Let every burning heart be holy ground

Removing the Mud from Chicago Tabernacle on Vimeo.

Advent Day 20

It is ironic that this same heart that pumps
life to lungs and limbs
could simultaneously harden and atrophy.
There is no surgeon that can soften
a calloused state of being or remove the thorns
that have crept in-between ventricles and atriums.

I cannot self-apply a balm that will
turn this heart into fertile ground.
I cannot administer an injection that will
anesthetize or staunch a bleeding heart.

Perhaps unseen procedures are best left to
unseen forces.

Advent Day 6

I sat behind opera guy at Chicago Tabernacle this past Tuesday and I timidly tapped his shoulder and introduced myself. 

"Hi, my name is Grace and I just wanted to say that the way you worship the Lord is really moving."

He smiled at me and gave me a look like he was going to share a profound secret. And he did.

"Don't give the Lord half-hearted worship. Many things will try to distract you, but He is worthy of our full attention." 

Ha ha. Ironic that I was semi-distracted in my awareness of this man during service! But it was a good kind of distraction that propelled me to stand in awe of the Lord. 

Advent Day 4

A prayer.

Help me to be disillusioned and dissatisfied with 

anything less than what you desire - a heart fully 

abandoned to you.

Living Spirit, active and moving

Help me to submit, and anticipate 

the deeper waters that you compel me to.

Darkness retreats, lies are cast down 

At the mention of your name.

Glorious King, you allow me to draw near. 

Advent Day 2

Soften this heart, prepare this heart
for numinous glimpses and appearances

Startle this heart, shake this heart
out of busyness, into stillness

Humble King
spirit, soul, body

Anticipate you

Thankful List

-Thanksgiving miracles and the Lord's redemptive plan for my family. 

-Being able to spend Thanksgiving with Grace, Alison and her family up in Northern Wisconsin. 

-Small group at Brielle's. Sharing moments when we have encountered the numinous presence of God.

-Hanging out with Alison and taking her friend to the Bean and watching people ice-skate (cue the giggles and silliness that ensued).

-Advent worship - thankful for the people who couldn't make it and the people who could! Thankful that Lisa Werner stuck around and hung out with us for a few hours.

-Homemade biscotti and a hot cup of coffee.

-The power of worship and prayer.

-Start of Advent season - I pray that the Lord would take me deeper and would instill in me a sense of awe and fascination in Him and in this season of life.

-Rainy mornings.

-Knee High Vintage (one of my favorite stores in the city - I walked in trying to sell my mink coat and walked out instead with some other lovely articles of clothing). 

Seeker

Captured Liz making some moves  

I was waffling - to go to prayer night at Chicago Tabernacle or stay home and stay out of the cold, windy elements that have sadly hit Chicago so soon in the season? Usually, I'm all for prayer night and it has turned into routine for me to make the half-hour drive up to Avondale, but I found myself in my room deliberating if I should just stay home and take a shower and light a candle.

At the heart of my pause I realized that I was carrying a small thought that had creeped up on me: "Is the drive up really going to be worth it? Is the Lord really going to meet me tonight?"

I decided to stop grumbling and forced myself to put on my coat.

As I made my way out the door, Alison said, "Grace, it's going to be worth it. There hasn't been a time when it hasn't been refreshing."

Fast-forward half an hour and I found myself being ushered down the aisle into a seat near the front. I had gotten to the church a bit earlier than expected, and the worship team was warming up and I realized that I was sitting in front of a middle-aged man who has a wonderful tendency to gesticulate emphatically when worshipping (he too is a regular prayer night attendee - I usually sit a few rows behind him). As I sat down, he stood up and started to sing and worship the Lord and his voice was audible in the semi-quiet room.

This man was ministering to the Lord like he was the only one in the room - little did he know that the Lord was using him to minister to my heart. Something in my heart caught and the Lord spoke to me. "Grace, this man is worshipping me with his heart and it is so incredibly pleasing to me." I found myself wanting what this man has with the Lord. Or rather, I found myself drawn to want even more in my own personal relationship God.

As I grow in my relationship with Christ, I realize that even though I don't "feel it" in the moment, expectation rooted in the Lord's character has grown in me and I can step forward expecting that the Lord honors those who pursue him and seek him and desire to encounter him. And you know what? It's always worth it.

I pray that the Lord would continue to grow faith in me and that this faith would shadow moments when I stumble, when I doubt or grumble, when brokenness is evident. And I pray for the man sitting behind me, that his relationship with God would only grow richer and deeper with time and that it would cause others to pause and yearn for more.

In the midst of a busy season, one devastating incident caused us all to come to a forced halt this past Wednesday and grieve and mourn. I was upstairs doing my quiet time and heard someone open the front door and the heart-jarring sound of Sam crying floated up the stairs. I ran downstairs to see Emily and Grace standing next to Sam and slowly I pieced together what had happened. Sam's 20-year old cousin had committed suicide. We stood around Sam, confused and sad and unable to comprehend the enormity of death and especially death caused by suicide. We prayed in the capacity that we were able to (because really, isn't death a wordless circumstance? One that leaves you bewildered and shocked to the core?). Sam left for the suburbs to be with her family, and the rest of us tried to go about our days. Last night, I came home to see everyone in the living room, and we spent some time praying and just simply being with each other. God, my community is in pain. God, my friend and dear sister is in pain and I don't understand why suicide is something you permit. I pray that in the confusion and the anger and the denial, that Sam and her family would experience your love and your presence. Lord, come.

The Call

This year, I got to go to the Global Missions Health Conference with a group of people from Lawndale Christian Health Center. I had gone previously two years ago and forgot that during the last plenary session, there is an altar call where people go to the front and drop their commitment cards on the world map. Claude Hickman spoke at the last session, and he talked about how some moments are more special than others. Claude spoke about various moments in history when God touched the hearts of individuals, and they responded to him and became missionaries and martyrs and basically lived with reckless abandon serving the Lord. Towards the end of his talk, the worship band came on stage and started playing and I sat in my seat, heart beating wildly. Tears started to fall down, and I looked up and saw that old-time missionaries and seasoned healthcare professionals and young students were making their way to the stage to commit their lives to the Lord. I saw Megan up on the stage, and my heart grew so warm. How do I describe what I felt as I looked out at the body of Christ, at individuals laying down their lives and choosing to follow Christ? Tears continued to fall and I found myself making my way up to the stage, commitment card clenched in my hand. It's true that I had no idea where I was going to place my commitment card - I don't know what part of the world the Lord is going to call me to. But as I made my way up the stairs towards the stage, my body began to tremble and the intensity of my crying increased by about ten-fold - I can only describe the next few moments as the Holy Spirit within me interceding for the nations, particularly for the nation that the Lord is going to call me to serve.

I don't think I will ever forget what happened on the stage - I felt this irresistible pull towards East Africa/the Middle East region and my heart continued to beat rapidly as I walked over and dropped my card down. I walked back to my seat, crying and crying because this is what usually happens to me when the Holy Spirit touches my heart and when I encounter the Lord: I turn into a broken fire hydrant.

More than finding the answers to my questions regarding the future, I delight in experiencing the Lord and experiencing affirmations from Him regarding missions. It doesn't matter where or when - I know that He is in the entire process and that ultimately, I am living out His will for my life.

4.1 Miles Podcast & a Potential Side Project

My clinical group made a podcast for a school project - here is the end result! 

Watch the actual documentary here: 

Because I am a distractible nursing student, I have some aspirations that are stewing regarding this particular medium and would love to interview friends/family and create an archive of sorts of stories and experiences. More on this later! 

(SUPER) Thankful List

-Having Joan stay with us and getting lunch at Sultan's Market. We then proceeded to grab coffee at Ipsento 606 and take a (brisk) walk along the 606. Truly, so lovely.
-Attempting to make panna cotta (turned into panna cotta ice cream because it didn't set and I had to stick it in the freezer).
-Wine and cheese night with some gals that I've been wanting to get to know and hang out with.
-13.1 miles on lakeshore (kept repeating "just keep running running running" in my head. And yes, the voice in my head sounded very much like Dory).
-Fall leaves.
-The beauty of trusting in the Lord and failing to trust and trying to trust and receiving his grace throughout it all.

In all of this, I feel the pleasure of the Lord.

Take Heart

Thankful List:

-Dropping by Jamie and Ryan Gorgol's small group this past Wednesday; hospitality in the form of Ryan making all of us lattes from his espresso machine (!!!)
-The Gospel and Our Cities conference - hearing Charlie Dates, Pete Scazzero, and Tim Keller speak
-Happy Camper dinner with Alison and Kelly
-Calling Michelle and catching up with her post-wedding/honeymoon/move to Kansas City
-Hanging out with Mae at Bridgeport Coffee; the beauty of friendships that are raw and gritty and transparent
-Sex 101 talks with Sherrie and the rest of the girls I live with (as Christian women, how do we express our sexuality and yet value purity and live out Gospel-centered holiness)

I got a chance to attend the Gospel and Our Cities conference here in Chicago and wow. WOW. I was convicted and challenged and encouraged by the plenary sessions. What does it look like to fervently love the African-American community and the Black church? What does it look like to be an emotionally healthy leader? What does it look for the Church here in the city to actively engage the people around us who don't know Christ? There were so many dimensions that were covered during this three-day conference and I feel blessed to have been exposed to  different catalysts that I know will move me to know God deeper and live out the Gospel in my personal life and in my community in North Lawndale.

One thing that struck me was Tim Keller's talk about how we as a Church can engage the people around us. Certainly, it won't be the programs and curriculum that churches offer that will compel non-believers to try out church. It will be ordinary people who aren't afraid to live out their identity as passionate followers of Christ. Tim Keller made this extraordinary metaphor that I think works well - he said that Christian beliefs are like a suit that is too big; non-Christian beliefs, however, are like a suit that is too tight. For anyone who chooses to believe in anything other than Christ - because, believe me, if you don't profess faith in Christ, you will most likely profess faith in something else such as power, money, beauty, sex, etc. - the suit that is too tight will eventually rip in different places. Your belief and trust in money will give, your pursuit of [blank] will at one point fail to deliver. When existentialist justifications start to fall apart, where does it leave you?

It is exactly in moments such as these that believers can step in and say, "There is more. There is someone (Christ) who loves without condition and who satisfies far more than power and money and beauty and sex. The identity that you have tried to achieve can be received."

It is my desire to be so radically in love with Christ that people see something different. It is my deep heart conviction that Christianity isn't a cop-out religious belief system and way of living that squashes life's pleasures - it is a personal relationship with the living God that brings life and brings it abundantly. And truly, it is my passion to see people encounter the Lord and taste and see that He is good.

I Boast in You

How can I fully and adequately describe this current season I am going through? It is one where the Lord is tearing down idols, breaking strongholds, pruning rough edges, building my faith and trust in him. I have been experiencing healing through confession and repentance and I realize that the Lord loves me in all of my ugliness and brokenness. I can honestly and truly say that I am living out faith when I choose to turn to Him in the midst of anxiety and fear. In the moments when he asks me to confess sins to trusted others and all I want to do is run the other way and not open the can of worms - because let's be honest, no one wants to share the ugly. And yet, even though my heart is lurching and I feel like my stomach is going to fall out my butt (I believe this is a Mean Girls quote), I take a breath and trust that the Lord wants to use this to encounter me deeper still. As much as I want to side-skirt, turn a blind eye or even trivialize sin, I cannot disregard the fact that the Lord cannot fully heal me if I keep the most broken areas of myself under wraps. I cannot disregard the fact the Lord is Holy and that what kills intimacy is sin.

What does this generation need? It is intimacy with the Lord. And indeed, this is something I desire above all else. I desire intimacy with God. The act of repentance and confession ushers in a space where we can truly be honest about our brokenness; it is a space where God's grace and acceptance meets us and where faith in the power of the Gospel takes on an active and dynamic form. There is something freeing in the act of confession and repentance, and there is grace to be found when this is done in the context of Christian community.

The thing is, I want to live fully and completely in the reality of who I am in Christ: a beloved daughter of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Known and received and free. And you know what else? The Lord does not leave me shorthanded - He always meets me in those moments, which in turns strengthens my faith and motivates me to turn to Him again when I find myself in moments when I am reminded of my smallness and fickleness and tendency to turn to things other than Him. In all of this, I boast in the Lord's love and faithfulness. I boast in his supreme sovereignty and goodness. I boast in Him because in the end, there is no one else I can put my utmost confidence in. I will disappoint myself. My family and friends will disappoint me. Life will disappoint me. But the Lord has and never will disappoint me.

Thankful List:

-My clinical experiences, which have thus consisted of being on the mother-baby floor at Elmhurst Hospital and teaching sex education to 7th graders at an elementary school in North Lawndale.
-Sultan's Market
-Alison is back from MTI - Y A Y !
-Prayer meeting at Chicago Tabernacle

October Thankful List

-Meeting with some folks from church on Tuesday and spending the time in repentance, confession, and prayer. Love the people at my church.
-Getting to know 2.0
-Spontaneously going over to the Werner's for dinner and feasting over homemade Indian butter chicken. Hearing Rob tell stories about the legacy (haha) of 1818 Troy. Also, Rob gave me a jar of honey harvested from his beehives. This is probably the most local honey I'll ever get (all of a sudden, I don't regret the swarm of bees that I would try to evade while walking on the sidewalk close to the Werner's house on the corner).
-Homemade kombucha tea
-Prayers uttered in my heart when I fall asleep and when I wake up.
-Getting to observe a c-section at the hospital today.

Thankful List

-Getting to talk with Teretha for a good three hours; I am so incredibly thankful for her mentorship.
-Baking a cake for Anna and taking it over to her house.
-Quality time with my house and with Kevin and his friend Chris, who was in town from Los Angeles and is Director of Homeless Initiatives with United Way.
-Mom's trip back from Corona, California (she spent the week at a Korean retreat center).
-Having Rebecca and Mae over to study for our exam.
-Waking up at 5 am with an uncontrollable urge and desire to intercede for friends and family.
- Running in cooler weather.
-Strolling through the Logan Square Farmers' Market, loaf of bread in hand.
-Deep talks with my other Korean roommate, also named Grace.
-Getting an A on my first mother-baby exam. !!!

Thank you, Lord, for your grace and for your love.

You alone can move my heart, can touch my heart, can heal my heart.

You alone deserve all majesty, all glory, all honor and praise. 

Lord, today I thank you for giving good gifts to your children. For knowing my needs and for providing for them. I thank you for the gift of faith, that it propels me to continue to pray for my family and for this city and for the nations. I thank you that you are a God who loves intimately and knows intimately, and that loving you simply boils down to saying yes to you. I thank you that you are going to use my story to reach others and that you are going to use me to expand your Kingdom. I thank you that your perfect attributes cover my imperfect ones, and that you delight in me and rejoice over me. Truly, it is an honor to proclaim you as Lord of Lord and King of Kings. 

Towing Lessons

Lord, I need a fresh dose of your grace and mercy today. I'm tired, I'm grumpy, my car got towed (and it was totally my fault). I took an Uber to the lot to pay my dues and get my car and sat there annoyed that I got caught for parking illegally. Worst of all, I sat there honking at the towing truck to move so I could get out of the lot and then shamefully ignored his gaze as I drove past and proceeded to drive home.

What if I had just followed the rules and hadn't parked in the Jewel parking lot? I would still have $172.50 and wouldn't have been so crabby towards the man just doing his job. Rules are good, rules prevent events and situations like this from happening. This little instance is a pretty good reflection of my natural tendencies to say no to the rules and boundaries that the Lord calls me to live within. Every time I say 'no' to the Lord puts me out of alignment with his will and in the end, causes me more harm than good. Truly, not worth it. And yet, I need constant reminders that His will for my life is better than my own will.

So, Lord, help me to take this experience and learn from it. Help me to genuinely feel repentant not because I get caught in my sin, but rather for disobeying you. Help me to say yes to you in both public and private spaces and help me to simply trust that you know what is best for me. Forgive me for my attitude towards the man at the towing lot and for my proclivity to side-skirt or ignore rules in my life.

Broken Vessels

As a nursing student, one of the most consistent thoughts I have is how I represent Christ to my peers and friends from school. I think my biggest fear is that I will misrepresent Christ or inaccurately portray Him because of my anxiety and well, my other flaws that tend to surface every now and again. It's not that I want to come across as a perfect Christian - far be it. It's that people will see me and think that Christ is not for them. In all my associations with my non-Christian friends, my deep desire is that they would have Christ to lean on during the highs and lows that life will inevitably throw at them. It's that they would know that deep suffering can be experienced alongside a Savior who suffered likewise and that deep joy can be truly encountered with Christ. And that everything in-between becomes precious and sacred when experienced in the midst of a person who loves and is love.

A few days ago, I had a conversation with an acquaintance from school and he pointed out that he noticed that it seemed like I was doing much better and that it seemed like I was going through a rough patch earlier this year. True. And then he asked me if during that time, I was having a crisis of faith. Wait, what? My worst fears came true in that moment and with a sinking heart, thoughts like "Grace, people see you struggling and they don't want what you have. You are your worst enemy, and it shows." I quickly processed his question, and answered that on the contrary, it was my faith that acted as a buffer. I responded with those words, but my thoughts remained bouncing around in my head.

Discouragement. This is what I felt walking away from my conversation with my peer. And yet, I had a conversation with my roommate this morning where I talked to her about this conversation and she insightfully pointed out that when Christ walked on this earth, even he was misunderstood. Christ was and is the utmost perfect representative of God, and yet he was misunderstood. Wow. A lightbulb went off in my head and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I, on the other hand, am a flawed and broken representative of Christ - of course people will misunderstand me. This is a given. So what now?  I plan to press in to Him even more, with all of my messiness and brokenness and with a little more peace on my end. At the end of the day, my job is to simply love Christ and love others and let the Holy Spirit move in the hearts of people who don't have a personal relationship with Christ. The saving work is on His end, and I gladly relinquish image control and the Savior complex that has somehow insidiously crept into my working definition of what it means to be a Christian.

Thankful List

-Small group last night and hanging out with Matt, Jane, Manny, Kaitlyn, Eunjoo and Eunjoo's dog, Gavey (I've never met a dog with such a spunky personality ha ha).

-October issue of Tabletalk. This month's issue is on perfectionism and control and the articles I've read so far have been so intellectually and heart-stirring. Especially the articles, "The Illusion of Control" by Thomas Brewer and "God's Control and Our Responsibility" by Guy M. Richard. Highly highly recommend. Plus, it looks like there is a free three-month trial subscription period (which I just entered my info for).

More on Tabletalk here: https://www.ligonier.org/tabletalk/

-Rainy days when you order a medium latte and the barista accidentally makes a large one for you. Thank you, friendly barista.

-Last week, I made the New York Time's sea salt tahini dark chocolate rippled cookies to send some to my mom along with some coffee I got her from Colombia and WOW! NYT continues to impress me with their cookies recipes. I think this, along with Laura Bush's NYT cowboy cookies are my favorite cookie recipes.

-Officially done with my first week of classes! Today, we watched a video on labor and delivery in class and I started tearing up. The messy physicality of giving birth juxtaposed against the holy and sacred experience is one that I am so mesmerized by. I truly look forward to observing a live birth during clinical.

In all of these things - both simultaneously mundane and numinous - I feel the pleasure of God.

Garden Lessons

I picked a bouquet of flowers for you,
not that you needed them

Not that cut flowers could possibly add
more to your splendor and beauty

I picked a bouquet of flowers,
soon to passively surrender to gravitational forces

I picked these flowers from the garden,
exquisitely handcrafted by you

Perhaps I picked these flowers,
unbeknownst that they were quite possibly from you to me

Hearts Aflame

During my time in Medellin, I learned a lot about its turbulent past and the clashing agendas of  paramilitary groups, guerrilla groups, government, and drug cartels whose activity climaxed in the 80s and 90s. Indeed, during this time, Medellin was considered one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the world and to this day, many Colombians have opposing and very sensitive views regarding Pablo Escobar, a world renown criminal who integrated the fragmented drug trafficking groups into an organized system. Indeed, all of the populace has been impacted by crime and violence (whether it be indirectly or directly) and as my Colombian friends informed me, many are prone to put on a smile and desire to forget the turbulent past.

On Saturday, I got to go to a local Colombian church with Katie and Julio and during the worship, the Lord spoke to me and I started to intercede for Colombia and the church here in Colombia and prayed that the nation would be transformed by a generation of believers and that Colombia would be a future peacemaker among nations. Interestingly enough, the Lord also said the following to me, "Grace, this is only the beginning. I'm going to show you more of what I am doing in other nations."

On my last day in Colombia, I journaled the following:

"I feel like His purposes for my time here have been fulfilled. He allowed me to experience new sights, new foods, a new culture, showed me how He is using the body of believers here in Colombia to expand His kingdom, gave me an insider's glimpse into a missionary family's life, affirmed my heart for the global church and for missions, refreshed me and taught me new things."

It's weird, even though I don't really know what my future holds, I have carried this deep, gut feeling of anticipation and excitement that I can only attribute to the excitement that God feels towards my future and the dreams he has for my life. It's an excitement that has encouraged me in dry seasons and in seasons of doubt - I know that God's dreams for my life are wrapped up in one purpose: to glorify Himself.

I'll end my post on this quote by Brennan Manning (please, do yourself a favor and read his book, Ruthless Trust):

"The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise."

Safety Net

I cannot deny that I am a fickle creature, prone to sink deep into emotions and quick to stray from the Lord and forget his love. And yet, there is an aspect to my relationship with Christ that I have come to appreciate, and it is His grace and mercy. As a Christian, I am free to express myself honestly before the Lord and free to mess up and stumble and wander because there is a safety net around me. True, as Christians we should never take the Lord's grace and mercy for granted, but what I have come to realize these days is that His grace is never far from me - it is there to catch me when I stumble.

The thing is, I see myself go through moments when I experience waves of despair and hopelessness but in perspective, even these things are experienced within the safety net of God's grace. He will never remove His presence from me, and there is an overarching hope that I can constantly come back to. It is God's hesed love, it is his unchanging character and faithfulness. And for that, my only response is one of worship. 

I am officially halfway through Rush's nursing program (hurrah!) and God, I give you glory! I know that you are going to turn my small yes to your dreams and plans into something beyond my wildest imaginations. Thank you that despite my doubts and grumblings regarding nursing you have remained faithful and have sustained me thus far. Incline my heart towards Yours, incline my ears towards Your voice, and increase my faith so that I can say yes to your promptings.

Wash my feet, and my hands and my head

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" Jesus answered him, "What I am doing, you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand." Peter said to him, "You shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" -John 13: 6-9

With his crucifixion imminent, Christ washes his disciples' feet (including Judas') in an act of love. As I read through this passage, I am struck by Peter's earnestness and desire to experience God's love.  Not only his feet, but he wants Christ's act of love to wash over hands, to wash over his head. Little does he realize that Christ's impending death will be the ultimate act of love that washes his heart.

So Christ, let your love clean these hands, these words and thoughts and actions, this heart. Let your love transform me to reflect your love and let it seep into the lives of others. Help your words become a reality in my life: "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Galatians 5:14). Truly, I can only love my neighbor if You are in the center of my heart.

Do Not Fear

But God, if I have truly experienced your Gospel and your love, why is it that I experience and live with such anxiety and fear?

Do not fear.

But God, I'm laying here, and I feel so lost. I feel so lost in my relationships with my dad and my sister and I feel so lost within myself. I am my worst enemy, and I wish I could see the potential that you see in me.

Do not fear.

But God, all that this life offers does not satisfy me. I am searching and seeking and I keep coming back to you. I will not settle for anything less than you.

Do not fear.

God, with all of my sin and all of my limitations, I come before you and give it to you. I do not have confidence in myself so I look to you.

Grace, do not fear.

A Prayer

Create in me a new heart, Lord.

Breathe life on all the places that have become hardened and jaded,

on areas where I have allowed bitterness to take root 

and spaces where thorns have flourished.

In my heart of hearts, I am a sinner - 

prone to despise you, myself, my neighbor.

Easy to wander, quick to self-idolize, I cannot 

stand on my own self-righteousness.

I give you deep-rooted fears that 

I am not enough, that I am a broken record 

stuck in the past and unable to operate in the present.

Create in me a new heart, Lord - 

let my life be a reflection of your saving grace.

Joys

One of the most formative experiences during my time here in Chicago has been going to Chicago Tabernacle's prayer meetings. Intercession is a gift that the Lord has placed in my heart, and I am quick to admit that the weekly prayer meetings have grown my heart for prayer and corporate worship. I truly believe that prayer is the medium that turns doubt into an act of faith, and thus worship. One of the biggest realizations has been the transformative effects of prayer - I believe that I have grown in love with the process, and not simply the end result of answered prayers. Because the thing is, God can and does answer prayers and while there are certain unanswered prayers that I have prayed for more than a decade, I also believe that God's timing is good and perfect. Lord, I thank you that as you show me your heart, my heart expands and softens in response.

These days, as I continually surrender to the Lord each day, I realize that I am getting better at hearing and listening to His voice. His promptings are becoming more familiar, and as I obey, I am aware of how He affirms my obedience. 

Thankful List:

-My spiritual mentor, Teretha (W O W. God, thank you for mentors. I foresee a season of accelerated growth and I thank you that you have put me on her heart to speak into my life). 

-Meditating on scripture 

-Iced coffee / soft-scrambled eggs 

-Rolling out of bed at 5 am to go for my long runs 

-Quiet mornings 

-The girls that I live with

-Random spontaneous haircuts 

Thankful List

Wow! Wow! So much to be thankful for! Here goes:

-Tuesday night bible study at Lisa Werner's house.

-My birthday this past Wednesday. I felt so incredibly loved by God from the moment I woke up to when I fell asleep. I had a 12-hour clinical that day on the inpatient psych unit but Sam and I have been joking that I can easily use this in a 'two truths and a lie' game.

Truth: I spent my 25th birthday on a lock-down psych unit at the hospital.

BUT! It only gets better because during group therapy, the occupational therapist led us in a form of tai chi and we did various movements focusing on our breathing. She also had us massage our heads.

Truth: I spent my 25th birthday on a lock-down psych unit at the hospital doing tai chi.

Gonna stow this one away with my other crazy truths.

Afterwards, I met up with some friends from school at Sultan's Market and we sat on the patio and then went to Handlebar afterwards and sat on the patio for dessert. Mae and Emilou started singing happy birthday to me, and the people sitting around us all joined in and it was one big festive birthday song. Ha ha!

I think the best part was that on Tuesday, my dad texted me saying happy birthday. Lord, thank you.
All in all, such a wonderful way to begin my 25th.

-Yesterday, I woke up to an email from Katie, a missionary who New Community Covenant Church supports. She and her family live in Columbia, and in the email (I've been in communication with them for a few months now), she invited me to come stay with them next month. Lord, THANK YOU! I have been praying for opportunities to get my toes wet in the mission field and seeing that I'll be on break next month, it seems that he has opened this door for me to go help out and simply love on Katie and her family. I went to small group last night, and as we were praying, I saw an image of a stoplight and the green light was on. Truly, I feel like the timing is right for me to go.
*Edit, I bought my tickets today and will be going next month from August 19 - August 28! Columbia, here I come.

-Thankful for small group and for everyone I've gotten to know. Thankful for Matt's hospitality and for his joy and love for food (and also for feeding us restaurant worthy food).

All in all, life is a whirlwind right now and my heart is full.

The Heart of Worship

When the music fades
All is stripped away
And I simply come
Longing just to bring
Something that's of worth
That will bless your heart
I'll bring you more than a song
For a song in itself
Is not what you have required
You search much deeper within
Through the way things appear
You're looking into my heart

I'm coming back to the heart of worship
And it's all about you,
It's all about you, Jesus
I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it
When it's all about you,
It's all about you, Jesus

King of endless worth
No one could express
How much you deserve
Though I'm weak and poor
All I have is yours
Every single breath

I'll bring you more than a song
For a song in itself
Is not what you have required
You search much deeper within
Through the way things appear
You're looking into my heart 

-Michael W. Smith 

Less Wild Lovers

The following essay is one that was recommended to me by Alison. I am an unabashed seeker of the written word, whether it be articles from The Atlantic, beautifully written novels, or essays of a more scholarly nature. This essay is one that I hope shapes my life, as I continue to follow Christ and grow more and more in love with Him.

The essay can also be found here (the format is probably easier on the eyes): http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr08/curtis1.html

Less-Wild Lovers

Standing at the Crossroads of Desire

By Brent Curtis

Copyright © 1997 Mars Hill Review 8 (Summer 1997): 9-23.

In all of our hearts lies a longing for a Sacred Romance. It will not go away in spite of our efforts over the years to anesthetize or ignore its song, or attach it to a single person or endeavor. It is a Romance couched in mystery and set deeply within us. It cannot be categorized into propositional truths or fully known any more than studying the anatomy of a corpse would help us know the person who once inhabited it.
Philosophers call this Romance, this heart yearning set within us, the longing for transcendence—the desire to be part of something out of the ordinary that is good. Transcendence is what we experience in a small but powerful way when our city’s football team wins the big game against tremendous odds. The deepest part of our heart longs to be bound together in some heroic purpose with others of like mind and spirit.
Art, literature, and music have all portrayed and explored the Romance, or its loss, in myriad scenes, images, sounds, and characters that nonetheless speak to us out of the same story. The universality of the story is the reason Shakespeare’s plays, even though they speak to us from a pastoral setting in England across four hundred years of time, speak so eloquently and faithfully that they are still performed on stages from Tokyo to New York City.
Someone or something has romanced us from the beginning with creekside singers and pastel sunsets, with the austere majesty of snowcapped mountains and the poignant flames of autumn colors telling us of something—or someone—leaving, with a promise to return. These things can, in an unguarded moment, bring us to our knees with longing for this something or someone who is lost; someone or something only our heart recognizes. It is as if someone has left us with a haunting in our inner-heart stories that will not go away; nor will it allow itself to be captured and ordered. The Romance comes and goes as it wills. And so we are haunted by it.
If this poignant longing were the only deep experience of our soul, then we should not lose heart. Though we may not have satisfaction yet, we would search for it all our lives. There are enough hints and clues and "tantalizing glimpses" to keep us searching, our heart ever open and alive to the quest. But there is another message that comes to all of us in varying shades and intensities, even in our early years. It often seems to come out of nowhere and for no discernible reason that we can fathom. It is dark, powerful, and full of dread. I think of it as the Message of the Arrows.
There are only two things that pierce the human heart, wrote Simone Weil. One is beauty. The other is affliction. And while we wish there were only beauty in the world, each of us has known enough pain to raise serious doubts about the universe we live in. From very early in life we know another message, warning us that the Romance has an enemy.
The psalmist speaks of this enemy and tells us we need not fear it:

He [God] will save you from the fowler’s snare
And from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day. (Psalm 91:3-5)

Yet we cannot deny that the Arrows have struck us all, sometimes arriving in a hail of projectiles that blocked out the sun, and other times descending in more subtle flight that only let us know we were wounded years later, when the wound festered and broke.

The Haunting

In the time of our innocence, we trusted in good because we had not yet known evil. On this side of Eden and our own experience of the Fall—whatever our own Arrows have been and however the adversary has woven them together into our particular Message of the Arrows—it appears that we are left to find our way to trust in good, having stared evil in the face.
Most of us remember the time of our innocence as a Haunting. I mean innocence not as being sinless but as that time before our experience with the Arrows crystallized into a way of handling life which requires a false self. The Haunting calls to us unexpectedly in the melody and words of certain songs which have become our "life music": the crooked smile of a friend; the laughter of our children (or their tears); the calling to mind of a mischievous fact that still believed in joy; the smell of a perfume; the reading of a poem; or the hearing of a story. However the haunting comes, it often brings with it a bittersweet poignancy ache, the sense that we stood at a crossroads somewhere in the past and chose a turning that left some shining part of ourselves—perhaps the best part—behind, left it behind with the passion of youthful love, or the calling of a heart vocation, or simply in the sigh of coming to terms with the mundane requirements of life.
Whenever I hear the Old Frankie Avalon song "Venus," I see the blue eyes and dark hair of my first adolescent love, Kathleen. And I can feel the familiar Haunting seize my heart with palpable waves of longing and regret. We stood under the mistletoe together and I was afraid to kiss her. Even though our family moved to another state not long after, I thought for a long time it was that lost kiss that brought about the loss of the Sacred Romance; Romance that at sixteen is so embodied in first love. I felt there was something I could have done to hold onto the Sacred Romance by holding on to Kathleen.
And each of us has points of contact where the transcendence of the Romance has seared our heart in the fragrance of lovers, geographies, and times. They are captured there and return to haunt us with their loss whenever we return, or are returned, to their heart locale. At the end of the book, A River Runs Through It, the author, Norman MacLean, stands as an old man in the Montana river that defined the life of his family, now all gone. He casts for rising trout and something else. He tells us,

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand in my youth are dead, even Jesse [his wife]. But I still reach out to them. . . . when I am alone in the half-light of the canyon, all existence seems to fade to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four count rhythm and the hope that a trout will rise. . . . I am haunted by waters.

My best friend experiences the Haunting whenever he reads the words of Robert Frost’s poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay":

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The poem hangs on his office wall as a reminder of something lost.
Yet the people and times and places through which the Romance has seared us will betray us if we think that the Romance is in them, C.S. Lewis tells us:

". . . it [is] not in them, it only comes through them and what [comes] through them [is] longing. . . . They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited."

It is Lewis’s way of telling us that the Romance is both set within us, and still out on the road ahead of us—a Haunting that calls us to pilgrimage.
At one time or another, though, most of us forget the Haunting, or try to; for it often threatens to cripple us, leaving us bent over and unable to deal with the everyday things that life requires to be done. We all, to some extent, take that shining something in us that felt magical and passionate as children, that something that later swirled amidst the confusion of sexual passion and our longing for heart intimacy—we take it and push it through the loneliness, ache, and turmoil of life—through various stages of disconnection and hardness to another abiding place: a kind of resignation. There is something inside of us that says, "That is the way it is. I had better learn to deal with it." Thinking that Act III, Scene 2 (the Fall) will go on forever, we lose heart.
In C.S. Lewis’s science fiction novel, Perelandra, the story’s protagonist, Ransom, is sent to the planet Venus to hinder Satan’s attempts to seduce that planet’s first woman, Tinidril. He encounters her still in her innocence on the floating islands Lewis tells us cover the planet.

Beautiful, naked, shameless, young—she was obviously a goddess: but then the face, the face so calm that it escaped insipidity by the very concentration of its mildness. . . . Never had Ransom seen a face so calm, and so unearthly, despite the full humanity of every feature. He decided afterwards that the unearthly quality was due to the complete absence of resignation, which mixes, in however slight a degree, with all terrestrial faces. This was a calm no storm had ever preceded.

Resignation is not just the sigh that groans with something gone wrong. Such a sigh can be redemptive if it does not let go of the Haunting we have all experienced of something presently lost. Resignation is the acceptance of the loss as final, even as I chose to interpret it on the bridge that long-ago November day. It is the condition in which we choose to see good as no longer startling in its beauty and boldness, but simply as "nice." Evil is no longer surprising; it is normal.
It is from this place of heart resignation where many of us, perhaps all of us at one time or another, having suffered under the storm of life’s Arrows, give up on the Sacred Romance. But our heart will not totally forsake the intimacy and adventure we were made for and so we compromise. We both become, and take to ourselves, lovers that are less dangerous in their passion for life and the possible pain that comes with it—in short, lovers that are less wild.
Those of us who have been drawn to understand that God is our father through conversion in Christ recapture the Romance again—for awhile. We find ourselves again in the throes of first love. The Romance we thought we had left behind once more appears out on the road ahead of us as a possible destination. God is in his heaven and all seems right in the universe.
But this side of Eden, even relationship with God brings us to a place where a deeper work in our heart it called for if we are to be able to continue our spiritual journey. It is in this desert experience of the heart, where we are stripped of the protective clothing of the roles we have played in our smaller stories, that the message of the Arrows reasserts itself. Healing, repentance, and faith are called for in ways we have not known previously. At this place on our journey, we face a wide and deep chasm that refuses us passage through self-effort. And it is God’s intention to use this place to eradicate the final heart walls and obstacles that separate us from him.

I will go before you
and will level the mountains;
I will break down gates of bronze
and cut through bars of iron.
I will give you the treasures of darkness,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord
the God of Israel, who summons you by name. (Isaiah 45:2–3)

The Road Not Taken

God’s imagery of going before us lets us know that he desires us to go on a journey. This is not so frightening. Most of us are aware that the Christian life requires a pilgrimage of some sort. We know we are sojourners. What we have sometimes not given much thought to is what kind of a journey we are to be taking.
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart," said Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago. Not realizing it is a journey of the heart that is called for, we make a crucial mistake. We come to a place in our spiritual life where we hear God calling us. We know he is calling us to give up the less-wild lovers that have become so much a part of our identity, embrace our nakedness, and trust in his goodness.
As we stand at this intersection of God’s calling, we look down two highways that appear to travel in very different directions. The first highway quickly takes a turn and disappears from our view. We cannot see clearly where it leads but there are ominous clouds in the near distance. It is hard to say if they hold rain, snow, or hail, or are still in the process of fermenting whatever soul weather they intend to unleash upon us. Standing still long enough to look down this road makes us aware of an anxiety inside, and anxiety that threatens to crystallize into unhealed pain and forgotten disappointment. We check our valise and find no up-to-date road map but only the torn and smudged parchment containing the scribbled anecdotes and travelers’ warnings by a few that have traveled the way of the heart before us. They encourage us to follow them but their rambling journals give no real answers to our queries on how to navigate the highway.
"Each heart has its own turns and necessary overnights," they say. "Only God knows where your road leads. But come ahead. The journey is purifying and the destination is good." Faced with such mystery and irritating vagueness, we cast our glance down the other highway. It runs straight as far as we can see, with the first night’s lodging visible in the appropriate distance. Each mile is carefully marked with signs that promise success on the leg of the journey immediately ahead if their directions are carefully followed. The crisp map we take from our valise assures us that heart baggage is not needed on this journey and would only be in the way.
As we turn to look at the old parchment one more time, our eyes find the sentences left by one former traveler, "Don’t be afraid of embracing the disappointment you feel, old or new. Don’t be scared of the unreasonable joy either. They’re the highway markers home. I’ve gone on ahead. Yours Truly."
We snort with disdain at such quaint sentiments, and our choice made, we stuff the parchment in our valise and strike off down the straight highway of discipline and duty. All goes well for a while, sometimes for years, until we begin to realize that we’re really not feeling much anymore. We find ourselves struggling to weep with those who weep or even rejoice with those who rejoice. Mostly we don’t bother looking people in the eye. They may want to engage us and nothing much inside feels very engaged. Our passions begin to show up in inappropriate fantasies and longings interspersed with depression, anxieties, and anger we thought we had left behind. With a start, we realize our heart has stolen away in the baggage. It is taking the journey with us but under protest.
We redouble our efforts at discipline to get it to knuckle under but it refuses. Some of us finally kill it well enough that it no longer speaks as long as we’re occupied. Any quasiredemptive busyness will do. We look like we’re still believing. Others of us decide the deadness is too high a price to pay and agree to let our heart have a secret life on the side. We even try to be passionate about our faith but the fiery embers that once sustained it have turned to cool gray ash, the evidence that life was indeed once present.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," wrote Robert Frost in perhaps his most well-known poem, "The Road Not Taken": "And sorry I could not travel both/And be one traveler, long I stood/And looked down one as long as I could/To where it bent in the under- growth. . . . "
Ironically, having ignored the road that "bent in the undergrowth" and taken the more traveled highway of discipline and duty, we find ourselves at the same place of heart resignation we left so many years ago before we were Christians. We arrive at the Vanity Fair that John Bunyan describes in The Pilgrim’s Progress. It is a familiar city populated with many of the companions we had hoped to leave behind: deadness of spirit, lack of lovingkindness, lust, pride, anger, and others. Nonetheless, having been out on the Christian journey for a number of years by now, we assume that this is as close to the Celestial City as we’re ever going to get. We set up housekeeping and entertain ourselves as well as possible at the booths in the Fair that sell a variety of soul curiosities, games, and anesthetics.
The curiosities sold at the fair are endless in their diversity, many of them good in and of themselves: Bible study, community service, religious seminars, hobbies we try to convince ourselves are eternally transcendent (e.g., "Wow, I can’t wait to ski deep powder!"), service to our church, going out to dinner. But we find ourselves doing them more and more to quiet the heart voice that tells us we have given up what is most important to us.
Life in Vanity Fair
Not even the most concrete of us live in a totally black-and-white world. Even so, we tend to fall into two groups when it comes to taking up housekeeping with these less-wild lovers—lovers who promise to deliver us from the Haunting of the Sacred Romance God has placed in our heart. Those of us in the first group choose anesthesia of the heart through some form of competence or order. These may be expressed in countless arenas: a clean desk, perfect housekeeping, scripture memory and Bible study, a manicured lawn, a spotless garage, preparing and hostessing dinner parties that would make Martha Stewart proud, sending your boys to the best sports camps to insure they (we) never experience disappointment that might provoke thirst, formulaic religion that has three-step solutions to every problem—the list is endless.
We don’t stop to consider that the curse God announced to Adam and Eve dictates that we will never be under control, either in our vocations (we will not defeat the thorns and thistles of life), nor our relationships (Eve would desire to control Adam, but would fail). God’s intentions here strike us as strange if not sadistic until we remember that Satan’s offer to Eve was that she could bring about her own redemption through knowing good and evil.
If we were to try to picture the one who anesthetizes her heart to control life’s Arrows as a wife, we would see a soul occupied by a seemingly redemptive busyness—involvement with her household and community that is productive and worthwhile. When her husband comes home from work, she is satisfied with a peck on the cheek and a few pleasant words about the day. She doesn’t mind lovemaking if it’s not too spontaneous but she rarely if ever pursues it. An evening of television or a good book would do just as well. Like Cinderella, a wife often settles into the lesser role of maid and housekeeper rather than risk rejection by wanting romance. Her husband will feel guilty—even accused—for wanting anything more with her. If he expresses his sadness over something lost in their love affair, she chides him for his melancholy spirit.
Sadness on this order, sadness about something they once had together but had lost, is what God was so often expressing to Israel (and to us) through the prophets. He was continually trying to invite her into a lovers’ quarrel while she kept hearing his words on the level of an attack on how well she was performing her duties. One with an anesthetized heart hears God with Israel’s ears.
The heart sentences of one who has taken on some form of anesthesia to tame her won heart as well as the heart of anyone who would want a romance with her, sound something like this: "My heart is not available for any love affair that requires engagement. I live only to avoid the surprises that the wildness of your desire, or mine, might bring. And if you were smart, you would do the same."
And underneath those brusque sentences is a person’s story.
For some of us who have chosen anesthesia to tame our heart and the hearts of those who would love us, there is a hail of fierce and identifiable Arrows whose damage we try to contain by simply closing the door to the damaged heart places. For others of us, it was perhaps living in an atmosphere too fragile to bear the weight of our unedited souls. We grew up with a certain civility under which was an unadmitted demand that things be good. We learned that nothing considered "not nice" could be entered into without our world being in danger of shattering. Those around us let us know in no uncertain terms they needed us to be less-wild lovers. Sometimes whole cultures put this demand on us. Rosemary Daniell, in her book, Fatal Flowers, portrays the southern belle who was nonthreatening to men and southern society, and a competent, independent career woman who could make up any family deficiency.
Our adversary seduces us to abide in certain emotions that act as less-wild lovers, particularly shame, fear, lust, anger, and false guilt. They are emotions that "protect" us from the more dangerous feelings of grief, abandonment, disappointment, loneliness, and even joy and longing, that threaten to roam free in the wilder environs of the heart. These are feelings that frighten us, sometimes even long years into our Christian journey.
As I write this, my wife, Ginny, and I are walking through a time in our marriage where we are trying to allow some of the sadness we both feel, due to years of misconnection and detachment in a certain area of our relationship, to be felt and expressed. Over the years, we have kept the feelings at bay with a bantering anger out of fear of where they might lead us (divorce?) if we admitted them. Having allowed ourselves to mourn, we both feel more possibility of a deeper romance in the years ahead than we have for a long time.
If those of us in the first cadre of less-wild lovers choose to control our desire through various kinds of ‘stay at home’ anesthesia, we who hang out in the emotional nightclubs of Vanity Fair choose a different kind of control: indulgence. We put our hope in meeting a lover who will give us some form of immediate gratification, some taste of transcendence that will place a drop of water on our parched tongue. This taste of transcendence, coming as it does from a nontranscendent source, whether that be an affair, a drug, an obsession with sports, pornography, or living off of our giftedness, has the same effect on our souls as crack cocaine. Because the gratification touches us in that heart-place made for transcendent communion, without itself being transcendent, it attaches itself to our desire with chains that render us captive.
A few years ago, I was counseling with a Christian man just ending a year-long affair. He was married to an attractive and energetic woman who was also a believer, and he knew that he really loved her. He also began to understand that whatever it was that attracted him to the affair, it was not the woman herself, but something she represented. As we talked of making his break with her final, he wept with grief, immersed in the fear that some shining, more innocent part of himself would be left behind with the affair—left behind and perhaps, lost forever.
And this is the power of addiction. Whatever the object of our addiction is, it attaches itself to our intense desire for eternal and intimate communion with God and each other in the midst of Paradise—the desire that Jesus himself placed in us before the beginning of the world. Nothing less than this kind of unfallen communion will ever satisfy our desire or allow it to drink freely without imprisoning it and us. Once we allow our heart to drink water from these less-than-eternal wells with the goal of finding the life we were made for, it overpowers our will, and becomes, as Jonathan Edwards said, "like a viper, hissing and spitting at God" and us if we try to restrain it.
"Nothing is less in power than the heart and far from commanding, we are forced to obey it," said Jean Rousseau. Our heart will carry us either to God or to addiction.
"Addiction is the most powerful psychic enemy of humanity’s desire for God," says Gerald May in Addiction and Grace, which is no doubt why it is one of our adversary’s favorite ways to imprison us. Once taken captive, trying to free ourselves through willpower is futile. Only God’s Spirit himself can free us or even bring us to our senses.
If God’s experience of being "married" to us, who are his Beloved, is sometimes that of being tied to a legalistic controller in the ways I’ve described in the paragraphs on anesthetizing our heart, at other times it is more like that of being married to a harlot whose heart is seduced from him by every scent on the evening breeze. In our psychological age, we have come to call our affairs "addictions," but God calls them "adultery." Listen again to his words to the Israelites through Jeremiah: "You are a swift she-camel / running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, / sniffing the wind in her craving— / in [your] heat [how can I] restrain [you]? / Any males that pursue [you] need not tire themselves; / at mating time they will find [you]. / Do not run until your feet are bare / and your throat is dry" (Jeremiah 2:23–25).
God is saying, "I love you and yet you betray me at the drop of a hat. I feel so much pain. Can’t you see we’re made for each other? I want you to come back to me." And Israel’s answer, like that of any addict or adulterer, is: "It’s no use! / I love foreign gods, / and I must go after them" (Jeremiah 2:25).
Perhaps we can empathize with the ache God experienced as Israel’s "husband" (and ours when we are living indulgently). Having raised Israel from childhood to a woman of grace and beauty, he astonishingly cannot win her heart from her adulterous lovers. The living God of the universe cannot win the only one he loves, not due to any lack on his part, but because her heart is captured by her addictions, which is to say, her adulterous lovers.
Many of us have had the experience of not being able to bridge the distance between ourselves and others, whether they be parents, friends, or lovers. Whether the distance is caused by unhealed wounds or willful sin in our lover’s heart—or our own—we experience their rejection as our not "being enough" to win them. Unlike God, we begin to think of ourselves as having a problem with self-esteem.
Whereas God became even more wild in his love for us by sending Jesus to die for our freedom, most of us choose to both become and take on lovers that are less wild. We give up desiring to be in a relationship of heroic proportions, where we risk rejection, and settle for being heroes and heroines in the smaller stories where we have learned we can "turn someone on" through our usefulness, cleverness, or beauty (or at least turn ourselves on with a momentary taste of transcendence).
The list of our adulterous indulgences is endless: there is the exotic dancer, the religious fanatic, the alcoholic, the adrenaline freak, the prostitute with a man, the man with a prostitute, the eloquent pastor who seduces with his words, and the woman who seduces with her body. There is the indulgent lover who never really indulges physically, but spends his life in a kind of whimsy about what is lost, like Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind. What these indulgent lovers have in common is the pursuit of transcendence through some gratification that is under their control.
In the religions of the Fertile Crescent, access to God (transcendence) was attempted through sexual intercourse with temple prostitutes. Perhaps, as we indulge our addictions, we are doing no less than prostituting ourselves and others in this very same way. "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God," said G.K. Chesterton.
At first glance, those of us who live by indulgence—illicit affairs of the heart—appear to have a certain passion that is superior to those who live by anesthesia. But it is a passion that must be fed by the worship or use of the other and so it is a passion that does not leave us free to love. Indulgence leaves us empty and primed for the next round of thirst quenching in an endless cycle that Solomon described as "vanity of vanities." Jimi Hendrix, one of our modern-day poets, just before his death of a drug overdose, said it this way: "There ain’t no livin’ left nowhere."
Life on that first road where the signs promised us life would work if we just applied the right formula—the road that seemed so straight and safe when we first set out on it—gives us no wisdom as to what we’re to do with the depth of desire God has placed within us. It is desire that is meant to lead us to nothing less than communion with him. If we try to anesthetize it, we become relational islands, unavailable to those who need us, like the father who lowers his newspaper with annoyance at the family chaos going on around him, but makes no move to speak his life into it.
If we try to gain transcendence through indulgence, soon enough familiarity breeds contempt and we are driven to search for mystery elsewhere. So the man having an affair must have another and the man who is an alcoholic must drink more and more to find the window of feeling good. "There is only One Being who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ," said Oswald Chambers.

At the Edge of the Abyss

What, then, is the way of that less-traveled second road—the road that is the way of the heart?
We usually think of the middle years of the Christian life as a time of acquiring better habits and their accompanying virtues. But inviting Jesus into the "aching abyss" of our heart, perhaps has more to do with holding our heart hopefully in partial emptiness in a way that allows desire to be rekindled. "Discipline imposed from the outside eventually defeats when it is not matched by desire from within," said Dawson Trotman. There comes a place on our spiritual journey where renewed religious activity is of no use whatsoever. It is the place where God holds out his hand and asks us to give up our lovers and come and live with him in a much more personal way. It is the place of relational intimacy that Satan lured Adam and Eve away from so long ago in the Garden of Eden. We are both drawn to it and fear it. Part of us would rather return to scripture memorization, or Bible study, or service—anything that would save us from the unknowns of walking with God. We are partly convinced our life is elsewhere. We are deceived.
"We are half-hearted creatures," says Lewis in the Weight of Glory, "fooling about with drink and sex and ambition [and religious effort] when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
The desire God has placed within us is wild in its longing to pursue the One who is unknown. Its capacity and drive is so powerful that it can only be captured momentarily in moments of deep soul communion or sexual ecstasy. And when the moment has passed, we can only hold it as an ache, a haunting of quicksilver that flashes a remembrance of innocence known and lost and, if we have begun to pass into the life of the Beloved, a hope of ecstasies yet to come.
At some point on our Christian journey, we all stand at the edge of those geographies where our heart has been satisfied by less-wild lovers, whether they be those of competence and order or those of indulgence. If we listen to our heart again, perhaps for the first time in a while, it tells us how weary it is of the familiar and the indulgent.
We find ourselves once again at the intersection with the road that is the way of the heart. We look down it once more and see what appears to be a looming abyss between the lovers we have known and the mysterious call of Christ, which we now realize is coming from the other side. Jesus appears to be holding out his hand to us even as he calls us. He tells us he will provide a bridge over the chasm if we will abide in him. We hear his words, but such language is strange to us, sounding like the dialects of many who have used us or consumed us and then left us along the highway, exposed and alone. We pull back. Many of us return to Vanity Fair and mortgage our heart to purchase more of what is religiously or materially familiar.
A few of us arouse our spirit and take a step toward the chasm. We dig into our valise and pull out the old and torn parchment of road map and journal entries left by those who have traveled the way of the heart before us; the ones we had treated with such disdain. This time the words intrigue us. We realize they are telling us something about our heart that is true. One of them writes:

Tis hard for us to rouse our spirit up—
It is the human creative agony
Though but to hold the heart an empty cup
Or tighten on the team the rigid reign.
Many will rather lie among the slain
Than creep through narrow ways the light to gain—
Than wake the will, and be born bitterly.
(George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul)

Yet, "holding our heart an empty cup" and "tightening on the team the rigid reign" is language we are not familiar with. Our lovers have so intertwined themselves with our identity that to give them up feels like personal death. Indeed, they have kept us from knowing the emptiness of our heart’s cup. We wonder if it is possible to survive without them. We look once more at the journey to see if this sojourner ahead of us can offer any encouragement. MacDonald writes:

But we who would be born again indeed,
Must wake our souls unnumbered times a day
And urge ourselves to life with holy greed.
Now open our bosoms to the wind’s free play,
And no, with patience forceful, hard, lie still
Submiss and ready to the making will,
Athirst and empty, for God’s breath to fill.

We are surprised and somewhat anxious at his words. We had expected him to give us religious instruction. Instead, he commands us to be greedy in our thirst, to open the windows of our heart to the "wind’s free play." "What does this look like?" we ask.
"The answer is somewhat surprising," answers one who is standing at the chasm with us. "It is surprising because it happens in the context of everyday relationships and vocation." She tells us a story of how her own less-wild lover held her prisoner one day. She is a counselor, she says. Not long ago, two of her clients expressed their thankfulness for her help, saying she had done more for them in two sessions than previous counselors had done in months. Strangely, she found herself angry with them, admonishing them not to expect her to do "what they must do for themselves." As she reflected on her surprising anger, it became clear to her that she did not yet totally trust that she could live in freedom as a woman who was truly enjoyable. When her clients complimented her, her old less-wild lover of living by competence shouted at her that she had better keep coming across with counseling insights or her clients would no longer value her. It was how she had survived as a child and for a moment, she forgot the hope that God has placed something in her that is truly enjoyable, separate from her competence.
As she finishes her story, we puzzle over the truth that setting her heart free depends so deeply on trusting in her own beauty; on hoping in what is wildly good. We remember that the last line of the inscription on the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno reads, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." We pull out another of the old journals and read the apostle Peter’s warning that our adversary is constantly at work (the lion seeking to devour us) to convince us that there is nothing wildly good, within us, in God, or in his plans for the future of our love affair. "There is no such thing as true goodness," our adversary roars, "and if there is, it’s deadly dull."
We wonder if it is our enemy who has convinced us that "good" is synonymous with "nice": the way we would be required to behave in Aunt Suzy’s parlor on a warm summer afternoon when we would rather be swinging from a rope over the swimming hole.
It strikes us that to hope in the kind of goodness that would set our heart free, we must be willing to allow our desire to remain haunted. This side of the Fall, true goodness comes by surprise, the old writings tell us, enthralling us for a moment in heaven’s time. They warn us it cannot be held. Something inside knows they are right, that if we could do so, we would set up temples to worship it and the Sacred Romance would become prostitution. We understand that we must allow our desire to haunt us like Indian summer, where the last lavish banquet of golds and yellows and reds stirs our deepest joy and sadness, even as it promises us they will return in the fragrance of spring.
Intrigued by these things and feeling the wind’s free play on our face in a way we have almost forgotten, we seriously consider stepping out down the road we have so long feared and avoided. Just then our old lovers reach out for us with a vengeance. They promise us they will fill out heart to overflowing again if we will just give them one more chance. They even promise to become more religious if that will help.
Drawn by the familiar sound of their voices, and still somewhat anxious about the unknown journey ahead of us, we reach into our briefcase one last time to see if there is any solution to such double-mindedness. We find these words written by another traveler who also faced the chasm that has tortured and perplexed us so deeply. He assures us that even our deep ambivalence is part of the journey of the heart and that only severe measures by God himself can free us. He exhorts us to pray like this:

Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new,
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but, oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend;
But is captive and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain;
But am betrothed unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
(John Donne, "Batter My Heart")

Partly afraid to pray for such bold movement from the wild God who loves us, we sit down to reflect on our plight. But this time, we are honest with ourselves. We admit that Vanity Fair really never has felt like home. We confess that we are truly captured by the less-wild lovers we have taken on, hoping that they would protect us from the Arrows even as they quenched our thirst. And we cannot deny, like it or not, that our lives have always been entwined with the characters in the Sacred Romance. We have lived under the hail of life’s Arrows, some dragonlike in their ferocity, others—the everyday nits—small but continually troublesome. The Sacred Romance has touched us for a moment, but then has gone. It strikes us that we have nothing to lose. We get up and grip our valise for the unknown journey ahead of us. Something makes us search in it for an old scrap of paper. The words scrawled on it always bothered us when we came across them back in Vanity Fair. Now we read them for assurance. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference."

We strike off down the road feeling much more alive than we have in a while. We are clueless as to how we will cross the abyss, but we feel a gladness to be on our way.

A Poem on Prayer

The rumblings of my prayers begin

deep in my chest, turn into 

swells that grow defiantly against 

hopeless situations and broken systems.

I am laying down tracks to usher in 

Your glory, because faith is a gift you have bestowed 

upon me and I cannot sit idly by,

allowing my throat to become coated with dust.

And it is part of my inheritance to sow into 

things unseen; to pray into existence promises
long foreseen.

"Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for him so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first?"

-Elisabeth Elliot

It is my firm conviction that I was created to glorify the King.

June Thankful List

-Going out to eat at Jarabe with Liz and Sam and then walking on the 606 with them. Thankful for laughter and good conversation.
-Talking with Tiff over the phone and catching up after many months.
-Writing my pen pals (!!!)
-Making homemade ricotta cheese
-Serving at church
-I found myself at the gay bar last Tuesday at an event called Outspoken, where members of the LGBTQ community go onstage and share stories. A few weeks ago, Rick, a friend from my cohort, invited me to this event. He approached me and said, "Grace, I know you enjoy a good story or two and this event is a safe space where people tell wonderful stories. I think you would like it." Not really knowing what to expect, but being pleasantly surprised and very much honored that Rick would invite me into his world, I accepted. So... Last Tuesday I dragged Rebecca along and we found ourselves in the back of the room. It's true, I didn't know what the evening would hold, but I'm so glad I went. Six individuals spoke, and the stories ranged from one man's experience coming out to his very traditional, very Catholic, very Italian family to another man sharing about his 200+ weight loss and how ultimately, friendship was what catalyzed the weight loss. The stories were beautiful in their transparency and humanity and I felt touched and humbled. Also, I felt honored that Rick, knowing my strong faith background/inclinations, would think of me.

On a side note, I am determined to run the 2019 Chicago Marathon next year. I want to raise funds to run with World Vision. Next year, I'll be 26 years old and by the time the Chicago Marathon rolls around, will be approximately 2 months in. 26.2 years seems like an appropriate time to run a few miles, eh?

I cry a lot

Liz is on call today at the hospital and I've been feeling a bit down and ended up sleeping in late and never really got around to washing my face or brushing my teeth; anyways, we both found ourselves in the house on a Saturday afternoon. For some reason, we got on the topic of my relationship with my dad and I shared things with her that I don't really like to share with people. I started crying. Like a lot. Seems like a reoccurring theme these days.

As Christians, we live in the liminal space. We know about the death of Christ and we know about his resurrection and the hope of glory that is in the near distant future. But what about the here and now when prayers seemingly go unanswered for more than just a mere few years and heartaches settle into the steady rhythm of a dull throb that never really goes away? I, like many of the Christians I know, live in the liminal space.

So what do I do? I cry and lean on my Christian community. Liz and Emily came around me and took my hands and we prayed prayers that I have long forgotten or rather, have allowed myself to become disillusioned with. And the tears that fell from my eyes betrayed traces of what my heart longs for, and has longed for for quite some time. God, I would like a relationship with my dad. 

I started my day rather late. Actually 6:18 pm to be exact. I grabbed my ugly sneakers and drove out to lakeshore and parked at Foster Beach, my usual start-point for my long runs. And it was quite magical, or maybe even a little ominous because fog blanketed the entire lake and I couldn't see past a few feet for the entire duration of my 12-mile run. 

The liminal space. I'm waiting, and I'm trusting that Christ is just as glorified in this time period, not just in his death and in his resurrection. 

Mid-May Thankful List

I realize I don't write enough thankful lists, so here goes:

-Volunteering at the bike shop and learning more about bikes from Jerry, a retiree who once owned his own bike shop and is a bike mechanic who spends his weekends volunteering at Working Bikes and graciously allows noobs like me to pester him with bike and life-related questions.

-Thankful for my small group and for Leah bringing over bags of Ethiopian food from Demera.

-For my budding friendship with Alison, our newest housemate who moved in a few weeks ago and all of the new memories that have followed hence: runs to Whole Foods to do price checks, steamed artichokes / margaritas, going to IKEA and eating the $1 breakfast (which, by the way, I wouldn't recommend because it's pretty subpar but maybe it is worth it considering it's only 1 buck). Alison is preparing to leave for Croatia in October to be a full-time missionary with Josiah Venture. Check out her story and what God is doing in her life here: https://www.josiahventure.com/people-and-places/croatia/22894

-Baking 'Life-Changing Bread' - basically a bread composed of various nuts and seeds. Sadly, my expectations were maybe a little too high and alas, the bread that came out of the oven wasn't very life-changing. I should have expected that no bread lacking in yeast or even flour could possibly be life-changing. But I had hopes. And now I'm on the #carbhunt and will be making carb-filled loaves of bread that will hopefully make my kitchen smell like a bakery.

-Term 3 of nursing school, which hasn't been too stressful and which I've found to be extremely interesting so far. My inpatient psych clinical starts up at Saint Anthony's Hospital and then in July I'll be on the RUSH inpatient unit.

-Last week, I got to attend the Faith and Race conference with some girls from my church and I was B L O W N away. Leah, Katherine, Blair, and I got together the next day after church to process everything we learned and I am continually challenged to be a learner, seeker (i.e. seek out different relationships and stories that will challenge my perceptions about race), peacemaker...

-Continuing to process my past relationship with Marcos - a relationship that ultimately changed me to be a more others-centered person and grew my heart to better serve others. It's been more than four months since I ended my relationship with Marcos, and it's true, there are still many days when I feel the weight of unanswered questions. Ultimately, I trust that God was the one that led me into that relationship and that his purposes were fulfilled. Still, while it's trite of me to say that breakups are no fun it's true that the first one really does catch you off guard. Who knew the sensation of your heart breaking could actually feel like just that? And to think that this is mostly a universal experience - holy cow. And yet, I trust that when God was asking me to let go, he had my best interests in mind, as well as Marcos'.

Divinity Beheld

I found myself in Sam's room, myself stretched out on her bed and she on the floor with Zeke stretched out luxuriously beside her. It was dusk, and the only light was that which emanated from the various candles lit in her room. We turned on worship music, and humbly sang along and then proceeded to pray expectantly. I glimpsed a sliver of heaven that evening, and the realization of what could be numinous caused us to tremble, and be still.

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Starting a few months ago, a new tradition was birthed in our house and a few of us girls started doing morning cuddle/prayer sessions. Basically, this consists of Emily drowsily going upstairs and then me following. We usually end up in Liz's bed, all three of us tangled up in a web of limbs and morning breath. When the weather decides to be agreeable, a morning breeze will gently find it's way through the open window and carry our prayers perhaps sinking into cracks in the pavement or maybe upwards to realms unseen. 

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For me, going to prayer night at Chicago Tabernacle is something I like to do by myself. It's quite routine for me to drive on Lake Street, with the windows down and usually I'm listening to worship music, or when the mood strikes, Arcade Fire. Sometimes, the timing is just right and the train will rumble laboriously above me and I'll feel a certain tingle of power in my veins as I increase my speed.

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I have been inhaling, devouring, call it what you will, memoirs, nonfiction, fiction, well-written articles and am currently reading John Updike's My Father's Tears. There is one short story, Morocco, and it's one of those pieces that leave you feeling transported. Can memories be experienced second-handedly? 

Even his closest friend, Okwudiba, often told him how humble he was, and it irked him slightly, because he wished Okwudiba would see that to call him humble was to make rudeness normal. Besides, humility had always seemed to him a specious thing, invented for the comfort of others; you were praised for humility by people because you did not make them feel any more lacking than they already did. It was honesty that he valued; he had always wished himself to be truly honest, and always feared that he was not. 

-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah 

Thankful list:
-God and faith
-Writing poetry just because sometimes it's the only way I can best express myself
-Cooking, because sometimes creating something both new and nourishing is a magical experience and opportunity to provide a space for community and fellowship
-Finished reading Educated by Tara Westover (HIGHLY recommend) and currently reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
-Relationships that leave behind indentations on your heart and grow you to be a better person