june

 I didn't think I would actually post this month, but here I am - drinking cold coffee on my parents' couch after feeding and rocking my niece and nephew while my mom got ready for the day...and I'm typing into the void once again.

Realistically, I know this isn't a void. Way more people have popped in and read the words I've written than I ever anticipated (though the numbers are still few). Words have been elusive this past month and a half. Both journaling and speaking have taken concentrated effort that is difficult to muster.

I had goals, of course, for the time Tanner and I would be in New York. A few of them were accomplished; many of them never materialized. As we pack up to head to Wisconsin, I think that's the lesson God has slowly been teaching me this month. Slowly, because I can't seem to learn any other way. Too often, my goals rely on others' expectations of me. I want to maintain whatever status I have achieved in their eyes, and that has been impossible lately.  Not only have I been unable to achieve goals I think others think I should, but it has been made clear over and over again that no one had those goals for me in the first place.

Any standard I attempt to reach without God is impossible, and He is really only in the business of helping me meet His expectations, not everyone else's.

hello again

I have written and rewritten a post called "hello again" almost every week this month, and it never seems to say what I want it to say. This post is going to say none of those things whatsoever.

Tanner and I visited Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, and I had the chance to talk to his Aunt Jody. She talked about his grandmother (her adoptive mother) and how she poured her heart into her grandchildren. She talked about the deep sorrow that always seemed to be present in Grandma's heart, despite the space it shared with a love for God and and joy overflowing from family. She told me that I have Grandma's spirit.

Now, obviously, she doesn't mean reincarnation, because I was in my late teens, early twenties (I think) when she died.  She meant that our souls were made of the same stuff. We are both proof that sorrow and joy are not opposites, that both can thrive in one's heart soil, that love has nothing and everything to do with grief. Grandma was a poet, an amateur artist, a strong heart with perhaps not the thickest skin.

Aunt Jodi asked if Tanner and I want any of Grandma's things before she gets rid of most of it. We asked for her poetry. I want to understand the woman everyone says I remind them of. I want to know the woman that poured so much in the man I married, so maybe I can understand him more. I want to know her, because maybe she will help me know myself.

new perspectives

 when new people speak into your life, new pathways or connections need to be made in your mind. new realities need to be accepted and considered. new ideas need an opportunity to brew, to be mulled over.  here are some of those thoughts over the past few weeks:

"sometimes God uses people to draw our hearts out, so we can learn, in time, to allow the Holy Spirit to that, just the two of us."  a question that I have carried since childhood is, "why isn't praying enough? why does it feel like I need to talk to people, even after I talk to God?"  the reality is that there are two truths. the first truth is that God has created us in community. the second is that God created our most core desires and needs to be met in Him and Him alone. those two truths together are what make that opening quote to this paragraph relevant. God uses His people to work with each other in the process of becoming totally reliant on Him. that answers my question, but it takes time to mull it over and accept it.

"everyone has been wounded by someone else, and everyone has wounded someone else. no one is an exception."  that reality is devastating to me.  at the very core of who I was made to be, I am disgusted and horrified when faced with the reality that I have wounded others and will continue to do so, accident though it may be, in the future. that's a truth, too, but is God's intent with showing me the truth for me to get stuck on devastation? does He want me to spiral downward in despair?  no! the hope, the purpose, the intent is for me to recognize how and where I wound others and to stop, to apologize, to ask God for help in healing rather than hurting.

i am learning, and it is still a process.

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.

entitled to be frustrated?

It’s almost 5 AM, and I’m supposed to be filling the pastry case at work. Supposed to. Instead, I’m blogging in my car because my supervisor left his keys in his apron, which got locked in the building last night. For some reason, though, I’m not frustrated with him. I’m not irritated at all.  A little bummed because this cuts my hours short and I need all the money I can get, but not frustrated.  I have grace for this guy and his forgetfulness.

I’m reminded of all the moments I’ve struggled to live in God’s grace recently. Frustration and anger seem to be two of my most constant companions. Whether it’s because of vacuuming or missing out on friendship or poor grades or lost opportunity or hunger or exhaustion....my explosive emotions have been getting the better of me and everyone around me.

God, I’m so ready to be a spokesperson or ambassador for your grace. I want the people who don’t have or understand it to get it. But I forget, so often, that it’s as ready and available to me as clean drinking water. Thank you for continuing to teach me how to throw my irritation at the foot of the cross. I love you in Jesus’ name.

Flash Flood Warning

My friend, Anna, is really worried that, as Wisconsin (hopefully) warms into spring, the large snowbanks will cause flash flooding.  We laugh at her, whether or not she's right, because pretty much everyone I know will trade a couple flash floods for windchills above the negative degrees.

It's been so long since I've written about what's going on in my personal life.  I mean, I can't remember the last time I wrote a journal entry longer than three sentences, let alone wrote a blog post that wasn't a school assignment. Sometimes (most times) I want to give myself a pass on posting because, let's be real, my only reader right now is my mother.  Even she barely reads this.  But then I remember the point is just to keep the practice of writing regularly for when I'm in a ministry position where writing consistently actually matters.

With that in mind, let's go through the brownie-frownie exercise.

Brownie: I got to go to the Ethnos360 Missionary Training Center down in Missouri last weekend. Honestly, I didn't even go because I wanted an exposure trip to convince me to go there when I'm done in Wisconsin. Some of the sweetest people I've been blessed to know are currently on interim staff down at the MTC: part of my Philippines fam, the Brooks.  Once again, they have been a complete answer to prayer. Over the past month, I've really been feeling the need for someone older and wiser, who's been where I want to go, to sit me down and challenge my thinking.  That's exactly what Danny and Pip did.  From my worries about having a home church, to finding financial support for 2 years at MTC and after, to my mounting anxiety about my next visit to the doctor over spring break, they challenged the way I was approaching each situation.

Frownie (but really a brownie, too): On the way back to Wisconsin from Missouri, my car broke down.  We were only 20 minutes from the MTC campus, so friends were able to come rescue us, but my car wasn't fixable at 10 pm on a Saturday night.  I had to be back for work early, so I caught a ride back to Wisconsin with a school van while Tanner and Michael waited with my car through Sunday.  In the end, one of the main belts had broken and more steering lines had rotted out.  I was amazed at how the community of Christ just completely came together in the situation.  People who don't even know me personally towed my car back to campus, figured out what parts I needed, purchased them, and fixed the car.  All free of charge to me.  In the end, Tanner and Michael got the car back to Wisconsin barely 24 hours after me.  At first, I saw the surface blessing of God providing people coming through to help me. BUT THEN! Guys, I literally wouldn't have been able to afford my car breaking any other place in any other way.  Like, God knew that and planned this minor inconvenience to take care of me.  He's always providing.  Every moment.  Why do I ever think I know what's best for me?

And that's where I'm at.

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. 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

Semester 2

Two tests to go and Bible school is half over, which means I'm halfway to halfway prepared (or at least as prepared as I can be) to going overseas.  So what have I learned?

Today, as we closed out Acts with Adam Demark, he said something that I thought, in my humble opinion, was profound.  He said, "The book of Acts with the word 'unhindered,' not the death of the Apostles Paul, because it isn't about Paul.  This book has always been about the Holy Spirit who will always be triumphant while you and I are expendable."  And rather than being offended, it was probably the most comforting I've heard in a while.

His statement paired well with a challenge we received from Rick Barth in Bible Basis of Missions.  He was talking about discerning God's will and he stated, "I don't want a shout.  I want to be ready to hear the whisper." Meaning we should be so in tune with God's heart, so filled with the Holy Spirit, that God's will isn't a question.  Time and time again this semester I've been reminded of good ol' Roger's (that's my dad) words of wisdom all through high school and college.  "Is your heart to glorify God?  Then whatever you do won't be a mistake."  Pursuing God's heart isn't just half the battle of figuring out life, it's the whole battle.

So again, what have I learned?  At least from this most recent block (maybe I'll tackle the whole semester another time) life might not be easy, but that doesn't mean it was ever intended to be complicated.

Basic November Thinking

I’ve been reminded of how much God actually, really, truly loves me lately. (Which means I’ve had a lot of reasons to be thankful lately, but it’s November and my inner non-conformist can’t write that sentence without cringing and imagining poorly drawn turkeys.) 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been given more little notes and food presents than I thought possible.  Honestly, that statement is true of this entire semester, though. My sweet friend Lydia left a note in my backpack to tell me how God’s light and peace has been especially evident in my life this semester. Another friend, Maggie, gave me a card filled with encouragement.  Someone else, who chose not to leave her name, left boxes (YES, PLURAL BOXES) of Larabars on my desk with a small card that brought me to tears.  I’m overwhelmed because I know I don’t deserve any of this, and God continues to show His love for me through the people around me.

For whatever reason, He has blessed me with more community than I ever asked for that show me love in ways I have never experienced.  It’s a constant flood. Between the girls living on 4th floor with me, to the mentors that open their home to me, to Tanner and even some of his friends...guys, I feel like this crew of Christians is beyond anything I could imagine and it doesn’t even touch Heaven!

God continues to teach me, too.  My class is just wrapping up classes on Theology and 1 Corinthians. My last paper for 1 Corinthians was on head coverings and, can I just tell you, it rocked my world.  I’m finally beginning to understand and wrap my head around the concept that the Biblical metaphorical headship of a man “over” his wife does not contradict the concept of equality.  Being created as complimentary beings does not place one sex over another. I love it!

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been at for the last chunk of time.  ✌🏼