Admiring Grace

Life is rushing through me. No longer by, just straight through. I see so many things in this world I want to impact, to change. But here I am, halted. It’s not apathy. It’s paralytic. Decisions are being made and I see myself saying no or even agreeing but all along my mind is screaming what are you doing? And I don’t really know. Every choice I make this semester is a big one. Where will I live? Where will I work? Should I get a roommate? Which relationships should I invest the most in? Does any of it even matter? Luckily for me, Ecclesiastes is in my top ten. I can see it now: sitting at your computer screen shaking your head. That book is so depressing you poor thing. That’s not lucky. Read some Psalms. Okay. That’s good advice too, but you’re wrong. That book has pushed me through many paralytic seasons. I was in a bible study a few years ago that went through this book and made me fall even more in love with it. Solomon was the wisest, most wealthy, best ...

Ah the glories of a new semester. The wonder of this being the last. Rain has fallen nearly steadily since I returned to classes. Almost as if nature itself cannot console itself with the changing tides. That’s been a big theme for the past year. Change. Here I have talked a lot about how receptive I have been to it, but really that’s only a part of the picture. I don’t publish the things I’ve been learning until long after I’ve realized the lesson is there. At times I am in the midst of it still, but yet, I am far from the beginning. I’m reminded of that journey as I sit in an unfamiliar place imagining an unfamiliar scene. It would be so simple to just look out the window and picture what I’d like to be there – I so often do. But how often do I look to see what’s there? What is right before my face. Not often, I must admit. It is so much easier for me to dream of something than to admit what I have is, well, what I have. An empty sidewalk is easily a running track for...

I like leaving my radio on when I’m not home. Coming home to singing just makes me smile. The right song at the right time can change a whole day. That happened today. I came home because I was so tired of school. Just being there was draining me. Seeing the same people I see every Tuesday – I just wanted to run and hide away. I ran home. As I walked into my room Matthew West was pleading, “Show me how to love the unlovable Show me how to reach the unreachable Help me now to do the impossible” My head tilted and I just stared at the numbers on my radio thinking they would help clear out my thoughts, explain the mess in my brain. I am unlovable. Maybe not to everyone, but to someone. There are lots of people that I have to pray to love well, to have patience for, ask forgiveness for bad thoughts. I hadn’t really considered that that person is me to someone else. Before repentance, that was me to God. All He could see where my imperfections. My lack of righteo...

My roommates left for Thanksgiving. It meant I got to spend time working on some research papers I’ve been putting off. Be impressed, I actually made progress. The first night was pretty lame though. I did absolutely nothing to further my homework goals. I did, however, make a delicious dinner and have too much dessert. I then spent some quality time with Facebook and music. Lots and lots of music. Before I turned off the tunes for the night, a chorus echoed through my room: “Who’d like to know, I’d like to know. Author of the moment, can you tell me, do I end up, do I end up happy? Do I? Not going to lie, it was a pretty lonely evening. Not having the roommates around to catch my thoughts and throw them back. Do I have to know how things end up? I would really like to know. Most days. Then again, this mystery has created some magic that my knowledge would have destroyed. In general, I like to know things: how things work, where something goes, what a word means, how s...

Cause I want to be with you but I need a place to start I'm surrounded and captured by the armies of your heart I’m in such an odd place. Again. I read two articles yesterday about Guarding Your Heart . I really liked them. I shared them on my social media sites. Now I think I need to add my thoughts to the authors’ thinking to avoid confusion of my personal views. They said don’t guard your heart. They said love people without bounds. They said you will get hurt. They said it is so worth it. They said it’s what Jesus did. I agree. However. People are stupid. Love is so ultimately important because God is love . We have been commanded to love others whether we want to or not. These authors don’t want people to fear loving, because God doesn’t. He loves without bounds. He does get hurt. He says it’s worth it. We’re to live in love. I will never disagree with that. My concern comes with the type of love. Romantic love is not the same as friend/family l...

My second semester of college I took a sociology class which the professor simply called “The Family.” It was a study of relationships, of marriage, of love, of families. The prof didn’t give us much homework beyond reading the text so maybe that’s why this assignment has stayed with me in the years since – or it could be possible that I was chewed out by this particular prof for not starting the paper until the night before it was due over dinner. I had the rare opportunity to learn about something so important from my father in a public setting. His big assignment was for the students to write a paper describing our family of origin followed by how we wanted our future families to be. My plan was to be ordinary. I wanted my future life to be utterly boring to onlookers. I wanted us to live our lives and go to soccer or ballet or school or church or wherever we happened to be headed without concern for much more. Part of me still likes a lot of what I wrote, but my direction was...

This will be the final part of my summer series. This is by no means a full account of the lessons I learned and as I have realized these past weeks I am still in the process of understanding why May to August was so packed full of education, but I know this summer has been a turning point in many ways. Skipping ahead several weeks from my Blessed Shock I was on the road back to school. A whole twenty-six hours on the road. For those of you who have never been on a road trip, that’s a long time – especially when you are alone travelling through many states. [Thankfully, I have wonderful friends who allowed me to stay with them letting me break up the trip into three days of driving plus plenty of hang out time!] My time in the car was spent listening to Matt Chandler of the Village Church’s Galatians series , [okay, yep, again. I needed to hear it again to actually get it. Also, I highly recommend checking it out] praying, listening to some music, and being freaked out of my min...