Home

This week I spent only my second Thanksgiving in 28 years of life away from my family. This time it was with my new family, the one I gained through marriage. Though my husband's family, now mine too, is amazing it was a significant challenge for me. There is an entire set of expectations and behaviors that a family adheres to that the family doesn't even think about. In fact they are completely unaware of them until an outsider is brought in. I found myself missing my own family and their unspoken expectations much more than I ever expected. Yet a really great thing happened over the four days I was with my new family. They welcomed me with completely open arms. Not only that, but they were completely gracious during all of those awkward getting to know you moments. They were patient with me and it never seemed to occur to them to treat me as an outsider. I left thankful for my new family and more thankful for my own family than I have ever been. On returning home I realized something else. For the four months we've been married we've been working hard to make this apartment our home. Being in it everyday and dreaming about where I want it to be fooled me into thinking we had made little progress. When seen from a distance and returned to with a great deal of anticipation, I realized how much we have made this place home. I love being home.

A New Life and Grace

A new life has arrived. You would think I'm talking about marriage, but I'm mostly talking about the career change. I love being married. I love coming home to a fantastic man and working out all the things that living in a very intimate relationship entails. Changing professions at the same time was possibly a really good choice and sometimes an agonizingly hard choice. In this time where it feels like my entire identity is shifting its wonderful to have someone who is always right behind me cheering me on. In another sense it feels as if my entire identity is being shifted and shaken. I am no longer the independent single girl, but married. I am responsible to another human being in a way that I have never been. We now have an identity that we are forming together. Now I am functioning in a career that requires me to move and excel in an entirely different skill set than my previous position. I have been projected into a place of leadership that involves boldness and trust in relationship that was not required of me in the public school. Every day, in order to do this job in the way God has called me to it, I must risk. I have to trust people in a way I have never allowed myself to before.

Out of this I have found three things.

1. When we trust people they come through for us at a much higher rate than they fail us, especially if we are placed in a position where people are rooting for our success.
2. When we trust people we discover grace. We are able to see each others heart. When we see into someone's heart its nearly impossible to dislike them.
3. Often we have to walk as the person God has called us to be before we are actually that person in order to really become that person. Like Abraham.... "We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!"

   Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God." Romans 4:17-25
   

Mourning

I've finished packing up my apartment and I find myself mourning. This move feels like the end of my single life, all that I have known as an adult. There are many parts about it that I have really loved and treasured, with the exception of the miniblinds I'm always breaking. Though I'm so excited about this new life I'm starting with this man, tonight it seems fit to mourn. Even when we move from something that is good to something that is also good we have to mourn the loss of the previous good thing. So tonight I will mourn the loss of the old thing so that I can move into the next part with great joy.

Blogging When I Should Be Sleeping

God will just not let me settle about anything in this wedding. He used a woman who is by most standards not a Christian to speak absolute truth into my life. My Father has been so lavish and extravagant with me through this entire process. At every turn he has provided for me, not just enough, not just the bare minimum but extravagantly more than I could have ever imagined. Let's make a list.

1. A man that is so right for me God even allowed him to be my favorite color (orange).
2. More money than I ever could have imagined saved by my amazing mom.
3. The reception site that I never thought I could afford and what appears to be favor with the employees.
4. Incredibly unique, visually interesting, and high quality handmade invitations that I never could have afforded.
5. Amazing friends and family that are so eager and willing to step in and help at a moments notice.
6. An apartment that far surpasses my expectations. Huge kitchen (in Chicago!), a private back porch, and a garden!!
7. A new and improved relationship with my family.
   
8. A dress designed and made especially for me.

WOW!

Part 2

I was looking at my posts from November 23rd and 30th. They were the part 1 of what I've been starting to experience and just received another major piece to yesterday. God had started some restoration in the area I referenced right before and during the fast, but yesterday when I went back to the workshop he gave me another big chunk which explains a good deal of why I was such an emotional mess about this subject. He birthed in me yesterday a calling to not just children, but to families. Most people would say no big deal. Yet, after I got that from him I cried, then cried some more, and then cried some more. Something about this calling is connected and tapping into something so deep inside me that I don't think I even realized it was there buried under all the layers of other stuff. The other half of that is realizing there is still some healing God's trying to take care of connected to that. The scary part of this next healing process is that it looks like its going to involve other people. That's scary for me. I can't control how other people react to me. I know one thing, though. God protects his people wherever he takes them.

I Don't Want To!

So I went to this workshop thing tonight and I don't want to go back, but I have to. They're making us map out our lives and dig into our pain and so on and so on. Forgive my flippancy its a defense mechanism. I don't want to do that!!!! Many people would say well then just don't go back. I can't do that. God has made it very clear to me that he is going to start digging again. He even gave me a great picture/vision/whatever you want to call it. I'm walking down these hallways back and forth, back and forth until I come to a spiral staircase of which I can't see the bottom. At one point I slip on the staircase and this man that seemed clearly to be God or Jesus or the Spirit (good thing they're triune) grabs me by the arm and lifts me up and continues to support me down the staircase until I get to the bottom which ends in a pool. Once I hit the pool he lets me go and I swim on. When I asked him about it I was told he's moving me to a place of less resistance. That's amazing, but I am struggling with the process I have to go through to get there. I did all this a couple of years ago. I'm not relishing digging more becuase now I'm hitting an unseen layer. The stuff I dealt with before was all on top in clear view. I knew what was coming. This time its all a suprise. It also doesn't help that I'm fasting and my emotions are pretty raw. Well, actually maybe that will help. One less layer to get past. I'm going back tomorrow and counting on the fact that my God is good. Every time in the past I've had to walk through this stuff he always lifts me out of my pain and frees me more. So here goes.....

I Love Fasting!

That's right! The girl who loves to eat really does love fasting. Its hard. I make no claims to the contrary. Yet the things it opens up are completely worth it. Since I have been fasting a joy and excitement about my wedding has been released that I haven't experienced in the entire 5 months I've been engaged. We do not have any more money than we had before, but God has graciously lifted the anxiety and assured me he will provide. Things with my family are better than, well, ever. I went home and actually enjoyed myself. That's right I had fun. This weekend the Holy Spirit just poured out on our 4th and 5th graders and it was phenomenal. I can't explain how much joy there has been in not eating. It seems odd to me that those two things would go hand in hand, but they have during this time and I'm so excited to see what God does during the second half of my fast.

Answers

For a long time I've been yearning and praying for wiser, more experienced people that would honestly and frankly speak into my life. That was something that A. and I started praying for pretty early into our relationship. I feel so blessed to see that coming to fruition. God has just placed those people in our lives. On the flip side he is growing me in how I view those relationships. That I would not use them to replace my parents, but that they would be an addition to my parents. In effect I can hear my own parents more clearly and take what is valuable instead of throwing it all out as useless. This comes from having other thoughts and opinions to weigh them against from people that are not my peers. I think having these people in my life has actually caused me to listen more attentively to my own parents and glean from them the wisdom they have.

Progress

At school we track the reading progress of our students by giving them bi-weekly or monthly tests. Then we plug the scores into a computer program which in turn creates an easy to read graph. Its simple, the line goes up, down, or stays the same. Then we reassess and decide where to change our instruction in order to make that line go up. Except most of life is not that way. I can't chart my responses to life situations using a test and a computer program. So how do we track it?

Learning to Fight

In the past when relationships got too hard or too scary I would run away, say, "I don't have time for that." Or I'd hide away into myself pretending there was nothing wrong but shutting myself off piece by piece until there was no relationship to salvage. I've been fighting lately. Learning how to fight without bludgeoning my fighting partner. Learning how to fight as one, but realizing that fighting as one takes a game plan, a strategy if we want to win. Fight by fight we're making it. Yet the most valuable lesson I've learned is running sometimes can't be an option. Sometimes when you have something so wonderful, so right to run would be certain misery. If I ran I'd lose this gift that would be incredibly hard to equal. If I run we lose, both of us. So I'm learning to fight...

Good Things

We've recently gone through this process of pairing down our regular commitments to the bare minimum. This is an attempt to spend our lives doing the things God has specifically laid out for us as opposed to a list of 'good religious' things. It's been nice having more free time, but honestly its harder than I expected. Asking God, "Should I take the free Spanish class my district is offering? Should I start the Vineyard Leadership Institute classes? Should I return to the group of people I'd been spending Thursday nights waiting on God with?" offers another set of unique challenges. The entire idea is very contrary to what I understand. All of the following things are 'good' things. None of them will ruin my life. Quite conversely they will in some way enrich it. Yet if they are pulling me away from spending one on one time with God or not pointing me in the direction that God is taking me that is all they are. They're simply 'good' things. I could do all of these things and have a 'good' life. Its not enough anymore. I want to give my life to something better than good. I want outstanding. I want to be rocked by a God that is so powerful I can't even begin to understand his sovereignty and yet so intimate I weep from his love. As a friend of mine said this week, I want something I can give my life for.

Why Such a Small Life?

If these are the things I believe....

• God is sovereign (having supreme rank, power, or authority)
• God loves me just the way I am. He takes pleasure in me.
• God speaks to me and has spoken a number of words into my life about really big things.
• God is faithful, always providing for my needs and keeping his promises to me.
• God is completely trustworthy.

Why am I living such a fearful small life?

New Years Backwards

I had a calm, but amazing New Years Eve/New Years last night. I'll start from the end as that is the most pertinent information to the readers of this fine blog. The man I am going to marry (I'll call him A. from here on out. Why not? I guess I like the idea of anonymity even though everyone that reads this blog knows him and me. Thanks for humoring me.) and I decided to step out of the Facebook scene. The decision came about for the same reasons I held out joining Facebook in the first place. I spent too much time feeling connected without being connected. We both love people. We want to love people in a tangible way. We desire to know what is going on with our friends because they were just in the neighborhood and decided to stop by. Or we can spend planned and spontaneous dinners with our friends sharing our lives and discussing the really interesting aspects of life. Honestly I'd rather be very deeply connected with a handful of people than to read the status of many people and wonder what that cryptic sentence really meant. I've always ached for genuine connectivity. So I will continue to blog, probably more now that Facebook is not sucking time. My e-mail will always be available and I'll post pictures on flickr. A. and I changed each others passwords to something absurd and then locked them in my fire safety box. It felt really freeing this morning when I only checked my e-mail.

Before we unFacebooked A. and I had an even bigger adventure. After returning from a party with some great people we went to a pedestrian overpass and created some public art. We decided to start small as this was our first attempt, but we were both pretty pleased by the result. This is something that we feel like God is pulling us into as a couple and last night felt like the small beginning of something bigger. This morning when I was walking home from taking pictures I remembered the parable of the mustard seed. It states that the mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds, but grows into a tree. That is what this feels like. A tiny seed that's ready to grow into a tree. We'll see.

If you don't know Chicago has these overpasses over the Eisenhower for bikes and pedestrians. We used ribbon and twisted clothe woven and tied into the chainlink.