Back in the Saddle, Starting Today!

It's time to get back in the saddle. After finishing grad school, it was nice not to be required to write, so I didn't write at all. Plus, I work on a computer 40 hrs a week; I didn't want to even turn my personal computer on! My personal journal hasn't seen much activity, either! Now, nearly 2 years later, it's time to start practicing something I claim to be good at. Not amazing, mind you, but not terrible, either. If I want to be able to tell my boss I'm a good writer, I know I need to keep working at it. So in this area, among several others that I shelved for a while, it's time to get back in the saddle.

As a means of commitment, whether or not I have any readers at all, I'm laying out here a few things I want to tackle in the coming weeks and months. Writing helps me to process my own thoughts, as well as document my experiences, so here's what I plan to blog about:
1. Stewardship - including tithing, generosity (today!), and areas beyond finances
2. My 30-Before-30 list - items already accomplished as well as what's next
3. Church. I'm still not sure where this one is going, but I committed months ago to thinking more deeply about it, so it's time I start. Eeek. 
4. General life goings-on - new position at work, LOVING Southern California still, and learning (still!) the slower rhythms of life as an adult 

Join me if you dare.

Quote

"It's slightly disappointing, but I never heard the workers sing on our site (where they were building our house in Haiti). Perhaps we live too close to the city, where modernity has trumped tradition: they listened to battery-powered, static-drenched radios instead. I'm grateful first for their friendship and for their profound influence over my choices. Though they don't sing aloud about my stinginess or generosity, they still have a sort of lyrical power over me as my neighbors. This wasn't the case when I gave my money to the cashier at Wal-Mart or the local drugstore and then walked out with a product that was put together by who-knows-who in who-knows-where in what-kind-of-conditions on the other side of the globe. Globalization has important efficacy advantages but also helps us evade the discomfort of knowing the people we do commerce with (to our advantage). And it's not that personal connection necessarily precludes exploitation, but at least when it's personal the exploiter has more chance of understanding and changing--or at minimum might feel how much the exploiting costs his or her own soul."

- Annan, Kent. Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle: Living Fully, Loving Dangerously. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2009. p170-171

Lost the plot

I kind of lost my vision for why I was writing this blog. So I just didn't write for a long time. And I'm not sure where to go from here, so it's just my ramblings, which is actually quite easily described by "my journey in heart and space", so it all fits, in the end.

Today, I saw the (beautiful and amazing!) wedding photos of a girl who was an elementary school camper when I was a counselor for church camp. I felt a) old and b) very single. Ouch.

Tonight, I went to the going away party of a couple (and their kids) who I got to know fairly well as part of my cohort group the 2 years I was in school. One of the options they are looking into is to join a c-planting team in northern India. My heart leapt into my throat! A flame sparked that has been hidden for a long time.

I went on a road trip with Judy last week. Judy's pretty quiet, and she told me from the get-go not to expect her to talk that much. I was happy to chat enough for the both of us the first few days, but by the last 2 days, driving over half of our 1724 miles, I started projecting onto her my own reasons for silence. I clam up when I'm hurt, annoyed, angry, or irritable. So I started wondering if Judy felt like that, and I had to remind myself that she wasn't mad, she's just quiet. She actually can and will be pretty forthright and honest when something isn't right, and I had to trust that she would have communicated something to me if I had offended her. (Right, Judy, if you're reading this?!) So it was a good self-awareness lesson.

I am now working (and have been for over 8 months) for a large, international, Christian, non-profit organization. About half our budget comes from child sponsorship (where a person sends in $35/month to sponsor a kid from an impoverished country and keeps his/her photo on his fridge). I like my job, to a large degree, but it's definitely a stepping stone to something else. Trouble is, I don't exactly know what that "something else" is. I do know I plan to live overseas in the future, hopefully doing more on-the-ground project management-type stuff. But my current position as an admin assistant isn't specifically going to open the doors that direction, so perhaps there are a few more steps between here and there. We shall see.

I'm going home for a few days in August. My sister, brother-in-law, and my new niece will be there! I'm excited to see them all, and of course my parents and cat, too. I also am looking forward to reconnecting with old friends, one in particular that has been a bit of a rocky relationship in the past year. We'll see if that person makes time to see me or not. But at least the beach will be there! And a NIECE!!

Hope I

I have been thinking a lot about hope recently, as a concept. I feel like there might be some deeper lessons in this, so I am planning to revisit it in the future. For now, a story.

Several years ago, my life felt like it ended. What I had been working toward for months, years, or possibly even my life had abruptly ended. At least, that's how it felt to me. My life had been building up to this one thing, and it had been taken away from me. I was completely crushed, and I didn't know where to turn. I literally had no idea what else to so with my life, and I was completely devastated.

In my agony and pain, I wanted to express on the outside what I felt on the inside, even if it was a bit dramatic. So during a worship set led by some of my favorite worship leaders ever, I found myself in the back of the room, on my knees, bawling my eyes out. I was in agony, crying out to the Lord, without a hope in the world.

In my mind's eye, a scene flashed before me. A middle-aged woman with brown skin and long dark hair, dressed in a beautiful sari, was in the middle of a crowd. She had flung her body over a rectangular wooden box: the casket of her son, the pride of her life. She wept sobs that wracked her body, mourning his death as her own.

In an instant, I felt the Lord gently ask me, "Why are you crying? This woman has no hope. You at least have hope."

God wasn't being rude or a jerk about it, but he did have a point. Even though it felt like my life was over, I still had a lot to live for. Even though I had no idea what to do with my life, I still had hope. I still had Jesus.

song lyrics

The J Band - Take Our Turn lyrics

Looking down a young man's seen
Waltzing once past everything
He takes a knee and pray
A father trains his king to be
It's the night that he runs free
He walks along castle walls
And looks upon, did he give up it all

Hey, we lay our burdens down,
Lord we burn 'em to the ground
Hey, we'll take our turn and die
For our souls to come to life

He found himself in foreign land
No one else with him to stand
But the mad man, the drunkard, and he
Together they went traveling on,
Singin' "Friends, we have become."
He turns to the call
Oh, he gave up it all

Hey, we lay our burdens down,
Lord, we burn 'em to the ground
Hey, we'll take our turn and die
For our souls to come alive

He remembers this one time when he
Saw a small child,
For one moment give one, one small smile
He thought that maybe,
That maybe the smile was meant for him
That the smile was meant for him

Hey, we lay our burdens down,
Lord, we burn 'em to the ground
Hey, we take our turn and die
For our souls to come to life