Ruminations of the week:

Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Isaiah 51.1

Today in church someone spoke a word about people being hard-hearted, like stone, needing a hammer to chisel away the rock keeping them from true worship. I seconded their prayer, their cry, I remember the stone in which my heart was encased only a year ago (this week!). But later today I read this verse and the gratefulness only increased. Can it increase more?

I talked to someone the other day, and in the midst of her saying how much she missed me and how sure she was of the Lord's will for my life this summer, she said one thing that I've been so excited about since. She said that since I've been gone since winter break she's heard such determination in my voice, whether it is to be content here, to stick to a schedule, to get the Lord, whatever it is I'm doing, she hears that I'm doing it in earnest.

The Lord's been speaking to me about the past few seasons of my life and it's been a little frustrating for me to realize that this season is going to have to be a different season than the one in which I've grown so comfortable. This year has been a season of being. Enjoying the Lord, basking in His goodness, testifying of His grace. But He's been speaking to me that this year will be a year of doing. That means this year will have to be a year of hearing. I'm excited.

I realize I've said little about my roommates, either last semester or this:

Annie is my direct companion, we share a room and a bathroom, and a blowdryer. She is everything I'm not, which is fine, because I'm everything she's not and I've got that on her. She is tall and thin and staggeringly beautiful and musical and wild and witty and friendly and social and she likes cream of wheat. Last semester we became friends and this semester I feel the lack whenever she's not around.

Monique is the Californian surfer babe, mulatto and proud of it. She has crazy curly hair and a huge laugh and the kind of smile that can't help but make everyone around her smile. She likes to wrestle, much to the chagrin of our downstairs tennents. She likes her boyfriend. She likes to eat yucky chicken fingers. And she likes to pull me down on her lap once or twice a day.

Kristin is the vagabond firefly. Born in Jamaica and raised in the Philippines, she completes the flavor of our small home. Always ambiguous and consistantly constant, she does crazy things like dye her hair pink and practice Karate in our living room. She is my eclectic friend and we mesh when everyone else disagrees. She loves art and color and relationships and the Lord.

Together we make up our apartment--a collaboration of four girls, ages 19 to 25, all on different routes, all headed toward the same goal, and all at the same conjunction, happily together.

Now you know.
Aren't you glad?

Life is not so filled with twists and turns, swerves and surprises, as it was this time last year. I thank the Lord, and don't have to delve very deeply for even an inkling of joy. Things fall into place neatly and in their time, and I somehow am okay with obedience and patience and all that entails. I read my bible a few times each day and memorize scripture with fluid ease. I wake with thoughts of praise and go to bed with intents of repentance. I fellowship with believers and pray for those who don't. I smile and give a testimony. I remember afresh all that has been accomplished and pray that I'm only a little bit done. I stand on promises, both spoken and unspoken, and ask for an increase of faith in them both.

So last night I went to bed, and perhaps it was the lateness of the hour or the duties of the day, I don't know, but when I searched my heart for a prayer, it eluded me. When I tried to find some earnest desire or painful request, all I found was contentedness.

It scared me.

Because even though all that I said in the first paragraph is true, I still confuse contentedness with complacency. I still confuse that rest and peace inhabiting my heart with the passivity and undoing of my soul. I still frighten myself into thinking that joy can't be enough to propel me into the things of God, there has to be passion as well.

Perhaps there's some truth to that, I know there must be; but in the meantime, and when all I can find is the joy, I'll rest in that. I know that the joy of the Lord is my strength, not the wavering barameter of passion.

I still haven't lost my summer tan. I know that because I am wearing a Gap demin skirt I bought last fall. It comes to just above my knees, which are bare. Yes, bare. Yes, it is January and it is 70 degrees outside. Any takers for the jealousy corner?

In other news, our apartment is clean. I just marrooned my way through it with a washcloth and a vacuum.

I met with my advisor today. 19 credit hours, an RA job, homework, and working at the stables is too much for this person to undertake with joy. I'll be dropping American Literature on Monday and picking it back up this summer. That will knock me down to 16 hours and a more doable schedule, it will also mean that graduation has been pushed from Spring 2007 to Summer 2007, a few mere months and summer classes. S'ok.

When I first started this weblog I would post all the thoughts running through my head on one post a day, beginning each new thought with bolded print. I stopped doing that when my posts began to be more essay style. But I think in light of the infrequency of my posts recently, I'll begin doing that again. That way you only need to read the bold print of each paragraph to determine whether you really care that much about what's going on in my life.

In World Literature we are reading Voltaire's satirical Candide. Thus far it has been brutal rapings, murders, jolting resurrections, true love, and the cutting off of a princess's posterier; yes, all the good stuff of literature, I would agree. But then I came across this passage, which, surprisingly was void of any violence and/or vulger foolishness:

"You are making a foolish mistake [to want to leave Eldorado], the king told them. I know very well that my kingdom is nothing much; but when you are pretty comfortable somewhere, you had better stay there. Of course I have no right to keep strangers against their will, that sort of tyranny is not in keeping with our laws or our customs; all men are free; depart when you will, but the way out is very difficult. You cannot possibly go up the river by which you miraculously came; it runs too swiftly through its underground caves. The mountains which surround my land are ten thousand feet high, and steep as walls; each one is more than ten leagues across; the only way down is over precipices. But since you really must go, I shall order my engineers to make a machine which can carry your conveniently. When we take you over the mountains, nobody will be able to go with you, for my subjects have sworn never to leave the refuge, and they are too sensible to break their vows..."

Of course Voltaire knew the irony of the last statment, but we readers are not always so keen. It took me a time or two to reread it to discern that it was not the insensibility of leaving which kept the subjects in Eldorado, but the foolishness of their vow.

And so it goes with us. Or me, at least. I make vows, foolish ones, smartish ones, seemingly wiseish ones, and ones I never think twice about. I swear to never do, always do, be called, not be called, leave, stay, go, forever and never, and almost every single time I find myself in bondage to that vow, that promise, those words I spoke without any real thought. I regress further into Eldorado, not because I don't want to leave, but because I spoke of never going too rashly.

I'm challenged by that, to hold my tongue and still my head. To hear the voice of the Lord and calm myself by His presence, instead of my certainty.

A man plans his way, but his steps are ordered by the Lord.
Proverbs 16.9

I can look far ahead of me and know where I want to be, but my constant goal needs to be the letting of Him order each step to get there.

Tonight we went around a circle and confessed those frightful and intruding plights of humanity. The things which touch us all and haunt us after the lights have been turned out and our heads hit the pillows. Those vices of character and self-loath. Sin, in short.

Three of them. And I didn't even hit the chiefest. It's this, I'll confess it now; it's the fear of being unwise. Yes, the fear of being unwise. The fear of intruding on a path not marked out for me to take. The fear of stepping out in what I think is faith but what is really just foolishness. It's the fear of making the wrong decisions with the wrong information for the wrong reasons, even if it all seems right. It's not just second guessing, it's short-changing, and it's my most relentless of sins.

Really, it's just faith inside-out. And upside-down. All wrong.

Isaiah 30 says this to an errant nation:


Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher, will no longer hide himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you 'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right or turn to the left. And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, "Be Gone!"

I'm so intent on being directed every step of my way, so needy for the roadmap with highlighted routes, and so hungry for affirmation from the authorities in my life, that I forgetten that I have a divine Teacher who will tell me, when the time is right, to turn to my right or to my left. There is no need for me to know the route, I only need know the destination. There is no need for me to know the timing, I only need know that the end result is eternity. There is no need for me to lack trust in the guide, He's the maker of Heaven and Earth, and He knows the way, even with my eyes closed.

My only real duty is to respond to his directions with a scattering of distractions; to say to them "Be Gone!" He'll plant my feet when they need to be planted, and He'll uproot my stubborness when it needs to be sifted, and He'll purify the dregs at the bottom of my vessel. My steps will never really be wise, the way I envision them to be, but they will be guided by one Who is wise, and that's the way it should be.

Is it okay to love some people as much as I love these people?

I'm alone in our apartment and it's oh so nice. Relationship excites me, especially with these girls, my roommates, but being alone energizes me. I spent four hours in the bone chilling cold this afternoon teaching girls and boys how to put their heels down and keep their eyes up whilst going over a jump and then spent four hours cuddled up in a blanket with my head buried in an American Literature book--both definitions of a perfect day.

All this scheduling, lack of cell phone minutes and lack of a computer of my own has given me quite a lot of time to reflect and think about a few things. I love it. I put on a worship CD in the other room and meditated on what it means to be wholly His. The phone rang a few times, invitations to mingle, a request to go ice skating, and another to cheer the Lady Flames Basketball team. I've said no to all of them, content to find myself again. Content to find the Lord without the need for other people around. And then I catch myself, brinking on what scares me more than anything: that sickening independence from relationship that I love so much and loath so much.

There are suddenly no attachments this semester. Nothing I can't say no to. And so I have. Said no, that is. Perhaps it's the fear of being attached to things I don't want to be attached to, perhaps it's the knowledge that I find the Lord more when I don't rely on others to point me to Him, perhaps it's just because I like the sound of silence. I don't know.

But it reminds me to make sure that I'm not mistaking aloneness for a quiet time, not trading relationship with others for a relationship with myself, not accepting the glamour that is silence instead of the socializing that is growth. It's where I'm stretched and grown. It's where I'm used and made aware of the glaring insufficiencies. It's where I hear the Lord by hearing others.

So this is nice. This aloneness, this quiet. But, Lord, let it be a respite, not a habit.

Things they don't tell you when you're hired for an RA position:

Well, really just one.

Your phone bill will skyrocket and you will be left with no minutes left and two weeks until the end of your billing period.

If you need me right now, right this minute and it won't wait until the 27th of January, you can call me at 423.614.6044. Leave a message. I'll call you back. I promise.

Yes. One of those horribly boring but terribly informative posts. Yes. One of those.

I've been getting resettled in down here in my new home. Resettled in familiar patterns and reevaluating old ones. It's the old ones that get me every time. I'm optimistic enough to think that the necessity of forming new patterns will be enough incentive to actually form those patterns; I'm patterned enough already that I find it difficult to change anything at all. New Year's Resolutions are fruitless for me.

But as I think back to Last New Year's Eve Good Cheer and Wishes, I can't help but thank the Lord, and all His blessed stars, that He was resolute enough to catch me from myself this year. It's been amazing.

That said, though, there are a few things I'd like to see accomplished this year; and I'll settle for them being accomplished in my life, but let's be optimistic, shall we?

I'd like to really really really stick to a schedule this semester. I am a little bit overwhelmed by the magnitude of things to be accomplished and the fact that there are more than 24 in a 24 hour day.

I'd like to bring my GPA back up to par. I'm not sure what par is when referencing golf, but scholastically speaking, a 4.0 would be ideal, but I'll settle for it not budging from its current 3.8. No, not one inch. I can't afford it.

I'd like to save my pennies enough so that I can buy a new laptop without the guilt of credit card debt. Mine is completely rot (The real explaination for the lack of posts this week. I'm using my roommate's currently.).

I'd like to foster relationships that are wholly fruitful. I didn't do that so much last semester. Hung out a lot for the sake of hanging out. I feel yucky doing that.

I'd like to really work on writing this semester. I wrote about twenty papers last semester. Twenty. That's it. And I was proud to hand none of them in. Not one.

I want to communicate in a bigger way the things that have been instilled in me. Not just nod my head in agreement, but really communicate them.

I want to do everything I do with excellence as though the Lord was inspecting it, for indeed He does.

I want to trust that He is the author of all of those 'I'd like's', and that He knows all the million desires of my heart.