Misplaced Yearning

I feel like there are a lot of things I'm yearning for, and consequently I feel like I'm living in Proverbs 13:12 -- "Hope deferred makes the heart sick."  So I'm sitting in my apartment on my day off, typing out a blog post, because I know that there's value in giving thoughts a pace (a slowness, a patience and a peace, perhaps?) rather than letting them run as they please.

Deferred hope for serious things, like a world where people of different races at least listen to the struggles, the tears, and the pain of the others--and continue listening until they struggle, cry, and endure pain together on the road to racial reconciliation instead of race blindness.  Deferred hope for less serious things, like comfort for a certain person who's feeling all twisted up right now.  Deferred hope for personal things, like a somewhat stable vision of where I'm supposed to be going in this madness.  Deferred hope for everybody things, like justice for people harassed into homelessness by systematic injustice and inequitable access to resources and catching a tough break.

That verse has a second clause, though: "--but a longing fulfilled is the tree of life."  Honestly, I write this as a reminder to myself: Longings find their ultimate fulfillment in Jesus, who is the True Vine, the River of Life, the Firstborn over all Creation.  God, make me know that that is true; for now I repeat it in faith.  Eh, I'm still feeling sort of deferred at the moment, but this is a good reminder of Advent: "Behold, I am coming soon!" (Revelation 22:7).  Come, Lord Jesus, and let my ultimate longing be for you.  This deferral is making my heart sick.

Touch and Peace

Last week, my community members and I packed up and moved from our spacious and dusty convent to an apartment with strikingly large windows, and simple, lovely light streaming through those windows that I could call disproportionate but I'll instead term bountiful, because there is so much of it and yet it is just right.  It's lovely.

The convent where we had been living had been occupied by volunteers from my shelter for 16+ years. As you might imagine, it collected some fascinating artifacts from its various residents over that span.  One of my favorites was an inconspicuous typed sign taped to the back of one of the bathroom stalls: a "urine prayer" explaining and then offering a prayer to ask God to rid our minds and hearts of emotional and spiritual toxins at the same time as we rid our bodies of toxins in our urine. I wish I'd packed it and taken it with me.

In another stall, a different sign: "Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." - Leo Buscaglia

It's... I don't know, it's maybe not true, and it's not really groundbreaking to me, and perhaps cliched--but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  All those things, the touch, the smile, the kind word, the listening ear, the honest compliment, the smallest act of caring; they mean something. I suspect that there exist people whose lives have been changed by them, and I appreciate the encouragement to be gentle with people when it's easier to be self-absorbed to the point of gruffness (and it reminds me of that other cliched admonishment to "be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle").  All good and well!  But there's an emptiness to that singularity: "a," one.  What about the people who need the listening ear every week of years?  Or every night?  This number, I now think, must have been pulled from the air, but I remember in 9th grade health class being taught that people should receive five hugs per day for their optimum emotional health. (What?)  Then what of about those people who need more than "a touch" for their lives to be turned around?  Those whose trust and self-worth are built by daily acts of caring, by day-in and day-out affirmations of who they are and who they are called to be?  I don't think Buscaglia's quote means he is omitting these things--no zero-sum here!--but what about the long haul?

In another stall, still another sign: "Loneliness is the leprosy of modern society." - Mother Theresa.  Maybe it's because there aren't enough people doing enough small acts of kindness, but maybe it's because not enough small acts of kindness endure to become great and mundane acts of love.

Of all these things which "have the potential to turn a life around," the one I think about most often is touch.  I think about it because of all the things I have the freedom to do at  my job, working as I do with young people who find themselves homeless, this practice of touch is most perplexing. I smile, offer my listening ear, give genuine compliments when the occasion arises, do my utmost to speak kindly, and care as much as I am able.  But touch?

I've sat with residents who are distraught, having just found out they are pregnant while running from domestic violence and living in a shelter and dealing with serious mental health concerns, or having been diagnosed with an STI acquired while living at the shelter on the very day they were to return home to be reunited with their wife, or just being so overcome by the trauma and the pain of the abuse and exploitation and loss.  Sometimes I speak soothingly and sometimes we sit together in silence bearing witness to the sound of falling tears. And there have been times I've offered: Would you like a hug?  Sometimes they say yes and often they say no.

Yesterday there was a resident on my floor who was sick and so was allowed to stay in her room during the day rather than have the door locked.  In the middle of the day, however, some workers came to repair the smoke alarm in her room, and so I went to ask her to leave for 30 minutes (for liability reasons, mostly, to protect youth from possible misconduct by outside workers and to protect those workers from allegations thereof).  (Here I would like to make a side note regarding the absolute value of sleep to healthy human functioning and the relatively low value that institutions, including hospitals but most saliently homeless shelters, place on ensuring that humans can get that sleep: Sleep deprivation is a serious problem for people experiencing homelessness, as it only compounds other issues affecting their situation, and yet due to their homeless status losing sleep is part of a vicious cycle!  See this article for more.  Now, back to the main piece:)  Completely swathed in a blanket, the young woman did not respond as I called her name increasingly loudly.  So, identifying her elbow jutting angularly away from the thin form of her body, I did what I try to avoid doing when waking any residents up: I tapped her very gently.

Her body spasmed frightfully and she quite literally jerked into consciousness, her arms flailing and head erupting from under the covers with wide eyes as she gasped for breath.  I have rarely ever seen anyone so scared.  "Don't ever do that," she panted, eyes darting around the room and eventually identifying my face. "Don't ever do that again.  You are so lucky that I didn't hit you."  It was not a threat, but a helpful warning.  "I must have known somehow that staff was trying to wake me up.  I would have really attacked you."  I apologized: I'm sorry!  I really didn't mean to startle you.  I will not do it again.  Then I asked how I could wake her up in the future that would so she would not be so distressed: "Just scream." 

When I went through my single day of training, I was cautioned against touch.  I don't remember exactly what was said or how it was presented, but I remember being warned.  I'm glad I was--boundaries are important!--but I admit to not fully understanding either.  Certainly, even among my community members, I've learned that touch is not a panacea: one may receive an embrace as an act of comfort, and another as an intrusion.  That's true among residents, too, and I may also find myself in situations, as I did yesterday, where touch is a trigger. But there's an added dynamic when I'm at work, and that's the cloudy idea of "professionalism."

A book I'm reading called Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness mentioned this idea of professionalism in a way that pierced me.  It's by Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier, the founder of the L'Arche communities.  Because the background is important, let me give a quick exposition of L'Arche: L'Arche is a collection of small communities where people who are variously differently-abled (what some would call disabled) live with those who are not.  They do so with a mission not to dichotomize as I just have.  Rather, they recognize themselves as one community where all members participate equally, if in different ways, because they are a community and not a group of care-givers living with a group of care-needers. Hauerwas argues that places like L'Arche are prophetic to the church because they provide a true vision of peace, which he defines as requiring slowness and a place.  He writes, "Peace creates time by its steadfast refusal to force the other to submit in the name of order" (2008:46).  War, on the other hand, particularly in an age of mass and social media, globalizes, accelerates, and "real-times" events of the world.  So peace is really about being personal, being present, and being patient: "For at the heart of L'Arche is patience, which is but another name for peace. ... L'Arche requires that those who do this important work learn that time is not a zero-sum game" (2008:47).

Later, Vanier notes, "Living in L'Arche I have learned that it is a revelation for people with disabilities if you say to them, 'There is meaning to your life.'"--and then, this is it!!--"We are not just doing good to them as professionals" (2008:63, emphasis added).

A resident once said to me, a few months ago, that she just wanted someone to care for her who was not paid to do so.  Her sentiment has since been echoed to me several times by other residents.  How to respond to that?  In some ways, I am not a professional: I'm a very recent college graduate, no Master's credentials, living off a collection of simple stipends and trying to figure out whether or not I can give residents who live at my shelter hugs. But there's no denying that I occupy a professional role.  I am not a friend per se, or a counselor, or someone who is free to use touch uncritically, or a fellow community member in the spirit of L'Arche.  I like to think that I care not because I am paid (in kind) to do so.  Yet it remains that I am paid to care, and I am doing good in a professional role.  This professionalism, this sense of having to do and having to document and having to audit and having to justify, can feel at times like war: generalizing, accelerating, real-timing.  There are times of intimate humanity too, but they don't always win out.

I'm working to figure out how I can create peace at my shelter, a place where there is so just so much.  Whether busyness or chaos or activity or anything else, there is much.  Maybe I as one person cannot create this peace, but I'm at least trying to figure out how I can work toward it.  I don't know how to do that while wearing my professional hat.  But I think asking these questions is a place to start, of looking to understand how to be in it for the long haul.  Two places I look for encouragement:

1) The encouragement of Heidi Baker, missionary to Mozambique: "Stop for the one."

2) The words of Paul writing to the Thessalonians, made richer when I think about what it may mean for God to be the God of Peace, that I've recently been meditating on: "May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it" (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

God, make me a peacemaker, that I may be called your child.

Thanksgiving in a Shelter

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.  What a strange one it was.  Nevermind that on Thanksgiving Eve, knowing I'd be working most of the actual holiday, I had what is definitely one of the most memorable and delicious Thanksgiving meals I've had so far with a collection of friends and housemates whom I'd known for scarcely more than 3 months, if that.  Well, not "nevermind"; "thank you, Father, for your blessing; I am learning to be content whether well-fed or in want."  It was wonderful.  But it was just such a sharp contrast to my actual Thanksgiving day.

As days at work go, it was a very quiet one.  I got to the youth homeless shelter where I work around 2:30pm and all the residents gathered a 3:00pm for a Thanksgiving dinner complete with tablecloths, apple cider, and pie.  Only about 1/4 of the residents on my floor were there, most of the rest of them having been welcomed back, at least for a few hours, into their homes or their friends'.  Homes they had left or been told to leave because they argued or fought or were gay or got pregnant or went to jail or didn't want to deal with the instability or the abuse or the broken promises.  Homes where a big dinner had been cooked and where people would eat together and then go their separate ways, some back to their bedrooms and some back to a shelter.

It's confusing, to be honest: If you have a family whom you can celebrate Thanksgiving with, why can't you live with them too?  But it's not so simple.  I don't pretend to have the discernment my residents do to tell when Mom's stable enough for them to visit versus when going back will just bring them more rejection and harm.  So I see them dressing up, hair done, and tell them to have a happy Thanksgiving as they leave.

But others stay.  We play charades: "promise ring!" "ginger!" "story!" "Michael Jackson!"  And we watch Ms. Doubtfire.  We talk about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and how going once is enough.  We eat the cold cuts that have been delivered to our floor by the kitchen staff to stave off hunger when the Thanksgiving fullness has worn off.  We check on the residents who have chosen to stay in their rooms, alone.  We laugh and chat.

When new residents come to live with us, within their first few days we complete a basic assessment of their history and needs.  It takes the form of a one-on-one conversation with a staff member who asks a series of questions about their housing and homeless history, health and mental health history and status, education, employment status, childhood, abuse and trauma history, arrest history, family and non-family support system, and goals while living at the shelter.  Typically, it takes about an hour.  Around 8:30pm, I found one of the residents whose assessment was in need of completion, and she joined me in the office to conduct it.

Thanksgiving is a terrible day to complete this assessment.  It brings up all manner of painful memories and past traumas, many of them caused by loved ones with the analogues to whom most other people are spending their holiday.  But without this assessment conducted in a timely manner, residents are subject to discharge, and considering that this resident's was overdue, protocol suggested that it was better to be a little emotionally uncomfortable than to not have a bed to sleep in.

Perhaps that sounds harsh or cynical; I do not mean it to be.  To anyone who has not worked in a setting such as a shelter where these regulations are necessary, it seems cold: Answer all these questions that may take you back to places of deep pain, or be kicked back to the curb!  As I've learned, however, the structure is there for a reason, and that reason is to give the best support and services that we can muster to our residents who need them.  Maybe there is a better way to do it (or maybe not, as boundaries and clear expectations have some intrinsic value), but with as many residents as we care for, I don't know it.  So I did the assessment on Thanksgiving night.

We talked about a lot--or at least she did while I listened and tried to keep it moving along with the questions that glared from my computer screen: How her forsaking her family's religion led to a rift in her home that grew until she could no longer live there.  How she does not know where she would be without her school, where she has been well-supported and encouraged to flourish.  How she's been in some damaging romantic relationships.  How much she loved her childhood and how passionate she is about her creative careers aspirations.

And then the last question--of course the last question!  Why is it the last question?  "Have you ever been a victim of sexual abuse?"  And she tells me she has, and lowers her voice, and tells me the details of what happened.  I remind her that she doesn't have to tell me more than she is comfortable telling, and that as she has already requested, I'll make an appointment with her to see one of our social workers soon, as this is a very heavy burden to carry and I don't want her to do it alone.  But she continues: lays out why she used to call it "rape" but now figures maybe he was just "sexually aggressive" even though she said no, why it feels so much like karma, why she was afraid she would die, why...  I've done a lot of these assessments, heard a lot of stories, been present for a lot of retellings of trauma.  After we finish, and I lamely ask her to sign a paper giving us permission to speak to her emergency contact in case of emergency, she leaves and I sit there for a moment to collect myself.  Then I type a summary of what she told me into the little white box on my computer screen, since it seems so inhuman to be typing when someone is trying to tell you that kind of story.

It was by then 10:30pm and my shift was ending.  Feelings are powerful, as is giving them a precise name, but I can't say I knew what I was feeling.  I've long been a faithful student of the declaration that begins Psalm 34: "I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips."  That is, praise (and gratitude, I think, much like love) is a choice: "I will" is not conditional.  "All times" is not sometimes.  "Always" is not only when things are right.

But I know that on that night I did not feel particularly thankful.  There is, of course, the basal gratitude that I always feel at work: Thank you, Father, that I get to be working here, and that I get to be uncomfortable and sad.  But it was somehow too trite a response to say, "Thank you, Father, that I get to be going home, and that I get to be comfortable and happy."  There is just something wrenching about donning my coat and waving bye to my residents, wishing them a happy Thanksgiving for the final time as they play another round of Sorry! and I walk down the hallway of rooms inside which I knew that some other residents are sitting alone.  Again I remind myself to be content whether well-fed or in want because I know I am well-fed.  But mostly the whole scene feels wrong; I know there is not so simple a response as to say, "Thank you, Lord, that I am not in this situation."  So I left and went home and ate some cold pie and went to sleep and woke up warm.  And now, reflecting again, I wonder if it's the same, or better, to say instead, "There but by the grace of God I go."  I trust the Lord, and I will bless him at all times, but this mystery of the unevenness of grace (unmerited!) disturbs me.  Clinging to something (someOne), I remind myself: Our broken world will be redeemed, and I guess it's enough for now.

Now, knowing that I am very small and peripheral but also that I feel more that I can write and that being a body in the crowd means something, I go to rectify, in part, my regrets: #BlackoutBlackFriday

Regrets

I wish I'd gone back to Times Square last night--nevermind that it was late and I'd have gone alone, nevermind I'd already showered and put on my pajamas, nevermind that there will be more rallies and vigils, nevermind that I had to work an early shift today; nevermind that I was tired; nevermind.  If for no other reason than to let my presence serve as a witness to the sorrow of a world rent by killing and racism and pain, I wish I'd gone back.  I watched the news instead, and wore black in mourning (for the death!  for the protests!  for the doggedness of racism!  for the creation that groans!) today.  But I wish I'd gone back.
#BlackLivesMatter

Moments at work, 11/7/14 edition

N: "Ms. Jessica, did you grow up in the hood?"
me: "Mmm, why do you want to know?"
N: "... I think you did."

Post-Grad Living

[an addendum to the accompanying post from today]

This fragment comes to us from June 10, 2014, though I'm publishing it 4 months later:

I graduated last weekend, and on most fronts I've ostensibly got it together: I have a job, and I bought a car, and I don't have any debt.
But I'm trying to figure out the purpose of these fleeting twenties, a third already having left.

I'd like to point out that while my diploma is still intact in an envelope somewhere at my parents' house, the other three things I had "together" are, humorously enough, not: I quit the job (before starting), sold the car (no need for one in NYC, baby!), and am... well, still not in debt, but not really saving any money since that's tricky to do on a volunteer's salary (read: less financially stable than I expected... see "job" above).  As for the purpose of my twenties, I'm realizing it's not different than any of the other decades: love God, love people, and fear not.

Being Worn (not in the knees)

I wish there were more moments in my life recently of which I could say that I was knocked down to my knees and decided to pray instead of dusting myself off and getting up right away.  See, I've been working for the past month and a half at a shelter for homeless, runaway, and trafficked youth in New York City (more on that later), and I've been knocked down often.  It happens.  It happened a few weeks ago when I did an initial comprehensive history with a newly-arrived minor who had been (somewhat willingly) trafficked into New York from several states away then brought by her pimp to our shelter to "work out her issues before coming back" to him, and then returned to the shared staff office where a resident was in tears over having just witnessed another resident be beaten bloody by police for jumping the subway turnstile--went home and cried and prayed.  And it happened more recently when I accompanied a resident to a two-hour psychiatric evaluation in which the exploitation of a friend-turned-abusive (is that redundant?) pimp and the anguish of an antecedent stillbirth that I'd learned about in her comprehensive history were painted in even sharper, fuller strokes--went home and sat on my bed and tried to find some comfort in the familiar Psalms.  But that's a mere two days of a few dozen to date, perhaps not all as intense, but all bringing me face to face with what feels like the underbelly of a world that's stubbornly asunder.  The rest of the days I come home and watch TV or cook and eat dinner or talk with my housemates.  It's not all that often that I remember that praying is breathing.

Usually I pride myself--and that's not a word I use nonchalantly, pride--on being able to bounce back so readily.  Cursed out?  Well, it's not personal.  Girls fighting?  Deescalate and call security if that doesn't work, then write up the incident.  Out of towels?  Apologize since there's not much you can do, already having requested some earlier that day and the previous two days.  But keep moving forward, because there's already a line out the office door: someone needs a metro card, someone needs a letter certifying their residency at a homeless shelter to apply for food stamps, someone needs their room changed because their roommate refuses to clean, someone needs their medication, and someone is just bored and wants to hang out in the office.  And it's good, because that's just what you have to do.  But it's also bad, because having accomplished so much in a day makes me more prone not to let myself be knocked down to prayer.  I can do this!  Really, though, I can't; wasn't built to.  I tell myself this to remember it's true and to make it true; some days I really don't believe that I can't.  Again and again though, the catharsis of the cross wins out over the catharsis of even the most wonderful of housemates rehashing with me the injustices and the trauma of just-another-day-at work, at least when I let it.

I'm lacking.  I hope I've made that clear.  My heart is often more worn than the knees of my work pants, which should be the most prayer-torn pants knees I own.  But that does not mean my experience of working is devoid of spiritual insight.  When I go to work, I know it's an honor.  It's early in my experience of working at the shelter, and I have no qualms admitting that--but still! most days I wake up and I can't believe I have the privilege of going to the shelter, at best to be of help but at least to just be a person who cares enough to be there.  Even when I'm proud of myself for a successful shift, I'm not self-congratulatory in a good-for-you-for-working-at-a-shelter kind of way; this, too, is a gift that's given to me, to not be allowed to close my eyes to darkness and injustice for too long and to see my residents at both their absolute best and their most wrenching worst and to be knocked down, at least to have the call to prayer resound in my knees striking the ground even when I don't answer it.  Yeah, this is the place for me to be.

I've been perhaps a bit vague to this point about what it is I actually do: I work at a shelter for youth who are experiencing homelessness (and often a lot of other things, from domestic violence to substance abuse to sex work to mental health issues).  I work on the females crisis unit, where about 75 girls from the ages of 18 and 21 (and sometimes younger, 16 or 17) spend an average of 30 days while we work with them to find more stable housing and also remove barriers to a successful transition out of the shelter, for example by providing mental and physical health care, GED classes, job readiness classes, and the like, or helping our residents obtain their identification or prepare for upcoming court dates.  Technically I volunteer for a program through which all my basic needs (housing, food, transportation, etc.) are covered in exchange for my service at the shelter, but for all ostensible purposes I am a full-time resident adviser working 40-hour weeks.  I make a lot of referrals and help in various capacities with all the things I listed above and many more as the need arises.  The opportunity to be here is one for which I can credit only God, who allowed me to dally in some other foolish ideas of where I'd be working after graduating before making it clear the game was up and taking me to this exact place.  I'd like not to romanticize my job, and I hope I have not--but I hope equally, and perhaps more fervently, not to have overemphasized its challenges at the expense of communicating the joy I receive from working there.  For now I will limit myself to that.  My words have likely been needlessly complicated; I apologize.  I can only say they reflect my thoughts and my heart, which I hope in time become clearer too.

At last, two songs to share (shout-outs to J-Mel and T-radz for bringing them to my remembrance), the first of which represents how I know I am and the second of which represents where I know I need to be.  Peace my friends!  Let us know whose we are and whom we serve.

(link)

(link)

Be Grateful

(link)

God has not promised me sunshine;

That's not the way it's going to be.

But a little rain,

Mixed with sunshine;

A little pain

Helps me appreciate the good times.

Be grateful.

Produce: a new paradigm

I was praying this afternoon, because I knew I really needed to (obviously.  unceasingly, right?), and the only thing I could think to pray was, "God, I'm so cranky and so grumpy right now, and I'm annoyed at my friend, and I'm hungry.  I know you know, but I thought you should know.  Anyway, here I am."  And it was odd, having proved to myself immediately prior--and unequivocally--just how foolish it was to have tried to assuage my crankiness and grumpiness and annoyance and hunger by reading about Ph.D student debt and wallowing in other similarly vapid internet practices, to get this response: "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance."

Simple: "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance."  I recognized that, from John the Baptist, Luke 3:8.

And that's it.  Not it, the end of this musing (clearly)... that's it, the Word I needed for this season.

See, it was last week that I was again acting the fool and veritably calling for locusts to come and feast on my time--which meant I was being an especially poor steward of my waking hours--that I came across this: an article entitled "Why I Bought a House in Detroit for $500."  I read it, and I was enthralled, and I came as close as one like me, who is not at all given to emotional decision-making and who is fairly conscientious in weighing wisdom and discerning a way forward before deciding such things, to deciding then and there to move to Detroit in June and buy my own $500 extreme fixer upper.  I knew the thought was a bit silly, and maybe somewhat impractical, but I was unsurprised by the inclination in myself.  Restoration like that, which perhaps I've romanticized but which I also know would be backbreaking and dangerous and frigid in the winter and dirty, is redemptive.  Making newly good the bad things, or the unfinished things, or the rejected things, is itself good.  I loved wood shop in middle school, I took a machining class a few years ago, I'm not experienced but I like cooking; there's a sort of reverence I hold for such physical makings; something in me likes to create things.  To produce things.

And thus my mind was recalled to an article I read a few months ago, that I had sampled but not digested, and to which I had to return to give it the proper time to metabolize.  READ IT, please.

So our fundamental orientation in the economy of the Kingdom to which we are called is alien to that of capitalism: We are not consumers, but producers.  We are to be fruitful--to produce fruit!  (This makes me think Marx was perhaps onto something more Kingdom-minded than he knew--not with the "opiate of the masses" thing, but more with the "alienation of the laborer from his labor" thing--but I can't be sure.)   And the fruit we produce is nourished, and therefore produced, only when we are connected to the True Vine.

Reading The Atlantic and Buzzfeed and The New York Times and Boundless?  (I'd include the clear analog, shopping, but since I do so little of that it would be almost irrelevant to a personal post like this one.)  All, for the most part, consuming.  Not altogether bad, but certainly unfit to occupy much of the time of one who should be producing.  Building and budgeting wealth so I can share, restoring a house with no owner to a home, investing in the growth of younger brothers and foster children and siblings in Christ, bringing a musical to life from some ink and paper, keeping a blog?  Producing.  And by the grace of a good and loving Father who grafted us onto His own Vine.

Moreover?  Spending time in prayer instead of spending it on my own selfish pleasures?  Producing fruit in keeping with repentance.  That's the key to my desire to be satisfied in the Lord: to allow myself to choose to produce fruit--that is, plug into the Vine and be nourished--rather than to consume everything I'm told should fill me up and turns out only to give me cavities and a stomach ache.

I may not be packing up and heading to Detroit, and I probably will continue to read the news online; but somehow, I know this is big, and I daresay--or foolsay, though I hope not that one--it's a shift in my paradigm.

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance!

A Life That Matters

The other day my friend prayed for me that one of the things that would mark my last semester would be good, renewing relationships--which is something I have in no way been asking for myself or even thought of asking for myself, but which I was so thankful for her to have prayed for me.  Because I really need that.  Because it's really hard sometimes, the past few years in particular. 

I had dinner with a different friend a few nights ago, and it was one of the most affirming things that I have experienced in a good, long time.  Do you know what he said to me?  He told me that he's noticed that I'm always the one listening, and so he figured that it would be nice for me to have someone to listen to me sometime, and asked me to share with him my life story.  The whole thing.  And when I tried to give him the politely abridged version, he stopped me and told me that he wanted to hear the whole thing, not just the highlights.  Wow.

We continued our conversation a couple of days later, since our dinner was cut short (we didn't make it past middle school...), and one of the things we were discussing was our vision of the successful life: when we started thinking about it, what we thought about thinking about it, what it is... Anyway, I watched this today, and all that little anecdote was meant to set up was that, though I've thought some about success (particularly around the time when I jumped off the pre-MD ship and swam as fast as I could to the pre-PA flotilla), when I saw this, there was no question: 

These surrendered people, this great and extravagant and mundane love?  This is the successful life.

(link)

P.S.  Shout out to my life-story friend, who has no idea that I have a blog and will probably never read this... but if he ever does, a most genuine thank you.  But by then I think it will be redundant, as it would be silly not to say "thank you" in person.

This.

"Love God and do as you please. If you love Him, then you love holiness. What you please shouldn't present a problem."

-- N.D. Wilson, in his Notes from a Tilt-a-Whirl, describing St. Augustine's philosophy; I haven't read the book, but feel like I should now


Two brief additions:
1 - My prayer for this year, my senior year, has been that God would make me faithful in the small things.  It was such a blessing yesterday to hear from a friend that she sees that in me; it's one of those things that can be hard to see in oneself, so I'm grateful (anew) that God "seriously hears prayers in accordance to his will," as she said, and that she encouraged me in that way.  That's actually amazing.
2 - My prayer for this year, 2014, is to be fully satisfied in the Lord--that is, not looking for "outs" in other things, like rest in Yahoo! News or relaxation in watching the Food Network.  Nothing against those things, but... come on.  Jesus satisfies.  Full stop.