ONE

"I don't want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and dicipline-- not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.
"You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness."
---Ephesians 4 (the Message)

Oneness. God is doing something in me. Believe it or not. I'm not sure where to begin or how much humility I am going to have to employ in order to fully expose everything that is going on in this post, but God is definately doing some hard work in me. It's work that requires an occasional, "I don't like this." It's work that makes me ask, "Do You know what you are doing? Do you see me at all? God, where are you in all of this?"

But this past week I have been reminded that God does keep his promises, even if it really does not look like he even remembers what those promises were. I have begun to see that I will be continually asking, "God, where are you in this?" if I remain in the mindset that God can only be found in certain places with certain teachers who use certain words. I am learning that healing does not come from running. Clean slates only look clean for a while. You can't escape the chalk, no matter where you go. God keeps his promises.

Strange how the process of God's working is not our timing nor will it ever be on our terms. Strange how sometimes you open your eyes after having clutched to what little faith you've had for so long to find that God still has not left you alone to your own devices. I am finding that after a year, God is still working on the same things in me, only each round becomming more intense. A year ago I began this thinking about what community means to my life, said a lot of words about it, read a few books, but now I am finding when the reality of it comes to a head, when i actually have to face what I thought I believed about it, it becomes really hard. It takes a great deal of humility. I requires me to make a committment, not knowing where the road is going to lead. It runs the risk of having to face conflict and pain and disagreement. It means bringing the things I am really passionate about out of the closet, believing that because they are beautiful to me, they might also be something more than burdensome to others.

I am finding that the shockingly beautiful things that I learned a year ago are real, but if they are really as big and real and beautiful as i thought they were, they cannot be confined to certain circles. I have to trust that someone else might actually understand if I can muster the courage to explain and the humility to learn from another perspective.

And so I am seeing that if this big, extraordinary God is really One, I must be brave to really explore that. I have found myself guilty of following Paul rather than Apollos when that is who God sends. I have found myself saying one thing, resonating with something, but finding a hard time facing the real-life application. Do I trust God more than I can trust in my own pride? Do i trust God to shatter everything once again so show me that he is actually bigger then even this wall I have built around him?

I feel as though I have been seeking this one kind of christianity, speaking the right language, listening to the right people, reading cetain types of books because this was a perspective that I really resonated with. But I allowed that admiration and resonation to form a wall, the very box that I was fighting against. I allowed my love for one part of who God is so blind me, to make me discontent with the other parts that he is longing for me to see. Just as i wrote about a few weeks ago, how we fear to cover the first great layers of a painting for fear that we may never be able to recapture that greatness in the rest of the peice. I need to allow God to paint over that area of my life so that the painting can be ONE. Building up the layers sometimes requires a time of ugliness.

And so I find myself forced in the face of my fears. Real committment to a community. Exposing the things I really love. Admitting that there may still be things that i don't know; I don't actually have it together at all. Approaching and cultivating realtionships with people I really admire. Having the courage to care for other people. Having the courage and faith to pursue my dreams. And a lot of the things that are required for these areas to be worked are fraught with "What if's" and "What about's" from the Liar, the Destroyer, the Discourager. They are fraught with returning pain and the urge to run. But I am making the choice, planting my flag, becuase I know that God has a plan and he is working in me and he keeps his promises. But I will never be able to see the fruit of this if I do not make the choice to trust, to stick it out, clutch to the pole, to find my strength in God in order to weather the storm.

Abba God, I thank you for your work in me. I thank you that you never give up on me, even when I want to run, when I think it would just be easier to hide. Abba God, I thank you for brining me to CSU, for giving me the strength months ago to plant my flag here in Fort Collins. Thank you that you have kept your promise here. Thank you that I can already see you making me into the artist and person I need to be in order to be the kind of teacher you want me to be. Thank you Abba, for the Rock, for what you are doing there. Thank you for placing me there, as hard as it is for me to commit there and as hard as you know it is for me to surrender that. I thank you God, that you are a journey God and that you are not yet finished with me. I thank you for what you are preparing me for. I thank you for really handing me a community where I can work out all of these challenges that come with relationship. I ask that you would really use these people in my life, not becuase there is anything extraordinary about the poeple, but rather that you have made them your precious creations and you have placed them on this earth for me to see your glory in them. Abba God, I ask that you would totally expose me so that I can work through these questions I have about you in honesty, in the light. More than anything, I want to come out of hiding and I want people to understand. Give me the words, the understanding, the courage, the brokenness and humility. Give me eyes to see your people. Show me the places where you want to use me, how I can be an active participant in bringing your Kingdom here, bringing your restoration, your life, to replace the old, stagnant relgion we have substituted for you. Give me the courage to really open my hands and hand over the cheap trinkets in return for your deep, ravenous, passionate, intense love. This what I really want. I love you Lord, more than anything else.

Back to Square 27: Trusting God for Big Things

"God can do anything, you know-- far more than you can ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushig us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us." Ephesians 3:20

Tonight as I spent some time in reflection, I had this verse bubbling up in my heart, reminding me of a teaching my youth pastor did over the summer, which was then reinforced at TEAM, and then again brought up this past sunday during our discussion at small group. Or really, it was the discussion at small group. I wonder if God is trying to say something to me.

This weekend I am going on a retreat with The Rock. Honestly, I feel as though I am giving something up, settling for something that wasn't my idea, that is, actually committing to the Rock, not the retreat itself. Its a challenge for me to believe that God is going to be doing something big in this place that just isn't what I would have picked in many ways. But it seems to be the place where I might be forced to face the hard stuff and it is the place where I know there are people who care so much about me and it is a place where I can give something.

This semester I have begun to learn the importance of goals. I am learning the importance of learning to be deliberate, to ask God for specific things instead of avoiding whatever the fear is. My goals are to be a person with deliberate goals, who chooses to take the jump, to freefall in this way. Tonight my RA and I were talking about the retreat (she is also going on a different one) and one thing she said to me was that in her freshman year when she went on her first college retreat, she asked God to turn her life upside-down. I want to have this kind of faith. I want to make this same request.

And so this weekend I am waiting to see how God chooses to transform me, shock me, change me, but I think first, I must remember the first lesson of all: I have a lot more to learn.

"The Artist's life is frustrating not becuase it is slow but because he imagines it to be fast." *

No, I have not abandoned you all for my new journal, although it is quite lovely. And I have considered sitting down here and writing out something insightful or witty or encouraging, but have not been able to find the actual words to express my current states. I have been waiting. I have felt the need to just wait for quite a while, but only just recently have I begun to actively do it. Just wait.

Every day, I find it incredibly intriguing how the reality of art so closely paralells the innerworkings of the deepest parts of our spiritualities. I have this incredibly deep-thinking (although sometimes considerably creepy as far as artists go) professor for my foundations sculpture class who has this sense of the process of art making. If you are doing well, working through things, he has a habbit of saying, sort of in a soft, thoughtful tone, "Well, you are in a good way." I sometimes just laugh to myself becuase what does that really mean, "to be in a good way," and yet, I get this deep sense that I know exactly what he is saying. I understand what it is to be in a good way--its persevering, quiety working through the daunting task of expression.

I am continually surprised as I slowly delve deeper into my education as an art student (an incredibly noble and lovely position, i might add) that the evaluation of my worth as an artist has less to do with the final product and more to do with the process through which my expression is forged. As my painting instructor observed the other day as she watched my cringe before my most current endeavor "sometimes it seems to get more frustrating before it gets easier." As we finished a large assemblage/construction peice in scultpure, it was almost strange to watch as every student thought their peice was almost completely finished, it was turned upside down or on its side or put in the light and it completely changed. The materials ended up dictating the form. The important thing was not what we had to show for ourselves at critique as far as something to look at, but rather how we grew in the process. I alsways thought that going to art school would be hard becuase my heart and soul would be demanded of me in perfect order in the form of a Rembrandt. But I am now finding more than ever that in art and in life, the thing that matters is the journey. Its about the process. One step at a time. One inhale before the next exhale and so on.

I've been thinking still quite a bit about church lately. And I've been waiting. I've been breathing. One breath in. The next breath out. Both eyes open. Waiting. Anticipating. Learning. Seeking. And as I sat quiet, whispering to Abba my anxieties, my exhaustion, he just spoke into me. What if the destination isn't a church? What if the destination...

One of the things that has been eating me the most is this debate between whether or not this so-called salvation is more about being saved from something (usually this formulated idea of Hell) or being saved to something (the kingdom of God begins now). And I have sat here writing all this, it has occured to me, its this same idea about destination. OUR GOD IS A JOURNEY GOD. How concerned is he about the destination-- which most of us assume is this idealised sort of heaven-- in comparison to the winding journey he wants to take with us, one step at a time, beginning today.

So I'm waiting. Maybe I'm learning to stop posting about destinations and will begin exhaling the breath of the journey instead.

*David Bales & Ted Orland in "Art and Fear; Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of ARTMAKING"

i got a new journal today....

I got a new journal today. Do you ever have a sense where you just can't remember who you are? you can't face yourself?

This has been a bit of a strange week. I week of seeing with new eyes-- humble, small, student eyes. Appreiciative eyes. Worshipful eyes. Eyes that know their own smallness, their own limitations. Eyes that no longer wonder why we need grace or where to find it. Eyes that suddenly know why they see more of the world than the face they are attached to. Eyes that are thankful for the sound of a mother's voice, eyes that long to look on the faces of those from long ago. Eyes that fill with excitement upon finding old friends.. and new ones. Eyes that are still searching for what is on the road ahead. Eyes to see.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about community and honesty and humility and i have realized there are so many places I have failed. I have considered the thought that it is so hard to find community because I fear what I see in other people might be more true of me than it is of me. But I keep reading blogs, hear people talk, read in books about these people who have this group of people who they just journey with. More than anything, this is what i want. But i'm finding that breaking into that is so hard. So hard. Hard to let go of my pride. Let go of what I know and accept that someone else might actually know a little bit more.

So I got a new journal today. I have a bit of strange journal psychology that sometimes just throws me. I have a lot of journals from the past year. About 9. And each journal has a spirit of its own. All i have to do is look at the book sitting on my bookshelf and i go back to what i was thinking about, how i was feeling at the time. Sort of like in The Notebook. It brings me back to that place.

And as I looked at those journals, I realized they are so full of failure. To be brutally honest, there are a lot of times when i look at those journals and I think about how i just don't want to go back there. They are full of the records of how much i didn't know and instead of honestly seeking God for the answers, I looked into myself, filled pages and pages with me-- and so there is no resolution. They are stories without resolutions or happy endings. And so i hate those tangible reminders of all the failures of my life and i love those tangible reminders that i'm a failure becuase its not about the time and the paper and the ink that i waste, but its simply a reminder that someone else is God. (And that person is not me, in case you were wondering). They remind me that I am incapable.

And so I got a new journal today. I want to start fresh in this place. I want this journal to be different. I want it still to be a reminder that I am a failure, but a record of the success of God, not just me.. out there... trying to keep this mask on alone.

I think this is going to be a hard road. really being open and humble. but i think it will be a good road. Its sort of like practice in being submissive, letting go of control, living life to serve another . Strange. I always thought that coming to college would be learning independence-- but somehow i keep learning that it is actually more about the exact opposite. So i got a new journal today.

Crushed

I feel like there are about a thousand ways that i could title this post, but i think this choice is the most accurate-- the most all-encompassing. Bascially I have been a real jerk. That is the best way to describe the roads i've taken in the past few months and I am hoping, praying, begging that this a new beginning-- a new leg of the journey. I have been trying to grasp God's grace before I was willing to admit that I really needed it.

I'm not sure if any of you is going to understand what any of this means, but it means something big about the place where i feel i've been for an incredibly long time-- last semester, the summer, the time up till now.

I've been judgemental. Prideful. Unteachable. Grasping. Caniving. Selfish. Self-worshipping. I've been hard-hearted and stiff necked. Most of all, I have not been giving God the place he deserves in my life and I think that it is time that I stopped. I don't know who i've been. I don't know what has taken hold of my life to so completely blind me, but today i find myself crushed. I find myself mourning over who I have been and who this person is that I have been hiding and justifying.

When did that which once was sacred to me become mundane? When it started to be about me. My life has been small and stagnant becuase the focus of my life has been on the smallness that I am. I am seeing grace in a new, humilating light. Humiliating as it is, I am so grateful for it. Who have I been?

So my church search... teachability. I've been looking for a place where I could continue to feel justified in my piety, my judgement, my religious superiority. Last night I went to this small group and it just hit me that I have been so proud. I have been so proud, and so masked, and so stupid. Finding community must begin with humility-- I've learned this the hard way I'm afraid.

So, thank you all for your prayers. I know they've been going up in full force. I am ever thankful that God doesn't put up with my masks, my lies, and that somehow he is always calling me back-- even when I have been so irreverant, when I have been so ignorant, so indifferent to all that he is. I can only keep asking myself, "Who are you and who do you think you are?"

What a terrible thing to have to admit. Its embarassing and shameful and yet somehow for once I am proud of my honesty. I just wonder how to articulate this to people in person and be able to look them in the eye, without bursting into tears. I feel that I should appologize to all the world, all the people who I have come into contact with... I have been so lost and not even aware of it.

"Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just an altered way of living and thinking, but a full-on metamorphasis." Martha Beck

Today is a genuine rainy day. The real deal. Its a good day for just quietness, for rest, for reflection. So last night I had the amazing priveledge of seeing David Crowder in concert and it was just an amazing night of thoughts, emotions, but especially one just to see the power of God and how he is at work in the lives of these people he has gifted to express who he is musically and the way that he expresses what he wants to do in his world through them.

I have realized that a lot of my time is spent thinking about me, worrying about me, wondering what is wrong with me and i have missed this big God. I've missed out on a lot. I've been thinking a lot about this line from Rob Bell, "I just don't want to live lame." Is that really a possibility for my own life? Is there something better, something bigger than this mush of a life? Sitting there last night simply in awe of what can be expressed through God's creation of music: the beauty, but also just the bare-bones honesty, the total surrender that seemingly can only be expressed in this powerful medium. Surrender. Brokeness.

There is a lot in life that I just don't understand and I wear myself out trying to figure it all out. What is this season in my life? What am i looking for, what am i expecting, and really i think the biggest question, what is the most important for the here and now.

I don't really know, but i am simply going to rest in the fact that i don't know and i don't need to know. This morning at just this strange moment right at the end of the closing prayer at church this morning, this thought came over me. " I just want someone to put their arms around me and tell me that its going to be all right.." And somehow i sensed that.

Abba God, I ask for your honesty here. I ask you to bring me out of the hiding that I have been in. expose me. You've been talking to me a lot lately about giving up myself in order to gian you, to find real life i need to loose mine. Idon't know what that means and in my human flesh I am too weak to open my fingers. But Lord God, I make that my prayer for however long it takes.. Soften me to the point of being able to let go of my own life-- who am i to even know what to do with it? develop this in me, I beg you. Abba God, i just want to thank you for al that you are. Thank you for the pattern of your rain on my window. Thank you that you are not contained by my imaginiation or my spiritual stamina, nor are you limited by my confusion and laziness. Abba, I thank you that you have a plan and it isn't all about me-- thats a lot of pressure and i think i am about to break u nder the notion that that is what it is about. Thank you that you never leave me, that you never withdraw your promise of rest. Thank you for doing in me whatever it is you are doing. I ask that you would keep reminding me to be quiet and simply and surly keep working on my heart... give me trust. I love you my Lord, my God, my redeemer, the one who is bringing me back to himself. What a beautiful God of grace you are.

I feel like I am failing in a lot of ways and i feel like i've been hiding that for a long time-- even from myself. I feel like i'm failing, like i am incapable of doing anything else. This college thing is hard-- and thats hard for me to admit. I would like to think that I could handle this, handle life, handle everything, handle my own faith. But honestly, i don't even know what faith looks like anymore. I don't know what it means to follow all this formulas, these "truths" that I am so good at talking about. I am beginning to wonder who God is, where he is, what is so wrong with me that i cannot even find him. I feel like the fact that I haven't found a church, that i have no real community here that i don't feel like i am betraying in a way-- I am failing. Its hard to get past my pride enough to even ask for what I really need-- i'm afraid to ask for the things that i'm really longing for because i'm just afraid of dissappointment. I'm tired of falling, tired of trying to find my own life and falling. I feel alone, wondering if it will be this way forever-- half-expecting it becuase that seems all i have ever known.

I hate to admit all of this because it doesn't make me look like i have very much good christian hope and it doesn't make me look like i have it all together and it makes me think that commiting all of this to this blog, this place where you all read about me, the place where you define parts of who Heidi is, that this failure will become a permanent part of your opinion of me. I guess thats the risk of it, the fear of it.

I don't know who I am, where I belong. This faith that I have based so much of my worth on just seems to be falling out from under me. I feel like i'm being punished for my pride. I want to add some type of "...but...." with some immediate solution, but even if i were to do that, i would be lying and just continuing this cycle. So I'll just leave it at this... i feel like a failure.

so i just realized maybe this support and advice i feel i am missing is actually my mom... how wierd is that?

its 4:30 in the morning and I suddenly find myself awake with this question:

When did that which was once sacred in my life suddenly become mundane?

How did that which used to excite me, fill me with wonder suddenly get mixed in with the mush of my life?

"A wise son heads his father's instruction...
"He who guards his lips guards his life.
But he who speaks rashly will come to ruin...
"The sluggard craves and gets nothing.
But the desires of the diligen are fully satisfied...
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick
But a longing fulfilled is a tree of life...
"Good understanding wins favor
But the way of the unfaithul is hard...
"A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul
But fools detest turning from evil..."

"Souls who folow thier heart thrive"

"He who walks with the wise grows wise...
"An appettitefor good things brings much satisfaction,
But the belly of the wicked will always want more..."

Selections from Proverbs 13

Last night I went to try out a small group with some people from Timberline Oldtown. I'm not sure exactly what I am going to do with it, but i don't really think this is where God is leading me, which might be okay. Its strange how so many things really are so good, but all of them can't be for me. The group is going through Hebrews, and last night we went through chapter 4, which interestingly i had been looking through just on sunday, as it speaks about somehow entering into God's rest. As we disected the peice, Tim, the leader, sort of summed it all up in this statement:

Faith means trusting God enough to enter into his rest.

Think about that for a minute. So often we are caught up in the thought that our life is about doing the right thing, getting things done, but doesn't it take so much more faith just to do nothing. To honestly trust that we have nothing to do with our security to the point of being able to simply rest? It seems to often, the thing that God wants to drill into our heads and pound into the beat of our hearts is the fact that our power is found in rest and our livelihood simply in love. What a foreign concept to our busy, self-driven lives. To have so much faith as to understand that not only is there anything we can do to be right with God, the very place in which we find this harmony is in doing nothing at all.

So, as Tim was speaking and guiding us, he asked this question:

What does it mean for me personally to enter God's rest today?

The immediate thing I thought of at this point is this search I am on, even this seemingly run from commitment for fear of making the wrong choice. It is as if GOd were saing, trust in the palce where I seem to be laying it all out for you. Trust me enough to allow you to let go of all of these things you are choosing between and honstly follow where you know I am leading you. There are all these places that just so totally resonate with where my heart is at, but the age group isn't quite right, its too hard for me to get there, small things that seem to just shoot the wind out of God's leading.

I really enjoyed the small group last night. It was exactly what I needed, exactly the type of thing I am seeking after, but it is almost though that it seemed that God was confirming, "this is not the place where I want you." Why? I feel like he has said that to me before and I have wanted to say no, I want to argue. But its like he's asking me to trust him, asking me to rest in the fact that he is capable of teaching me whatever he wants, no matter where it is and no matter if i don't hink that it is the right place for me... how am i to know?

Abba God, I really emjoyed the group last night. I felt like it just hit me where my heart is, and yet you seem to still be leading on otherwise? is this really true? Am I allowed to think that maybe this is the right place? what is holding me, where is the catch? Please show me and give me peace in the meantime. Help me to let go of everything and just choose from the clean slate of your quite voice.

The one thing I need to know...

Just a few minutes ago, I was listening to the radio on my ride back from the gym (oh yeah, I love my mp3 player, bike, and university with so many student resources) and this song from Cademon's Call came on that always seems to hit me. i don't even know what the song is called, but i know i have even blogged about it before and the main phrase of the song is: "Don't you know i've always loved you and I always will." I remember the first time i heard that song-- really heard it, it sort of shocked me, but really hit me where I needed to be hit.

So today has been one of those Colorado days at the first of fall that just hits you with cold. Its just cold. And i can't help but think of last fall, so many autums in my past that have been really beautiful. What is it about fall? Everything is dying and yet it seems like so often in me everything is becoming new again. I almost feel as though I have been cold for the rest of the year and now i am just waking up to the warmth again.

These past weeks have really shown me how small my faith is. Its been a hard month or so, full of questions and few concrete answers. It has been especially hard choosing a church, finding that place where I fit, the community I want to join in its seeking of God. And honestly, it has been hard to see that this search that I am is not about me against someone-- it has been hard to see that God is on my side. I've been reading blogs and talking to people and thinking about people and the thing that just keeps going through my heart is this ache for that community all my own where I fit. I mean, tehre are all the girls in my hall that are really great, other people like that, but there is still this thing that I just am reaching my arms out for.

And so the past few weeks I have felt like i need to find this place, figure this out. Like I have to pass the test with God too. I mean, its been such a challenge just to listen to my heart, but it has been such a good journey to get there. And so, as I contemplated today where I want to be, where GOd wants me to be, the thing that just struck me was that God simply wants me to know that he is on my side. No matter what else happens, no matter what else he seems to be doing in the lives of others that just isn't working for me, he wants Heidi to see that He is on her side. That is what that is about..

So I am just asking for a little help in the trust department...

What I want...

I want to find a place that simply lives life as a celebration
I want to be with people who aren't condemners
I want to be with people who are free
I want to be people who are not afraid to question
People who push boundries
People who aren't afraid of God getting out of the box
Out of their control
I want to be free
To Choose
To be friends with the people I love
Without having to follow the rules they want to follow
Or neccessarily check off all the same boxes

I want to be in a place
Where things are open
Where God is big
And Real
And personal
Personal enough to see my heart
And let go of the list

I don't want to settle
For a place
That lacks these things
No places that settle for the lists
Or the guilt
Or the pain
Or the bootstraps that are bound to break

I want to find the place


I've been reading Thomas Merton's "Thoughts in Solitude," and as I was standing in line in the dining hall, I caught just a few lines of the book. Here is what struck me:

"To unify your life, unify your desires To spiritualize your life, spiritualize your desires. To spirtiualize your desires, desire to be without desire."

A number of years ago (as if I am old enough to say "a number," how about a few) I was going through Henry Blackaby's "Experiencing God" and I remember one of the things that stood out to me at the time was a discussion about making the prayer to be free from desire my own. I haven't put much thought into that idea until today-- what does this mean? What does this mean in the context of our desires being from God, this idea of following my heart and really desiring things becuase of my love for God? What does this mean?