if i were...

If I were to write a blog post I would write about how God has provided a place for Lydia and I to live.

I would write about opportunities to relax and spend time with girls that I barely know and yet feel so connected with.

If I had the words, I would wax poetic about my desire to be certain that I am not an emotional, verbal bulldozer.

It might be worth telling about some truth nuggets from class.

But it’s hard to be faithful to a blog no one reads.  I’ve always had this vision in my head of a time when some of God’s people want to support me as a missionary.  Then, because I was faithful with an online journal, they would have access to me and God’s work in me over the years. And I still have that dream. 

I’m learning that breaks are okay if they have a purpose.  I’m learning that patience and waiting does not always mean proactive pestering in the white noise.  I’m learning that it’s okay to be ready for changes I’ve never even imagined being ready for until now.

Tanner is in Africa, practicing this whole missionary thing, and we couldn’t talk for a while. When we finally could talk, I informed him that he has ruined me. He cleans my car when it gets snow on it, he buys me snacks and coffee, he listens to me when I’m fragile and I cry.  I’m spoiled and also happy and I miss him. And I’m thankful for him. And for some reason he loves me back and it blows my mind.

And if I were to write a blog, I would say that the future looks bright and hopeful and plain old full. 

where has all the time gone?

I am overwhelmed with lists.

There is a list for things that need to be done on my phone: messages checked, emails responded to, figure out how to get the cloud to stop telling me my phone can't back up... A list for homework, additional promises, future plans, insurance, food prep...All of it to attempt to make sense of time spinning faster than my hands can catch.

I am learning that I don't pray the way I ought.  We've been going through Daniel and the man fell on his face three times a day to talk to the God he knew was holy, and I think to Him.  I cast my stray thoughts to Him in moments, but I do not know how to bow in prayer for more than ten minutes at a time.  And they're sporadic minutes.  Not that I need a prayer schedule, but something needs to change because Daniel was a man of God and people knew it and I want people to know it about me, too.

The days are shorter and colder.  Some days it feels like my friends are shorter and colder, too.  This isn't bitterness, because I see the sweet moments we have.  I mean that they are tired, and worn, and this world seems so heavy for all the young Christians around me.  They are world weary, when I think we are meant to be heavenly.  Why do the cares of this life mean so much to all of us? 

October is a hard month for me.  The second hardest is February.  They're claustrophobic months that creep into my sense like snakes looking for an extra skin.  These are the months that I need to remember God is sovereign.  Over my feelings.  Over my worries.  Over my cares.  And over all of the feelings and worries and cares carried by the world around me.  And God is love.  Love is defined by Him.  I am learning that love flows through me best when I am not focused on sharing how I am worried today.  Love is better expressed in sharing the joyful mess of who God has made me for today.  Like, there is only triumph for us now that we are in Christ and I don't understand why we so quickly forget that.

October is a hard month for me.  But I am learning it can be easier.

12 oz oatmilk latte for vivian

Last Tuesday, I got a call from my doctor back in New York.  Over the past year and a half, we have been monitoring suspicious tissue on my cervix, and it's finally been determined that we need to do a good ol' scrape and test to figure out exactly what kind of alien business is happening on my insides.  That means I'm missing the last three weeks of my third semester at Bible school.  That means I need to start packing.  That means I need to figure out travel plans.  That means I can't actually plan too much, either.

On one hand, I'm nervous. The last time I went through any serious medical decision, I was young enough for my parents to talk it over with my doctor while I checked out mentally.  There is a huge part of me that wants my mom to do that for me still, but she can't.

On another hand, I remember how Danny encouraged me when I visited MTC earlier this year.  He encouraged me that this is clearly God's best for me within His plan.  Maybe this is the moment where I get to build relationships with a church back in New York.  Maybe this is time and space necessary to prepare me for a particular ministry, or maybe there is a ministry waiting for me back home that wouldn't be my first choice, but it is God's.

On a third hand, I've grown so used to the community here in Wisconsin, I'm a little afraid of the quiet backside of Summit, where I have all the time in the world to think and stew on life.  But it's also time to meditate on my God and how truly amazing He is.

The good news is that EBI is letting me finish my semester online, so I can keep on track to graduate in December.  So I'm just gonna drink my basic oat milk latte with Tanner and Wesley.  I'm going to play cards with Travis and Emmie.  I'm going to walk and pray with Jo and Lydia.  I'm going to chill with Martha.  I'm going to talk wedding business with Bek. I'm going to get dinner with Vick and Gaby.  And in two weeks I'm going to pack my car.  And it's going to be okay in the end, whatever the end is.

April Showers

It never ceases to amaze me how the things I love are the first to fall by the wayside when my soul is tired. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about Home, about the future, about the dull exhaustion headache always behind my eyes. In this past week of break at home, I remembered how easy it is to fall back into my old pattern. I barely read any of my Bible, felt guilty when I wanted time alone, and allowed the numb apathy of depression to hold sway or my thoughts and actions. For the first time, I consider dropping out of Bible school. The thought of coming back was unbearable and overwhelming.

Why does everything feel so mountainous?

How will anything make me care?

A couple things stood out to me this morning, and while they haven’t exactly fixed everything that has gone haywire in my brain, it’s good for thought.

Number One: Job 42:1-2 - “Then Job answered the LORD and said: “I know that you can do all things and no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.”

Number Two: a quote from Paul Stutzman.

“I walk through the low valleys on this trail and see dead trees and decaying matter and I’m reminded of the death of Jesus. But I continue on to higher elevations and see new growth and new life that reminds me of His resurrection.

“That’s the rhythm of our spiritual lives too. We walk through valleys, we lose loved ones, we suffer, we struggle, we experience many kinds of deaths. We travel on and we reach a higher plane, where we pause to enjoy the views, look back to remember where we came from and look forward to mysteries still ahead of us.

“But we do not stay on the exhilarating mountaintop. If we sat there and never moved on, the views would no longer be enjoyable. And so we go on, just as we do on the trail.

“After valleys and struggles and even deaths, we always have the hope of new life. Someday we’ll pass through the last valley and finally reach the last mountaintop and we’ll never be bored by the glorious view that awaits us there.”

Letter No. 5

Hey Kid,

We left off in chapter 4 with Paul making it clear that God’s thumbs-up only comes from trusting
Him in what He’s said. That’s how we get into God’s family—by trusting Him that He meant it when He said He would count Jesus’ death as payment for my sin.  But what does life look like after that?  Do I just trust God and then move on? 

Obviously, you have kind of a heads up from my last letter that the answer to that second question is a fat no. Chapter 5 starts to deal with those questions, with what being in God’s family actually looks like.  The chapter starts out by telling us exactly what we get when we join God’s family: peace with
God (because when we were out of His family, we were always going to be hostile with Him, but now things are different), grace (that’s God’s thumbs-up to me, because Jesus deserves God’s thumbs-up and gives it to me), confidently and joyfully looking forward to looking good with God because He changes me to be like Him, the ability to be joyful when life gets tough, and the assurance that I will never be disappointed that I joined God’s family.

A little further on, Paul talks about our fickle feelings. We get worried (or at least I know I have) that God might decide to get rid of us.  But, Kid!  He sent Jesus to die for everyone WHILE everyone hated Him, while people were His enemies.  Now that I’m in His family, there’s no way He’ll get rid of me!  Imagine the amazing things He’ll do for His family when He did incredible things for His enemies!  Just wow.

Pretty soon after that, Paul reaches a transition point in the letter.  He moves on to talk about Christian living.   He recaps a lot of what we talked about in chapter 1, with the main point that Adam’s original sin (taking from the tree in the Garden of Eden to try to be like God) affected everyone, making everyone die, BUT Jesus made one payment for everyone’s sin to make joining God’s family available to everyone. And that, my dear sister, is what we’ll talk about in Chapter 6.


So what do I do with what we’ve talked about in the last chapter?  One of the things that struck
me the most was how Paul deals with our feelings of fear about God possibly deciding He doesn’t want us anymore.  You know from my last two letters that I for sure struggled with those thoughts for a long time, and I love the way Paul smacks those thoughts into the garbage.  He’s all like, “Listen, God sent the Person He loves most to die for you while you still hated Him.  He wanted you then.  What makes you think that, now that you love Him and accept His love, He’ll decide He doesn’t want you anymore?  THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS!”  And it just makes my mind rest easy, you know? 

I love you, Kiddo.

Viv

Letter No. 3

Hey Kid,  

I’m going to be real with you, this is the third letter I’m writing, but the first one isn’t in the mail
yet.  It’s a goal for this week is actually to put at least one of them in the mail.  Enough excuses, though, I’m about to lay Romans chapter 3 out for you! 

The chapter starts out with a hypothetical conversation between Paul and a Jew.  They’re
arguing about whether or not the Jew deserves God’s thumbs up (just so you know, NO ONE deserves God’s thumbs up, not even the Jew). To prove his point, Paul reminds his imaginary opponent about Psalm 51, in which David (the best Jew after Abraham) goes to court against God, and God is justified, not David!  God is the only One who can ever be announced right.  Paul uses a lot of Old Testament quotes to back up this idea, but then it finally gets good, Kid! 

Starting in verse 21, Paul announces that now, through Jesus’ death on the cross, God is giving His right status to everyone who believes that what Jesus did was enough.  In the Old Testament time period, God had set up for Israel a system of sacrifices that looked forward to what Jesus was going to do on the cross. Those sacrifices didn’t pay for Israel’s sin, it just covered for the sin like a credit card.  Then, when Jesus lived the whole Law out and died on the cross, all sin was paid for IN FULL by His blood.  Paul also announces that payment wasn’t just for the Jews, it was and is for anyone who will trust that Jesus’ payment is enough!  This doesn’t mean the law is dead and gone, it just means that it is fulfilled and now we get to live in Jesus’ fulfillment of it! 

How does this apply to my life today?  SO MUCH, KID!  I used to think that I could only fit into
God’s plan if I followed Jesus’ life exactly and obeyed the Law to its fullest extent.  I thought that was the only way God would be happy with me.  I trusted Jesus when He said He would save me in the Bible, but I also thought He would save me even though He was angry with me for failing at the Law every day.  I love this because it explains what it took so long for me to understand as a teenager. Jesus did everything for everyone; it’s simple.  All we have to do is trust Him that He did everything He says He did.  Of course, Paul is going to keep explaining the ins and outs of the salvation situation as we go, but I hope this letter encourages you

I love you, Kid.

Viv

Letter No. 1

For nine weeks this semester, my class will be going through the book of Romans.  Part of our homework is, after each chapter, stopping and writing a letter to someone about what we've learned and how we can apply it to our lives.  While I'm pretty sure I know who I'm going to send my letters to, I also want to put it on here.  My hope is that maybe someone will find it encouraging:

 Hey, Kid!

We're starting this semester at school with a class on Romans. Each week, part of our homework is to write a letter about what we have learned to a non-student, so I chose you. Here we go!

You know that Romans is a letter from the Apostle Paul to the early Roman church.  It starts off with Paul introducing himself to the church as a servant of Jesus, an apostle, and as someone set apart.  It was really cool to see that he introduced himself as a servant first, because that was what he considered to be the most important thing for the Romans to know about him.  Then, they needed to understand that his teaching held the same authority as James or John, the early church leaders who walked with Jesus.  His title as an apostle gave him that authority. Finally, when Paul says he’s set apart, it explains how God saw Paul.  He had one job in God’s eyes—spreading the gospel, and that’s it.

The next thing that stood out to me was verse 15, which leads into the "theme verses" of the letter. Anyway, it talks about the news of Jesus' life, death and resurrection (which is the gospel) and how it is as much for people after they're saved as it was from them to become saved.  The gospel literally plays into every aspect of Christian life!  That concept goes forward into verses 16-17, where Paul basically says, "I am beyond proud of this Jesus story because it shows us how right God is and it gives salvation from sin because He gives His right-ness to people FREELY through Jesus!"  The big point you need to get is that God's salvation for people comes through trusting in God alone.



One more thing! Paul gets into explaining how God revealed Himself to everyone, even the most remote people groups, by His creation.  Kid, you have to read verses 20-23.  At one piont, everyone alive KNEW about God, BUT PEOPLE CHOSE NOT TO CHERISH THAT KNOWLEDGE, Kid!  Humankind actually CHOSE to forget God.  So what did God do?  He let them forget and gave them all the horrible consequences that went with choosing darkness over God's light.  He let them go, ready for them to realize how awful life was without Him, ready for them to turn back to Him.  They noticed, all right, but they got all excited about how horrible they could be instead of going back to God and His right-ness.

There is a lot more, but those are the highlights that stuck out to me the most.  Sometimes the hardest or most time-consuming part of learning all of this is how to apply it to my own life.  When I look back at how Paul introduced himself, I don’t think the first thing I’ve ever told someone about me is that I am a servant of Jesus Christ.  Honestly, I don’t that I’ve ever spoken or even thought of myself in those exact terms for any extended period of time until this class.  Kid…that probably (which means definitely) needs to change.  

 The other major thought that is going through my mind stems from the bit about what happened when people didn’t cherish their knowledge of God.  It reminds me of myself when I went to college for the first time. I feel like, for the first time, I am truly understanding how equal the playing field is between me and the unreached tribal nationals in Africa in terms of knowing God.

I love you and God loves you,

Viv

there and back again

It's crazy to think that Christmas and New Years Day have come and gone.  I've driven to New York, stopped in Ohio twice, driven back to Wisconsin, and stopped at a train station along the way.  We're amping up to do leadership training before the semester starts, then classes and work both kick off on Monday. 

Over the break, I was supposed to go to the doctor to have some tests run.  For the past two years, I have had abnormal results in other routine tests, and my PA suggested that it was time we took a closer look at things.  The first specialist didn't do any of the things she was supposed to do and, after further deliberation with my PA, we decided that I should see someone in a different practice.  My new doctor, however, isn't accepting new patients until March.  I feel like I've been waiting forever to find out what is going on in my body for certain, but the waiting isn't over.

Real talk: I'm not a patient person.  Like not at all.  I like to think I am, and I try to be when I'm dealing with other people, but I'm for sure not patient when it comes to dealing with myself.  I want to know what's wrong, why I'm feeling the way I feel, and what I can do about it, and I want to know all of it yesterday. And maybe that's why God's timing is working the way it is.  I need to wait on Him.  I need to trust Him. That's all.

Medical aspect of break aside, it was probably the most relaxing break I've had with my family in years.  We played a ridiculous amount of board games, ate all the time, stayed up late and slept in. Of course there were moments when we all got under each other's skin, and I'm 100% happy to be back at school, but my over-arching memory of the break is sweet.

On to Semester Three!

more picture memories

(Emily, the lovely lady in the middle, and her husband open their home to me at least two or three nights a week.  They’re basically my school parents.)

(My CM chicas:)

(Definitely a garbage picture, but I like it anyway.  If you look closely, you can see where I have a butterfly bandage on my finger, where I lost a fight with a squash knife.)

Keepsake

I took sometime this afternoon to tuck some sweet notes of encouragement away in my journal.  This school never ceases to amaze me with the amount of people that go out of their way to show love to others.  The body of Christ is alive and active and I am blessed to be on the receiving end of its care so often. 

We’re half way through with semester numero dos, so I thought I might just take a minute to be fired up about some of the truth we’ve been talking about in class lately.  This week closes out nine-week studies on both Life of Christ and Prophets (mainly Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel), and a three-week study on Man and Sin.  Man! I could spend forever ranting about how much sense Ezekiel makes when your perspective is to be in awe of and enamored with God’s radical glory.  Or about how comforted we can be in the reality that we’re all born dead and only once Christ is alive in us, that’s life!  The feelings of shame, fear, and guilt are signs of spiritual death and once alive, we are free from those chains! Can I get an amen?!

Have you ever heard the phrase, “To whom much has been given, much will be required”? Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s a verse in one of the Gospels. But either way it’s true!  I’ve been on the receiving end of so much care, and God has definitely been desirous to pour me out in return.  My introverted self has been taxed almost to the max.  I can’t remember the last time I was left alone to recharge for more than an hour in the gym before sunrise.  And yet, I have joy and the ability to continue to show love to the girls I live in community with on campus.  

praise

YAHWEH

He is as He is.

I AM.

Unfathomable.

Beyond the edge of the universe yet intimately breathing life into every cell of creation: God.

 THE God

(note the big “G” God,

and no

lower case nonsense),

outside of linear thinking and movement yet working within those confines for my sake. YAHWEH

God Who sees, hears, knows—

holy;

God above and below.

He’s an enigma, out of reach like a seed in water, unattainable and yet! He abides.

Constant

as twenty-four-hour days

so God

chooses to remain.

He meets me where I’m at and stays there

until I say, “Here I am, send me.”

“Abide

in me and I in you.”

His Word—

alive, speaking truth.

From age to age, He doesn’t change;

outside of time, so He is unaffected by seconds ticking by.

YAHWEH

He is as He is.

I AM.

Unfathomable.

gluten-full or gluten-free

Brief prelude: I love food.  I also have a sweet tooth. Also, there’s a bakery twenty minutes away that makes vegan, cane sugar-less scones.  And I have some really great friends that went to experience that with me. (With the promise we’d go to a second bakery for them afterward.) Life is good.

(The first bite of a chunky monkey scone 😍)

(Marty, Acacia, Jenny, and me)

(Too many choices. Also, I dress like a hobo. It’s fine.)

Comforting?

What does it mean to be holy in a sinful body? What does it mean to be truly humble in our relationships? How do you reach the ones who are so far retreated inside themselves, even they have forgotten the way out?  In lieu of answers (which I’m working on), I want to share a sort of poem almost directly lifted from one of my recent conversations with a twelve-year-old girl.

I say, what’s your favorite part about school?

Leaving.

I say, okay, so what’s your least favorite part?

Coming.

The teachers, she says, spend all their time

yelling.

The teachers, she says, spend no time 

listening.

They say, she’ll make it through just fine 

complying.

They say, she just needs to stop all her 

fighting.

Really? That’s what they say to be

comforting?

Really?