FMF {Five Minute Friday}: Hope

My first experience with timed free-writing was in college. My professor knew we were anxious about the research paper she'd dumped on us the week before, so she came to class that day armed with an unlikely activity.

She passed around lined sheets of paper, set a timer for five minutes, and told us to "word-vomit" every single thought we had about our research onto that paper. We were not allowed to edit, re-think, spell-check, or erase because the point was to simply write, without calculation or consequence. It was magical, and I was hooked.

Now, three years after college, there is a community of bloggers who free-write on a new word every week. We do it for fun, for encouragement, and to remind ourselves that our unedited selves are still worth sharing. For more info, check out Kate Motaung's blog here!

This week's word is HOPE.

Hope? Yeah, I thought I'd lost it.

It got misplaced somewhere after college when I woke up one morning to find myself in a hostile place, doing those mind-numbingly same things day in and out. My friends were gone or out of touch, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt welcome in a crowd. I felt stuck and stupid for getting myself stuck and hopeless that anything would change.

But the Hope of the world was living in me, no matter how dormant I felt.

He was alive and active, even if I wasn't alive to it.

He doesn't merely have hope--He is hope.

He leaned in and whispered to my hopeless heart that He hadn't gone anywhere. Slowly, like crusty ground under a steady soak of rain, I softened.

Hope had found me again.

And to you--yes you, the one scrolling down this post on your iPhone--He whispers, "Child, I am still here. I AM hope. I am hope for your crusty dreams, your family situation and the apathy that numbs you. Open your heart to me."

Hope will find you. 

Photons, and a safe place for my flurried soul

There is this wonderful sentence near the end of my Bible. It's dense and heady and rich like eggnog, and I've been sipping slowly, savoring each phrase ever since Easter.

In our team devotional time, we were challenged to ruminate on the words of God, let them soak into us deeply, digest them and re-digest them until they saturate us, become part of us.

Our leader actually coined a word--part Italian, part American silliness--to describe the process: "moo-care". (moo-KAH-reh) It's from "mangiare", the Italian word meaning "to eat", and "moo", as in, well, a cow.
Eat, chew, digest.
Repeat.

Not a lovely image, but accurate. So here is the verse I've been "moo-care-ing" on for about a month.

"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being..."

In 7th grade science, I learned about light. The photons that bounce off of objects into my eyes are what allow me to see the color and shape of anything I look at. You could say that those photons are the exact representation of whatever I see.

Without the radiance of light, the world would be dark, formless, mysterious.
Before the Radiance of God's glory in Christ, God was a mystery.

But we have seen him.

He is knowable.


"...sustaining all things by his powerful word."

God doesn't haphazardly breathe life, get wheels turning, and then turn His back.

He sustains all things. He continually breathes life into this universe, holds laws of physics in place so that electrons rotate at orbit and water drips downward and the earth stays tilted just so.

He sustains all things. The everything included in that tiny phrase of power spells safety and security to my flurried soul. Sand slips through fingers and things slip from my mind like so much sand, but nothing escapes his power and love.

All my crazy running-out-the-door moments.
All the am-I-enough wonderings.
All of me, sustained. Upheld. Plucked from darkness as many times as I return to it. Imbued with life not my own.

By the same powerful Word that once created life from nothing, He now sustains ours.
That Word was with God at the beginning,
And was God,
And now intercedes for you to God as He sits, victorious.

Me and my lovely teammates at dinner on Tuesday! 

Exciting things are happening here in Milan, y'all! I'll post another update tonight with lots of pictures.
(Today's post is based on Hebrews 1:3a)

A Report to Celebrate!

For all of you who read the last post about our (quickly!) upcoming mission trip, this is a celebration report of God's faithfulness!

A silly picture from last year at a Milano coffee shop. (I'm wearing the hat.)

Last Thursday was the deadline, the critical day when all of the funds had to be collected, in hand, and on their way to the bank. Only one week before, our team was falling far behind, collectively in the red by more than six thousand dollars.

The team was praying, but even they were unaware of another circumstance that threatened to add an additional two thousand dollars to the overall team goal. If the university in Milan would let us use their free classrooms for the English Clubs, we would be ok. If not...well, let's just say that renting hotel conference rooms would be pricey.

This alarming news had come Tuesday. To avoid a team-wide freak out, hubby and I were praying quietly between ourselves.

On Thursday, I went to work as usual and sat there praying between customers, waiting for news.

By the end of the afternoon, ALL the money had come in--to the penny!
AND the university had agreed to let us use their classrooms! Not only did this reduce the price of the trip, the convenience of the location will also make it easier for more students to attend and meet our team. We are thrilled to see how God will use this close location to connect students with the church in Milan.

So if you prayed,
or gave,
or did both,

THANK YOU!

We will need more prayer than ever as we go, so please don't stop! I know from last year that I can do absolutely nothing without His power. 

Five Minute Friday::Broken

A Christan radio station recently made an Easter comment that resonated with me. They said that Easter was about breaking: a broken world, a broken Body that redeemed us, and a broken curtain that used to separate us from a Holy God. (Ok, torn, but I guess that's what we call broken fabric.)

I feel broken. In many ways I am a person who needs fixing, like a broken lamp, shattered by anger or careless mistakes. 

I am also emotionally broken when I see the brokenness it took to fix me. And right now, on the Saturday between sacrifice and victory, I feel a kinship with the heart-rending brokenness his followers must have felt as they sat, fearful, their dreams shattered the day after He died. 

They waited, broken. But isn't waiting the thing to do in our brokenness? To wait on the One who heals?


Want to join or just want to know what Five Minute Friday is all about? Head over to Lisa Jo's blog and find out :) And while you're there, be sure to visit & leave some comment love for the other bloggers who linked up! 

No Worrying Allowed

All this mental stretching, the waiting, the groaning under the weight of everything that I have to do.

Hmm...I think final exam week must be a small taste of what the final stage of pregnancy is like.

A) Pregnant girls can't go to the rec center and work out very hard, and neither can I.

B) They can't get very good sleep, and neither can I. 

C) They also have weird cravings for certain snack foods. (My craving: salted, roasted almonds, mixed with chocolate chips.)

If it's not a good comparison, my pregnant friend, Mrs. Kroeger, can correct me later. 

In the meantime, here's a little guy who made me smile today while I was walking on campus: 

Someone put a bowl of food for him outside their office window. Mr. Squirrel was so absorbed in his meal that he hardly noticed as I crept close and snapped this shot with my phone. 

It brought to mind something that my Savior said one day to a crowd: 

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" (Matthew 6:25-34) 

Yes. My heart totally needed that reminder. If God feeds this little squirrel, He can certainly give me enough time and energy to finish this paper. 

And to get ready for graduation. 

And to pack for Italy.

And to train my replacement at work. 

He is faithful. :)

Beautiful beginnings

I really don’t know how to condense my happiness for my friends into words! I’m sitting in a coffee shop, surrounded by people, and I can’t stop smiling. If they look up from their iphones long enough to see, they will probably wonder why.

The reason is because three of my friends experienced significant, beautiful, life-altering beginnings this weekend.

One of these earth-shattering changes occurred at my kitchen table.  

Four of us were sitting, eating pancakes, maple syrup and fresh strawberries as we discussed God. What if He asked you, “why should I let you into Heaven?” What would you say to Him, I asked, if you were standing in front of him?

As we talked, I illustrated on a rectangle of paper between us. The themes of holiness, lawbreaking, and an uncrossable divide were discussed and scrawled, and I saw understanding light up her face.

I told her a piece of my story. About the perfectionism that ruled me, guilted me, and tortured me with feelings of inadequacy as a little girl. About how I simultaneously thought I was better than others, full of pride, unwilling to listen to corrections. And then—amazing! How I learned that Jesus was perfect when I was not. How I learned that he—the perfect one—had been humble, paying the death penalty I owed.

In full.

And there, at the kitchen table, my friend gave her life to Jesus because He had given himself for her. I don’t even know if she realized the HUGENESS of what had happened in her at that moment! It was as earth-shattering as if King Tut’s mummy had suddenly come back to life.

The second beautiful change occurred the next day, my two friends standing hand in hand in the colored light filtering in through the stained glass of the church.

Her father officiated, and I heard his voice tremble with unreleased tears. We all sat as witnesses, alternately laughing at the groom’s hilarious facial expressions and crying at the purity of the moment, the beauty of the bride.

One change occurred at my kitchen table; the other under the vaulted roof of a church.

All three friends made life-altering verbal commitments: the first to God, and the second to each other. Both resulted in something completely new, something beautiful, something that had never existed before. 

And I am so excited for all of them! :)

My friend, Dana

I had planned to write a happy post today. My sister is in town for a rare visit, and we had a blast last night in historic downtown Bryan. But today, I am grieving the death of my dear friend, Dana Ciumac. This morning, at around 3 am, Jesus took her home to heaven.

Though I lost both of my beautiful grandmothers to cancer, my heart is feeling a deeper, sharper sense of tragedy because this was a friend who had not yet reached her thirties.

I met Dana in the fall of 2006. With my high school graduation only months behind me, I had flown to Europe for a six-month mission trip with Operation Mobilization. I was such an eager, skinny twig, excited to be abroad where nothing was familiar except the Latin sounds that the Romanian language holds in common with Spanish. Dana, who was Romanian, was one of perhaps 3 people on the team who spoke English, and her accepting hugs and smiles made me feel at home almost immediately.

She was young--only 22--but I was only nineteen and deeply admired her. She was so gentle, so cheerful, and if there was a joke or party, Dana was probably in the middle of it. Kids in the villages we visited would flock around her, glowing under the individual attention she gave so freely. As I greedily learned every Romanian word I could, she would patiently help me with spelling and correct my pronunciations. She led teams of young people as we served widows, created puppet shows for kid programs, and told people on the streets about the freedom and joy of knowing God personally.

After I left Europe, she continued to serve on the team, and I would receive emails, facebook messages, and even precious letters from her in Romanian. In November of 2009, she married a young man who had also been our teammate, and I celebrated with her by oooing and ahhhing over her wedding pictures online.

For approximately the last nine months, her husband Eugen has served and loved and encouraged her as few men could have done. He kept hundreds of supporters and friends informed as the cancer gradually took its course, always with unwavering faith in God's goodness and love. Only God could have known that a healthy young woman like Dana would die so soon, and I am so glad that He brought such a wonderful man into her life.

Even this morning, Eugen wrote: "I know that this is a shocking news for you, but I thank God that He released her from all the pain she had...Please pray for our families and all the friends that kept Dana close to their hearts.

Be blessed and don’t forget, God is good!"

Dana, goodbye, my beautiful friend. I will see you someday again soon.

Hopefulness

I’m wrestling with the idea of hopefulness right now.  Its definition is shifting in my mind, squeezed out of its usual place by the unusual  pressures aimed at me from within and without.

What is its usual place, you ask? Well, think of the word “hopeful”.  What comes to mind?  If you’re like me, you think of up-tilted chins sporting confident smiles.  You think of bright colors and optimistic decisions to “assume the best” of people and situations.  You think of a row of shiny glasses of water—all half full.  Hopefulness means positivity, sunshine, and dogged cheerfulness despite all odds. Right?

But at the moment, the odds are stacked higher than I’ve ever seen them.  I feel enormous pressure to perform to standards both real and imagined, but I consistently fall short of the mark. You know those days when you’ve been crying so hard that positivity and cheerfulness feel like salt rubbed in a wound?  Yeah.

I’m a self-sufficient gal…and it’s not a good thing. I’ve tried pulling myself up by my bootstraps so many times that my boots lost their straps. Sometimes I glued the straps back on and kept walking despite the blisters. But now the blisters hurt too badly. And I’m tired.

In the past, I hoped for better performance. I hoped that I could become stronger, run faster, do better, and that somehow I would attain perfection. Here, at the end of my strength and endurance, I admit that I can’t conjure up change—or hopefulness!—for myself even if I scraped the bottom of those boots. Now, I know that I just contradicted every Disney slogan I ever heard as a kid, but it’s reality.

Hope must be based on reality. 

This is where I CHOOSE to believe a different definition of hope. My emotions, as real as they are to me, are slippery and unreliable. My abilities, as great as I sometimes think they are, are NOT enough. Reality must be found in a reliable Person, one who never lies, never gets tired, and never runs out. Only God fits that bill. Here is what He says about the hope I have:

“No one who hopes in you [God] will ever be put to shame” (Psalm 25:3)

"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." (Romans 5:3-5)


"And the God of all grace...after you have suffered for a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast." (1 Peter 5:10)

On my own, suffering produces blisters and exhaustion. But when I anchor my hopes on the truths God tells me, the same suffering produces a bouquet of good things, crowned by hope that will not put me to shame.

Gifts from Jesus

If stress is an odor, then this week reeked of it. My emotions were out of whack, the mountain of laundry loomed ever larger, and my job felt like I was trying to juggle 200lb dumbells. Wearing a blindfold. And rollarskates.

It's interesting: Jesus didn't take away the situation. I still have a to-do list longer than the Amazon. Instead, he reached down into it, purposely, thoughtfully, and left me some beautiful gifts as if to say, "I am still here. I still love you. You are known and treasured by Me. Trust me."

Gift #1: Check out the picture! I opened the mailbox earlier this week to find an envelope from my parents. Inside, was a gift card to Wally World for twenty smackeroos and instructions to buy plants for my garden. My heart craves fragrant, green, growing things, and Jesus knows it.

Gift #2: I found a beautiful $40 sweater marked down to $10. Once I used the $9.47 gift card that I had saved from Christmas, I bought it for only fifty-three cents! Jesus knows that I love to feel beautiful while saving $$.

Gift #3: It stopped raining this morning just as I mounted my bike to ride to class. Jesus cares about the fact that I forgot an umbrella.

Gift #4: My sweet husband folded clothes for me the other night. Aww....

Gift #5. My boss called to tell me that one huge source of work stress is NOT due today, as I had feared, but at the end of March! At that news, I could almost feel my nerves unknotting themselves. Jesus is my Shepherd. He gives me rest.