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.
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.
Four days ago:
I don't like being away from the dorms. It's not as though being back home is bad in any way, I just love the utter comfort in having so many people I absolutely love surrounding me at all times.
After our epic last night in the dorms, packing with irritation, all these things - it will just be a very interesting summer. I sit here on my naked bed, surrounded by five versions of the Bible, listening to the Glorious Unseen and the Decemberists, and I cannot process yet that this is something normal, that this is going to be my life for the next three months. With miles instead of feet separating me from Holly and from Ben. Miles... I can't imagine not seeing them each day.
I feel like I should be sadder than I am. It will probably hit me in the next few days. But God will provide and I will survive. I just want to continue growing this summer, to remain passionately in love with Jesus. Because that's most important.
Yesterday:
What a day. What a life...
Writing, laughing, sun, Holly and Ben, swings, merry-go-round, narrating small children's lives, walking, comparing dogs to their owners, holding hands, relaxing on a couch, Ben's hand deep in my hair, playing board games designed with kids younger than college students in mind, relaxing in the papasan while watching Holly organize, parking lot nightmare, paddle boat adventure, ducks, buoys, swimmers, the boys in the water, Holly and I holding their valuables, complaints of lake itch, soggy hugs, parents' awkward encounters, emails, writing.
Can every day be like this? Simple, spent in love and in friendship, enjoying each other and enjoying the world.
Thanks be to God.
And hoy:
Just a small note.
I'm not sure I'm ok with this whole concept of summer.
I'm not sure I'm ok with going days without seeing Holly and Ben.
I'm not sure I'm ok with just bumming around my house for over three months.
I just want to be back in your arms.
Sitting on my bed with Holly's head in my lap.
Relaxing in the papsana with Jill.
Hugging Ben in the middle of Gwinn.
I want a quick escape to go see the ducks, or a walk by myself in the rain.
I want to be back at school all the time, even if it means papers and stress and not enough sleep.
I love that little independence that appeared when I left my home.
I want it to be September twenty-second.
Me, in word cloud form.
Friday:
Learning lessons of love in UFND.
Scribbling the first lines of a sonnet in Chem.
Playing Dutch Blizt on a blanket on the beach.
Getting my first painful sunburn of the summer.
Raiding Candice's closet.
Watching the lovely Dahlstrom sisters make crepes.
Second date...
Eating dinner in Gwinn (of course).
Driving in Ben's car to Alderwood.
Wandering through Pottery Barn; quick stop at the Apple store.
Watching Up (with the adorable happy little cloud short before).
Driving to Bothell.
Packing adventures.
Wandering the labyrinth of Albertson's, in desperate search for Rosarita.
Snatches of Pride and Prejudice, bits of conversation, barking of tiny dogs.
Lovely car rides (so many of them) filled with the Killers, Coldplay, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Barcelona, Shane and Shane. Also laughter and smile-filled silence.
Surveying all of Seattle from atop Gasworks hill, the lights of the city reflected in perfectly still water, sun-warmed air slowly cooling. Stories of Europe and life. A perfect moment beneath the stars.
Saturday:
A complete lack of productivity.
A quick visit from Ben.
A sunny walk down to the canal; time with ducks and God.
Roomies...
"Left on Smith! Left on Smith!"
Mingle.
Link Tag.
Ultimate Frisbee.
Swings.
Four Square.
Extreme Simon Says.
S'mores.
Amazing view of Mt. Rainier.
Sitting on a low concrete wall, watching Seattle after dark for the second night in a row.
Someone amazing sitting beside me.
Standing in a parking space, unable to make decisions.
Run to Wendy's.
Sitting in the lounge, Jill and Taylor, Ben and me.
One last hug good night.
Sunday:
Paper writing.
Sonnet scanning.
Cloud-filled skies.
Knowing that summer is too close.
"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. [...] For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord."
Ephesians 5:1-2 & 8-10
If I had to pick a favorite book of the Bible, it would probably be Ephesians. I remember my first real time encountering the book as a whole was junior year, KP Bible study, when Jordan led us through the book. I still have some of his notes at home, and I still remember and love so much the example he brought from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It was a great Bible study, and through that year, and all the struggles it involved, I feel like I finally started diving into the Word. And that was great.
But back to Ephesians.
Paul has so many incredibly important things to say about how we are to live. We are to understand the Lord's will (verse 17). What a weighty claim... I mean, I have always understood God's will to be unable to be grasped. He is a mystery and so huge, and what He has planned is so far beyond what we could understand. I didn't know we had the capacity to understand His will. This is so beyond me.
He also states that we should be filled with the Spirit (verse 18). Paul's language here is almost demanding; he is commanding us to be filled with the Spirit. But is this something over which we have any control? Do we have any responsibility insofar that the Spirit fills us? Can we decide 'Oh, today I think I'll be Spirit-filled'? I've always though that the Spirit moves on His own. He is within us and we have no control over that. But, I don't know, maybe it is more conscious. As we grow in the Lord, and make choices toward righteousness, striving toward humility with the grace of God, the Spirit fills us more and more. We are the balloons Pastor Tim was talking about, being inflated, stretched, grown, all by and in Him.
That is really exciting actually. God is so great to us. So incredibly loving. What could we possibly want to do besides live a life of love as Christ and sacrifice?
Sing each other psalms,
Sing and make music in your heart
To the Lord.
Wake up, O Sleeper!
Rise up, and Christ will shine on you!
God's love is just the most overpowering thing ever, and honestly, when everything gets boiled down, God's love is what's most important. We are to live lives of love as children of light. There is no compromising on this rule. The two most important commands God gives us are to love Him and to love each other.
So when it's said, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son," this means that our salvation comes only through love. It is the source of our lives, and without His love we would not be breathing.
I feel like we should not be striving to experience that love. If you're looking for some emotional experience as an end to itself, there's probably something wrong. God's love is so surrounding us that we should experience it whenever we come in contact with anyone else. God's love should be so overflowing in our lives, there should not be a moment where we are thinking, 'Hmm, I wish I could experience God's love right now.' We experience it at every moment; each breath, each person, each small prayer.
"Our own response of love allows God's life to flow into us without limit. [...] I want and I choose what better leads to the deepening of God's life in me."
-St. Ignatius
One last word from Paul:
"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
Ephesians 3:16-19
This is such exhaustion:
Greek Orthodox Church with Rachele, Amolia, and Carolina; incense, Greek, standing in heels, three hours, liturgy, holy bread, altar boys, the Lord's Prayer in four different languages.
Fremont Market with Ben; first date, sun, parking garage, wandering, his crazy forcing me to eat, Greek food, dogs, talking (about family, summer, futures), smiles, so much sweetness, flowers; lying on a blanket, chin against his arm, watching him change his facebook status to something adorable.
Ultimate frisbee with Ben, Cody, Kevin, Rachael, Taylor, Dan, Elliot, Jess, and Sarah; sun, cool dirt, jumping, yelling, wishes to be a six-foot six black man, laughs, gentle frisbee tosses, joy.
Mars Hill with Jess, Clarissa, and Chester; so much joy and substance in Pastor Mark's message, prayer, peace, smiles, singing.
This aching in my throat, dry eyes straining to open after each blink, sore cheeks, and tired feet; these are the signs of a joy filled day.
"You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Galatians 5:13-14
