On Beauty

There are few things I love more than fall in Seattle. While the calendar still reads August, the weather plainly screams Autumn and I could not be more thankful.

Stepping out my front door, I took a huge whiff, a smile sneaking across my face: it smells like rain. Clouds coat the sky, and the temperature is perfect to be wandering around campus in long pants and long sleeves.

With the weather aching of fall, I want fall events. Cue the start of school... in a month. Thirty-two days will pass quickly, won't they?

I rest assured they will if I fill them with the beauty that was yesterday:

Babysitting John and Grant, walking to the beach, laughing lots, stopping at the bakery, singing Potter Puppet Pals, reading choose-your-own-adventure books aloud, playing Don't Break the Ice!, and so many other tiny things that just make me smile.

And after a beautiful (but exhausting) eight hours with the twins, to relax with Ben and a good movie:

Pretending we were star gazing on my living room floor.
Endless fits of giggles.
Tickle attacks.
And priceless embraces.

I love the awkwardness, quirkyness, weirdness that we both possess. Our silly times together are amazing.

With an empty September calendar before me, the rest of summer promises some good times and surprises before the utter comfort of school descends once again.

On Growing Up

I am fearful of change, of an uncertain future.

Suddenly, my childhood is fading fast with trips to the airport, whispers of engagements.

How we have jumped from being children to adults without transition...

The beauty of drawing with sidewalk chalk, of stargazing, of playing board games, of reading children's books is thankfully not yet drowned in this growing up nonsense.

I still feel seven-years-old most of the time as the months left in my teenage years dwindle.

When does that inner child die? When do making up nicknames and running around acting like dinosaurs become less hilarious? Where there is a country separating you?

Within Jesus' call for us to have faith like children, is He also not pleading with us to retain the eyes of children? To see the world about us shrouded in lenses of joy and innocence? To love like children, quickly and without fear? To laugh like children, boundless and without end?

Whispers of Your graciousness and faithfulness abound.

спасибо

On Absolute Peace

It smells like smoke: campfire, cigarette, flare, pot. And the ocean, salty breeze too cool when too far from the fire pit. So many conversations flit about, running into and on top of one another. Dirty sand stains bare feet black.

In the midst of all of this: tranquility.

Her head against his chest,
he breathing in the scent of her hair,
kissing the top of her head,
his arm fitting perfectly around her shoulders,
fingers playing and entwining with one another.

Beauty.
Comfort.
Absolute peace.

On His Greatness

You know... God is great. "But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is!" (Romans 1:19, the Message). There is no way I can go through a moment of my life without thanking God for the beauty that is surrounding me. And that is a joy. I love being aware of God, thinking of Him first in everything that happens to me.

This summer, these last few months, even this whole last year has been an incredible blessing. I think back on last summer, the relief it was to be out of that tiny, brainwashed world. The walks, the writing, the time spent with friends as I watched them, one by one, scatter across the country. Nerves started to creep into my stomach as I would lay awake at night, unable to imagine the changes in store for my life in late September.

But college came and God was great. A journal entry from the last day of orientation weekend: "I am increasingly happy at this point in time. Increasingly. It is a beautiful moment. I have this amazing sense of fulfillment and peace, and am so thankful to God. I feel like I've finally found this place where I'm supposed to be. And it is amazing. I don't think I've ever had this feeling before."

God gave me such a sense of security: I'd found a home, and I knew it after three days of being there. Another entry, from halfway through October: "If, once upon a time, you found this place where you found yourself effortlessly happy, comfortable, peaceful, and safe, but knew you could only stay for four years, what would you do to savor those years, those months, those weeks, those days, those hours, those minutes, those seconds?
Open up your arms and embrace the whole world, loving everyone you see. Smile and laugh because life is small and God is clever. Trust that everything will come out perfectly as it must and there's nothing you can do to ruin it.
I cannot lose my grace because I was not the one who gained it. Ah, to be free of all pressure.
God is good."

Blessed assurance...

It's incredible the way God knows us all so uniquely and cares for us so well. He is amazing.

I know it's easy to be hopeful and joyful when everything in your life is seamless, but my life is not without it's share of seams. But God created us, and He knows what we need, and He will always be there providing enough. Sometimes more, but sometimes just enough.

I am beautifully in love with life, and with my God the Creator of all.

"Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God.
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts..."
Psalm 95:1-8

On Joy

What a joy this life is.

In the passenger seat, watching two old men in a convertible nod their heads in unison to music, hearing a motocyclist pull a wheely in the far left lane and speed off, feeling much cooler than he was in actuality.

Sun streaming, in the company of people I love so freaking much. Trader Joe's and canoes and Blue Angels and splashing and Quelf.

I cannot put voice to the assurance I have that our joy is God's joy.

On Words of Hope

So, for the past week or so, I've been clearing out a work room in the SUB that the student ministry groups use. It was a huge project, as the room was completely trashed throughout the year, but it is rewarding to see it looking so beautiful now. In sorting through a lot of the papers and Exhale supplies, though, I ran across some great messages of hope and of joy in the Lord:

Go out into the world with peace and with humility to love and serve the Lord.
May the radiance of Christ illuminate all that you learn and do.
May the God of hope fill your being with all joy and peace in believing so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
May the God of peace make you holy in every way and keep your whole being - spirit, soul, and body - free from every fault at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.


Come and sing.
Come and draw.
Come and pray.
Come and dance.
Come and... be welcome.


Don't be afraid to be silent.
Don't be afraid to speak up.
Perfect love casts out all fear.
Bring good news.


I lost everything... and it set me free...


I am so sick of this by-the-book life that everybody seems to be living!


When we open our eyes...
(What if? How could we know? Can it be that...?)
We accept that there are many brilliant forms of LIGHT in darkness.


I am designing myself to
speak only love
teach only love
breathe only love.


Do more good.


Pray with someone.


Pray for someone you would normally never think of.


Pray for someone through your art.


Do not be afraid of judgement.


Love someone.


If I come without a thing then I come with all I need.


Challenge yourself.


Random act of love.


Most of these messages were painted on cardboard, scrawling script with black paint. I tacked up a lot of this artwork around the room on various bulletin boards, hoping the students who will be working in that room throughout the year will take encouragement from these words.

It was hard, I won't hesitate to admit, to sit at the SMC desk, sorting through binders of years past, seeing all these people who have served in the position I desperately wanted to obtain. Seeing a list of next year's SMCs, so many of whom are my friends: I'm so proud of them, and so jealous that they succeeded where I fell short.

A lot [a lot] of thinking went on in that room, where I could crank up Pandora as loudly as I wanted, sitting on the floor surrounded by books, or buckets of paint, or worship lyrics on overheads. And thoughts from a confused and struggling mind:


So, I know I’m being taught a lot. And I know that all of this frustration is coming from a selfish place within my heart, and these are things I need to work out between me and God. So, how can I not be frustrated? What changes do I need to make in my life, Lord, to be listening to Your voice, to be striving toward Your will? How am I to live and breathe and speak only love? Will You teach me these lessons?


My fear is that I miss too much. That my thoughts are turned up so loudly, I cannot hear the voice of God. I need Him more than any other, and when some revelation hits me in the middle of 409-ing the desks in the storage room, I am scared that God is whispering these things in my ear all the time, every day, but I am not listening well. I am too busy playing with words, or conjuring up situations that will never happen.


I need to have the patience to wait and be still. I need to wait for him to come to me. I need to wait for Him to come to me. I have these fears, this idea that I need to hold so tightly to everything around me or else it will slip away. But when I relax and let God happen in my life, that is when the greatest things begin to occur. I need to trust Him, and know again that His love will carry me and He will not let me go. That is my hope and my joy, always, continually each day.

On Eleanor Rigby and Other Things

Sadness that was terrifyingly overwhelming. And then... Keith? God has an absolutely amazing sense of humor. I just had to laugh, all the way down the hill, through disgustingly muggy air, to my sandy empty beach. Leaning against a sun soaked cement wall, wind spitting sand onto my page, while the shore shortens, surf crashing ever closer.

All the lonely people; where do they all come from?

These clouds are a joke, promising nothing but an obscured view of Mt. Baker. The light breeze cools my reddened cheeks, though.

I wish someone with a particular crooked smile could be in the sand right beside me, squinting across the Sound.

Time for a relocation.

Another beach, a sun bleached log behind my back, another pound of sand in these shoes. A more persistent wind, drying contacts, drying sweat. Such a depressingly empty day.

Pen cap tracing patterns in such warm sand. Words are scarce, like raindrops: painfully missed, like that all too familiar smell drifting through my open window, carried by the laundry room vent, forcing my neck to crack with the speed my head turns, finding a distressing no one in the empty welcoming door frame.

Pen cap moves to tracing words, fearlessly bold statements because of their short lifespan. One strong gust of wind and... yes, they're gone.

Pages bent and blown, hair flung back, sand cascading in the breeze. The tide is tauntingly ever creeping closer. The ferry wake utterly destroys sand creations; screams of protest echoing over the surface of the water.

Death Cab lyrics echo through my head; fingers twitch for the keys to accompany the familiar melody.

The spray is close enough to splash onto my skin, cooling the suffocating air.

More traced words. More sentiments blown away.

Close your eyes against the assaulting sand; take a walk to clear your head.

These lazy, empty, wordless days.

How can you go for days without speaking?
How can you not?
These words are not to be wasted.