Food for Thought

 I have a couple different thoughts running through my mind on this delightfully rainy Friday morning. 

The first thought is that I'm SO VERY EXCITED for this upcoming week! Family Camp!!! I try to explain it to my friends that it's where my Dad's side of the family gets together for this little reunion that takes place just this one time every year.

People seem a little shocked that we would want to all see  for a WHOLE week. But here's the deal, it's my dad's parents and siblings and their children. COUSINS!! Of course not everyone can make it out there and those that can can't always come for the whole week. But it is a delicious privilege that I think everyone else in the world could envy. As it is, it's like a week long retreat filled with sessions and worship and adventure and fun and lots and lots of coffee.

How many other families get to spend a week digging into the Word together, teaching each other what the Lord has taught them and then encouraging each other in the ways they need?
Our mornings start with breakfast, than a whole family devotional, which is followed by coffee consumption and then a worship session. Then it is two hours back to back of sessions on life lessons with a 10 minute coffee break in between. 

 Most of us cousins are adults now and have begun taking our turns speaking for an hour or so for a sessions. I love this! There are talks on relationships, biblical manhood and womanhood, politics, creation, resolving conflict, and sharings of missions trips where the Lord did great things. We are filled and fed every day of the week and equipped by our grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, siblings and cousins with the tools of the scripture and prayer and then built up and encouraged in our faith as well.

Of course my heart is just dancing in anticipation at the thought of ONE WHOLE WEEK spent focused on growing in my walk with the Lord and, of course, closer to my family.
I love that I have such a family of strong believers! I count myself overwhelmingly blessed. I LOVE that my cousins and aunts and uncles are my brothers and sisters in the Lord as well. Love ABOUNDS when our family is together. This could be my last year that I can attend the full week. I could be the last year for any of us and we just don't know it. But it'll be great. The Lord is already there and I'm excited to come and join him!

I like to illustrate the things I learn in session. This was our lesson on the family tree. This was when I illustrated the "substantial" aunts... :D hehehehe

My other thoughts are maybe a little bit deeper. Perhaps as I sort them out I'll find that the Lord actually tied them together even though they come from two different places.

The first thought is that I'm starting to hate facebook a lot. Well, I think I do. I'm beginning to question how.. good it is. 

The Bible tells us not to gossip and to avoid discord and jealousy and selfish ambition and slander... among other things. And I KNOW facebook can be used for good things like posting Bible verses on your status in case one of your non-believing friends reads it and is inspired to start walking with the Lord. (There was a little sarcasm in that sentence.. mostly because I think this thought in the back of my mind sometimes). 
And facebook can be used to build people up and all that. 

But as I was wasting time scrolling through my mini-feed, I couldn't help but notice there are a lot of people who post all of their dirty laundry on facebook. It's personal stuff that no one needs to know apart from their close confidants  And as I'm glancing through it I wonder, "Is it gossip for me to even READ this?" After all, it's a bit like reading a gossip column out of People magazine just reading some people's statuses.  I've asked my friends what they think of this, too. Is it gossip? Afterall.. the person put that out there for the world to know. They announced it and made it public. And then there's this issue:
If I'm friends with person X and we are both mutually facebook friends with person Z and we both see the same facebook status posted by person X for the world to see, and then either I or person Z says something like, "Did you see Z's status?" and then we discuss it a little.... isn't that gossip? Even though it's out there?

So as a girl easily caught up in that, wouldn't it be more wise of me if I avoid facebook on account it can easily ensnare? Wouldn't the Bible support that?
And I'm not saying my own convictions are to be the convictions of all believers on facebook, but I thought I'd share a little warning anyways.

Another thought I have is on freedom. Drew talked about freedom last night at Salt (Student ministry I attend). It was a good one. He was speaking on Titus 3 where it talks about if you are free, you do X, Y and Z and before you were free you did a different X, Y, and Z.
As he described being enslaved to sin,The Lord gave me a delightful vision and I saw it was like living with a ball and chain on one's ankle. And then the ball at the end of the chain became the world, and then the chain got longer. The chain had more than the world ball and chain, the chain was also dragging every body of every person we wouldn't forgive. It drug along every worldly possession and relationship. It had alcohol and money and entertainment. That was a lot of stuff to be dragging around and obviously was nearly impossible to walk. And then the path was narrow with deep caverns on both sides. And then the chain of worldly things slipped over the edge, dangling above the fires of hell. But the weight of what was on the chain pulled at the person it was attached to and the person was about to slip over the edge as well.

And then Jesus came and cut off the chain and set the person free. :) How great is that. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Free so we can run. Free so we can dance. Free so we can jump over life's potholes and climb out of the pits we fall into. We have been set free so we can walk in the way of Truth and be light on our feet when we encounter a battle with the evil one. We have been set free so Christ may scoop us into his arms when He needs to carry us rather than him having to carrying along all of junk too. Why would that be fair to him? When he tells us to let go of our stuff and let him take the burden from us, why do we get all upset when we still fill like we're in the pit? Why should he have to pull you AND all your junk out? If the pit is deep enough, the nice thing to do for our rescuer is to leave everything behind except for ourselves.Good luck getting out of that pit with 1000lbs of chain and crud on your ankle.

And then on facebook I see people trying to solve their own life problems and making bold claims like, "I'm trusting God now" or "God will fix this for me" but nothing else changes. Who am I to judge, right? Okay, yeah, I judge people. I judge people who claim to be believers.
Judge not lest you be judged? Well, I want to be judge, honestly. If you're a believer and find something wrong with how I live, PLEASE judge me. Call me out. Set me straight. I would LOVE that!

So, here's what I don't like, people taking God's name in vain. not just, "OH my g**" it's when they tack him onto whatever they wanna say just to sound deep or spiritual. "I'm trusting God and I'm gonna fix this and no one's gonna tell me what to do but me. My self. My life. " blah blah blah.

My heart is just screaming, "Don't talk about my Jesus that way! You don't know Him like I do!" And if they're actually trusting God, I'm happy. I like that. Please do that. But don't SAY you're gonna and than live a different way. God isn't a puppet. He's not a genie. He's not an obedient puppy that comes and goes and answers to "Here boy!" Don't say you're gonna be praying if you're not. Don't say "God's in control" for the sake of saying that because you don't know what else to say. Those are special words. They're precious and wholesome. That's good bread right there, don't throw it around like crumbs or left over pizza crust. 

Light and Dark

A month ago one of my fun-loving cousins introduced me to a concept he called FOMO. Him and his whole family have a tendency to start their epic hangouts and fun times somewhere around 10pm, enjoying games and laughter way into the wee hours of the morning. I experienced this first hand when my brother and I visited them for Thanksgiving last year.

FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. 

Yeah, I have that too. I've been having a glorious summer, making several un-wise choices and pushing aside my usually well exercised common sense in order to have as an adventurous summer as possible packed in between work and sleep. Unfortunately the time window between work and sleep is very narrow thus I've been eliminating the sleep stuff to make room for the adventure parts. 

I'm glad, though, all of my adventures have given me more ways to see Jesus and grow in Him. 

It's been a great summer. :) I have a feeling that shortage of sleep might catch up with me eventually, though. 
Yesterday I awoke shortly after 6am and arrived to work shortly after 7am. As I drove my sleepy self to work, all I could think was, "in 12 hours I can go home and take a little nap and go to bed at 9 and catch up on sleep. 

14 hours later I was finally given the go ahead to go home. At that point I had a chance at 8 decent hours of sleep as I would be working another full day starting at 6am. However, I'd been informed that 2 of my friends were going on an adventure and I was much pleased at the idea of joining them. 

I got a few hours last night and a few more this morning whilst waiting for the kiddos to wake up. :) The Lord truly did bless me with a great job. 

The last two weeks have been amazing as far as how the children have been behaving and getting along. 
I think somewhere in the Bible it talks about how the Word of God does not come back empty. Like if you plant in the Spirit, there's gonna be some sort of harvest later. 
I love this. Especially because I see it as evidence in my own life. 

I think my mom should get an award for most creative punishments as she had to think outside the box a little when the usual methods were lost on me (which was almost always). I was a terribly rebellious child/teenager with not much evidence of the Lord in my life. 
Scoldings and spankings were expected consequences of my misdeeds and I knew I'd survive them, so my motivation to stay out of trouble was never especially high. I think even now I don't have a ton of anxiety over following rules.

When I was 13 I realized how much I loved writing and began filling journal after journal full of thoughts and adventures. My mom decided to use this to her advantage when I was bad. She would assign papers one why what I did was a bad thing complete with a thesis, main points, body, conclusions, etc. using only scripture as my sources. But I had to cite 2 sources for every point. 

Talk about away to experience conviction. We also had to memorize a lot of verses as a result of our behavior. At the time I hated it and I felt like it only gave me a bitter taste for the Word, but now I remember all of it and have started using similar methods on my nanny kids. It seems to be working well and I've had several wonderful spiritual conversations with them as a result. I like that. 

The peace that surpasses all understand will guard your heart

I've heard the Spirit whisper this over and over in the last several days. Maybe even weeks. When I made the decision to call 911, I had a lot of peace, even though what I was seeing frightened me to tears. As we waited in the ER, speaking with doctors and nurses, recounting what all we knew, Amanda and I both had an unnatural peace. 

I think I'm learning that peace is a result of confidence in the Lord and anxiety is a result of a lack of confidence. I have some friends that worry easily, and sometimes I've wondered how one can worry and trust Jesus at the same time. I think, I've learned through my own experiences that it's not actually possible. 

I've had a thought pricking the front of my brain the last week or so. Earlier this year, my sister and I found ourselves on a snowy sort of adventure in Kalona. (Of course, right?) Well, this one wasn't actually as enjoyable in the moment as it is to tell about now. But after a blizzard-y sort of Wednesday, we were invited to go sledding and, I'll leave out the details, found ourselves with my sister's tiny Ford Torus hopelessly stuck at the bottom of an icey-curvey, steep hill. The person we were with seems really casual about it and came off as a little too confident in his ability to resolve the situation. It was one of those adventure where I genuinly wondered: 
1) if we'd actually be home in our own beds that night
2) How we'd actually get out if we did
3)What it'd be like to snow camp in a car in the middle of nowhere and possibly die of cold in one's sleep.

They were legitimate concerns. Somehow someway, the fellow was able to pull the car out of the valley using some chain and his tiny little truck. I was riding shot gun with him as he pressed his gas peddle to the floor as the truck slid sideways towards the edge of a steep ravine with a semi-frozen creek at the bottom. 

I was braced so tensely inside of that truck that my legs started to cramp up. And it was while the truck was sliding and the chain was jerking and the car was jolting that our hero was praying out loud. I think this may have been the point when I most strongly experienced a fear that there was a possibility of something very terrible going to happen. I think half of it was that the guy had acted so calm and carefree and confident and now in the tensest moment, he was praying things like "Oh lord let this truck be a good investment"
And when I've re-told that story, framing myself as the victim and our hero a little more like a villain as he was the reason we were there in the first place, I've gotten varied reactions. Most people react with gasps and words of disbelief, especially when I mention the pitchfork that was stuffed down the hood of the car.

However, when I told the story to the hero's friends, the pitchfork punchline was received with, "Sounds about right. Go on.." And it was like, "wait.. do I have to retell the part about the pitchfork?" So if the pitchfork doesn't get a reaction, praying out loud should because that means the situation is bad, right?

Well, a little over a week ago, months after the whole ordeal the story was being re-discussed with the hero's friend that showed little reaction. He was commenting on how I'd mentioned that the hero had been praying out loud and had trouble connecting why that added to the situation. I didn't really know how to explain, but I feel like I've learned that praying out loud for all present to hear are the kinds of prayers meant to bring comfort to a stressful situation. You pray out loud because you need God and you need God now. 

It's been pricking at my mind ever since then. I didn't realize it at the time, but that made it sound like I only do emergency prayers or that I never pray out loud. I do. I pray with my friends. I'm just not used to impromptu outloud prayers. Well, I wasn't then, but I'm learning to incorporate it more into my life. Especially since it can't do me any harm to try it anyways. 

There was a lot of conviction in that conversation too. I feel like there's a lot of conviction most the times I'm around that friend group. Mostly because they're all really godly and conservative and everything I rebelled against the majority of my life before Jesus. 
I've come to realize that my eager questions of curiosity as to why they do somethings they way they do has only made myself to seem arrogant and proud. This of course was slightly devastating to realize as I don't think I have quite fallen in love with any other part of Iowa quite like the part where this delightful group of friends call home, nor have I ever else encountered such solid group of people who only cause me to love Jesus more with every interaction.

They are thoughts to ponder, at any rate. I don't think I'm as solid a believer as I would like to be. I don't think I love Jesus well enough or let the fruit of the Spirit grow in my life. Perhaps I've been fooling myself into thinking I had a great relationship with God all these years only because it is contrasted by darkness of worldly pleasure found in Iowa City. Perhaps when my light gets around other lights, it's the dimmest of them all. 

The Lord is Gracious

I've had intense weekends before, but this one may or may not take the cake. (I think my head is still spinning trying to recover from it).

Friday at 7 I got off work and headed back to my place. Upon arrival, I ate a quick supper and Amanda, our new friend Danielle and I headed out for a Kalona adventure. (These are always the best kind)

This adventure was supposed to be simple:Watch movies at someone's house. Simple enough, but we'd never been to that person's house before and we're still very new to the area. So we trusted Amanda's GPS. This was a bad idea. The GPS told us to take a quaint little off road and as we drove up to it I was sure the dirrections had to be wrong. Of course I hesitated saying,  "This is a field entrance."
"No, it curves around, see it's a road" Amanda confidently told me.
"Well then, if the GPS says it, I suppose this is what we gotta do."

We only got a few yards into it when we realized that this "Road" was just a long stretch of 5 inch deep mud. At 10mph I was fish-tailing like I never have before but there was no stopping or turning back lest we be stuck in this field for the rest of the night. I thought about our options if we did get stuck but figured we'd best plow through it since the likelihood of a prompt and willing rescue might be a little slim. We were praying out loud and while we nearly went in the ditch 3 or 4 times, the Lord was gracious and we eventually found ourselves on a gravel road. I've never been more thankful for a gravel road or have thought of it as being such high quality, but I was glad of a new reason to be thankful for them. 

Once we got off the mud path and the stress of keeping the van out of the ditch had passed, we all three burst out laughing.
We arrived with inches of mud all over everything but had a splendid evening of movie watching with our friends that stretched into the wee hours of the morning. We were given better directions for our home return and arrived back at our apartment safe and sound. 

My Saturday morning was crazy with grocery shopping for the first time in 50 days in preparation for the brotherhood to come visit and help my sister move. Once home from that, I immediately set myself to work making shrimp scampi for the first time ever as all of them said they'd only come if there was lots and lots of food and one of them said he needed seafood. To my absolute delight he informed me that it was the best he'd had. (I'm an affirmation sort of person and so I felt so loved by this).  

The rest of the day was pretty packed with chatting, moving, resting, and more chatting. Since there were 7 of us when Pearl and Brooks joined our group, there was a lot of deliberation for our evening plans. At first we considered a baseball game that was an hour away, but that didn't work out. And then there was bonfire possibilities and other such things. The final consensus was to go swimming at a pool that could be accessed with little effort. 

As it was, Amanda and I had left our swimsuits at Amanda's old apartment. This was such the Lord because when we arrived home around 7 something, one of Amanda's roommates was laying on the floor next to a blanket and pillow, but not in her usual curled up position. We noticed her breathing being a little bit heavy and decided maybe we should wake her up to see if she was okay.
She didn't wake up and I decided that 911 would be a good idea. It was. 

It was a little after 9pm when Amanda and I found ourselves walking out of the ER after 2 of the most traumatic hours I've been through. It was a little like the previous night when we'd suddenly burst out laughing after surviving the muddy field apart from the fact that when we'd realized we'd survived something much more awful that we we burst into tears instead,
However, we were able to praise the Lord all the same for his timing in that we had to return to the apartment for our swimsuits and that none of our other plans for the evening hadn't worked out. 
We praised the Lord that her mom, though she lived 4 hours away, had already been on her way when we'd called 911 and was only an hour or so from Iowa City. 

It was a little after 10 when we arrived at our late night swimming location and it was exactly what we needed after our hectic evening. The water was warm and the moonlight was gorgeous. 

Sunday was a whole other compacted morning with lots more stops and visits, but by 2:45 we were back on our way to Kalona (I told you they're the best adventures) and this was epic. One of our wonderful friends was so kind as to let us shoot guns at his house and it was perfect.

I'm thankful my brothers were in town this weekend because they're very generous in their hug giving and words of peace and comfort. The Lord is gracious in all these things. 

There was a lot more to the weekend, but it's best left unsaid for now. Somethings are awful  enough to be forgotten forever. But in those things, one can still marvel at how gracious and good the Lord is. There was a lot of good things to ease the awful hard things. And the Lord is gracious in that. While the awful things will still happen, and there will continue to be bad things in life, the Lord is gracious by sending us people to go through it next to us. He is gracious by how he sends peace in the moments of chaos and uncertainty. I like that. 

The Water Proof Bible

Goodness! I've drafted so many potential blogs in the last week, but I've been too distracted by everything else to finish them. Maybs I'll dig them out sometime. 

It is 6:50am and I am already an hour into my work day. :)  Fortunately for me, the kids are still sleeping and the house is quite peaceful. Give it 10 or 20 minutes and that will change.

As I write this, my heart is simply BURSTING with joy and delight over how amazing God has been and how blessed I am to be called His. He uses me when I least expect it!

I could tell you bunches of stories of God's goodness from this last week alone, but the ones that have my heart dancing are from yesterday.

My friend, Amanda, and I have gone to Sugar Bottom beach together two or three times this summer and have quite enjoyed our deep conversations about Jesus as we soak up the warmth of the sun whilst sitting in the water. Things have been crazy hectic for a while and we've been trying to find a time to go back there. A week ago Tuesday, after a lovely week with my parents for the 4th,  I arrived back in Iowa City around 3:30pm. Amanda and I decided upon my return that a trip to the beach was in order. 

I got to my house, unpacked some things from my van and reached my front door at about the same time Amanda did. I changed, grabbed my water proof Bibles (partly to justify going to the beach, partly to actually do some reading and discussing if we wanted) and we were off. 
As we turned off the exit for North Lib, Amanda's car was making rather a funny sound and, since I had JUST had my water pump replaced and knew the location of such an object I suggested that maybe it was an issue with the water pump (What do I know?)

A few stop lights later we heard a "KA CHUNK" and then the sound stopped. And..then the air conditioning stopped. I was like, "hmm... maybe serpentine belt?" And then the battery light came on. So I was thinking, "I'm pretty sure your serpentine belt is gone" and she was like, "What do I do??" and at that moment we saw a sign for an auto center and we made a quick turn to pull in there. WELL..almost quick, the power steering was gone at that point too. 

We got out and I looked under the hood and, sure enough, the serpentine belt was shredded. A nice mechanic man came out and looked and told us that a loose water pump and interfered with the serpentine belt and caused the lock up and snap. (I know more about cars than I thought!) 

We were stranded and I didn't have my phone so the only North Liberty contact I knew was my sister, who wouldn't be off work til 5. Seeing that we didn't want to tote around bibles and such whilst we wondered the streets of North Liberty in the sweltering heat, those were left in the car as we explored to find some A/C whilst waiting for Pearl to get off work and rescue us.

Fast forward a week to Monday. Moving day! It was hot and we were exhausted and we considered at the end of the day that jumping in the lake would be an excellent idea. Seeing as we still had a lot of loading/unloading to do by the end of the day, it didn't happen. 

Thursday! (Yesterday) I had a day off, and had been unpacking boxes and doing a walk through of the new places with my check list and all sorts of I-just-moved-to-a-new-place-and-have-a-lot-to-do kinds of behaviors. When Amanda got off work @ 2:30 it finally worked out. We were gonna take a break from the unpacking and organizing and just relax for the afternoon and get back to everything later. 

We got in the van already to go and I was like , "Oh! The Bibles!" I'm trying to read Romans 8 everyday as per my great-grand father's request and I'm usually better at reading it out loud to my friends whilst I do it myself. Back  in the van and Amanda was like "Oh! Towels" .. we're a little scatter brained at times. 

We got to the beach, finally! And there was a LOT more beach than there was a month ago. My gosh, the lake seems like it went down 10 ft. There weren't that many people there, and given that the roped off area for swimming was a LOT smaller than it has been, we were closer with everyone as well. 

I had the two Bibles in my hand as we waded out in the water and was in up to my waste when I asked Amanda, "Why'd I bring things out here? I should just go put them back on the beach" But the water was rather delightful and I just held them with me anyways. 

I gave Amanda a Bible and we decided we should read Isaiah 61 and thus opened our lovely books, never mind the waves that lapped at the pages. :) It wasn't long before one of the other beach goers, a young man who studies at the University called over to us, "Is that a waterproof book??" we responded back that it was. I told him, "it's actually a Bible. Want to see it?"
"Yeah I do," was his response and he swam over and flipped through the pages. 

He handed it back saying that it was pretty cool and began to swim away. He didn't go far before he turned back and asked us why we were reading it. He wanted to know what our objective was, like if were were in a study group, or searching out different religions or what. We told him we read it because we wanted to and that we believed in Jesus. 

He said he was really curious as to why that was, because he was an Atheist and didn't understand why people choose a religion since all religions generate hate. 

We were then launched into a full on Spiritual discussion for the next 30 or 40 minutes as he asked his questions of curiosity. He claimed that since he studies physics and the Bible can't be proven that it seemed like any one who had their own religion was just someone who was ignorant and used God as a cop out answer to explain how the world came to be. 

(In my mind I was secretly thanking the Lord for all those times my Grandpa Kohl had sat us down after dinner to explain the Bible to us through science)

The guy also claimed that scientists were able to replicate DNA with chemicals in a lab and thus it is proven that chemicals makes nothings into something and the world came from chemicals. Of course I asked if the it was the chemicals coming together by chance in a lab dish or if scientists put them together. "Scientists" he said. 

And I asked him, "do you believe the same thing about buildings? That some materials randomly came together and became a house? Or that a painting was just random chemicals turning into paint and forming a picture on a canvas"

"Well, no. I see where you're going. But if God were real I don't see why all religions would generate so much hate and violence in the world."

Now that I think about it, I wish I would have said that it was more of a lack of people allowing God to be in the world that caused such animosity, but I suppose the Spirit had me say what ever he wanted. 

The conversation went really well and it ended just as pleasantly as it had started. I just pray that we gave him something to think about. 

After that, we decided to sit on the beach as we'd originally planned. setting the Bibles down in the shallow water we debriefed a little on what the Lord had just done and we no sooner had turned our faces toward the glorious rays of the sun when we heard, "are those books water proof?"

I turned to see a man in his late 30s walking towards us. "Yeah, it's a waterproof Bible. Want to see it?" "*curse words removed* no way! Yes I do!"  I picked it up, dipped it in the lake to get the sand off and handed it to him.


"Now who would bring a Bible to the beach??"

"We would I guess"

"Do you know Psalm 23?"

"Of course"

"That's my favorite verse. What's yours?"

"James 1:2-4"

"Where do you go to church?"

"Veritas. It's in Iowa City."

"where are you from?"

"Iowa City"

"I haven't been to church in a while. I don't really have time any more."

"oh yeah?"

"Yeah. But just because I don't go doesn't mean I don't practice."

At this point he started wading in and leaving the conversation. Shortly thereafter a lady came over to us.

"You have a water proof Bible? I've never seen one before."

"You wanna see it?"

"I'd love to!"

As she did her own flipping through it and commenting, a little boy swimming not to far away (maybe it was her kid) got all excited as well exclaiming he'd never heard of such a thing. 

I kind of chuckle to myself remembering all that. It wasn't either of our goals to draw so much attention. I think if we'd have known, we probs wouldn't have brought them. But, it's really all how the Lord works. The people we met at the beach yesterday probably wouldn't have been there when we went a week ago. 


A curious Atheist doesn't happen by chance. They would only be curious is they weren't totally confident that what they believed was right. I mean, he had a lot of well thought out questions and he was really respectful of our responses. I think the Lord wanted him there. I think the Lord wanted us there. 

Driving away from all of that, of course we could do nothing more than praise the Lord for putting us in a place to be used, whether we had expected it or not. 

It'll be fun to see what the Lord does with those seeds that were planted yesterday. I shall ask the Lord about it when I get to heaven and perhaps show me the spiritual battle that took place over our heads that we didn't see. Christ won. I know that. I'm just curious as to what it looked like. 

There's a bubbling sort of joy in the deep places of my heart. I just feel so loved and honored that the Lord would see me fit to share His love with others. I feel honored that I am "good enough" by God's standards. 

*sigh* the children are up now. I think I better go intervene before they start in on early morning sodas and nutella/marshmallow fluff covered cookies for breakfast. 

Moved

Good morning, world!

6:34am and in ten minutes, I will have been awake for 2 hours already. 

What a crazy last..uhm.. I think maybe a crazy last week, but possibly only a crazy last 5 days. I don't remember at this point. Yesterday was the big day. We moved!!

The big thing about all of this is how incredibly loved I feel by the whole process. I mean,  I hated everything about packing and the stress of having everything exploded everywhere and all that, but in the end, I felt very loved. 

Acts of service is one of my very top love languages and so of course my heart was moved in the deepest places when some of my friends showed up on my door step at 8am and stayed the day to do anything and everything. 

Our last helper outter left around 10pm, I think, but it was glorious. I had been up til 12am the night before, putting the last touches on the packing boxes and then up at 5:30 to get a head start on the day. So, of course by the time 5 or 6 rolled around in the evening, I was a little loopy, I think. It's a little vague to me at this point on account I'm still short on sleep, but everything was extremely funny to me, and of course my wonderful friends kept it going. 

I love that at the end of a long, exhausting, hot day, I can laugh and be as content as ever. I love that the Lord has blessed me with such good friends who would give up all the spare moments in their day to help us girls move and lift and carry things. Honestly, I can't imagine that it would have gone as smoothly had we not had our wonderful man friends hefting the big things. 

It's funny how there have been times in my life where the pain in my heart has cut into the bottomest places and I've wondered if there would be a time when I'd be happy all the way down to my core ever again. I mean, it's easy to be temporary happy, or to be touched on the surface, but there's something about the very core of our beings that we guard and protect from whatever may come at us. We fail miserably, of course, trying to protect that part of our hearts and then we blame God for it. (Why didn't we just trust Him to protect us in the first place?) And then we are broken in the deepest places. And we can trust God and give our lives to Him, but the brokenness can sometimes linger for a long time. 

And then in the stillness of the night when we are left with our own quiet thoughts and deep contemplation  that broken little piece reminds you that you're still broken no matter how much you run from it during the day. 
I think part of letting God heal the deepest places involves surrendering to the ways He loves you and seeing it. I think in a situation like having to move across town on a hot day, operating on very little sleep, and just being totally exhausted can lead to being grumpy or really complainy. 

But, I've come to look for how God loves me in the ways that I know i feel loved and yesterday was filled to the BRIM with lots of little things that added up to a whole big basket of being loved. 

There was someone to lift the heavy seats out of my van at 8am and someone to put them back at 10pm Someone took apart my futon and put it back together at the new place. My dresser, bed and every other heavy object were carried down a flight of stairs and back up a flight of stairs. 
People were holding doors for eachother and everyone kept making the trips, loading, unloading, arranging boxes to not be in the way and affirming each other. 

It made me think of the many work project missions trips I've been on with my church family back home. My very favorite trip I went on was actually when I was in college but went as a youth leader for the freshmans and sophomores. It was filled with sweaty work project after sweaty work project and no showers or coffee. But it was SO fun because everyone worked together, no one complained, and everyone worked hard until is was done and the leaders had run out of things for us to do. I love those trips because I always grow closer to the people I go with because you get to talk to them and get to know them while doing mindless tasks. You get to joke with them and make memories with them and you wouldn't outside of that situation. 

I loved that I felt like that with my friends yesterday. I felt loved by them serving in that way, and I felt loved by how they made me laugh. 

It was 10:20pm when I was finally all washed up and laying down on the mattress I have set up on the floor at my friend's house so as to keep the drive to work in the morning shorter. At that point all I wanted to do was spend a little time with Jesus as I'd felt him love me all day long and I'd hardly stopped to spend a little time with him. I got to read some Psalms. :)

Tomorrow I have the day off and I resolve to spend some quality time with The Lord as I miss him far too much at this point. 

Joy in Chaos

If ever were there a time in my life where chaos and stress collided with peace and perseverance, it's now. 
I've done two 12 hour days the last two days and today and tomorrow I'll be working as well. 

I'm not the type of person who can sit and organize for hours. I get the steam for it in bits and spurts and so it's a work in progress. Monday is our big day. I've never had such a stressful moving experience.

Yesterday after a long day, I returned home and gathered and boxed up and made quite a bit of progress for an hour or two and then in a moment of sitting alone I realized I needed to be around people or risk going slightly insane and thus tracked down my friends and joined them for an evening of painting. 

Painting is such a de-stressing activity, and of course the company of my sweet friends was perfect. After we completed our projects, we went for a Kalona adventure that involved getting jumped by men with guns, being led through the woods in flipflops and finding every stinging nettle off the beaten path with our feet, 
then sitting around the most peaceful beach side bonfire I've ever seen in my life.
(The boys with guns were perfectly harmless apart from them enjoying our shrieks of terror as they took advantage of our being in an unfamiliar situation in the dark.)

I just LOVE every interaction with my Kalona friends on account they love Jesus a lot and there is is an obvious sense of the Spirit's presence wherever they go. There is peace and there is joy and I always feel so loved by Jesus just by the fact that they exist. 
I often wish I was more like them. They're carefree, adventurous and kind. 

Our evening came to a close in the wee hours of the morning as we sang some of our favorite worship songs by the fire under the most magnificent display of stars with which  the Lord could  blessed  us. I imagine that I should much like to worship Jesus on a beach in heaven someday. It's so wonderful!

We were returned to our homes sometime before 3am but of course there were things to complete and accomplish before going to sleep, including scrubbing mud and sand off my feet and legs and packing some more. I imagined that I would sleep til 10am and get a glorious 7 hours of sleep. Of course when you're used to waking at 5am, your body thinks you've accomplished a great thing when you've slept til 7:48am and since you're not used to getting more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep anyways, why should you sleep any more than that? Oh well. I got good things done before helping a friend out with some errands.

I also got a few more hours of packing done before leaving for work. That's where the peace meets the chaos. 
The bonfire last night was peace and joy and the presence of God in a beautiful gift box wrapped up with a bow. Sorting, packing, organizing and everything else centered around my house today has been chaos and everything else opposite of last night. I'll save my tears for after it's over though, maybe.  

 I shall much like to spend a day with Jesus when all this is behind me. Moving itself isn't as bad as I'm making it sound, but there are other factors about this that make it..trying. 
But this time next week I'll be looking at peace and joy all over again. 

Praise the Lord! I really need a day with Jesus to let my heart rest in His presence. That will be wonderful. Me and Jesus. It's a date. 

Content Doesn't Mean Contentment

Some days I'm amazed I still have  a head. Sometimes I wonder if I actually do. 

I think today is the former, which makes the idea of hacking it off with a large knife somewhat tempting. It's not that anything is particularly wrong or upsetting, but the feelings of being overwhelmed, stressed, and burning out my last fumes is starting to weigh in to me. 

The stress is because of the time crunch for moving is finally closing in. I've wanted this move for a while. I've been dreaming of how I would arrange furniture and decorate walls and re-invent my quiet time corner in a new location where I'd be surrounded by my closest friends and only two or three blocks from my sister and more of my close friends. 

I'm realizing I'm not very good at being content with my present circumstances. When talking to the Lord about my ideal summer job, I said nanny. And I love my job as a nanny. But the hard parts like settling disputes, investigating crime scenes, confiscating electronics, and deciding what battles to fight and what ones to let go can be a little wearing when you're only getting 5 hours of sleep at best.
I love my kids. I really do. 

But on the days I catch myself being excited for classes to start again, I have to catch myself and find the things I'm truly thankful for in order to be content now. Of course when classes start I will immediately hate my homework and loathe the bus schedule and dream excitedly for my graduation. 

Content. Satisfied with what one is or has; not wanting anything more or anything else. 

That's what I need. Peace if part of the fruit of the spirit, so if I'm lacking in that, I'm lacking in a lot more places. Patience? Yep. Kindness? Probably. Goodness? Definitely. 

 Yesterday I did so much running around that my head was still spinning when I finally shut my light off at 11:15. I'd waken up shortly before 5am and left my house @6. 

There were piano lessons to chauffeur people to and things to be picked up inbetween. We spent a little time at Pet Land and then there were swim lessons, children to return to their prospective homes and impromptu gas station exploring whilst waiting to pick the last kid up and head home. 

Upon my return home, I had about 6 minutes to change, eat some green beans, take a phone call, exchange quick words and plans with my roommate before snatching up my keys one more and picking friends up for Salt

Salt finished at 8:30 I think and then it was driving people home, taking a friend to North Lib to pick up her car from an auto shop and then driving back to Iowa City to pick up a friend for a late supper. It was close to 9:45 before we got our food and chatted for 30 minutes before returning him to his place and me to mine. 

It was then 10:30 when I walked through my front door again, exchanged some words with my roommate and headed to my room to accomplish some things before making attempts at a few hours of sleep before I got up at 5 once again for another full day. 

Even as I sit here, I'm contemplating a potential all-nighter of packing (I always say that, but of course there is almost nothing in the world worth giving up a whole night's sleep for) in attempts to have everything in order by Monday morning,  especially given that I'm working Saturday and Sunday. 

 I'm a procrastinator. I bring it on myself everytime the stress sets in and I deserve no ones sympathy. 
I have my reasons for disliking the moving process, this one in particular. I'm excited for the end result, but nothing about getting to it brings me any sense of joy at this point. 

I do, however, get a sense of satisfaction when all is loaded up and a chapter closes and everything is literally put behind you. 

In the mean time, the Lord keeps putting His hand on my shoulder saying "Just wait.. Just one moment. Don't rush, don't run, don't hide. "

So, I'm trying to be still before the Lord. Er... I mean, I've thought about trying to be still before the Lord. My  attempts are more frequent than my success. I think after I move I need to devote a day or so to that.

It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy…Let’s go exploring!

By God's grace I was given another week to go home and see my siblings and parents back in Storm Lake. 

The 4th of July is one of our most celebrated holidays and it was no disappointment this year! Everything we wanted to do, we did. From watching the parade, eating our usual 4th of July pork burger from the Pork Producers stand, sailing the lake all afternoon, grilling, blowing up things, watching the fireworks by the lake... it was perfect. It even ended with star gazing and a couple bodies falling asleep in the front yard and sleeping out there all night. 

The waves for sailing were thrilling as the wind was a bit more than we'd usually request but better than not having any. White caps that crashed over the bow and caused more than one capsize, we were delightfully exhausted by the time we sailed in and put up the boats. 

Home for the weekend was magical by itself as well. Perfectly relaxing, filled with adventure, rest, joy, laughter, coffee, games and as much cuddling as the summer heat would allow. One morning my little sister and I took our coffees and painting supplies out on the front deck as she decided to give me a lesson in oil painting, as I had never done it before. 

 As I just said, home is wonderfully magical and as I contemplated what I should paint on my white canvas, looking up and seeing one of the most familiar scenes from my childhood, the North garden, now overgrown and just as magical as ever, I decided I should like nothing better than to have it hung in my room in Iowa City to admire forever. 

I'm not a particularly skilled painter, by any means. Like I said, I'd never done it before. So, given my complete lack of experience and good talent, I was pleased with the outcome well enough to decide to keep it around. 

  I spent many a summer in that garden, digging worms, burying change, playing Indians, or tending to my dad's flowers or strawberries. It was here that I babied my watermelon plants and harvested my beastly 52lb melon with several others weighing in over 40lbs. 

It was here that we had bonfires and experimented with explosives. We explored the woods, climbed the trees and got way too many thistles in our feet from going around without our shoes. Yes, I love this place.

My original plan to come home Sunday was delayed when my mom and siblings requested I stay an extra day, given I didn't have work on Monday. The extra day was so delightful that I let them coax me into delaying my return to Iowa City one more day and didn't return until Tuesday, making it exactly 1 whole week that I'd been gone. 

I haven't been to the grocery store in 36 days now. Of course I'm basically out of food apart from frozen berries in the freezer. Upon my return home I decided to check the fridge and see what I might have that was edible. 

The first thing I noticed was a bottle of carrot juice that I had not yet finished drinking. I couldn't remember when I'd purchased it, perhaps after a work out in May, but the expiration date was for July 8th and since it was only one day passed it I decided to take a swig. 

Bad idea. It was totally fermented and left my mouth buzzing. Of course I spit it right out and thought "That's disgusting!" so i emptied the bottle into the sink and threw the bottle in the recycle bin. 
Next I opened the fridge and saw leftover noodles in a tupperware container. I popped the lid off of that bad boy and saw green fuzzy spots all up on the noodles and thought, "That's disgusting too" and tossed out the noodles. 
Next I explored our cheese drawer and came across half a block of swiss cheese. Yay! I LOVE swiss cheese. I took it out of its plastic to see green fuzzy spots on that too... so I threw it out. 
At that time I got a text from my friend asking me if I had any meat to bring to a BBQ we were going to later. I looked to see a pound of ground beef and texted her back saying, "Hamburger yes!"
I took it out of the fridge and the smell was one thing, the green color was another. Yuck. 
I texted her back saying just kidding on the meat. *sigh*
Next I came across turkey meat for sandwiches. Well, given that it's been 36 days at least.. I didn't have much hope. Who knew that turkey grew bubbles when it went bad?Not me. 

Lucky me, my mom sent me home with two cans of tuna and a package of hotdog buns. 
I had a box of tuna helper on my shelf and so, I should be able to survive on that a couple days. My milk expired a couple days ago, but why waste it?

Given that I move in 5 days, I don't want to go grocery shopping until after that. So, I'll ration out my tuna and frozen berries and I'll do just fine. Besides, it's not good to have frozen stuff in a move since you gotta take it out of a freezer and all that stuff in the hours of moving. 

Now it's time to pack. To move to my next chapter of life. Again. (I move every couple months it seems.) I love this place. I love this comfy chair in this comfy corner where I do my quiet time and read books and write in my prayer journal. But, I'm ready for the next thing the Lord will have for me. 

New adventures. New relationships. New beginnings. 

The nice thing about moving is that it teaches you a lot about material worth and possessions. 
I usually end up throwing tons of things away because they're not worth the effort of preserving and moving to the next place. You also get to clean up and throw out the memories you don't need to keep around any more. It was a nice chapter but, heck, I'm moving on. Some times the best thing is to only let the memories exist in the far corners of your brain or your heart and wipe them away from everywhere else.

Phases. That's what life is. A collection or series of phases. Some good, some bad, all temporary. 

Even people. Friendships, relationships, acquaintance-ships. Temporary. 

So heres hoping the next chapter is happier than this last one. :) 

Joy in July

Happy July everyone! Having been out of class of a month and a half now and working with my nanny family for several weeks, I finally feel like I have a bit of a groove going. At least I think I do. 

Yesterday, my 11 year old brought me a book while we were all hanging out asking me if I had read it before. It's called Kisses From Katie and it's about a girl whose heart for Uganda at the age of 18 lead her to leave everything behind and serve the people of Africa, even adopting 13 children of her own as a single 22 year old. When I informed my 11 year old that, no, I had not read it but I had heard of her, he informed me that it was a really good book and that I should. 

I'm not much of a reader, but since he asked, I began to read it. It is really good and I hope to finish it soon.
The book is challenging to me in many ways. One of the ways being that half of why I am so hesitant to actually go overseas to wherever the Lord may call me is that I'm so emotionally dependent on my family and friends that I know that I would cry everyday if I did go. Katie writes of her own lonely tears and the difficulties of being away from home, but she still went and stayed and does big things. 
Also, there's the part about rats and geckos and bats and other unpleasant things. I really struggle with those

 In Nicaragua, there were several nights that some of my roommates felt the need to inform me, as I lay down on my mat for the night, that, they had just seen a gecko or multiple geckos right about where my head was going to be.Yuck. Of course, every time, I envisioned the scene from the Lindsey Lohan version of The Parent Trap the part where the lizard crawls into the mouth of the father's girlfriend. We all prayed the geckos would stay out of our mouths while we slept. 

But in the book that Katie wrote of her experience in Uganda (she still lives there as far as I know) she doesn't seem to mind the lizard in her toaster or the rat in her bathroom. I think I need to let the Lord change that about me as well. But I'm afraid, because I know that the best way for the Lord to change that is to put me into the situation and just make me be okay with it.

I finish school in 5 months from now. I want to go on an adventure. An adventure with Jesus where my heart is to be made more like His. 

Also, I'm learning about patient (I've said this.) It's a part about God I really don't know anything about, I'm realizing.
I really try to be patient with my kids. I'm much better at this after spending time with Jesus, but it's still so tricky. The big thing is that I try to be really patient and give a lot of grace, but that doesn't work when we have to get to swimming lessons or piano lessons by a certain time and they're dragging their feet. If I'm as patient as they are slow about getting ready, than we'd be super late to all the activities that they're supposed to attend. 

Yesterday this happened when I gave them a 20 minute warning to go to swim practice and in the last minute one of them decided that they didn't want to bring their swim bag and took their time finding a new towel and then decided they needed to stop off for a snack in the kitchen. (This is the part where I'm usually praying through clenched teeth and thinking, "are you kidding me??"). Of course it also the part where I'm like, "What other option do I have, Lord? If was any more patient we'd be late or miss their activities." 
So I was thinking through that as we were driving to their swim practice, "What would the Lord do?"

I'm not even sure I've come to a conclusion, but maybe it is that the Lord is so patient that we do our appointments and activities that we could have enjoyed had we not dragged our feet in getting there. Maybe it is that the dragging of our feet has caused us to be late for a lot of things and we only get to enjoy small portions of grander things. It makes me wonder how many things I've missed or am missing..on account I seem to be dragging my feet in doing missions overseas. Not that I think I have to go overseas to do missions, I just think the Lord would like do big things in my heart overseas. I don't even know where, but I've kinda felt like I should go overseas for a while and stay for a while. 

It's hard for me to find the balance of being as patient and loving as Jesus and being a good baby sitter getting the kids to their appointments on time. I fail at being like Jesus everyday. 

Food for thought I guess. 

Apart from my daily battle in learning to see what the Lord is doing in my heart, everything is going well. Too well. Or just perfect, maybe. I was talking to my best friend about this the other day. Just the fact that I'm coasting and not really sure what to do with it. She reminded me that I need to be content with the fact that I'm not going through a trial or so difficult thing. It doesn't make sense that when I'm in a trial I would be discontent about because it was too hard or too much. Likewise it doesn't make sense that when I'm not in a trial I'd be saying that it wasn't enough. How funny. The two things that I claim of myself when I'm insecure, (being too much or not enough) are the two things I'm unhappy about in my spiritual life. 

Honestly, I am thankful for the time of rest that I am in right now. I'm still so amazed that it's coming up on a year almost exactly since my life was "wrecked" and "fell apart" in the most painful way. But also the best way. I find something new to be thankful about it everyday it seems. However, I wouldn't want to wish my fall semester last year on my greatest of enemies. That's one dark valley I hope is forever in my past. 

I'm in a good place now. I have a good job, amazing friends, and soon will headed home for my families favorite holiday. I will get to climb into a sailboat and sail the lake with my best friends and sailing buddies (My siblings). We will snuggle together on our Raggedy Anne blankets spread across the basketball court as we watch the fire works over the lake. We'll all hold hands as my mom insists we need a buddy so we don't get lost, even though her first 7 children are older than 18. And it will be home and it will be great.

I love that. I love home. I love the 4th. I think it's our biggest holiday, next to Christmas of course. 
I've been dying for a good bonfire lately, too, so I'm excited! 

Happy 4th of July everyone!