Texas

In the last couple of months, I have been tested and tried. In that I have been changing, seeing myself for the beautiful, loved woman God has made me. I am not perfect, nor will I ever claim to be. I have made mistakes, but I repent from them and ask for forgiveness from myself, the people I have sinned against, and God. I have found there are people I know that don't understand who God is and think that it isn't ok to separate myself from that which is hurting me. I realize my actions are misunderstood and people will take offense to them, but I ask that those people whom take offense have forgiveness written on their hearts instead of allowing the offense to attach itself to them. I will not allow the hurt, bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, anger, fear, grief, perversion, or any other negative emotion or sin to attach itself to me. It may mean that I don't speak with you for a period of time until God can strengthen my foundation in Him. God works in ways that even I, one of His loved children, do not understand.
I ask that no one pleads with me to keep in contact with you. If God says for me to not speak with you, I will listen to him before I listen to a fellow human. You don't know what God is doing in my heart, mind and soul unless I tell you. You don't know the conversations I have with Him. God's wisdom is greater than any human wisdom and what makes sense to Him doesn't always make sense to us, especially to those who don't have a personal relationship with Him.
I came to Texas unsure of what to expect, not knowing what kind of changes God had in mind for me. I still am unsure of what to expect, but I do know God has good plans for me, good changes to  make within me. I pray for the people in my life who do not know God, that they may come to know Him. I desire for them to realize their own potential, which can only be found in God.
Something I am learning is that my life is not my own, and that it isn't such a bad thing for me to belong to God. We are here because of Him, so why not Give Him the Glory instead of taking it for ourselves? What about ourselves deserves Glory? The knowledge and abilities we have, we have because they have been given to us by an almighty, sovereign, loving, just, forgiving God.
I desire to live the life I have been given to Glorify my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I desire to be loving, kind, forgiving, joyful, peaceful, firm, uplifting, confident. I want to be a blessing to the people around me. I want to be able to discipline and rebuke when needed. I want to be able to look people in the eye and tell them who my God is, and why I am different. I want people to see God in me, rather than seeing me. 

Listening to God

For the last couple of weeks, God has been very much on my mind and heart. I have been having a hard time with things because I knew for a while that the person I was staying with wanted me out of her apartment. The morning I left to visit family for Easter, she told me that she really needed me out. I was worried about it the whole week because I had a feeling that she wasn't going to be happy with me when I got back. I was there for one night before she got a bit brash about it. I left that afternoon a bit upset and went to my friend Nikki's dad's place in Long Beach where she's staying.
I know I should have been out a while ago; I wasn't happy being there as I didn't have my own space or privacy and it was stressful. There were too many people in such a small space--we were getting on each others nerves. I haven't gotten a job, so getting my own place or renting a place with friends has been out of the question up until this point. I have wanted to work, because I have been so bored not doing so. I've been so tired of looking for work and not getting any prospects, that I've been tempted to pull my hair out.
I'm thinking about going to Texas with Nikki. I've been praying about it and since I don't have anything holding me down here, it may be the best move for me to make. I was considering moving back up with my parents in WA, but I don't think that's the best option. I don't get along well with my dad when we live under the same roof. Part of it is that my dad doesn't know how to treat me like an adult--I think he still sees me as a kid. Another part of it is that we are so much alike, making it hard to know how to deal with each other.

Headcovering Commitment

I have had a hard time committing to covering my head. I go back and forth. Some days I cover, while other days I don't feel like doing so, so I don't cover on those days. I want to, but at times I feel self conscious about it.

I recently renewed my license and in my photo, my head is covered for "religious reasons." So now it validates it even more. It's less of an issue, I guess in a way, because now my official form of identification has a picture of me with a scarf on my head. I still at times feel self conscious about it because I don't personally know any other Christians who head cover. I've been covering since last September and I don't think I will stop unless God tells me to do so.

New Beginings

December 13, 2010
Last Friday, I left Job Corps. One of the security guys, Brandon took me down to my dorm to get my stuff right after he got to work, and for half an hour we spent our time loading my stuff into the Durango. On the way down, I warned Brandon I had a lot of stuff, but he wasn't quite prepared for it. My stuff was in the aisle of the AWOL room, and when we got there and he opened the door, he was amazed at how much stuff I had-- 7 boxes and several bags, including a suitcase, hiking backpack, and my school backpack. Brandon got me laughing so much with him picking on me about how much stuff I had, and when I reminded him that I had been there for two years, he told me that in four years of college he hadn't accumulated nearly as much.
When we got back up to the gate, my friend Deedee was there waiting. Given her car wasn't big enough to fit everything, I put only what I absolutely needed into her car. Brandon had offered to put my stuff in the shed at the gate until I could pick it up. He finally went to ask the security manager about driving myself and my boxes out to seaside, who said yes if we could do so in one trip. So we got to spend an extra half an hour together.
We laughed more on the drive-- there were a couple of times when he changed lanes and I looked to see if there was anyone next to us; habit from when I was driving.

Natural Disasters

Last Thursday, there was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Areas of the west coast of the US were evacuated, including Seaside, OR. I have read articles and seen photos and videos of the damage in Japan, and it breaks my heart-- not so much the damage to the buildings and cars and earth, but rather the impact the damage has had on the people there; that and the lives that have been lost. Many people are trapped or without food, water, shelter or warm clothing, or wondering where there loved ones are. Others have died--drowned, crushed, starved, dehydrated. I cry even as I type this. I know that there is hope in God, but there is only a small percentage of Christians over there; it is one of my most fervent prayers that the Japanese come to know God through this tough time. I think God is allowing natural disasters to be more frequent and severe as a way to get people's attention and focus on Him.

Carmina Burana

I got to sing this when I went to Edmonds Community College a few years ago. This isn't the group that I sang in, though.

Calling for a Flood

While I'm Waiting John Waller

As for Me and My House - John Waller

Embracing the Windstorm

By Christine M. Smith
Psalm 104:1-5,10-13
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, in one of her books on death and dying, speaks about the power of embracing our greatest fears and the sculpturing marks that death leaves upon our lives:
To love means never to be afraid of the windstorms of life: Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings. I hope this [sermon] encourages people to expose themselves to these windstorms, so that at the end of their own days, they will be proud to look in the mirror and be pleased with the carvings of their own canyon. (1)

When anyone in the human family takes her or his own life, we are left with a deafening windstorm. The multitude of emotions that sweep through our hearts and spirits are fierce and brutal at one moment and hauntingly sad at another. If we are distanced bystanders, the windstorm only holds us for a moment and then flings us quickly back into life. If we are those most lovingly connected, the windstorm will leave us forever changed. Suicide is one of life's most overwhelming storms. It is mysterious beyond all our analyzing, all our searching, and all our naming. In the face of its profound message, we stand utterly vulnerable before each other and God.
The psalmist knows in an intimate way these mysterious moments of life and boldly declares God's presence in the midst of all.
You fixed the earth on its foundations,
for ever and ever it shall not be shaken . . .
In the ravines you opened up springs
Running down between the mountains,
Supplying water for all the wild beasts. . . .
From your high halls you water the mountains,
Satisfying the earth with the fruit of your works.
          Psalm 104:5, 10-11, 13 NJB
Yet in strangely contrasting images, when compared to the pastoral scenes of peace and harmony, the psalmist quietly proclaims: "appointing the winds your messengers, flames of fire your servants." Surely God's people throughout time have known God's movement in swift transforming fire and God's presence in fierce swirling wind. Sometimes fire will serve us an unknown gift, and the wind, even though a storm, will carry a message.
Suicide is shocking! We are a people who want to forget that the threads of life and death are tied at every turn, part of the same fabric, woven into the very cloth of existence. And each time we forget, death shocks us as some intruder or enemy of life. We feel in these moments that death has taken hold of us against our will. We cannot fathom any human being willfully taking hold of death. But in reality this is what happens, and their numbers increase each year, in each generation. In the face of such a message, such an act, such a choice, where is the God the psalmist praises, the creative and sustainer of all we know?
I have little to say about God's activity in the contemplation and taking of one's own life. It is a mystery I am content to leave an ultimate mystery, but I do know something about what that action does to the rest of the human community. When suicide happens, we all must speak about some of the profound questions raised, the faithful responses made, and the affirmations of faith that are renewed. We need not look outside ourselves for God's redemptive activity; rather, in the face of suicide we are called to look within us and around us to see and feel how redemption is manifest among us. For those of us who do not shield ourselves, this event leaves carvings on the canyon walls of each of us that take on a peculiar beauty and hope.

If we are able to move beyond the "whys that we will never be able to answer," let go of the "what ifs that we will never be able to know," and set free the "if onlys" that keep us locked in the past, we will clear our minds and hearts to perceive and ask the larger questions of our own lives and life itself.
How are we to respond when a 15-year-old boy walks slowly and silently behind a school building and shoots himself? How are we to cope when a brother hangs himself or a mother overdoses on too many pills? These moments feel like such an assault on life, we are paralyzed with grief. If God's redemptive activity is present and alive within these human horrors, we have a difficult time discerning it. God seems cruel in silence, powerless in the finality. If redemptive activity is only understood by us as God's capacity to control human choices, or our Creator's willingness miraculously to restore to life that which is dead, then God is painfully absent. Yet if redemptive activity involves bringing forth life from death, rebirth from letting go, and canyons of depth from terrorizing storms, then God is very much at work. Don't most of us ask deeper questions from life in the face of deaths that seem so lonely and despairing?
In the Christian community we must all ask ourselves where we have failed to nurture and sustain life for each other, and where the power of death has strangled the fire of life in the deepest recesses of our own being. The psalmist speaks God's praises and sings unceasingly the steadfastness of life's goodness, yet on another day a lament will pour forth from this same persons' heart.
"Yahweh, my God, I call for help all day; I cry out to you all night. May my prayer come to you. Hear my cries for help, for my soul is trouble." (Psalm 88:1-2, NJB).
We are so much like the psalmist. Life for us moves between a hymn of praise and a lament of despair. Life is difficult to live, and far too often we collapse into one death or another in the midst of its demands. The windstorm deaths of teenagers, alienated lovers, despairing parents, and hopeless adults violently turn us around to face life again.
When we perceive suicide to be an act of hopelessness, we turn to the question of our own faithfulness and the sureness of life itself. In those searching times we pause to ask whether or not life finds a home in us and in the places and communities where we live. As we ask these questions and seek their answers, we find that God's redemptive work happens within and among us in ways more mysterious than we can comprehend or say. These windstorm deaths often become wings of transformation and flames of rebirth for those of us who remain.
 Somewhere between the winds of death fully and clearly chosen and the fire of deaths tragically and desperately perceived, there are sandstorms that leave us with swirling challenges and beckoning glimmers of hope, political suicide that protest injustice and give witness to a new vision, self-giving deaths of middle-aged adults who firmly believe that life has run its course. These deaths, too, are oftentimes messengers and servants that we do not fully understand, and yet they are not easily dismissed. When we take every death seriously, it will always call all that we do and all that we are into question.
The psalmist stands beside us and proclaims anew God's eternal presence and asks us to embrace our Creator, one who comes to us as a spring gushing forth in the valleys, as a drink that quenches every thirst, as one who is clothed in majesty. But the psalmist's claim upon us is never that simple, for we are also charged to bless and celebrate the God who comes to us as wind and loves us as refining fire. When we plummet to the depths of what suicide really means, for a moment our simplistic answers are diminished, our religious piety is silenced, and our moral certainty is shaken. In these moments God moves in redemptive ways, calling us to throw our arms around the windstorm and let it cut grooves and holes and carvings into the very canyon walls of our souls.

(1) To Live Until We Say Good-bye, p. 155.
http://www.fiercegoodbye.com/?P=130