Thursday, June 21, 2007

life is a crazy mixture of hard and beautiful

...hard to watch the coldness in erica and aaliyah's eyes as their family falls apart around them, throwing bricks through windows, threatening one another with knives, dad beating mom during aaliyah's birthday party and causing the other kids to run home...

...hard to see justin again, this kid i've been praying for all year, to see some growth, some softness to the gospel in his life, and then for him to move to las vegas...

...hard to have a cheerful attitude about picking up the church again...and yet finding the strength to put on a smile and a song and pray for the kids as i clean up another one of their messes...

...hard to love through an excruciating head ache and terrible sore throat...

...hard to walk from door to door in the heat and the humidity, not knowing what encounter is behind your next knock...

...hard to not be broken enough by my sin...

...hard to get in bed after a day where the hours were too long to even calculate and then realize i still have to prepare a bible lesson for the morning...

...beautiful to rest my chin on eddie's curly head during the missionary story and cry over God's great goodness to me...

...beautiful to help qwue-qwue find habakkuk in her bible during church so she could look up her memory verse and then hear her read the whole book to herself at a whisper...

...beautiful to spend a whole evening just miriam and i, making eggplant parmesan in an amazing kitchen, driving with the moon roof open praying and talking about things that matter and how we can be spent for the kingdom...

...beautiful to have a mud fight in the fry's back yard and then have both angel and hosanna grab my hands when it was done and we were rinsed off to show me their kittens...

...beautiful to find strength whenever i read my bible or hit my knees...to realize how very much i need to be there more...

...beautiful to see a glinpse of a kindred spirit in ranisha, to work past the bitterness and anger and see her longing for love...

...beautiful to fall in love with the grace that i keep seeing more and more in the lives of the other interns and the saints at this church...

...beautiful to ponder how we can show we're crazy-in-love with Jesus in the broken neighborhoods of north tulsa...

...beautiful to attend my eighth bible study of the week and come away pondering something fresh and amazing about my God...

...beautiful to be told over and over to see and savor the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus...

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

the soles of [my] shoes are all worn down

the girl i babysit was sitting in my passenger seat and staring at herself in the mirror this afternoon. then she started turning her hands over and over in her lap. i asked her what she was thinking about. "my hands are really me," she said with a laugh.

i laughed back and asked her what she meant. she held her slightly crooked hands up next to her face. "my hands look like me. and my face doesn't." it sounded weird at first but i understood. our souls are similar like that...we just understand each other. (who knew that could happen with an emo jewish 13 year old and a 20 year old christian college student?) i knew how she felt...have you ever passed a mirror and wondered who that was inside? i don't look like i feel i should. (and i think you'd have to be made of some similar stuff to mariah and i to understand what that means.) we sat in my van outside of hebrew school and listened to death cab for cutie. and both of us pondered our hands.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

some thoughts in a coffee shop

i'm sitting in java and jazz right now...it's become a second home for me as of late.

caitlin is working on her powerpoint and rachel and danielle on a massive persuasion project. i am avoiding outlines.


there's a couple sitting off to my right and they just can't stop looking into one another's eyes and touching each other's faces. they don't see anyone else. and i can't decide who's stranger...this couple so into one another or me who can't imagine being that wrapped up in one person. maybe someday.

the other night we randomly met a guy in here who had just moved to the area and we gave him the names of our churches. a couple of women have been sitting at a table near me and just talking for the past hour and a half. and as i've asked rachel, "what would it feel like to go to coffee shops without homework?" i can't picture such a state.


i think that's why i like java and jazz. i realize that there really is life beyond college. i see the little kids trail their parents into the store and run around on the newhall coffee company logo on the floor. i watch a small child cautiously tiptoe around the edge of the counter before her dad swoops her back to safety. i see the rushed housewives and the business men looking at their watches and the kids who sit outside and smoke and the juniorhighers out on "dates" and the screenwriters trying to make it big and the couples falling in love or trying to pick up the pieces of a relationship...and i see again that the world is so much bigger than me. and i am amazed at my God who is orchestrating it all.

the barristas here have become friendly faces. rachel now has a usual. someone put up a poem on the bulletin board in the bathroom and rachel and i talk about posting some of our own attempts at poetry. and it's funny how a coffee shop can begin to feel a little like home. it's the people i'm sure. one of my friends finally admitted that she was in love and that's how she described it...feeling at home with him, no matter how far away home really was. that sounds lovely to me.


i'm an expert people watcher. i wonder if you can put that on a resume? i love collecting bits and pieces of people's lives from what they do and say and then piecing together an entire life from that information and my overactive imagination. today i was waiting to pick up kids from bridgeport elementary school and i made up an entire life story for the man sitting on the wall next to me. and i saw dr. wong. that doesn't have anything to do with anything, but i think this is rather a stream-of-consciousness update.

i think maybe why i couldn't imagine being like that couple is that i people-watch even when i'm with those i love most. maybe i even do it more with them.

i haven't eaten all day. today was the day of fasting and prayer for newhall. but i'm not sure this fast has had its intended effect in me. i've been praying for newhall all day, but not in lieu of eating. i've just been praying for newhall whenever i would normally pray for other things...when i'm driving or walking or that little chunk of time between lunch and work. i spent my lunch hour in the caf, just not eating but selling spring party tickets instead. and i spent my dinner time at work. i think i might go get some food...is that wrong? i just feel really tired and i know it's lack of calories. i still have quite a night ahead of me...and a seven o'clock meeting tomorrow morning. i need to figure out how to really fast and not simply skip meals. i do that anyway, just out of sheer busyness.

today i looked at the sky. it's always a better day when i remember to do that. some days i forget and i walk along watching my feet and i forget all the vast grandeur above me. i remembered today and as i walked out of my new testament class i just tipped my head back, looked at the vast blue, and breathed deeply. and at those moments, God sends calm to my heart. it sounds mystical when i type it out, but i promise that it's not charismatic in any non-biblical way. it's just me remembering where i fit in this world and breathing out of sheer dependence on God. i call it worship breathing in my head. sometimes i just take my breath for granted, but i can't when i look at the sky.


i looked at the sky last night too. i was on a beach in la and the wind was blowing as hard as it could and my feet were soaking wet from foolishly standing too close to the waves. i was wrapped in a sleeping bag that smelled like my childhood and the moon was directly overhead. and i just leaned back and breathed.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Skid Row is never the same two weeks in a row.

This last Friday night I met a man named Earl. He's a Vietnam war veteran, a drunk, and a drug addict--and wanting the truth. On Thursday, he and a friend were sitting on the corner of Towne and 5th just drinking and talking like any other day on Skid Row. But his friend got up and walked across the street. And a Toyota pick-up pulled up and a shot sounded. And Earl's friend went to face his eternal fate.

Earl didn't explain why his friend was shot. But he did explain the impact that event had on him. I read Job out loud to him and he started crying. I read John 1 and we talked about the Savior, how our only hope is that of Job, "I know my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand on the earth."

He begged us to tell him how he can be sure of his eternal fate...I can still hear his earnest "please, please tell me" ringing in my ears. And so my friends explained salvation, about how we have to make Jesus Christ both savior and lord. And there's the problem. Earl doesn't want to give up his sin. "It's so hard here," he said. And I believe him. It's so hard for me to fight sin living at the Master's College, surrounded by almost every conceivable help to living a holy life. How much harder it must be on the streets of Skid Row, where sin in its basest and most addicting forms is available at every corner.

We talked to him for almost two hours, reading the Word and preaching the truth. And still when we left he told us that he was going to finish his bottle before going to sleep. My heart broke. How could he so earnestly desire to know the truth and still cling so stubbornly to his besetting sins? We tried to show him the true beauty of God and how much more valuable He is than anything else, we prayed for him, we (I) cried as we brought his plight before God. And yet I still can't shake the thought that he's going to sleep tonight on the sidewalks of Skid Row not knowing where he might wake up.

So I'm asking you to pray for him. Pray that God will break the power sin has over him in order to bring Earl to Himself. Please.

Monday, January 29, 2007

even when i don't see...

And again it's been forever since I've written.

And again God has amazed me beyond words. I was struck in chapel today by His grace, by the fact that grace is the only reason for....well, for anything really. His grace is everywhere. And by it I am held.

There was a night this past week that a string of events left me questioning God's hand. A night when I couldn't see why things happened the way they did, and I thought that God was answering my prayers in a way completely contrary to His character.

Oh me of little faith.

I kicked against the goads and tried my hardest to doubt His care. But like I said, I am held. I can't describe how difficult it was for my flesh to open my Bible that night, but I did, and I went to sleep with Psalm 73 ringing in my head.
When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.
Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.

The next afternoon I read Job...and I filled two pages in my journal with verses from that book about His sovereignty and my human weakness. And I rested in the truth that "He wounds, but He binds up; He shatters, but His hands heal."

But the comfort of the Word wasn't the end of His plans for my struggle. Later that afternoon, the girl I babysit and I had an incredibly hard but incredibly worth it conversation about the story of Job and about the existence of Satan and about the problem of sin and evil and about God's plans for humanity. And God turned my failures and broken heart into something beautiful and hopefully maybe even eternal.

And I am so glad that I am held.