The Adventure Begins

As you read this, I am driving out of Denver, officially beginning the adventure of summer 2014.  This will be a different one, for sure.  Full of change and growth and challenge.  Full of JOY and possibly (let’s be real, most likely) some tears.  Filled with new relationships, thesis writing, embracing ministry, and who knows what else.

Life is crazy that way.  We never know what is coming up the road.  But there is so much hope and peace in knowing that God not only knows our roads, He created them.

I get stressed and anxious easily.  To the point where the other day I had to force myself to reread my own blog post about God dwelling in our tense, tight knots of life.  I had to remind myself of the promise He makes us, that He will be there even in the hard times.  Especially in the hard times.

I want to be a person who chooses trust over fear.

Someone who can relax and lay back and just float down the river of life without having to paddle or steer or even look ahead. 

I want to be someone who breathes easily because the stress of life is nothing compared to the greatness of Jesus.

There will always be something to worry about, but there is always Someone to hold onto.

I want to be someone who regularly appreciates the blessings God gives us each day.  That is why I named this blog “This Life’s Blessings.”  Because when you stop, lay down your stress or worry or anger, and just look around?  Life is so beautiful.

Recently Jesus gave me a moment of stopping and relishing in the beauty of the relationships I have in my life.  I said out loud to myself, “Man, I have amazing people all around me!” I have friends who have known me since I was a bratty middle schooler (and who loved me then and still love me now!).  My beautiful family, who has been redeemed and restored through heartache and hardship.  I have sweet friends who have walked with me through the beautiful and ugly of life.  Women who have mentored me through times of struggle and great achievement.  College friends who laughed with me in the library, seminary friends who have had break-downs with me in the library….

I have fellow soul-care soul-friends who will ask the hard questions and journey into suffering with me.  And JOY-seeking, dream-building friends who help bring small ideas to life.

I am surrounded by blessings.  I do not want my life to be characterized and dominated by the stress and worry and constant to-do list.  I want it to be about the happiness and community and what-is list of what really surrounds me.

I want that for this summer.  I want to dwell in a space of gratitude. I want to discover more of who God is and who I am in Him.  It will be a challenge, but it is worth fighting for. 
As I leave this beautiful city of Denver, I rest in this promise from Isaiah:

When We Find Him in the Knots

I’ve been obsessively reading The Circlemaker by Mark Batterson recently.  He talks a lot about God’s promises throughout the Bible, and how circling them (literally, with a pen, and figuratively, with your soul and mind) can fuel your faith and encourage your prayers. 
For whatever reason, I opened up to Deuteronomy the other day.  Not usually one of my first choices when I go to read the Bible, but apparently it was time for a change.

I happened upon Deuteronomy 33.  It is a list of the blessings that God gave to the tribes of Israel through Moses.  I don’t understand a whole lot of it, I’ll be real with you about that.

But the blessing on the tribe of Benjamin stuck out like an ice cream cone in a desert (That is what I would want in a desert, so whatever). 

It says this:

“The beloved of the Lord dwells in safety.

The High God surrounds him all day long,

And dwells between his shoulders.”

I don’t know about you, but all that usually seems to dwell between my shoulders is a whole lot of stress and tension and knots. Especially after a long semester of my neck craned over a desk or a book, between my shoulders is a place of soreness and pain.

It is where I carry my burden, between my shoulders.

So when I read this, I first thought – “well, that is weird. Why would God dwell there - where pain is found?”

Then I realized…that is where we can always find Him.  He is in the middle of our anxiety, stress, tension, knotted-ness.  He is there not because He caused it but because He cares.

I realize that in other versions it is worded as Benjamin dwelling between the Lord's shoulders, but in my version (ESV) it really portrayed the opposite to me.  I like thinking of it this way...we dwell between His shoulders, and He dwells between ours.

It changed my day.  Whenever I felt the pain of life between my shoulders I remembered that verse – “The High God surrounds her all day long, and dwells between her shoulders.”

I think we often don’t let our pain lead us to somewhere God wants to take us.  We whine and complain and take some advil.  But what if we changed our perspective and allowed it to be a way of meeting Him?

What if each time I get anxious I remember that He promises these things to me:
I am His beloved.

I will dwell in safety.

He surrounds me all day long.

He dwells in my pain.

These are promises worth circling.

When it is Easier to Believe the Lie

I forgot to take out loans for my summer class.  All of a sudden I found myself last minute signing up for a payment plan that I don’t exactly have the money for.  All because I forgot a deadline.  And the lies came rushing in.  I found myself (or someone) speaking things to my soul like, “Kallie, you are a ROYAL SCREW UP” or “How will you ever be successful at a job when you can’t take care of simple things like this?”

It is so easy to believe.  So easy to let things like this go straight to my identity – why are we so prone to believing statements like “You are incapable” and to deny truths like “You are cared for”?? 

Why when I meet a cute boy does my brain so quickly go to “you are unlovable” rather than “you have great worth!”??

Am I the only one?

I know I’m not the only one. Because the day after I experienced this, one of my best friends described experiencing the exact same struggle.

To me the words coming out of her mouth sounded ridiculous, but to her they made perfect sense: “There are so many other people more _______ (Fill in the blank: talented, creative, capable, lovable, etc.)…why should I even try?”

I think the devil knows God is up to something great.  That is when we get attacked.  I’m not saying satan sent a demonic spirit to tell me I’m incapable, I definitely made this mistake all by my broken-human-self.  But the thoughts that chase after me, those are not just from me.  And they are definitely not from the Lord.  The same lies I hear, my best friend heard too.  And its because God is calling dreams out of her that might be scary, but are God-given.  Which means they are not only possible, they are her destiny.

To me what she said was ridiculous, because I see the truth in her – that God gave her these gifts and the dream to create something with them.  Why is it so much easier to believe the truth about other people? What if we started viewing ourselves the way our best friends do? If she did that, then she would confidently start chasing those dreams, knowing she’s talented and capable beyond measure.  Because that is how I see her.

What if we viewed ourselves in the truth that God sees us in?  Imagine how different our lives would be.

God calls us to live in His Truth, and to throw off the false beliefs about ourselves that we have taken on.  It is like taking off a tattered, ugly, heavy coat and replacing it with a beautiful new one. 

The lies we believe can ruin us, and keep us from chasing God-given dreams.

The truth that God sees in us can bring out the greatest beauty, far beyond anything we could have ever imagined.

Seems like an easy choice to me.

The One Where I Disagree with Merriam-Webster

Longing.

A word that to me means waiting and desiring.  Google says it means “a yearning desire.”  The dictionary says it is “a strong desire especially for something unattainable.”  I would assume it is a verb, like the act of longing for something.  But apparently it’s a noun.  It is a state of being.

I don’t know what made me realize it, that inside the word longing is the word long.  Maybe that was obvious to you.  It just suddenly stuck out on the page.

That is how I feel about longing.  That it is a long process.  A long and hard process.

Recently I’ve found myself longing, maybe more than ever.  I don’t like the dictionary’s definition; I don’t think that it has to be unattainable. That would be hopeless.  It seems that somewhere inside of longing there is an undying hope.

My college mentor once dropped the wisdom-bomb on me that single people’s role (one of many) in the church is to represent longing.  As Christians we embody longing; we are living and hoping for another life.  We know things aren’t the way they were supposed to be, and we are always longing for them to be set right.

For this C.S. Lewis used the word “sehnsucht.” (I quoted C.S. Lewis, I’m officially a cliché seminary student).  He describes it as “this desire for our own far-off country…the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell” (Lewis, 29).  This is, he says, something all Christians experience.  I would wager that every human being experiences this, somewhere in their soul.

I still think that dictionary definition is wrong. I think we wish for things that are unattainable, but we long for things we can and/or will attain.  (Like I wish for the day I can drop $500 on shoes, but that is never.gonna.happen.)  It is why we use the term, “wishful thinking.”  Ain’t gonna happen, sista.

Longing, however, is full of hope and expectation.  We long for things because God placed that desire deep inside our souls, and He did it for a reason.  My future husband and kids, for example (to get reallll personal), are people I deeply long for.  And I have reasonable hope that my longing will be fulfilled, because it is God-given.

Speaking of God…I think He experiences longing too.

He longs to give us good things.  He longs for us to know Him, and trust Him, and love Him.  Which means that those things are not unattainable.  We can know Him, we can trust Him, we can love Him!

Someday, our longings will be fulfilled.  We will not experience the pain deep within us because all will be the way it is meant to be.  Some of these longings will be met on earth, and many not until life is restored to its original intent.  We can hope, and long, for the day when all this will happen.

Lewis, C.S. Surprised By Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Inc., 1995.