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.