On Faithfulness

I was reading through a previous blog that I had started in college. This post was written while I was in a discipleship program in Upstate New York, and reflecting on the lessons that God was revealing to me through day-to-day circumstances. I found it to be both encouraging and convicting, so I'm reposting it here.

God's faithfulness is not measured in one life, it is measured in His remembrance of His covenants. He is faithful, but I think many of His mercies and gifts are mislabeled and assigned as indicators of His faithfulness. Much of my mentality stems from bad habits and a twisted perspective from which I am still being delivered. Grace is still a new concept for me, and I will probably be learning about it and consumed by curiosity with it for quite some time. But, because of the mentality I grew up with, I think it is necessary for me to distinguish between the two concepts of "faithfulness" and "mercy."

Mercy: compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm; an event to be grateful for, especially because its occurrence prevents something unpleasant or provides relief from suffering.

The small town I currently call my home depends largely on year-round tourism; the summers bring hikers and lakeside vacationers, the winters bring skiers and snowmobilers. Winters without snow mean decreased tourism and the whole town suffers to the extent that snow is brought up as a prayer request frequently during our church service. Is waking up to three inches of fresh powder a sign of God's faithfulness? As tempting as it is to immediately begin praising God for His faithfulness in bringing the much-needed snow, I think it's important to instead recognize an answer to prayer like this as a mercy.

Maybe I'm simply criticizing semantics, but I do think we run the risk of an entitled attitude if we think that God's faithfulness is revealed by whether or not He answers our personal prayer requests. God does care about the little 'non-essential' prayers of His people, but He is by no means bound to answer them according to our wishes in order to prove that He is faithful. When I thank God for His faithfulness in providing a community of Christ-centered people to live with, is my deeper attitude one of deserving the community? "God is doing a great job of staying on top of giving me the things I deserve. Thanks, God!" To be honest, I am sinful and prideful enough to believe that on some level I do deserve the day-to-day blessings of life, and that God is really just giving me the due rewards of living a 'Christian' life.

As I sit here writing, a friend came in and gave me a coffee he had bought for me while we are both on a work break. I hadn't asked for the coffee, but he wanted to bless me with a surprise. (I was blessed.) Is the coffee an indicator of his being a faithful friend? By no means! But say this friend and I had been working together for a few months, and say he took delight in surprising me with a cup of delicious coffee from the local coffee shop each day. I get used to the gift, and begin to expect it as a sort of unspoken agreement in our friendship. Is he an unfaithful friend if he on day decides not to get coffee? Am I justified in being put off because he didn't give me what I had come to expect? The coffee was a gift, and it is no less of a gift the hundredth time it is given than it is the first. All that changes is my perspective. Of course, this analogy will fall apart, but the scenario stops me short when I really ask myself if I would be as surprised and thankful for coffee in a few months as I am sipping it right now. I take far too much for granted. I am all too easily tempted into believing that we all deserve the sun each morning, and that God is just holding up His end of our 'unspoken agreement' in each sunrise or answered prayer.

I want to cultivate an attitude of thankfulness. I want to see each morning as a mercy, and not as something I somehow deserve. I'm still seeking understanding in recognizing God's faithfulness, and it will most likely pop up as another blog post in the future. Either that or Grace. I'm still pretty captivated by Grace.

"Not in My Backyard"

I've seen this phrase tossed around a bit regarding stances on refugees, and I don't understand why people are so offended by it. I wholeheartedly agree. Have people in my backyard? No. Absolutely not. That would be utterly ridiculous.

It's cold out there. What if you're a family with little kids? There are no lights out there to turn on in case they get scared of the dark. Not to mention that there isn't much room in three squares of cement, and cement is no place for you to sleep.

Come into my home.

Come into my home and stay with us. Sleep on our bed, use our kitchen, use our towels, use whatever you need, whatever you'd like. What do you need? If we don't have it, we'll get it. Teach me how to cook your favorite foods, and don't worry about paying for the groceries. Teach me about who you are, what you love, what you're passionate about, what makes you laugh. Teach me about your country, and please have patience and grace for me in my ignorance. Let me laugh with you; let me cry with you. (Fair warning, I cry pretty easily.) Please let us share what we have with you. It's not much, but it would be our great privilege to share it with you.

If you ask me if I've believed all of the vitriolic rhetoric surrounding refugees, I'll tell you honestly that I did at first; that I still fight the shadows of doubts and fears and prejudices. I will ask for your forgiveness with tears in my eyes, because I am truly sorry for allowing fear to be my first response. But I want to learn how to be driven by love and compassion. I'll tell you that I was scared to open my home to people I don't know. But I don't want my fear to be bigger than my love. I'll tell you that, at my core, I battle with extreme selfishness, greed, and fear, and I need to kill those impulses daily. I'll tell you that I still have so much to learn about love, and that opening my home is a chance to learn more about sacrificial love. I want to learn how to love in practical, specific ways...not simply in abstract ideals.

If you ask me then why I've opened my home and my life to you even though I was afraid, I will gladly tell you about the One who owns everything I have and everything I am. The One who gave me everything I have so I could share it with you. The One who gently teaches me that my love should be bigger than my fear. The One who promises that no matter what happens on this earth, in this nation, in this family, in this home, to the people I love more than words can express...He holds the eternal future. The One who loves you, and who weeps with you. He's too big for my words to express, and I hope my actions do more justice when my words fail.

If you don't want to ask, if you just need to be listened to, if you just need a quiet, safe space, come into my home. But please, not in my backyard. It's cold out there.

Life Lessons from Trudy: Hospitality

Ryan and I had the immense pleasure of hosting some good friends from Illinois as they passed through Laramie on their way to climb Devils Tower. We had six road-weary and stoke-heavy climbers in our apartment, and I couldn't have been happier about it. 

Chess, vinyl, and 007 on N64. Life is very good.

I love hosting people. I love having people over, making food, and planning adventures. Heck, I even love cleaning the apartment before people get there. (Seriously. Ask Ryan.) I love creating a space for people to rest in. It's a way in which I can care for people, and I love to love people. More and more, I find that I like to host people because I feel like Ryan and I have been given so much, and I want to give back.

I have always been tongue-in-cheek when I've said that one of my mother's primary spiritual gifts is hospitality. But now that I have my own space within which to create a home, I'm not so sure it's as flippant of a statement as I initially thought. All growing up I remember Trudy effortlessly, gracefully, and warmly inviting people into home. It was our home, but it was also home for anyone and everyone who needed a home. Sure, there was often a lot of work involved in preparing a place for people, but she found joy in that as simply another part of caring for people. It wasn't a chore for her to stay up late the night before Thanksgiving to make sure that there was enough food for all of the college students who couldn't travel home for the holiday; it was a lot of work, but it was never a chore. Trudy cared for people so much that it was a privilege for her to get to serve them, no matter the cost to herself. And she never, ever made others feel the weight of the work to prepare for their arrival. She never pressured people to enjoy themselves at the risk of offending her. She simply created a place for people, and invited them in to be themselves.

At it's heart, hospitality isn't about having the right pillows or towels or decor. It's not about having the house sparkling clean and neatly organized. It's not about showing off Suzie Homemaker skills. Hospitality is about caring for people. It's a privilege and an act of worship, because I truly believe that God is glorified when we love and care for others.

So, Trudy...thank you for setting that Godly example growing up. Thank you for the way you taught me to love people. Thank you for teaching me to share what I have, even when it doesn't feel like much. Thank you for teaching me how to delight in the details of serving people. Thank you for showing me that serving people is a privilege and a joy. Thank you for teaching me that hospitality is more about what people feel than what they see. Thank you for the way you love people as an act of worship and thanksgiving to God. I am thankful for you, and I am doing my best to do what you taught me!

On Joy

This draft has been sitting on my heart for a few weeks. It's vulnerable for me to write about hard things, and it's easy for me to worry over who this might be forwarded on to. But hard things are real, and real things can lead to deep lessons, and deep lessons are worth sharing. Right? So, here's my heart.

The past few weeks I've been thinking quite a bit about Joy. I'll admit that this season of life for me has been discouraging. I've been feeling tired, discouraged, accused, distrusted, burdened, and weary. I'm so weary. I think only recently I've realized how worn down I've become. But in the midst of this heaviness, I'm grateful for moments of refreshment and restoration. I've felt rebuilt and restored as I've gotten to meet up with old friends and new family. I've had sweet times on sunny porches that wind up with confessions of hurt that lead to healing tears. I've been able to laugh from my toes while sharing salsa and seltzer with dear women in my life here. I've glowed with the feeling of being so loved with kisses on the temple for no reason whatsoever. I've been reminded of the beauty of autumn colors: deep, rich, muted golds and greens and maroons. I've felt at peace in the wilderness, and I've been reminded of the ways God speaks to me there. I've been reminded of how much I love writing and reading words. I've snuggled up with old and new friends with s'mores around a fire. I've been working on engaging in spontaneous time with friends, and been surprised by how easy it can be to enjoy moments that aren't scheduled (this is big for me). I've become more and more grateful for my husband and the patient love he shows me each day. I milked a goat. (See? Spontaneity.) I've learned new games and been reminded of old favorites. I've taken small risks and have received sweet joys.


I've been so hungry for community, but hesitant to seek it for a lot of different reasons. There are large parts of my heart that are still sore from recent experiences, and the temptation is to let those parts harden. And, if I'm honest with myself, I can see that I've let those parts harden to some measure because I've given up on community for the past few months. I haven't been seeking community, and I've been slowly hardening the parts of my heart that have been hurt. Not in an antagonistic, angry, or bitter way, but definitely in a defensive measure to protect my heart. 

But even as I try to close myself off, God is rescuing me from myself and from these reclusive tendencies. He's been sending me reminders of joy and healing my perspective of community through...community. There is something so deeply necessary about friendship without an agenda. I am being reminded of how to participate in relationship without looking for or assuming an agenda in the other person, and I'm finding such healing and joy in the process. I've said before that we experience celebration to the degree that we experience grief, and I'm learning how applicable that core thought is across relationships as well: I can only heal to the degree that I am vulnerable, as hard as that vulnerability might feel after being hurt. The sweetness of Joy is so strengthening in heavy times, but I can only experience the joy of community to the degree that I'm willing to be vulnerable. 

I am still very much in the process of learning these lessons, and of being able to (or willing to) articulate them to others. But I think they're worth looking into.

On Valentines

Remember back in elementary school when you would bring in enough Valentines treats for everyone in your class, and everyone got candy taped to red cards with your name scrawled in purple or pink crayon? I think we should bring those days back. Those were great times...especially because the most common candies to distribute were Reese's, and Reese's are delicious.

I did some brief research on St. Valentine (VERY brief...as in I looked him up on Wikipedia and crossed my fingers hoping that it hadn't been 'revised' past all truth) and found an interesting note. According to Wikipedia, "the name "Valentine" derived from valens (worthy, strong, powerful)." (Full disclosure: I did do some minor punctuation edits to that quote.)

"Worthy, strong, powerful." I like that a heck of a lot better than the images usually conjured by Valentine's Day...images of pinks and reds and fuzzy baby animals blushing and blowing kisses to one another. (Not that those things are inherently bad, they're just not my thing.) "Worthy," "strong," and "powerful" are all words that I want to characterize my life and my love.

How do we love worthily? What does it mean to have a strong, powerful love? What does it mean to love like Jesus did? (I don't know, which is why I'm asking.)

I have been finding that love looks differently each time; that each person, each situation, each season needs a different expression of love than the last. Love focuses on the need at present, even if that need isn't immediately apparent. Thus, there is no one answer to the question of how to love in a manner that is worthy, strong, and powerful; in order for love to be worthy, strong, and powerful, it must be focused on the Loved rather than on the Lover's desire to love the 'right' way.

I want to live a life of worthy, strong, powerful love. But the only true Source of that kind of love that I can find is in Jesus. The only way I can hope to live that kind of love is by first and foremost receiving that love anew each day (each moment of each day), and through loving Jesus by loving those He loves. 

So, in this season of life, as I fondly remember pre-printed, perforated cardstock, glossy Valentine's cards, please know that I am thinking of all of you. I have a deep love you all of you that is sourced by the One who is Love. He loves you so much more than a Valentine could ever communicate, because He loves you more truly, worthily, strongly, and powerfully than we can ever imagine. And we are invited on a journey to explore that love, and share that love with each person in front of us. 

May we live and love in a manner that truly reflects that kind of love.

Trail Life

As a staff we've been reading through a book called Changes that Heal and talking a lot about healthy self-awareness.  I'll admit, I was skeptical of the book at first.  But it has sparked some really good discussions during our chapter debriefs each week, and there's been a lot of good content!

The chapter we read this past week led to a discussion on self-awareness and self-analysis, and how we can often be tempted to lean only on ourselves for self-understanding.  (By the way, there are several philosophers who have dissected this topic, much more eloquently and thoroughly than I could ever hope to...read through Levinas, Derrida, Gadamer, Heidegger, Husserl, etc. and their thoughts on Phenomenology and "the Other.")  I thought about the parallels between figuring out who I am in the context of community and when I need to figure out where I am when I'm reading a map on the trail.

Above is a topographic map of one of the areas in which we lead courses over the summer.  It takes the right perspective to be able to translate that green and white map with squiggly brown lines and be able to accurately see where you are on the map when what you see in front of you on the trail looks more like this:

That's a picture taken by a friend of mine during my first course with SROM as we were hiking in the Wind River Range.  (I know, it's gorgeous.  Even looking at it now, I can't believe it's real and that I got to stare at it while I ate my dinner that night.)  This is Squaretop Mountain...you can find it on the map above in the lower middle leftish.  The tricky part about reading maps is that you can't ever rely on only one feature (a mountain, ridge, lake, river, etc...something that's not likely to completely change a whole lot over time) to tell you where you are.  Unless you're exceedingly familiar with the area in which you're traveling, you can't accurately determine your location based on one point.  For example, based on the perspective of the picture above, can you figure out where on the map the picture was taken?  You can't do it based on looking at Squaretop alone, you have to take into consideration the mountains to the right in the picture and the field in which you're standing.  

In orienteering, we use a method called "triangulation" to help determine more accurately where you are on a map.  The basics of it involve looking first to see what features you can determine around you...you have to see where you actually are first.  A common mistake is to try and first focus on the map and project what you see on the map onto the features around you.  Instead of looking around at where you actually are and seeing a large, square mountain in front of you, a field around you, and a set of mountains to your right, there is the temptation to look at the map first and find things on the map that might possibly resemble what you see around you.  The danger here is that, rather than getting an accurate picture of where you are, you're trying to force where you want to be or where you think you are on the map to be the reality of where you are.  "Based on the map, we should see this feature which....uh...could be that over there...."

Triangulation, when done incorrectly, will let you lead yourself further and further away from where you want to be with the utmost confidence in yourself.  However, when done correctly, triangulation will give you a pretty accurate idea of where you are on the map, it can help you plan out the path of least resistance, and can help you prepare to be expecting as you move forward.  

In a similar way, God puts us in community to give us an accurate picture of who we are and where He would like us to be going.  I'm not saying that we should all go out and get analyzed by every single person in our community, but I have found a lot of benefit in getting to know and be truly known by two or three close friends...people that are solid and are not likely to completely change a whole lot over time.  People who are willing to help me get an accurate picture of my strengths, my weaknesses, my successes, my failures, my gifts and abilities, my temptations and shortcomings, and how to continue to grow into becoming a woman after God's own heart who walks in the freedom of knowing that she is Beloved of the Lord.  As much as I might prefer to trust my own intuition and my own self-analysis, that would be tantamount to walking into an unknown wilderness area and trusting in my "gut" to lead me to a good, safe path.  (Spoiler alert: that is how people get lost in the mountains and die.)  

I need a map and compass in the wilderness.  I need to actually use and pay attention to the map.  I need to know how to use the map and compass correctly.  And when I don't know how to do those things, I need to seek perspective from people in my group who are much better at reading maps than I am.  I need to seek perspective from people in my group who are familiar with the territory in which we're traveling.  If we're diligent in learning from where we've been and we're accurate in our assessment of where we are, we will get to go to some pretty incredible places together.

Keeping the Soil Fertile

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none.  And he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none.  Cut it down.  Why should it use up the ground?'  And he answered him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure.  Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'  (Luke 13:6-9, ESV)

It's amazing to reflect on how easy it is for me to see the potential in others, but then how quickly  I tend to give up on myself.  When talking through a dry season with a friend, I can so clearly see how God is working in them to will and act according to His good purpose; but when processing through my own dry season, I lose sight of any progress and can quickly sink into a sort of spiritual apathy.  

I can't expect to be growing and able to produce much fruit if I'm not taking in the necessary nutrients!  Much like the vinedresser from the parable above, I have to tend to the soil first with the faith that the fruit will come.  Lack of fruit is the sign that something is wrong, but what is the appropriate response to that sign?

In times of spiritual apathy the easy choice is to focus on my lack of fruit (the lack of joy, the lack of caring, the lack of any wisdom to give to others in my life, etc.) and by so doing to let that discouragement drive me deeper into apathy, eventually leading to an ever-increasing cycle of despair, apathy, discouragement, and depression.  I need the reminder to 'tend to my soil,' as it were: to fill my soul and spirit by spending time with my Gardener.  My job is not to try and create something from nothing by striving to produce fruit without fertilized soil; my job is to take in the nutrients from my Father, Gardener, and Friend.  He is the One who created healthy trees to naturally produce good fruit, and He is the One who will work in my life to bring 'good fruit' in my life.  He is my Source.  If I am connected to Him, the dry season will pass, the apathy will lift, and the fruit will come.  

Is this to say that I have no responsibility in the process?  By no means!  I do have a responsibility!  But if I try to produce fruit, I'm in essence taking glory from God because I'm claiming that I can do what He does of my own strength.  Yes, Jesus tells His followers that "by their fruit" you can distinguish good teachers from bad.  But He doesn't say "by their fruit you will recognize them, so worry about the fruit you bear."  He says "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. [...] Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing."  (John 15:1, 5, ESV)  The command is to "abide in me," 'find your nutrients in Me, let Me fill your soil with good things.'  I am to be intentional about 'tending the soil' and making sure it is full of good things rather than letting it fill up with unhealthy, contentious things.  Where does my mind drift when I don't have anything to occupy it?  What thoughts or feelings am I entertaining?  Am I choosing to devote my mental and emotional energy to things that are of God, or am I letting my sinful desires creep in and take up residence?  Am I seeking nutrients, or am I seeking to produce my own fruit?  My own fruit will inevitably sour and rot.  The fruit that God produces in me will last.  May I be a tree that naturally produces God-glorifying fruit.

Lessons Learned in the Van

I've always loved road trips.  I love packing the car to best utilize every square inch of space.  I love putting together a snack box to treat myself to fresh fruit or veggies halfway down the road.  I even love the crappy gas station coffee as I watch the sun rise over the highway after driving for 3 hours.  I love making long playlists for different moods of the road:  mellow for the very beginning of the trip, but building quickly into golden classic rock songs to belt out as the highway stretches on to the horizon.  Or maybe I'm the only one who does that...that's okay too.

This past weekend, I got to drive down to El Paso with my church.  28 of us from our church piled into SROM's 2 new (used) 15-passenger vans early last week and started the 14-hour drive down south.  It reminded me a bit of the many hours I spent in similar vans on youth group trips in high school!  It was a great opportunity to get to connect with people in my church that I previously hadn't had a chance to get to know very well.  (It's amazing how quickly you can get to know people when you're crammed in the back seat together fighting the beginnings of feeling carsick.)

We arrived in Texas around 7:30pm on Thursday night and were warmly greeted by our church family in El Paso.  As exhausted as we were from the road trip, it was such a joy to connect and mingle with brothers and sisters in El Paso, from Kansas City, and from Fort Collins.  Even now as I reflect on it, our church family network is pretty amazing!  Ray, the pastor in El Paso, stood up to welcome us, orient us on the building we were staying in, and give us a basic schedule for the weekend (a very basic and very flexible schedule).  

Our Laramie church family had planned on going to Juarez to work with a children's ministry on Friday afternoon, which gave us time to solidify plans on Friday morning.  We also had an amazing time of prayer and worship on the roof of the school building!  It was amazing to get to look over the city of El Paso, and then turn and look over the border to Juarez.  We prayed for our time there and for the ministries on both sides of the Rio.  Piling again into our trusty vans, we crossed quickly over into Mexico and jumped in to help with the kids.  

I've done children's ministry in Hispanic cultures before, and every time I deeply wish I could speak Spanish!  But I'm also reminded of the love language of kids: playing.  We set up different games for the kids, had a puppet show, and painted faces, all with the heart to just love on the kids as much as we could!  I got to work at the face painting table, and quickly memorized the three most popular requests:  mariposa (butterfly), estrella (star), and corazón (heart).  As the afternoon passed, I slowly started remembering little bits and pieces of the Spanish I've collected from past trips...and it's amazing how quickly I forget them again!  

Saturday we split up and worked at two food distributions that the church in El Paso runs.  We spent the first two hours packing food into plastic bags for people to pick up as they came through.  The actual distribution is open from 10-12 the first Saturday of every month, and serves about 300 people at each location every month.  Along with caring for the physical needs of providing food, the church also offers to pray for each person that comes through.  Many smile, thank us for the food, and decline prayer.  But there are several who came through who eagerly accepted prayer.  Ray coached us to not fall into the trap of simply praying for their immediate situation (for a sickness, for provision of a job, for the healing of a family member).  He reminded us that the greatest thing we can offer them is Jesus, and it is Jesus who works all things (including immediate challenges and trials) together for His glory and His kingdom.

As we were packing the food, I kept thinking about Mary and Martha preparing for Jesus and his disciples.  I am a Martha by nature...I'm most comfortable being busy and packing the food and getting things done.  It's much harder for me to be Mary and to be content to simply sit at Jesus' feet and love as he loved:  without a schedule.  Once we were done packing and the people started coming in for the food distribution, there wasn't much for me to do other than smile and welcome them, and thank them for coming.  The entire time, my internal thoughts were running along the lines of "Is this really the best use of my time?  Aren't there other projects I could be working on?  What else can I be doing?"  But Jesus doesn't call us to always be doing.  He calls us to love the person in front of us.  And loving people means stopping myself from seeing people as another project to add to our missions trip to justify the long drive and the expense, and to look them in the eye and love them as Jesus loved them.  Without agenda, without impatience, without busyness.

Spending 14+ hours each way in a van provides ample time for reflection (another thing that I love about road trips).  As we were driving back on Sunday, I thought about what my agenda had been for the weekend, and what ended up being God's agenda.  The leadership in my church had much less of a project mentality, and much more of a person mentality.  We went to El Paso to connect with our church family and to support them in their ministry.  We didn't go so we could leave feeling like we had accomplished some sort of project; we didn't go because the church in El Paso needed us for any project of labor.  We went because they are our family, and we love them.

The Body of Christ

Monday morning staff meetings at SROM are quickly turning into some of my favorite times!  We come together as a staff to pray for our students, our alumni, our staff and directors, and anything that the Lord has been laying on our hearts throughout the week.  We take the time to really dive into the devotions that we lead students in throughout our courses, and we discuss the different needs we see in the generations we're serving. 

This week we talked about the general shift from the Church as an institution to the Church as a Family.  We drew on the concept of tribes in the Old Testament (Abraham, Israel, 12 tribes) and translated it to our lives today as covenantal church families.  Though we are not necessarily related to one another by DNA, we are related to one another by the blood of Christ.  We are all part of His Body; we belong to His Body.  For me, it hit home the point that I am not my own.  Because I have committed to Christ and have embraced His commitment to me, I am now part of a spiritual family that is significantly affected by my life.  I don't have the luxury of keeping the consequences of my actions to myself; my actions, choices, decisions, etc. affect my ability to contribute to the growth of my spiritual family, whether positively or negatively!  The effects of sin are communal, but the effects of blessing are generational (Deuteronomy 5:9-10). 

In our individualistic society, this is a tough concept to wrestle with.  I would like nothing more than to believe that my sin and messiness can stay locked up inside me with no one ever needing to know!  But the grace of relationship is that my sin and messiness comes to the Light and is redeemed.  The only way that redemption happens is in community, as I share my story with those around me and hear their stories in return.  We belong to the Body of Christ, and it is through our being with others in this Body that we are challenged, changed, and sanctified.