Some Merton...

Just because I liked it. To be perfectly honest, I haven't read much Merton. A friend (that would be you Mr. Klaszus - if in fact you still lurk around here occasionally) tried to get me into it a while back, when we were in the midst of a heated written debate on just war theory, but I never quite got into it. I'm attempting again. But, I happened to be assigned some passages from Merton for one of my classes, and found a couple of (what I think are) stellar quotes. So, here you go - some Merton to tide you over until I've actually read something of substance by him!

The real purpose of meditation - or at least that which recommends itself as most relevant for the modern man - is the exploration and discovery of new dimensions in freedom, illumination and love, in deepening our awareness of our life in Christ.
What is the relation of this to action? Simply this. He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his agressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. (From "Comtemplation in a World of Action.")

Things I Never Thought I'd Say

So, I’m sitting in a car tonight, on the way home from a wedding, and listening to (and sometimes taking part in) a conversation about relationships between guys and girls. And then, we switch cars, but I’m alone now with one of the people from the first car, and she’s still talking about this conversation, frustrated by it’s lack of resolution, and so finally, I just get fed up, and I start talking. And I’m sitting there, and as I’m talking, I’m thinking, “I never thought that would come out of my mouth.”

We were talking about being single versus being part of a couple. And so I started there. I’m happy (most of the time) being single. I feel like I’m in such a good place at the moment. I’m 22 years old, I’ve never dated, and never been kissed, and I’m okay with that. I’m so not in a hurry for these things. There are so many things I want to do that marriage would make harder. I’m open to the possibility of a relationship, but it needs to be a natural thing. (Note, this did not really surprise me when I said it. I’ve been okay being single for quite some time.)

But then, I moved on.

I looked at my friend (who is, like me, a control freak) and commented, “You know, if you’d asked me two years ago what my life would look like today, this is not what I would have described.” I started university four years ago, and I KNEW what I was going to do with my life. Today, I’m seventeen days from graduating, and I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. Starting December 21st, for the first time in 17 years, I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with major portions of my life for the next year. Yeah, I still like to make plans, but I’m okay with spur of the moment, or even with last minute changes.

The last month of my life has been insane. I can give you the specific date it changed. November 1, 2005. God stepped into my life on that day, and did some crazy things. He’s continued to do some crazy things. I’ve poured hours and hours into caring for friends in crisis this month. I’ve fought illness that’s been hanging around off-and-on since mid-October. I’ve written several term papers, midterms, and generally been extremely stressed by school. I’ve been overwhelmed by the areas of my life God has been touching. I’ve been delighted to realize that for the first time in my life I have a strong network of supportive, spiritually and emotionally healthy friends who care and pray as I step into crisis situation after crisis situation, and as God begins to open and heal my own wounds.

And here’s the funny part. I’ve always hated those classic “Christian” stories where someone describes some kind of intense period of their lives – usually a really painful time – and they get to the end of the story, and say, “I wouldn’t trade this time in my life, despite the pain, for anything in the world.” Something inside of my always went, “yeah right, you’re so not telling the whole truth.”

So, let me say it. I wouldn’t trade the last month of my life for anything on the planet. I mean it. It’s been absolutely INSANE, and I would not want it to have been anything different.

God is revealing Himself to me, and it’s blowing my mind. He is showing up in ways in my life that I would never have chosen for myself. He is touching old wounds, opening them and making them raw, and beginning to let me see healing. He is speaking even in the moments I have trouble distinguishing his voice. He is calling me to serve Him with my life and breath. He has handed me situations I never thought I’d deal with, and giving me the grace to walk friends through them. He has provided me with friends who are encouraging me on the journey, who are supporting me, praying for and with me, hearing God on my behalf. He is working. I have a sense of hope that was absent for the past years.

And here’s the thing. The most dangerous prayer I have ever prayed is, “God, my life is open to You. Do whatever You desire, use me if you want, and I don’t care how it looks.” That’s not an easy thing for a self-admitted control freak to pray. But, since that crazy day just over a month ago, it is the prayer I breath nightly as I fall asleep. It is the prayer on my lips as I ride transit every day, as I go to a job that can be less than exciting some days, as I pick up a crisis phone call. And it is the deep cry of my heart. I long to know Him intimately, to be sold out for Him, to know and understand His heart for me.

I have no idea where the next year is going to take me, but I’m excited. I sense His call on my life, and somehow, I know that something changed that day last month. I know that I will never be the same person I used to be. And I’m terrified, and ecstatic, and apprehensive, and overwhelmed, and I can’t wait for what’s coming next.

Wedding

I'm off in an hour or so to spend the day at the wedding of a friend in Canmore. Nice!

This friend went to Poland as a missionary, met a guy, and now they're getting married and planning to move back to Poland to serve God together in a year or so. Crazy story, but fun! So that's all I need to do - accept a call from God to the mission field, and I'll end up married!

I'm having a few dress issues. It took me at least an hour last night to figure it out. Oh well, I think I look okay now, and I'm taking jeans and a t-shirt for the drive home after the wedding - no sense being uncomfortable any longer than absolutely necessary!

And, I bought the funniest t-shirt ever yesterday on my break at work, and I can't wait to wear it. It says:

Blondes have more fun.

Brunettes can read.

And with that profound thought, I'm off to make breakfast before I finish getting ready for the wedding! Have a truly excellent day y'all!

unguarded...

I'm not sure it's a very smart idea to write a post at this moment. My thoughts are rather unguarded - a side effect of intense lack of sleep.

I've slept approximately 2 and a half hours. You see, I had one last term paper due this morning. The last term paper of my undergraduate degree. The only problem was, I got called into work early yesterday, so it didn't get started before my shift. So, I worked until 9, got home around 10, made my nightly hour long phone call to my friend in crisis, and started the paper around 11. I finished at 4:20 this morning, was asleep somewhere around 4:45, and got up to go to school and hand the paper in at 7:30ish. So, a couple hours sleep.

I'm actually surprisingly alert, if tired. But, as I was taking the bus home, it hit me that my thoughts are unguarded and emotional in a way they aren't usually. I'm thinking about a lot of stuff. Particularly about the raw areas of my life that God opened on Tuesday. I'm just now having the downtime necessary to begin to allow it to penetrate, to begin to process. And it hurts.

In light of that, and the fact that I really do need to go back to school for my evening class, I think I'm going to go take a nap. I think this batch needs to be processed in the privacy of my paper journal, before I share it with the world! Unguarded is safe in a book that no one but me will ever see.

Whispers?

I freely admit that I don't do a very good job of distinguishing God's voice from my own thoughts. In fact, I'm probably pretty bad at it, and, at the times when it's blatantly clear, I have been known to ignore it because I did not like what He was asking of me.

I had a weird day yesterday. Sort of full of whispers - maybe God, maybe me, but I think they were Him. I'm left feeling slightly raw inside, not sure where I'm going next. Wanting to hear Him, but hurting badly because of the places in my life that he's touching.

I had an ongoing conversation with Him through the day. It really started the night before. Because of the trouble I have sleeping, I have long chosen to fall asleep with some sort of sound playing in my ear, something to distract my mind and trick it into sleep. Now, most people use music, but I have long found that a book on tape, or a sermon, or a speech - something of the spoken variety - works far better. I can't remember the last time I fell asleep to music - I was probably a very small child. But, on Monday night, the book I've been playing over and over lately (Prince Caspian) just wasn't quite cutting it, and the strong desire in my gut was to listen to David Crowder's latest CD, starting about halfway through. So I did, and I slept! Weird.

I got up yesterday morning, and on a whim tossed a copy of The Messsage New Testament into my school bag. Now, you need to know that I don't usually read anything to identifiably "Biblical" or "Christian" on public transit. I'm embarrassed, and that's not something I'm proud of, but it's true. But, yesterday, on my way to school, I decided to read some of the NT. So, I flipped around for a while, but eventually ended up in Colossians. Now, I'd read Colossians in this particular copy of The Message at some previous time, and underlined quite a number of passages. And it grabbed me again yesterday.

"We pray that you'll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul - not the grim strength of gritting your teeth, but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enought to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us....So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe - people and things, animals and atoms - get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the Cross....I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ...My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now LIVE him. You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start LIVING it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving...Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve...No, you're already IN - insiders - not through some secretive initiation rite but rather trhough what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin... So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, ACT like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ - that's where the action is. See things from HIS perspective...Let every detail in your lives - words, actions, whatever - be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way."

Different parts of this passage haunted my steps yesterday, particularly the parts I put in bold for you. And I prayed - an ongoing kind of thing through my day. It's been a long time since that happened. And it felt weird. And like I said, I struggled with distinguishing God's voice from my own thoughts, but there were raw nerves being touched. Old wounds popped up unexpectedly - grief that I thought was long gone from a death in our family several years ago... it was a strange kind of day.

So, I hopped on the bus home, still praying a bit, but reading a novel this time. And the bus took an hour and a half instead of 45 minutes because it was the first snowfall of any consequence, and the traffic was horrific. I got home at 4:45, and I had to leave my house at 5:30 to pick up the carload of girls that I drive to house church on Tuesday nights. So I left. What normally takes me 20-30 minutes took an hour and a half yesterday. By the time I picked them up and drove the rest of the way, I'd been driving for two and a half hours - for what should have taken less than an hour.

I sat and stewed while I drove. Particularly for the first hour and a half that I was by myself. I was not a happy camper when I arrived.

Now, here's the crazy part. I never leave my cell phone on on Tuesday nights - I don't want to be distrubed during house church. But, last night, for whatever reason, I couldn't bring myself to turn it off. So I switched it to vibrate and went on with the night. Except that I got another crisis call. Okay, it was God that had me leave my phone on. I was able to take the call in the midst of people praying for me and for my friend (who's also a part of our house church).

My whole day - crazy. It makes me tired, this being available to God. I've haven't been this emotionally drained in a very long time. I mostly feel overwhelmed. God touching raw nerves in my life, then handing me friends in mid-crisis. In my better moments, I can laugh. But mostly I'm a little overwhelmed.

Novemeber 1st. The date is etched in my memory because of some of the crazy God circumstances. When I sat in a car that night and talked for hours with a friend, I finally gave in to God, and began to allow his healing in my life. I was willing to give in because I was so desperately frustrated, and because people I love and trust were saying things to me that were both confirming and terrifying. "God is calling you to heal people, Lisa. But you need to find healing first." The things God was telling me and I was trying to ignore. So, I allowed my friend to lead me before God. And God started to work. And it was good. But that tiny little moment of healing did not prepare me for the way the rest of this month has played out. Because I have kept being bombarded by God touching raw places in my life - and then I get a phone call, or see a friend, and suddenly I am picking up the pieces of their lives, while my own life is in tatters around me. I was griping about this to another friend recently, and he laughed at me "God doesn't really care if we feel equipped - he just wants to use us." Okay then. So, most days I laugh because it seems so ridiculous that it could only be God. But I am at the same time overwhelmed with the responsibility that he has entrusted to me while my life is still in so many pieces.

So, God, I'm still here. And my life is still open for you to use. But I need your strength - your glory-strength. Because right now I'm gritting my teeth and hanging on for dear life. Fit all those broken pieces together in the vibrant harmony you promised. Fit my pieces together, and J.'s pieces together and M.'s pieces together. We are longing for something more. And I long to live simply for You. To not be distracted. To easily distinguish your voice. Draw me ever closer. Help me Jesus.