far from what Christ preached, yet it is the global, fallen culture we live in, and it is, I believe, the root perversion and central lie that is the father of all forms of evil.

If everyone derived their self-worth from a perfect peace in knowing that they were accepted and loved by the only all-powerful, sovereign God of the universe, there would be no need for this comparison -- there would be no place for envy or rudeness or selfishness or pride or thievery or murder or greed. And, conversely, these sins are manifestations of the vacuum in our own souls -- of the need for affirmation, love, attention, and someone to take pride in us.

Every person is crying out for this hole to be filled in their life, and people seek to fill it through different means -- whether through sports or fashion or art or romance or popularity -- everyone is crying out to be loved and accepted for who they are.

And this is why community is so important! We are relational creatures; it's the essence of what separates us from the rest of creation! Without community -- without openness and honesty and the ability to relate closely with other people and hear and share and cry and laugh and talk and pray, we are nothing! Jesus said that our purpose on Earth -- the best and most important thing that we can do with our lives is to love God by loving others.

How are you showing others that love? Do you actively care about the struggles of your peers? Anyone can love a friend -- how are you loving those you don't get along with? What are you doing to get outside yourself and show the sacrificing, selfless love of Jesus to others? What are you giving up? How are you sacrificing?

And if it doesn't hurt you to love -- if it isn't in some way uncomfortable and even painful for you to live as you were called -- to be Christ to those around you -- are you really being Christ at all? Think about it.

beginnings

So I've been realizing lately how important it is for me (as a verbal processor) to be able to get all the thoughts in my head out in the open, whether that's through conversation or poetry or journaling, and so in a moment of original inspiration (no, actually that's a lie, haha -- I was reading a friend's Xanga, and I was like, "Why aren't I still journaling?"), I decided to give this whole blogging deal another run. :-)

I guess actually tonight there's not a whole lot on my mind, except that I just started listening to DC Talk's "Greatest Hits" album for the first time in.......ages. Haha. I think it's probably one of my all-time favorite albums -- some of these songs never get old and they bring back SO many memories.... It's funny how certain songs or phrases or even smells can sometimes bring back memories like that or take you back to specific moments in time as well as any picture could...

Memory.......what a beautiful thing, huh? I think sometimes it's easy to curse memory... And I think that, for some reason, we tend to dwell on negative memories, but think what life would be like without memory! Can you imagine that?? There would be no point in schooling, no foundation for relationships, no possibilities for personal improvement and maturity, and ultimately, no room for dreaming. Life without memory -- good memories AND bad memories -- would be........lifeless.

It all just reminds me of C.S. Lewis' quote: "It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at the moment, we expected some other good." It's something I know I struggle with, for sure -- it's so easy for me to get wrapped up in my plans and hopes and expectations, and then to sulk and complain when things don't go as I had hoped. And it's easy to look back at the past and feel regret or look to the future and worry, but what C.S. Lewis was saying is that sometimes it just takes a shift in our attitude to see beauty and blessing in brokenness -- to see an eternal, victorious plan in the form of a dead man on a cross. And sometimes it takes time, and sometimes you don't ever see that blessing.. And that's when Jesus smiles and patiently puts his hand on your shoulder and looks you in the eyes and says, "My son, where is your faith?"