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.