Aunt Michelle's kitchen counter

When I was in high school, my "auntie"/youth leader would sit me down at her kitchen counter and teach me all things domestic. The first thing she would always ask was "How was your week?" which usually was followed by "Have you prayed about that?". I'm pretty sure I would then roll my eyes. (Sorry, Aunt Michelle! Love you, Aunt Michelle!) We would spend the next few hours talking about the issues at hand in both of our lives while sewing or cooking or taking care of babies or organizing a home.

It was her presence in the mundane that gave her authority to speak in the personal, and her willingness to be open that invited me to share as well.

 

Fast forward a few years and a fifteen year old is sitting at the kitchen counter scrolling through pictures on her handheld while another girl and I mix together cinnamon roll frosting and filling. She holds up different pictures of boys to us and asks if we think they are attractive. Most of them I cannot comment on without being flagged as a pedophile, so I just smile and nod and tell her not to talk to boys (which seems to be the bulk of what she talks about). She holds up another picture and turns it away from me, towards the other student. "Dani can't see this, but don't you think he's hot?" Something in her tone has changed. I ask her if it's the boy from camp she's been texting who she mentioned a week ago. Her eyes get big. "How do you know? That's so creepy!"

I smile and tell her, "I just know."
 

Maybe it's because I've been fifteen too, or maybe it's because I've had enough girlfriends to gush with before, but I just know. She mentioned the boy a week ago, and I took note of it. I want her to know that the words she says matter and that I am listening. I want her to know that I know her and she matters, whether she's sharing big things or silly things, not so that I can influence her, but simply because I love her.

And I do love her.

 

We move upstairs to watch Shark Week as we wait for the dough to rise. She starts asking me questions about college, my family, my Florida youth group, going to a magnet school, and growing up in a sleepy beach town. She shifts back to talking about boys, and then she starts asking me about my own boy of interest from college. Her tone of voice tells me that she isn't asking to tease. Suddenly our conversation shifts from gushing to very real sharing about insecurities and frustrations and unmet expectations. We empathize with each other over our "relationships" that are going nowhere.

It all kind of sounds silly, but this camp boy matters to her, so it has to matter to me.  

 

We're in small group writing our cardboard testimonies by ourselves in different parts of the dining area upstairs. I finish mine, pray for a few minutes, and then feel uncomfortable, like I have no idea what to do with myself, like I have never done this before. I see her from across the room and feel compelled to go over to her, yet I have no idea what I'll say or do and the risk of it being even more uncomfortable is high.

I walk over anyway and sit down on the floor next to her. She tries to cover her paper with her arm, and I don't know if I should stay or go. I divert my gaze away from the paper and simply look at her, making eye contact, and smile. She pauses, moves her arm, and turns her paper towards me, revealing difficult secrets. I put my hand on her as she flips the paper to the other side that shows how Christ has made her new. I don't know what to do in that moment. I haven't a clue what to say, so I just hug her.

I hug her and I tell her that I am proud of her.
 

The girls gather together for the end of small group, and as we go around in a circle I am not sure that she will share her cardboard testimony - but I put my hand on her again as she reveals her paper to a group of teenage girls.

The night ends and I tell her again, "I just wanted to thank you for sharing in small group. I know that must have been hard. I am proud of you." She thanks me and says "It was kind of difficult, but I've grown up past that." Suddenly, the student is teaching the "master". She's fifteen and she acknowledges the power and necessity in being vulnerable, something that I have made great strides in this summer but still struggle in.

I can't help but wonder if this is what God has been working up to - the coffee date a week ago where she got a text from a boy from Texas, baking in the kitchen and giggling, watching Shark Week and sharing insecurities, and creating a space that invited painful secrets to be shared and redeemed. Mundane and serious; silly and personal; student and teacher; all of these different paradoxes are colliding.

Perhaps at Aunt Michelle's kitchen counter I learned more than domestic skills. 

Why sharing my testimony is terrifying

I shared my testimony last night to a room full of thirty teenagers.

It was the first time I had publicly spoken of several things, putting my shame and fears and hopes and dreams out on the table like a Thanksgiving feast for the skeletons that had been hiding in my closet.

Y'all, I was 63 inches of sheer panic.

A couple of times I paused.
"Something's wrong. Something's not right."
Breathe, kid. Breathe. You're not breathing.
Take in air. Take in new life.
Exhale the shame, inhale the grace, and wait in the wonder of vulnerability.

A really wonderful friend and partner in crime ministry classmate carefully reminded me that my testimony is really not about me at all, but about God and his story.

It is about identifying how God is moving in real time, in a real place, in a real person.

Even a 20 year old girl on the western slope of Colorado in 2013.

I do not own God's story, and therefore, am not entitled to keep it to myself.

God owns my story, his story.

History.

Buechner talks about the bible as this awful, boring, confusing book full of self-righteous toolbags, murderous whores, whimpy leaders, whiny blame-shifters, and a God that seems to want to smite everybody, including himself (let's not get into a conversation about the trinity for the moment), for the glory of himself.

Some book.
Some God.

But that's exactly what it is.
Some book.
Some God.
Some story that keeps telling the story of ourselves.
The story of a people who do every single thing wrong, but are still given grace from a God who sacrifices himself.

Yes, for glory.
Glory hallelujah.

The bible, our testimonies - they're about saying "Me too."
"Me too. I don't understand what all of this means, but I am with you. He is with you. Breathe."

And that is perhaps what makes the story of God so terrifying.
It is the story of us. All of us.

All is fair in love and shame

Mother's Day is a day of hiding.
Can I get an Amen from anyone in the crowd?

This Mother's Day will be the third in my life that I go to church - and two out of three have been because I worked at one.
The first time was a terrible mistake. 15 years old, bright eyed and bushy tailed - until I saw the mothers cuddling up with their doting daughters, my own hand left empty.
It was a rough day for my already-volatile teenage heart.
Mother's Day is now a day of Netflix, closed shades on the windows, and 48-72 hours of Facebook-free time to avoid playing too much of the Comparison Game.
The game where everybody loses.

I struggled with the foster families I lived with, being both included and excluded, constantly reading mixed messages about what it means to be in a "family" if it simultaneously tells me to remain loyal and yet reminds me that I am not one of their own.

"She's the girl that lives with us."
A charity.

I still struggle to call my closest friends "family" because t is an f-word of the most offensive nature. It means deceit, abuse, betrayal, abandonment, kicking, screaming - anything but love.

So when the God of love says I am part of his family, I shudder.
My mind races to a thousand "I love you, but..."s, a fistful of different house keys, and a dozen "mothers" and "fathers" that never were.

As if the One who both created and adopted me is also unwilling to deal with this mess.
Or maybe I am just his charity case, a pitiful face on the side of the road.

Somehow we came to believe that love can't be won.
It can't be won through a pile of paperwork - sometimes adoption just "doesn't work out."
Like the kid is a piddly puppy or a too-firm mattress.
It can't be won through inviting the stranger (or even friend) into our home on a holiday.
Because what would the rest of the family think?
It can't be won through waiting patiently with and fighting passionately for the drunk uncle or the prodigal son.
Sometimes people are a lost cause, like an over-cooked souffle.

This isn't to shame anybody, but our reality of physical family mirrors or image of spiritual family.

Love cannot be won?
If we believe this, then we believe that love cannot (and therefore, was not) won on the cross.
We believe that God creating us, shaping us by hand out of his own vision and image, was not enough.
We believe that God choosing to adopt us, taking us back during our runaway teen years and terrible twos, was not enough.
We believe that God promising to remain our Father forever, giving us his own last name and adding us onto his will, was not enough.

And so we hide.
Shame runs deep.
Or maybe it runs thick. Sometimes thicker than blood.

We feel like charities at best and orphans at worst.
As if God doesn't have a special love for the orphans.

Shame takes the things we enjoy most and turns it into our biggest source of pain and frustration.
Shame tells us to hide in our rooms on Mother's Day because we are not worthy of being daughters, or maybe because we are not worthy of being mothers.

God made mothers.
And God made daughters.
But God did not make shame.

So this Sunday, I'll be making a public appearance.
Partly because I have to teach Sunday school to a dozen tweens and teens.
But also because love wins.

Love wins

The earth - saturated and wet with the mood, appropriate rain falling from the cold, grey sky. The mud reminds me of red Mexican clay, but this ground is stained with a different kind of blood; a different kind and yet blood all the same.

It's the ground that saw the fates of 200,000 men, women, and children; fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, daughters, and sons.

It's the ground that spoke of evil and now whispers of hope, fighting to believe that love really does win.

It's the ground that may forever know suffering as pilgrims leave silk flowers for their loved ones, falling to their knees in the sinking muddy earth from the weight of it all.

It's holy ground.

It's holy not because ti's the earth that Jesus walked on or bears the bush that burned and spoke, but because it is the ground that Christ died for. It tells a story of evil and sin so great that no man can bear it, yet Jesus whispers "You are no better."

It is holy because Christ died for all sin and all people and bore a hope that no man could destroy. A hope that can't be dragged into a gas chamber or buried in a ditch.

It is holy because even in the darkest hour of human history, faith stood tall. Christ, carved into prison cell walls. Men, martyred at the walls between Barracks 10 and 11, falling to their knees one final time. Bibles and communion wafers, smuggled into the gates of hell, reminding all that love wins.

And so it goes, as my feet stand at the door of a young girl's home.
Anneliese Marie Frank.

We share the same middle name and I pray that we share the same spirit.
The spirit of a God who is greater than our greatest enemy.
The spirit of grace for the fallen and forgiveness for the pushers.
The same spirit that never believed evil would win.

A walk through Berlin tells the sale - the tale of a battle fought, lost, and won.
A battle where hope appeared to falter but now stands tall, tall like the pillars that commemorate those who could stand no more, through no fault of their own.

So we remember the fall and we remember the death, and we remember the one who fell and died only to bring hope and life.

He is here and He is good

This little gem kept me company on the dozens of ours of train rides during Eurotrip 2013. I couldn't put it down.

One phrase stuck out to me more than anything - more than the recipes of American food, the tales of lakes and summers and sunshine that I longed for, the stories of families and friends that I hadn't seen in months.

There was one phrase:
He is here.
Here is here and He is good.

It'll likely end up painted on canvas in my kitchen sometime soon, overlooking the table.
The place that holds us together, feeds us, and reminds us of our own humanity.
The place of hard conversations with held hands and hot cups of tea, warm laughter over heaping plates of pasta and salad, Pinterest projects and homework projects and glue and string and tomato sauce.
It's a place where food, time, and words all pass, allowing for a community that all can be a part of.

I was in a friend's kitchen last night stirring onions, zucchini, and garlic together in a skillet as noodles boiled and the music blared.

And there it was: an explosion far off, but too close.
Sirens wailed within minutes.
We peaked outside, waiting.
After the events earlier this week, the whole nation is on high alert.

I went back to the stove, back to the comfort of rhythmic stirring and waited.
Waited for dinner to be ready.
Waited for an email telling us to close our doors and stay inside.
Waited for the smell of smoke or an all-clear or anything.

And then through the corner of my eye, I saw my friend running towards the siren wails.
And so we chased her, chased her to a car accident that looked like nobody could have survived.

Completely flipped, crushed in, slid across the black asphalt, loud enough to hear from a block away.
And a girl sitting in the grass, a thin line of blood dripping down her leg.
She stands, seats herself in the gurney, and heads off to the ER.
But she can't be the driver. She can't have actually been in that car.

The tow truck comes.
Flips the car over.
Flips it over and reveals an entirely crushed passenger side, and an intact driver's seat.
A space of safety. A hedge of protection.

He is here.
He is here and He is good.

So we go back to the table.
The place where God always is.
The place where we break bread regardless of what has happened this day, because we still need food and we still need Jesus even when hopes and dreams and relationships and grades and cars are crushed.
And we believe that He is good - even when all goes wrong, even when all goes right.

Why you can't buy grace on the clearance rack at Primark

The following is the farewell speech I gave at the Final Symposium, celebrating the end of our time in Oxford.

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I'm half British. My understanding of the UK though was some sort of strange blend of C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter, and Downton Abbey - as if all three of them had a baby, and the baby was me. I thought that by coming here, I would find some sort of connection to my ancestry. I would discover my roots. I would identify with the British people and the British culture.

 

But I didn't. Although I have loved my time here, I found that I miss Hulu, Pandora, Target, and sunshine. I miss driving a car and serving sizes the size of my face. I found that I am not British. I am an American, through and through. And that's the problem.

 It's a problem because my identity should be in Christ first.

In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer talks about abandoning all that we have and all that we are until the only thing we can cling to is Christ. Christ calls us to a life of sacrifice and suffering, but all I want to do is get some In N Out and lay out by a pool.

I didn't come here to find beauty. If I am honest, I came here because I wanted to. I distinctly remember the chat I had with God that was more like a monologue. I remember boldly telling Him that I was going to apply and I was going to go to Oxford. But like all good Christians, I covered my tracks by convincing myself that I would let God lead my life by allowing Him to deny me to the program. If I was rejected, I wouldn't apply again because I was obedient, yet He and I both knew that it was only because this semester was the only time I could travel.

But our God is a God of grace, and He sent me here and He taught me things that no tutor could.

My blog's title is Finding Yofi. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong, but yofi is the Hebrew word for beauty. Over the last couple of years, I have been actively seeking to find beauty in all the wrong places, all the mundane places, all the places that our chaotic lives and glamorous culture teach us to ignore. It's not hard to find beauty in Oxford. Everything is beautiful here - the shops, the libraries, the very building we are sitting in. We don't have to look far and we don't have to try hard to become settled and content in the magic and wonder.

One of our friends who we have made this term from another school was over for dinner a few weeks ago. My flatmate and I were talking about our time with Mexico Outreach, and this friend asked if Mexico was pretty. I said yes, but it's not a normal kind of pretty - as if there is some sort of secret beauty that only some people are able to understand.

And there is.

There is the beauty of Christ. There is the beauty of the cross, a murderous weapon of shame and pain that somehow has become a symbol for the last two thousand years of grace, love, and hope.

I'm finding yofi here in Oxford, but sometimes I wonder if it is too good to be true.

If it's a faith that is simple that is a faith that is best, then I've got a faith that is much too complex.

I've believed a lie that the more I know, then the better I will love, but the truth is that I am at the mercy of the God from up above.

I try to figure God out like He's a topic to study, like if I read enough books in the Gladstone Link then I will finally understand. Maybe that was also the desire of the first man. Of Adam, the guy who wanted to know what God knew. The guy who lost it all and suffered not because he represented Christ and chased after His grace, but because he identified with himself and bought the cheapest understanding he could find.

In my own life, my faith is one of how much I can learn and how much I can know. It's not the costly faith that Bonhoeffer preaches of. It's not yofi. My faith, it costs me nothing. Sometimes I even think I bought it at Primark.* In my head I have memorized a lot, but in my heart I know little of the suffering that Christ endured, little of the martyrdom that Bonhoeffer was subjected to. My God is a pocket full of sunshine, and although these Oxford skies may be grey and dreary, I risk little and expect all the blessing.

We know that knowledge isn't cheap in dollars. We know that APU charges more for two semesters than the average American makes in a year. But what if we spent the same amount of time, money, and effort on the Kingdom than we did on our diploma? I'm not saying education isn't good, and I'm not saying our school is bad - I am saying that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also.

I encourage all of you as this chapter of our lives comes to a close to find the yofi wherever you go. Even when the food isn't good and the pub doesn't have enough ketchup. Even when the air is cold. Even when we have to be somewhere early in the morning. I encourage you to seek for the higher grace, the more expensive grace, the grace that costs us yet gives us all the more.

* Primark is a budget clothing store in the UK. Very cute. Very cheap. Very low quality.

Finding yofi

I changed my blog's web address.
Finding Yofi.
Yofi, the Hebrew word for beauty.
Finding beauty.

Finding beauty in that which beauty is easy to see - the mountains and valleys, the oceans and sunsets, the kind people and warm smiles.
Finding beauty in the ugly, in the mundane, in the difficult, and in the trivial.
Finding beauty in whatever happens. No matter what happens.

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I sat in the Lamb & Flag tonight sipping my water with lemon, a bold contrast to the traditional Oxfordian Friday night.
We went through a mental list of the most controversial topics: abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, capital punishment - everything you would not discuss at an American bar.

"Really, if you're a mom and you are going to put your kid into foster care, I think it would be better to not have been born at all. That's a terrible life." Despite our last few months together, he was completely unaware of my own past, the harsh words my mother had said of her second pregnancy and the reality of my last couple of years of childhood.

I was caught between my desire to crawl under the table and hide, and my urge to reach over it and slap him in the face.

So I spoke.
"I was fostered for two years. Now I'm at Oxford, so..."

Finding yofi.

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"Is Mexico pretty?"

My mind heart races back to the place I haven't been to in nearly a year. 

"Yes. Yes, it is" I tell him. I pause, unsure of how to transfer all that I am feeling and envisioning to him, a boy from DC. "But it's not the normal kind of pretty." He stares at me, as if there is some secret, special type of beauty.

And there is.

There's beauty in that red clay and broken glass and the little brown hand that knows nothing and everything about a guerra de narcos. 

There's beauty in the tired muscles and hot sun and sweaty skin and the hair that hasn't been washed since the other side of the border. 

There's beauty in the people of God who live waiting for the Kingdom more than I do, relying on Christ more than I need to, and finding faith in a barren land.

Finding yofi.

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Mat Kearney is standing on the stage, serenading my heart with a song that speaks right to my soul. 

It's simple and it's cool. There's no pretense; it just cuts deep, speaking what we all think but are afraid to say. 

I am completely glued to the words, the acoustics, the melody, and the gingerly placed allusions to the One I love.  My body, my heart, my mind, my soul - they're all dancing and swinging to the beat, falling in love with the sounds of delight and Truth.

Finding yofi.

When bigger things aren't coming

Y'all, I'm gonna shoot straight.
I will not be an RA next year.
I am devastated.

I have been praying, wishing, and hoping over this past year for the Lord to bless me in this specific way, at this specific time.
And what do you do when it feels like the blessings have run dry?
Despite all that you have and all that you are, what do you say to the God who lived and died for you, but isn't enough to settle your woes?

And while I am surrounded by beautiful people who mean the best, somehow insults to my school's judgment calls, "You'll get 'em next year" and "Got has bigger plans for you" doesn't fit the bill. This is what I have always wanted. I stand there silent and stoic, but oh, am I wailing; beating my chest like a three year old who feels entirely out of control.

I am racked with anxiety, fear, and defeat.
Where will I work?
Where will I live?
Who will I live with?
How will I pay for all of this nonsense?
How will I arrange all of this while I am backpacking through Europe?
What about all of my hopes and dreams and plans?
What about my resume?
What about my pride?
What have I done wrong?

I make some immediate attempts to rectify the situation to no avail. It's still dark in England.
I've still cried about it more than I've praised about it.

Living abroad magnifies the problem. Makes it harder to solve, harder to mourn and to recover with my usual vices. Being displaced makes it easier to turn to Yahweh when my comforts are 7000 miles and 8 time zones apart; but I don't realize this, not at first, and maybe not still. I begin to question my ability to live abroad at all. I begin to question my entire life call as perhaps not a call at all, but the off-key sound of an un-tuned trumpet.

And suddenly an opportunity that was about to define my entire year is shattered.
And maybe that's the problem.

Maybe I'm like the little three year old more than I'd care to admit.
A child who made the little into the huge.
A child who simply hasn't gotten her way.
Who thinks she has better plans than The Way.
A disgruntled daughter who thinks that if she shakes her first at the Almighty, things will go well.
A daughter who forgot who is her Father.

We sat around the dinner table tonight. Four of us, all from the same school, but never having met until England. We shared stories about the rather-forget times in middle school and laughed at how ridiculous we were, how things that were so silly mattered so much. In all his wisdom, 21 year-old Peter exclaimed, "If I could go back, I'd slap middle school Peter in the face and tell him to buck up and stop throwing a fit. These things I got so upset and worried about don't matter. Bigger things are coming."

Maybe not all is lost.

Do I really want an opportunity, no matter how grand, that isn't what God wanted for me?
The God who knows the residents I would have gotten, the stress I would have been under, the other opportunities I would have.
That doesn't mean I won't meet difficult people, have times of difficulty and despair, or come across something I will enjoy even more - but it does mean that there is a God who understands infinitely more than I could fathom.

I am not so sure that God has a specific road map for my life. Maybe He does. Maybe He doesn't. Maybe it's not my job to figure His job out.

Maybe my theology prof was right when he said, "We would pray for whatever God gives us if we knew everything He knows."

Foreigners in the frost

This picture was taken last week at the Marble Arch in London. 

Fun dresses, tights, and jackets that are promising of spring.

Y'all, it was (kinda) sunny with a high of 55. What more could a island girl want on for her birthday celebrations? (Besides the birds to go a way. Nobody likes a park pigeon.)

Well, my birthday came and went - and with it, the warmth fled.
It's a wind chill of 15 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't even know what that means. There is snow and hail and I am starting to doubt that global warming is an actual problem. Please, Globe, please do warm, and do it quickly.

It's supposed to be 90 back home in Cali this week. Half of me thinks "Well, I'll take the snow and the sleet over heatstroke" while the other part of me longs to be back in the sunshine and hot, dry air of the foothills. Back to the warm smiles and familiar faces and long afternoons sitting on the Walk with a reading list and a notebook. Back to In-N-Out, authentic Mexican cuisine, and a stove that reads on the familiar Fahrenheit rather than gas marks. A place where I am not constantly translating temperatures and currencies and distances and pronunciations or cultural norms in my head.

Sometimes I think I am not cut out for this whole "world traveler" thing.

But maybe that's the point.
I am not a worldly traveler, defined by the foods and accents and tourist hot-spots of a new place.
My expeditions are defined by the people I meet. The neighbor that laughs when we try to say his name. The new friends at the dinner table who do not understand why we always ask for the salt. The student who reads economics (as the Oxfordians say) and does not understand why I believe in an economy of mercy, but will stay up late at night to hear about it in my living room. The pastor who picked his whole life up from the sunny land that I love and came to a country so desolate and dry, searching for a God that they did not know the name of; a God that makes all of their magical history, military success, and beautiful buildings look like rubbish. Maybe He's the One I am meeting the most.

And suddenly, it doesn't feel so cold.

Rolling the dice on registration day

I registered for classes today, days after pouring praying over charts and schedules and academic requirements. We snuck out of a dinner party, laptops clutched underneath our arms as we held winter caps firmly to our heads with a red-raw hand and tried to not choke on our scarves flapping in the wind.

Spring semester was ending, but spring felt like it would never come.

We chimed around town looking for an internet cafe that was still open and would let a couple of ragamuffin Americans in who looked like they would push over anybody who got in their way. Registration day is love and war - but mostly war.

We nestled into the warmth of a hundreds-year-old building, crowded together in a mostly-empty room. We waited. We prayed to the internet gods. We prayed to the One True God. We held our breath as we clicked "enroll" as if we were enrolling into the rest of our lives.

Three of us.
"Yes! Done!"
"Oh! Yes! Wait... No... Crap."
"Oh no! Dangit!"

I have mixed emotions about registering for classes.

I love the excitement about a new teachers, new friends, new books, and a new pace of life.
I hate the anxiety of being thrown outside of the rhythm I have established.

I love dreaming about the future and ticking off requirements.
I hate the uncertainty and knowing my time here is almost done, only to be thrown into a world that I do not understand.

But mostly, I hate not having control.
I hate not knowing if I will get what I need. I hate being at the mercy of something or Someone that I cannot control.

It's better this way.
If I made schedules, we'd all be getting up at 10am to study cookie recipes, traveling plans, and small furry animals - only to expect a high-paying degree in Social Work. (Only part of that statement is a problem.) Y'all, I can't be in charge.

Rhythms have to change.
To remind us who is in charge.
To remind us what little control we have.
To show us new things, new ideas, and new people.
To keep us on our toes and far away from the most dangerous pace of all: contentment.

When a daughter was born

I was born two decades ago.
Knuckles white from the cold blizzard night and the pains and fears of both labor and of a child born into a century of war.
My mother's whole world sighed, and a baby cried.

The daughter of lords and rulers, immigrants and refugees, farmers and fathers who knew nothing.
Nothing of a God who was heaven-sent; the Lord and Ruler of all who welcomed the alien and freed the oppressed from the hands of the wicked.
The God who took the plow to a soil so barren and bruised, making all things new.
A Father who said "Come. You are my daughter."
A Father who places our identity in His Son.

On our birthdays we celebrate our creation, our foundation and our survival.
What if we lived every day with awe and wonder, reflecting on the past and being hopeful for the future?
If we spent every day thanking Abba for being our Father, for knitting us together and preserving us for another year.
From dust I have been created, and to dust I shall return - but what is it that I do with this time in between?
With this Grace that I have been given so freely yet forget about so easily.
Perhaps every day is a birthday when we remember that we are living on gifted time.

These last 366 days have made me no taller. I'm certainly no richer.
But do I know my Father any better?
Do I know Him any better than stained glass and recited prayers?
Or do I know Him as the one who bore me, boring a whole into my heart and soul that was looped through a string tied around His neck; two hearts beating together, never far from the other.

Blessed may I be

It's not the love of the red clay and shanty towns of Mexico that made my heart skip a beat.
It's not the slow-paced life and friendly faces of Boulder City that made me daydream about raising my kids behind their picket-fenced houses.
It's not the warm air and sunshine and even warmer smiles, the mountains and beaches of SoCal that made me sad to leave.

It's cloudy and rainy and snowy and when was the last time I saw the sun?
The faces don't smile back on the sidewalk.
The most magnificent cathedrals line every street, but nobody goes inside them.
It's cold here. Really cold.

It's a city that thirsts for knowledge over wisdom, man-made beauty over creation, appearances over authenticity, and aristocracy over loving thy neighbor.
A city where I'm not smart enough, pretty enough, busy enough, posh enough, or classy enough.
It's a city that fights for everything I struggle against.

Somebody told me a lie, that in order to be valued, important, successful, I have to constantly be doing.
That even when I go to bed with a heavy heart, aching muscles, and a tired mind - there was still more that I could have done.
That my greatest accomplishments are actually somebody else's greatest failures.
That I must be my own "tiger mom", constantly struggling for bigger, better, and greater.

But Francis Chan says, "Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter."

And Jesus says, "You're blessed when you've lost it all... It's trouble ahead if you're satisfied with yourself."

Blessed may I be.

The year the snow fell

The optimistics said, "Probably not. Don't count on it."

The realists said, "Prepare yourself. It isn't happening."

I consulted with the experts, the marriage and family specialists, the preachers, the teachers, the wise church women and the gossiping ones. They all said the same. "Sorry, but probably not."

Some laughed. Some scoffed. Some rolled their eyes and told me to try harder, as if a young girl could control the winds. 

Some told me to chase a new dream - but how could a girl do that when her entire identity is in the dream she has searched so long for?

The wisest of them though, they knew the fear of the Lord. So we waited and we prayed. We prayed and we waited. The leaves fell, winter came, and the summer rains fell hard onto the earth. Not this year.

I changed locations again and again. I moved from house to house, seeking and searching, waiting and wishing. I praised and I cried and still, the same answer. 

Time passed. Too much time.

Would my husband ever know her? Would my children ever see her?

Would I ever have a husband or children, or would I destroy myself in my search? Would I be too broken and tired, too hopeless to submit another to my own weary quest?

I consulted one last expert with the age of my father but with wisdom unsurpassed. 

"Go home." It was his only advice.

Go home? Home to the heat and the bugs and the sub-tropics? To the place that I left?

Surely, what I wanted, what I needed, would not be there.

We prayed harder than ever before. 

I looked up into the sky in the front yard of my youth - nothing. It was still too warm.

I boarded a plane, then I boarded some more. Winter was ending soon, so I headed north and crossed an ocean on a gamble.

A week passed. Then two.

And then the snow began to fall.

Slowly, slowly at first the snow fell, treading its ground lightly.

"Don't get too excited," the locals said. "It won't last."

So we waited and we prayed. We prayed and we waited. 

It was a familiar dance, year after year. 

The thermostat continued to drop. The heat subsided. 

The skies opened up and poured down.

"Be careful," they said. "The pavement is slippery. Don't get attached, snow always melts."

But a bridge covered in ice is harder to burn than a bridge dry and crumbling from the scorching heat.

The snow had fallen because He is risen, the God of snowfalls and blizzards, brokenness and mothers. We waited and we prayed. We prayed and we waited until He answered.

The earth is yours

I vividly remember the conversation (read as: monologue) that I had with God over a year ago.

"Hey, God? I just thought I would let you know that I am applying for Oxford... whether you tell me to or not. I kind of just thought that I should let you maybe have a say in it. I guess I should kind of pray about it and I would be a bad Christian if I didn't, so I guess maybe if you want me to go, let me get accepted, and if you don't, then I guess I'll have to be okay with being denied. This is the only semester I can go, so I guess I'll take your no for a no and not apply again later. Amen."

It was not one of my finer moments.

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This semester is going to shake me.
It is a trial run for everything I think I want in my life.

Over the next four months I will live in a foreign nation.
I will study my two loves: Christian ministries and social work.
It is everything I think I want.

My tutorials will blend my two loves together, hopefully weaving the two interrelated fields together in such a way that I have a clear picture of where my career may be headed. My semester will be in a foreign land, testing my proposed calling to live overseas.

The semester is going to end in pain.
A heart mourning the end of a beautiful time, or aching to finally go home.
Confusion and frustration at a career choice that is not for me, or excitement and anticipation to finally graduate and get moving.
All options will be beneficial. All will give me direction.

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This town is beautiful. We are made in the image of the Designer, and man has done well to use the creative capacities bestowed to him. It is a most frustrating thing to take a photograph of a place so breathtaking and have it reduced into a two-dimensional small frame. Pictures do it no justice. I want to scoop up the town in my hands and keep it forever, keep it for me and my children and my friends and family.

But Oxford is already mine.
The earth is mine. The earth is yours.
It is a gift, bestowed upon us by the only One who can breathe life into being. I do not need to covet the sea, the mountains, and the valleys. I do not need to squash a cathedral into a snow globe. I do not need to try to fit the wonder that fills my eyes into a 4x6 frame. I do not need to be riddled with the fear of losing a place that I love. It is already mine. All has been given to me and all has been given to you. We simply need to breathe, breathe in the beauty and breathe out the glory.