daring to be uncommon.

In the still moments of my morning, the beauty of relationship and trust envelops me as I listen to Phil Wickham’s Divine Romance.  It’s one of my favorites.  It brings me back to the reality that being a Jesus follower all comes back to a relationship.  I see an image of Jesus and I embraced and moving together.  I am safe and whole.  I am loved by Him fully and completely.  And only then, can I surrender to the overwhelming grace and incredible journey He’s inviting me into.

I’ve always known that the life I desired, was called to, could only find acceptable was anything but ordinary.  Whether in a seemingly average existence or something completely off the map of normal, I long for extraordinary.  On some level, I think that as Christ followers there’s something inside of us that longs for life that’s not common.   People don’t dream of average.*  I dream of unexpected adventure.  I desire extraordinary relationships.  I yearn for an uncommon story that is unaffected by the pressures of maintaining status quo. 

John Eldridge said this in his book Sacred Romance: 
We have been rescued, but still the choice is ours to stay in our small stories, clutching our household gods and false lovers, or to run in search of life.

So what does this look like and how do we get there?

Well, if I knew what it looked like, that’d be the worst told story ever.  I’m ready for plot twists and blind opportunities.  I’m excited for a story that draws others in and says “wow, God isn’t boring or far away because He was obviously at work with You.”  Psalm 139 talks about all of our days being recorded in His book.  I think God writes our stories as page turners.  He’s riveted.  We’re the stories He stays up all night reading because even though He knows what happens next, He can’t wait to surprise us with what is around the bend.  I love that.

As far as how to get there, there are only two things I know to do.  

The first is to seek the life and freedom that Scripture brings.  As it convicts, as it boldly testifies of our God, as it seals and firms His promises in our heart, we are fitted with His armor and find ourselves ready to follow with our crosses in hand.  The Word makes known to us what God’s heart is.  I know people with seemingly ordinary stories who are soaking up the Word and allowing it to direct their far from common daily journey of receiving and giving grace and love.  It’s inspiring.

The second is a practice I’ve adopted in the last few weeks.  It’s simply to get up in the morning and ask the Holy Spirit to take me on a journey.  My morning of getting ready is often full of questions.  “How would you use me today, Abba?  Where do you want to take me?  What do you want me to see or learn?  How do you want me to rest or be challenged?  Who do you want me to notice or love?  How are you going to do the unimaginable today, Daddy...and can I come, too?”

For me, though, I’ve been discovering how much fear is connected to these questions.  As much as I truly desire all the things I’ve been asking and long for an uncommon story, I am sometimes afraid to even think those prayers.  The enemy whispers that I wouldn’t be able to do it.  Whatever that even means.  I get scared of where this adventure could lead.  I might not have time for my “to do” list if I’m at the mercy of His.  My life may not meet expectation, but cause people to question or even disapprove of me.  I get scared of whom He might have me talk to or call me to love and that it will be difficult.  I get afraid that my life is impractical or unfeasible or irresponsible.  Fear steps in and breaks up the embrace my Savior has wrapped me in.  He fights to bring me wholeness and love despite it, but this fear keeps stepping in between.  It keeps me from experiencing the depth of God’s promise to never leave or forsake me.  It keeps me from desperately clinging on to Jesus when times are uncertain.  And when adventure is high and stories are uncommon, you can’t have anything standing in the way of you and your Lifeline.  I'm sorry, Jesus, for not trusting You.

So over and over again, I speak the truths I know.  God hasn’t given me a spirit of fear or timidity, but one of power and self-discipline.  God, Your Spirit is wild.  I’m giving You my fear and trading it for the adventure of taking up my cross and following You.  Your journey is going to be far more thrilling and fulfilling than anything I could plan or dream and You promise that we’re in this thing together.  We might have to start over again tomorrow when I see that fear has snuck back in the midst of us.  Maybe some days it won’t.  Either way, You are patient and we continue on together.  I love soaking up those moments with You as we walk together today and I see the glimmer in Your eye as we look toward what’s just around the bend.  This life, this faith, this relationship with You is making everything far from ordinary.  It’s enough to bring me through fear into Your freedom and so we keep walking.

my new meantime.

For those of you wondering and/or those who follow my blog at all, I’ve just come through a time of major discernment of how God would have me serve in His Kingdom.  I’ve loved my time serving in campus ministry.  It’s been an invaluable experience and a great first two years of professional ministry and development.  I have been so blessed by a place that has been full of relationship, worship, and mission opportunities all centered in bringing honor to Jesus and furthering His Name.  I do strongly believe, however, that God has used these past two years to prepare me for what’s next.  I’m confident in His calling for me to be a DCE in Arizona.

I will be serving as the first Director of Christian Education at Risen Savior Lutheran Church in Chandler, Arizona.   I served there as an intern for a year about four years previous and have been delighted to see the growth and development that’s taken place since.  My position is DCE of Students and Serving.  I’m excited that I’ll be working with students and creating meaningful connections where they can grow in faith and life and fall in love with their Savior.  I’ll also be working in a brand new area of the church, which is the serving part.  I am thrilled about how God has impressed on this congregation’s heart to take bold steps in serving and honored to be part of carrying that out.  The congregation wants to be intentional about serving both locally and globally.  One of the ideas it seeks to explore is making a community connecting with some local Native American reservations.  I will be playing a significant role in those connections and how we might partner with those communities as well as other local serving.  My role in serving would also include coordinating and leading multiple mission trips each year to places around the globe.

The older I get, the more I realize that I have a unique heart.  God has gifted me with a random bunch of skills, passions, and gifts.  (Then there are these other things that I have not a clue about, but are exciting because I see opportunity for God to totally show up without me trying to take credit.)  I’m so excited about this new calling because it seems that my unique heart fits in the gap of this church’s need and where they are heading.  I love diverse people groups, orphans (both physically and emotionally), mentoring, traveling, culture, serving, worship, teaching, and walking with people as they get introduced to all of these things.  Most of all, I love Jesus and helping others love Him, too.   This position is going to challenge me, allow me to grow, allow me opportunities to step out in faith amidst lots of looming fears that tell me I can’t, and this position will offer grace and freedom to follow Jesus wherever He is leading for the sake of His Gospel.  You bet, I’m a bit scared, but I’m every bit just as excited.  I’m putting on my game face and saying, “Lord, lead on.  I’m trusting You.”

You know, a friend of mine recently told me that we’re supposed to dream big.  Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  That freedom that comes from the Holy Spirit brings a wildness—something massive and adventurous—that we are incapable of.  It causes us to dream dreams that we often think “oh, that’s not reasonable or practical.”  My friend reminded me that God doesn’t care about that.  He thinks “impossible” is fun.  He does “never gonna happen” in His spare time.  We are being used and following the Spirit when we dream so big that it draws us to our knees every single day because we have no idea how it’s going to happen, but we know God is working and capable.  So we, eager to be part of His creating and recreating, humbly submit to how He might use us.  This is how I’m entering this new call.  Excited.  Totally humbled by what I don’t know.  Expectant.  Joyful.  I never know what’s going to happen next, but if I did, that wouldn’t make the adventure very exciting, now would it? :-)

Thank you for your prayers through the discernment process.   I’d love your prayers as this process unfolds—as God and I begin to dream about what this next chapter of my story holds.  Welcome to my new meantime.

new (original) song: I wait.

Well, it's not Bethany Dillon's EP, but creativity begets creativity and I was way overdue for some creative outlet.  A very rough first recording of my newest creation...

I Wait

"To those who wait;" New EP from Bethany Dillon

Bethany Dillon has been one of my favorite singer/songwriters for a long time.  I've had the opportunity to see her live several times and chat with her a few times as well.  I've always admired her and enjoyed her work because it often seemed to me that we had similar hearts.  That was confirmed in the release of her new EP, To Those Who Wait.

You can pick it up on iTunes, but here's one of the tracks for your listening pleasure.

home.

I think “home” is a strange concept.  People say, “home is where your heart is,” “there’s no place like home,” or my friend says, “home is where life realigns itself.”  After a childhood full of moving and an adult experience that has been nothing but transient, I have grown content with the concept that heaven is the place that is home.  Until then, each place feels a little like home, but parts are missing.  This is largely due to my philosophy on home.  To me, home is people.

I’ve thought this for a long time.  After a year in a van with 6 other people, it becomes apparent rather quickly that consistency, a sense of home, is only found with those consistently with me.  Home was my team.  I’ve seen that happen with college, camp, and internship.  It became the most obvious, though, once I’d left my “homes” and returned for visits.

This past week, I had the pure gift of spending a few days in a place where I’ve never lived, but it has seldom been trumped in the sense of home it brought to me.  I’ve never called St. Louis home before (except for in regards to Busch Stadium..go Cards), but a handful of my closest people live there.  They make it so for me.

It’d never been so clear as it was this past week that we are created for relationship.  More than a location, mom's cooking, or gardening in the summertime, home is a state of the heart.  Think about what you do when you get home after a long day.  You change into sweats, put your hair in a pony tail, lounge on the couch, and let it all hang out.  Home is where you can be comfortable, safe, and let down walls and masks that get put back on the moment you step back out the door.

This is my heart’s reaction when I’m among these people.  I’m comfortable.  I’m unafraid to show the most embarrassing and silly things that are often the most honest things about myself.  I feel safe to put on my emotional sweat pants and wipe off the make up of what is socially acceptable.  They see me with my flaws, joys, fears, doubts, and whimsical dreams.  I am known for all the crazy and lovely that I am without my value being placed in it.  And because of that, I can rest on the couch that is our friendship.  I am recharged, encouraged, delighted, and delighted in.  We laugh at things that would never even be shared outside of this home.  We cry about things the rest of the world wouldn’t understand.  We reach the silliest and most broken parts of who we are and the best parts of who we could become and it’s beautiful and refreshing.  In that place, I am so restored.

I watched in these past days as three of my favorite married couples delighted in each other and found home in those relationships.  For the most part, they are all away from familiarity of family and friends.  There are struggles, changes, and growing pains that they are enduring.  They have learned to lean on each other, have grown in that relationship, and have become home for each other in a very real way.  I can’t even imagine.  I already feel so at home with some of my friends.  Even thinking about being known and loved at a level greater than what I've experienced thus far is thrilling.

My dream of home refuses to stop there though.  How thrilling it will be to finally be in the presence of our Maker!  He knows us completely and loves us fully.  To be present in that kind of relationship and see it face to face is beyond amazing.  It’s wholeness.  It’s what my heart yearns for.  Even more than my greatest comforts or relationships, it’s satisfying.  To walk in and be welcomed by familiar open arms that I didn't even knew I recognized.  I see the best parts of myself in this Being.  I am consumed by His love and His glory.  I am complete and all is as it should be.  And that's when it happens.  I've arrived.  This is home.

I'm reveling in the fact that I got just a glimpse of that this past week.  I want to hear--what's home mean to you?

Blue Like Jazz the movie: a review.

After having my spiritual perspective affected so deeply by reading Blue Like Jazz a few years ago (and then again recently), I was thrilled to see the book come to life on the big screen.  After reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I was interested and curious as to how the book would come to life.  It did.

With many liberties taken in the creation of the movie from the book, I was delighted to see the heart of Blue Like Jazz left fully intact.

Don takes a journey from his conservative Christian world into the college dubbed as the “most godless campus in the country,” Reed College.  He dives head first into a world of experiences that many accurately depicts what many freshman face as they take their first flight from the nest (which explains why it’s rated PG-13).  Don is warned about the dangers of being religious and fears people finding out that he is a Christian.  He goes so far as to ridiculing the religious in order to feel connected at Reed.  The common struggle displayed between who he has been and who he is becoming is relateable and is what our young people need to see.  I wish I could show this movie to each and every one of my college students.  Get ready, friends.  There will be experiences and there will be struggles.  The struggles are part of the journey.  You are not alone.

The film also gives a glimpse of a well doing, intelligent Christian named Penny—an actual character from the book.  She is a refreshing character who is honest, loving, and passionate about creating good in the world as part of her journey with Jesus.  Penny is patient with Don, gives him perspective, and shows a positive image of what faith looks like in the midst of a highly secular setting.  For those criticizing Blue Like Jazz for their criticism of “church life,” we see a beautiful picture of unashamed, love-filled faith in Penny.

Penny knows who she is and calls Don out when she sees he’s living a double life.  I won’t ruin it for you, but Don finally admits his doubt in church, in God.  He admits his brokenness, the brokenness of Christians.  He admits he’s misrepresented and been ashamed of God.  It forced me to ask the question, “when have I done the same?”  Whether at college, in the work place, in the grocery store, at a bar, among “secular” or “Christian” friends, when have I been ashamed of Jesus and what He would actually stand for?  I think more often than I’d care to think about.

Faith involves people, therefore faith is messy.  Mine is messy.  So is yours.  We need to be honest about that mess.  We need to be open about the struggle and in doing so, allow others to do the same.  In admitting the struggle, we gain freedom trusting that God’s grace is enough for our doubts and broken parts and we don’t have to pretend to be resolved.  For we are and will be unresolved until Jesus returns.  That’s the point.  It’s blue like jazz.

Go give it a shot.  I pray it will be thought provoking and moving for you.  I’m excited to see how God uses Don’s story and this film to touch peoples’ hearts across the country and around the world for Jesus.  Or at least open the conversation.  Maybe it’s time for you to stop being ashamed.  Maybe it’s time for you to say “I’m sorry.”  Maybe it’s time for you to see Jesus as Jesus for the first time.

Blue Like Jazz just might be what you’re looking for.

this is not the end.

If you've been around me lately, you know that I've been on a Gungor kick, but more specifically the song "This is not the End."  I saw them live a couple weeks ago and couldn't help but dance like a crazy when I longed for the promise of these words and utterly rejoiced in them.

We did a Lenten series this year called eLemENTs ( www.cspelements.org ).  One of the weeks, we looked at the element, clay.  Clay is a cool thing.  It's messy and dirty.  It's basically dust with some water thrown in.  When clay is soft, it is not finished.  It is process.  It is not final, but vulnerable and moldable.

There are multiple references in Scripture to God being the potter and people being clay.  It's a great image.  God shaping us.  In the times that we feel ruined, smashed, or ugly about our life and story, it's not final.  It made me think of being in God's hands differently.  The potter isn't always gentle with the clay.  Sometimes He smashes it to reshape it into something lovely.  What we usually see as a comforting hand to rest in can also be a strong and disciplining hand that is capable of flattening us to start over.  He is a great and terrifying presence that longs for and demands beauty.  I, the clay, beg to just get there already--struggling to wait in the process of being molded.  The vessel won't be finished until complete beauty is achieved.  Who knows how it might get there and how many times it may need to be destroy, dried, watered, and built again for it to be finished.  God won't settle for less than beauty.

But this is what I know to be true.  God is a great potter.  A loving potter.  A potter that doesn't destroy clay for the sake of it and won't push it harder than it can stand.  There will be those days where we feel out of sorts.  We wonder what God is doing.  "How could He make something beautiful out of the mess that I am?"



Isaiah 45:9 warns us about this. "Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’"

We are clay in His hands.  The hands of a good Potter.  A potter so good that let His Son be clay and absolutely destroyed Him.  There was nothing left.  But our God is one who can't end the story that way.  A world in His hands can't end that way.  He is peace.  He is wholeness and beauty.  He is completeness and rightness.  He is shalom.

That is how I know, on this Holy Saturday, with Jesus in the tomb and the world in the tomb, that we won't stay there.  God continues to mold.  The clay sealing our tomb begins to move revealing a stream of light.

And in the midst of the broken, the dark, the death that surrounds, our good Potter leans over us with a knowing smile and whispers, "this, my darling, is not the end."