Laugh at me

I just found my W2. I was right where I thought it should be; I just didn't recognize it. I'm so glad that this world is not relying on my competence.

Has anybody seen my W2?

I have never been the most organized person in the world. When I'm at home, my mom allows a ten-minute cushion before leaving the house in order to give me time to find my keys, my shoes, and my keys again after I set them down to look for my shoes. I did lose my work keys one time, only to find them the next day in the mail box. No, they were not being returned; I had set them down inside the mail box while retreiving the mail the previous day. However, I have never lost any important documents, and, the rate at which I lose things is directly related to the amount of sleep I'm getting and the amount of stress I'm feeling. So, the fact that I've lost my W2 is a warning sign to me that my life is getting a little out of control. I'm setting enough time aside for sleep, but my sleep isn't good. I wake up several times during the night and feel stressed as I fall asleep and when I get up. I feel a little nauseated most of the time. I lack energy, which leads to getting less done, which leads to more worrying and stress. So, I'm in a bit of a predicament. I really wish I knew where my W2 is. I really wish I didn't feel sick all of the time. I really wish I had two weeks off work right now. Yet, the chances of all that aren't incredibly good right now. I think I'm just going to have to pray. And trust. And pray again. I doubt I'll ever find that W2, but maybe I won't get so worried about it.

Blog Plug

There's been a whole lot of blog-plugging going on in my circle of friends lately. I haven't really opened myself up to recommending web logs, as you can tell by my lack of links. However, I won't be able to go to sleep tonight unless I refer my circle of readers to Dave Ferguson's blog, Velocity. I discovered the blog about a month ago, I guess. He writes with contagious passion about leadership and ministry in a way that excites me, motivates me, and refreshes me. Seriously, when I feel drained and frustrated, I can read his blog and come away with a renewed sense of purpose. If you are actively involved in church ministry, go to a church, have driven by a church, or can vaguely remember hearing something about a thing called "church" sometime, I would recommend this site.

more thoughts on prayer...

I struggle sometimes. Sometimes the load feels crushing, and yet it is I who must bear it. There is no more delegation left to do, or, when it comes to burdens on the heart, I cannot give them away, get them done, or get them over with. I've written recently about the importance of listening in prayer. Tonight, I find it difficult to overemphasize the importance of praying for others - our brothers and sisters, in matters small and large in their lives and in their ministries. I am realizing that I need my brothers and sisters, not only for the encouragement they bring me, the lessons they teach me, the practical ways they serve me, but I need them to offer prayers to God for me. I need them to offer those prayers. I am dependent on those prayers. The struggles I face - struggles which might be unique in minute details but by no means special in terms of what is common to man - remain toilsome struggles as long as I keep them to myself, even if I do silently offer them to God. Often, relief only comes when I make the request for others to pray on my behalf. Why? Why would the prayers of my brothers and sisters be more effective than my prayers alone? I have not studied this issue extensively, and frankly, I'm not going to take the time tonight. However, I have a hunch. In order to ask for prayer from others, I have to make myself vulnerable. I have to admit my dependency on something besides myself. I can't follow Christ in a vacuum. I can't be a Christian in isolation. I need others. And God designed me to need others. And prayer is one avenue through which I become the most vulnerable, the most dependent, and the most grateful and thankful towards others. To know that I would have a difficult, painful time making it through my day if it were not for the faithful prayers offered by others in my behalf increases my love for those people, the connection I feel to them, and strengthens me and my love for God and His church. Wow, God. You get more beautiful every day.

Wonderful Rejection

I just got rejected in the most wonderful way this weekend. A guy is doing something right when he makes a girl feel better about herself during and after he tells her he doesn't want to spend more time together than before. I've been talking to, e-mailing, seeing a little of, a guy for the past month and a half or so - since around Thanksgiving I guess. We seemed to have a lot in common, He loves the Lord with all his heart, and conversation between us was easy yet meaningful. He recently came to the regretful realization that there was still healing work to be done in his heart from a past relationship, and he wants to call it quits for awhile, and who knows if our paths will ever cross again. I believe him about the past relationship, and I respect his decision to not go forward if he believes his heart is still attaching itself to something in the past. The reason I believe him is that he treated me with the utmost respect during this entire month and a half. He treated me with reverence - he knows I'm the daughter of a king, and he treated me as such. Therefore, when he wanted to stop spending time with each other and he told me it would not be right for him to string me along, I did not feel like he was making things up to make me feel better. His rejection was consistent with his asking me out in the first place, it was done with respect, with a little fear, and with my well-being in mind. I actually felt better about myself after he rejected me - or at least it did no harm to my self-esteem. I left the conversation feeling valued and of priceless worth. Of course, I know it can't be this way all the time. After all, I only knew the guy for almost two months and was cautious and respectful the entire time. However, I think this, "I don't think we should hang out anymore," was one of the most encouraging experiences I have ever had! This guy just raised the bar. Good for him.

Listening

Listening. Although I have professed the importance of listening in prayer, I admit that have never clearly grasped the concept. When praying for guidance, I present my problem to God, and, as a result of that prayer, I either have an answer or I don't. Sometimes the answer is clear. For instance, during my senior year of college I prayed, "Father God, I don't think I want to be a teacher. I want to drop the teacher's certificaton option from my degree. Is this a good idea?" No. I knew it within five minutes of the prayer. The answer was not audible, but is was clear: I was not to drop teacher's certification from my degree. I remember praying what to do upon graduation from college. Kristen had asked me to come up to her hometown and live with her in her parents' basement. Other than that option, I had the choice of continuing to live in Charleston, moving home to my parents', or getting a job somewhere completely new. I prayed, and it was clear: move in with Kristen. Even when I first moved in with her and was feeling lost and new and out-of-place, wondering why I didn't take a job in LeRoy with my parents, I clung to my confidence that I was where God had led me, and I would trust Him despite my fears. In those cases, listening was easy. When the answer comes within a few moments of the prayer, not much listening is required. However, I can only remember perhaps three or four times when answers came so quickly, so clearly. It usually isn't so easy. When the answer is not so easily discerned, I just hope that God is granting me wisdom in my decisions and that my motives are glorifying to Him. Through prayer that my decisions would be made out of love for Him, reading His word, and seeking the wisdom and guidance of others, I do believe that God has been faithful in preparing my path, protecting my way. God has certainly answered prayer far more abundantly than three or four times. Yet, listening has had only one function in my prayer life: I ask, then I listen for the answer. If I do not ask, I do not think to listen.

The problem with listening only after asking is that, if I only listen after I ask, then I do not always know what to ask in the first place. My requests become based on emotional and physical indicators such as weariness, disappointment, grief, illness, or injury, and only when they reach the point of pain. Weariness can be detected long before I am exhausted, and anger can be discerned miles down the road from an outburst. Lonliness can be brought before the Lord well in advance of tears, and one can certainly pray for physical ailments long before a doctor's appt., antibiotics, and two days off work is necessary. When I do not listen, but only react to what is uncomfortable, my prayers become just that - reactionary. Trouble and unrest have already surfaced - they cannot be prevented, only handled. Hearts have already been hurt, words have already been spoken, time has already been lost. What would God put on my heart if I listened before I prayed? Maybe God would reveal a smoldering anger in my heart, something He wants to teach me about before it damages a relationship. Maybe He sees a repressed loneliness in my heart, and He wants to address it before I start tring to quell it with social events and tv. Maybe I hurt someone, and I need to know about it so that I can apologize. Of course, listening will not rid our lives of hardship - there will still be lonliness, grief, illness, and tragedy. But I wonder how much stronger I would be in the Lord if I sought Him solitude so that I could listen to Him, learn from Him, find the center of my life in Him, and learn from Him what is important in my prayers instead of only running to Him when I get myself into trouble or am in pursuit of a blessing. So often I know what I want, so I ask for it, trusting that if it's God's will it will come to be, and if not, it won't. In doing so the majority of the time, I am not allowing my heart to be opened to God's will, and I am not allowing my heart's desires to be conformed to His. Instead of praying for what I want, just hoping that what I want is what God wants, why don't I take some time to listen? "Father, what should I pray in this situation? I want my heart to be conformed to yours - teach me how to pray in this situation. Give me wisdom as to what is needed. Let Your will in this situation be what I pray for" or "Search my heart at this moment and teach me what I need to pray in terms of being conformed to Christ's likeness. Show me where I am straying away from You or where I am hurting other people."

There's a whole other world out there. In prayer, we draw near. We draw near to God. I'm praying that I would silence myself enough to listen for my God. This world is noisy enough; it can go without my voice for awhile. God, I want to draw near; let me listen for awhile.

Presence

"God is always with you," so said a woman of wisdom to one of my best friends recently. It's a simple concept, one that I have acknowledged for as long as I have been a Christian. I remember taking great comfort in that fact when I was in junior high and high school, a time when my spiritual classroom was non-profit Christian radio station playing on the dresser by my bed, transmitting sermons from Steve Brown, Greg Laurie, and Chuck Swindoll. I would leave the haven of my room into the threatening world of junior high and high school, some days having an abundance of friends, some days feeling like I had none, facing peers and teachers and upperclassmen and tests, holding firmly to the idea that at least God was with me and with Him I had all I really needed. However, by the end of high school, I doubted how close God was to me, or, more accurately, how close I was to Him. Yet, even after the later years of high school and the early months of college when the battle for my will was wroght inside my heart, and after I finally surrendered my life to His lordship and His grace, I still have wondered about those days when I was so confident in His personal presence throughout my entire day, those days when I would unashamedly and naively talk to Him about everything, even the petty little things in my life. I was so concerned about being able to hit the softball in PE class (I was horrible at sports - I didn't care if I hit a fly ball, hit it straight towards the first baseman or what, I just didn't want to strike out.) I was so concerned about getting an A on my test, having a place to sit in the lunchroom, getting to hang out with a certain group of girls. I talked to God about all of that, and found comfort in His presence when the days seemed to go horribly wrong. As an adult and a growing Christian, I have often wondered why, though I so much more mature now, I am not as conscious of a personal, intimate God in the little details of my life.

The other day, when my friend was simply sharing a struggle of hers and the wisdom her mentor had given her, "God is always with you," sprang forward and buried itself in my heart. Though I do often pray during my workdays and offdays, though I do try to take advantage of time in the car to pray, though I do try to set aside time to engage in prayer and nothing else, the beautiful idea that God is with me, as present as my students or the traffic or spider crawling on the wall, suddenly came alive as it never has before in my life. As I'm driving, the concept of God in the car with me and not connected to me through some spiritual mobile communication device is much more comforting. The concept of God with me at work and not looking down on me from some unreachable Heaven, a Heaven foreign and frankly seemingly irrelevant to the lying, one-step-away from trapping himself in a world of addiction, police, and prison student that I'm trying to get through to - the concept of God present in that situation and not looking down on that situation is nothing short of revolutionary in my heart. One on my favorite passages from the Bible is in Isaiah 43 - "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze." and "Do not be afraid, for I am with you." I've never doubted that, yet my concept of "God with me" has been tainted. I have viewed God with me as someone who might be with me through a phone call. So many of my closest friends - Melissa, Melissa, Kristen, Kristi, Kristin, Krista, Liz - all are with me across the miles. I think I began to view God that way too - with me but via spiritual telephone. The concept not just as "God with me" but "God is present" has made my heart leap more than once this week.

Seminary

I received a letter and phone call announcing my acceptance to Covenant today.
:)

Allegiance

My friend, Tammy, recently was struck by the word "remain." She realized it was an idea she wanted to hold close to her heart for awhile, a lens through which she reads, a filter through which she hears. She was the associate campus minister where I went to college, and she and I both participated in meetings in which a leader challenged us to think of a word, one word, that summed up where we were or where we wanted to be going, a word representative of what God was teaching us at that time, a word representing an concept that needed to be important to us that semester.

Reading Tammy's blog inspired me to start thinking, what word sums up the challenge God is laying on my heart right now. Trust seems to be close, but it's not quite it. I chose trust during one of those semesters, and what I'm looking towards now seems to require more than trust. I thought about faith. Faith would more accurately describe it, yet faith is such an overused word that I don't know that ruminating on the word faith would give me the encouragement I need. I am confident that this year is going to be a year of choices, choices that could affect my career, my location, and my relationships. Because of the choices I make, it is quite possible that a year from now my life will be remarkably similar to the days I live right now. However, by the power of choice, in the course of a year my life might bear little resemblance to the life I live at the present. The choices unnerve me a little. I question my wisdom. I question my motivation. I question my commitment to Christ - whether I have enough to endure the road ahead.

To what am I being challenged as I may or may not being walking into a new chapter in my life? I am being called to listen to the Lord, but not just listen, earnestly seek, search, and pursue. And then, it is not good enough to seek, find, and listen; I must obey. And, it is not good for me to obey on my terms, but I must obey on God's terms alone. I do not know how to sum it up in one word: I am being challenged to every day earnestly search after the Lord, and then, to love him with all of my heart, my mind, my soul, and my strength. Seek, pursue, chase down. Recklessly obey. Bow down in prayer, in worship, in praise. Rise up in prayer, in worship, in praise. To let His praise be on my lips, and let His love change me, and let my love for Him be the motivation in every decision I make. To praise Him and trust Him when His plans don't complement my angle on how things are supposed to go in my life. To praise Him when I must sacrifice what I want.

The word that comes to mind as I think of all this is allegiance. Allegiance to my God - in every moment, every day of my life. Let my loyalty always fall with Him. Let me strive to make my commitment pure, and let not even future failure keep me from pressing forward. Let my decisions mark my allegiance to Him; and when I have to choose between Him and myself, or Him and another, let me always choose Him.