So, I'm back from my trip to the great city of Chicago. And for those of you who did not know I was gone, I took a trip to Chicago. And as you can see, I had a bit of a great time! (And for you curious types, yes, he is made of Legos.)

More to come...

Nothing to Loose

"Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming - it has, in fact, come - when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.

It is who you are and the way you live that cound before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is looking out for: those that are simplay and honsetly themselves before Him in their worship. God is sheer being itself - Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."

John 4 (The Message)

I've been thinking a lot lately about identity and hiding. As I was reading through the story of the Woman at the Well in the book of John, it struck me how much the woman was looking fowhen what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.r her identity and worth before Jesus is a number of places: her ancestry, what she knew about her ancestors, and even how spiritual she could appear in her knowledge about what the Jews believed and how God had revealed himself in the past. And still you can hear the desperation in her voice. "You mean, you could give me water so that I would never have to come back to this well again?"

And how does Jesus reply to her pleading for some recognition? He doesn't commend her for how much she knows and who she is related to nor does he condemn her for her lifestyle. Rather, he replies saying, "None of this really matters. I don't care how you've been labeled, who other people have told you you should be, where people say the right location for worship is. The day has come when the appearance of your insecure figleaf garments no longer matter. You are free just to take them off. Come out of your hiding, woman, come to the well as you are, in the morning, not hiding at noontime."

How often I find I have been hiding. How I shy away from the light out of fear that my nakedness underneath might be exposed, that someone might find out that I am really human too. Hiding.

"This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and ilusions hates God-light and won't come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so that the work can be seen for the God-work it is."

John 3:19-21 (The Message)

Sometimes I wonder, when I am struggling within myself with my own weaknesses, my shortcomings, afraid to come out, if God calls after me like he did so long ago in the Garden, "Heidi, where are you?" And once I become brave enough to come out, he says, "I know the crisis you are in. But the day has come when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. Your dirt is not too big for me to clean up, its not too big for me to be able to accept you with it. I am big enough even for your mistakes."

I've been thinking about what it would look like if I really lived my life as if I had nothing to loose. Think about that. Nothing to loose. If I were able to give all of myself because there is nothing for me to loose.

"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." Mark 8:36

In my family, there is a game of Rummy (endeared as "Liverpool Rummy") that is a deep rooted tradition, which naturally becomes and irreplaceable centerpiece of our holiday tradition at times. It is a rite of passage when you become old enough to posess the capacity to play the game at a speed that outruns the patience of the adults in the family. And this year, as I joined in my share of "Liverpool" games, it occured to me that in order to really have fun, you have to risk it all. In order to obtain enough cards to do something noticeable with your hand, you have to accumulate a great deal of cards often times-- a fine line between putting everyone to shame or counting well into the hundreds at the end of the hand. But as I did my share of card-collecting this holiday season, it occured to me that even if I end up counting far into the night, I have lost nothing. Even though it is just a card game, how often times we get even worried about how our score ends up when the game is over. And yet, in the economy of the Kingdom, loosing still isn't loosing. Coming into the light and exposing all the work, even as small as it seems, is still God-work. It was never mine. It's all his.

Living life as if I had nothing to loose. Letting go of the labels that world puts on me. Giving up on having to prove myself. Stopping wearing myself thin trying to maintain this fake, shallow identity. Realizing my identity is rooted only in God, in the spirit he places in me, the approval he builds into me just for being his child, his creation.

Tomorrow I am leaving for a trip to Chicago with a friend. For the past few weeks, I haven't felt very worthy to go on this trip with her, like she was allowing me to go even though I didn't deserve it. Like our friendship should be based on something arbitrary, on my own feelings of worthiness. Like me doing the things I think she wants me to do would make me worthy. What a great thing to to know I am free from this! I do not have to be bound by these lies, this upside down thinking the world has made up in order to keep the fig leaves on! Here's to no more hiding!

Abba, I thank you that you sent your Son to break down these glass walls we put up around ourselves. Thank you for sending your Son to show us what you are really like, that you are generous and your concern with me has nothing to do with how I am able to measeure up! Thank you for the freedom to be who we are, that I can always come to you, no matter how messy things seem. Thank you that even my mistakes are not too big for you! Thank you for this awsome opportunity to go to Chicago and strengthen this friendship. Thank you that your friendship with us as your people is never based on the worthiness we can conjure up for ourselves! I love you Abba!

So this is what I have decided: I am going to stop worrying a bit about how I spend my time and how many people I have to spend it with. What if I just enjoyed myself, didn't give myself so many expectations to live up to. I just had some coffee with an old friend and I realized that there are some things in life that are just not that important. There are some people in life that you just have to let go of. There are people out there that I just can't be best friends with all the time and there are people from my past, from high school, from this old part of my life that I need to not try so hard to maintain. It may end up just being fake and draining. What if I just enjoyed being here at home, in this room, in this house, with this family, playing with my toys, enjoying just being for a while so that I can get back to living the rest of my life.

That's the thing about college. It seems to be more like reality. Even though it seems also like a dream when you are away. But seriously, what if I just focused on the stuff that is natural, the stuff I don't have to try real hard to made work when in reality, I don't even know what it is good for. Who are the people who are really meant to be in my sphere of influence and who are the people who just aren't right now?

Superman. er. woman. What if I just accepted that fact that not only am I a superhero, I never have to be one. What if I were just a girl, who worried less about my life and just spent more energy living it. How nice would that be.

I think I am getting to the point in this break where I stop freaking out and start having enough clarity to enjoy it. AHhhhhhh.. its nice.

And now, off to the Newsboys Concert! woot!

Trust

Abba has been talking to me a lot about trust lately. I've been reading B. Manning's "The Relentless tenderness of Jesus," and here is a quote that really penetrated today:

"You will trust God only as much as you love Him. And you will love Him not because you have studied Him; you will love Him in response to his touch. Even when your troubles are not over. You may still wrangle with God. You may cry out with Jesus, 'My God, my God, why have you foresaken me?' Only if you love will you make that final leap into the darkness: 'Father, into your hand I commit my spirit...

...I believe Jesus calls all of us to let go of the desire to appear good, to give up the appearance of being good, so that we can listen to the word within us and move into the mystery of who we are. The preoccupation with projecting the perfect image, with being a model Christian and edifying others with our virtues leads to self-consciousness, sticky pedestal behavior, and bondage to human respect..."

You will trust God only as much as you love Him. In the past few months, I have been faced with the need to allow God to take charge of my life. I have found myself praying, teach me to trust you with my life, teach me to leave it in your hands. College seems to be a place of very important decisions needing to be made on little resources and a short amount of time. Its entering a world very much bigger than I.

I have been doing a lot of worrying lately about the summer and next year, which seems both near and far all at once-- I do not know if the near or the far is bigger at this point. I've never had to procure a place to live before. Its always just been there. And the people with which to live were also readily present. And I find myself at a bit of a starting over place in terms of the who and the how. I chose a new sort of road that is leading me away from the safe and secure that I was getting ready to anticipate in the last few months. Things seem much more open now. Open meaning both clear and beautiful, but also more unknown. More trusting is becomming needed.

There are also a number of things that are out of my control. Even the things that you would think I could control have slipped my grip. One of my closest friends-- and answer to a promise-- seems to have been taken away from me. And not only am I wondering how I will ever survive without her, she needs more encouragement than I do. I want to be there for her, I want to be an encouragement to her, but I cannot do it all. I have a problem with forgetting, and laziness, and business, and schoolwork. Even when it comes to this, I am so very human. I am not able to sustain her. Even though I want to. And so I must trust. I must pray, I must remember that she has a creator, who not only can see her, but knows her deeper, knows what she needs. Even though she seems to be out of my reach for the moment, she is not out of his grip.

I would like to have the power to fix my family. I would like to have the power to keep myself from adding to the pain and the chaos. I would like to make things different but I fear I am only an addition to the problem. Surprisingly enough, this is also and area where I find myself to be human. Small. Limited. Weak. Poor. And so I have to trust. I have to trust that the healing God really is doing is bigger than the ways I fear I may be messing it up. I have to trust that there is grace for me too. There is grace for the fact that I struggle with loving my sister, grace for my own outbrusts, grace for the times when all I know to do are scream, or cry, or just shout, "leave me alone." Grace for the insurmountable number of times when there seems to be just no answer, no way out. I do not want to become the evil that I see happening around me, but it is a fear that I may never find a way to do anything else.

Everything is so confused and tangled, turned around and jabbed into our hearts. Somehow I have to trust that the bitterness, the anger, the pain, the firey darts that I feel heatedly hurled across the dinner table yet one more time yet again and again and again and again and again will somehow not create such a deep hard dark shell that maybe somehow someday someone will be able to break through. It makes me feel like there is something I can do. Something I can say. Something I can stop. Is it really possible that this very same wound has been festoring in my own family line since Adam? Could this be? It does not seem possible. This is why I hate that stupid label. "I grew up in a chirstian home." What in the world does that mean? Its a lie. I don't think there ever is such a thing. Its an excuse. A coverup. A suffocating label that means we don't have to really face what is going on. Sometimes I think maybe I struggle with "traditional Christian churches" so much. They are a label. This is all. We're a "church family." What is family? What does this mean? It seems all the families that I have known have been labels. Claims. We call ourselves a family, so that must mean something. Pysically yes.

And what can I do? I'm failing. Drowning. fighting a rushing current without legs or arms. There are a lot of days when I just want to give up. I am so tired of just submitting, saying the right thing to keep the peace. Giving in to what people want me to do becuase I'm going to feel guilty for it anyway. As my mom says, "If only it were really my fault so that I could do something about it." Trusting that maybe it isn't my fault. Trusting that nothing I could ever do could fix this mess and that's okay.

Needless to say, I am learning firsthand why forgiveness is letting ourselves off the hook.

I guess this is a bit of understanding of what the human struggle really looks like. We've been hinding behind the "christian family" label for so long that we've been able to also numb our awareness and pain of the human struggle as a whole. It was easy to close ourselves off in this little ranch style and think we are the only ones. But there is a whole world out there. Dying. Chopping each other to peices-- one family at a time.

I saw this little girl at the grocery store the other day. She was there with her brother and what I assume to be her parents. Her dad looked like he couldn't be too old, but he looked aged in his eyes. She pointed and begged for a pack of gum as she tripped around her dad's feet. Her mom paid for the groceries and she too looked old and young at the same time. I looked at that little girl dressed nicely in a pink shirt but looking a bit dirtied from the day and this one thought came to my mind: I wonder if she is loved. I mean, really loved. Or could she be continuing this endless cycle where she only feels a little loved and goes searching for it and only finds children of her own who she does not know how to love either. We could go into whether or not I was being judgemental based on appearances, that 30 second encounter I had with the family, but that's not the point. That's the human struggle isn't it? Do you ever look around and just wonder if people have really experienced love?

And trust. That's what I was talking about. I have to trust that there is someone bigger out there, who knows how to love. I don't feel very confident in my ability to love. I'm very near to bankrupt in that area. And yet, somehow this trust comes from love. I really feel like I suck at it.

FInding Christmas in the Pain

But God has made clear his love to us, in that, when we were still sinners, Christ gave his life for us.

I've struggled some this year really finding Christmas the way I have in the past. Maybe its dorm life or business or not being at home, or maybe this discussion of Christmas versus Holidays and how maybe we stole the season by slapping the Christian label on things that we might not have earned the right to. But nevertheless. Its been different this year.

Coming home after being away at school for a while has proven to be a bit of an enlightening experience in terms of observation. Distance seems to create new eyes. As I step back and take a look at my family, how we interact, who we are together, it seems that the pain and the bitterness are so much clearer. Its like you can just see the mud flying across the room with new clarity. I mean, we've all known it was there before, but its strange to sit and the dinner table and find myself reeling, wishing there is some way I could call a time out.

Do you ever find yourself in the midst of something terrible? I mean, do you ever open your eyes, slowly turn around and realize the muck is all around you and no matter how hard you try, there will never be any way for you to clean it all up yourself, hard as you try? And not that I find myself free of guilt by any means, but I just look around and everything just seems beyond hope. How do you love in the midst of all the messed up lives? I find myself on the edge of this hole, the hole I have fallen in too many times. I stand on the edge between love and joining in the desolation.

And as I pictured myself there in the midst of all this trash heap that seems to have become of our wounds piled one upon the other, I think I am beginning to see a little better the healing that Jesus came to bring. This may seem like trite commentary on "what Christmas is all about," but seriously, I'm not sure we can really ever understand what Jesus did to come down here.

Jesus came down to this gutter of a world to stand in the midst of our pain. Its like entering a battle field and choosing to lay down right next to the dead bodies. I don't know if you have ever been in a place in your life where all you can do is look around at all the dead bodies. We haven't gotten a family portrait taken since I was about 6, but I think if we did today, it would look something like a gaggle from a hospital ward. This is the picture I see. And Jesus came down to pose with us.

Can you imagine what it would have been like for him, to wake up as a baby and hear Mary and Joseph fighting? To be carried through the overpacked streets of people arguing over prices, angry about the traffic? Romans 5:8 speaks about Jesus dying for us while we were still sinners, but I like the implications of taking that verse a bit further and thinking about the fact that he came to live with us while we were still sinners. He came and stood amoung the filth, amoung the wounds in order to bring us healing.

Honestly, I fear this may sound like all the other dry, old explanations we hear about Christmas, but there si something deeply meaningful and true when your eyes are open to the same kind of desolation. When I find myself totally beyond hope, beyond words, beyond any beneficial response to the axes I see swining all around me. People who need forgiveness. People who are afraid, people who are holding their wounds, trying to appear that they are holding themselves together, when everyone knows they have already fallen all over the floor. These are the people Jesus came to live among.

I've been struggling lately trying to figure out the rules of the quiet time. ANd it struck me as I poured all this out to God finally this morning, it occured to me that we find God closest when we let him into the real stuff of our lives. I find too often I ignore the stuff that is really bothering me in order to go through the right motions for God, hoping in some formula to still make me feel better. But I realized this morning that I know God's presence in my real life when I allow him in. When the time I spend with him is real and personal, when I really am brave enough to bring before him the things I don'tknow how to deal with, the ways that I have failed and will continue to fail without Him, then I find him living my life. If God cannot be in the most painful parts of my life, he cannot in my life at all.

And that is the thing about this God-Man coming to this earth. He knows. He understands what it is like. He has stood amid my family. He has sat at our dinner table. He has listened to our conversation. And he knows what it is like. He knows what the wounds and pain look like. And he is not afraid to face it. He knows what it is like to feel hopeless and he nows the fear of having to deal with it again, but he holds the key. He stands beside me, he hold my hand. He says, "Come on, lets face it together. I'm here with you. I came to do this with you." Healing is coming.

And so as I've thought about this season, whatever it is really about, whatever the cause, the undenyable thing about it is that it is a time of celebration. Over this past semester, I have been really thinking about how much I want to be a person who leads a life of celebration. No matter the circumstance, my surroundings, want to be someone who lives a celebratory life. And by no means should that be any less poignant in these next few days. Even amid the pain and frustration, the stuff that is hard to deal with, I want to enjoy the signs of life, the small hints of healing that are yet to come. Celebration. Rejoicing that we have not been left alone to face this daunting challenges in life. Thankfullness for my family that teaches me a little more about seeing with God's eyes.

I hope you all have a beautiful Christmas, full of enjoyment of all the ways God show's his goodness and grace in his world, and enjoyment of the people he has placed around you, no matter who they are.

Why did I have to say yes?

Wondering what the rules are

So I'm home. Seems like its been so long since I was really home. I mean I was here, in this room last weekend, but i feel like now i'm really home. I have nothing else to do for a long time. No more learning. No more filling my head with stuff. No more work. A bit less people around telling me who I should be and where I should be it. I find myelf exhausted from the pressure. Do you ever feel that way? Like people have been telling you who to be for so long that you are paralyzed when it actually comes to deciding for yourself.

I am frustrated. I don't know what I'm searching for really. Some sort of internal comfort I suppose. Some peace with the fact that I really have a right to begin my break today and not tomorrow. Some peace with the fact that once again i do not know what a proper quiet time looks like-- I feel like I need this God, but I have no idea how to get to him. I don't know how to breathe him in. And so I suffocate myself. Probably missing him as he is. Sitting beside me.

I really just want to leave. I want to go Christmas shopping. I want to get on with my life. Stop thinking so hard about it. I'm exhausted. But ahhh, break is here. Freedom. For the moment.