Joy like a Fountain

Today was the first day of summer classes.  It felt so good to be going back to a job that I love after two weeks away.  I enjoyed the two days off that I had--I was super productive!, and staffing Chapter Focus Week last week was important (more on that later), but this morning, I was filled with such joy.  I was going to get to teach again.  I was nervous, yes, I was dreading the stacks of grading, yes, I was anxious about dealing with student emails, yes.  But to be able to talk about something that I enjoy and help others learn about it, and engage with them as people, to see the lightbulb go on in their faces...Such a joy.  As if I wasn't already excited for the semester, after class, four students talked to me about the issues they were having in lecture.  They told me that they learned so much from me today, more perhaps even than they had learned the past three days combined in lecture.  I feel bad that lecture has not been a good experience for them, but I was so encouraged that they had learned something from me today!  They learned something from me today even though I felt like I could have done a little better.  And I was honored that they felt like they could talk to me.

There is a fountain out in front of the chemistry building that I pass every morning.  I love it.  It's a pretty fountain, surrounded by some hedges.  The sound is peaceful, and when the wind is blowing, I can feel mist from it as I walk by.  It's such a simple piece of architecture, but it can say so much more than you think tiers of concrete filled with water could.  Sometimes it reminds me of baptism.  Today, it was the epitome of what I was feeling: gurgling, overflowing, joy.

(photo coming soon?)

At Peace

I was reading over my blog (as I sometimes do--it's so interesting to read how life and my responses to it change over time!) and I realized that I never clarified what the "secret" was that I didn't want to blog about until appropriate parties had been informed.

The surprise was that I had decided to apply for staff part-time with InterVarsity.  This was a big decision for me.  To acknowledge that God has called me to be involved in student ministry involved trusting that God knew my gifts better than I do (because I generally feel I don't have any) and trusting that what I do have to give is worth giving and is needed (because even when I feel I have a gift, I don't always feel like they matter).  I was willing to take the risk to apply, and trust that God would take it from there.  If I applied and never interviewed, okay.  If I interviewed, but didn't get the job, okay.  If I interviewed and got the job, okay!  THEN I would embark on fundraising and all the fun and "fun" stuff I didn't even know about  yet, and trust that God knew what he was doing there, too.  It's how I got to Russia--one step at a time.  (The last half of this entry shares how my trip to Russia was part of the decision to apply for IV staff.)

The next surprise is that...it didn't matter.  It turns out that the area (West Michigan) doesn't really need my skill set.  They are looking for chapter planters (I am a chapter builder--I lack the extroverted, entrepreneur-type gifts to plant new chapters; I work better with existing structures that I can take and rework and encourage and strengthen.), or staff team directors.  And so began a painful 2-3 months of sorting through this news.  Was this a 'No'?  A 'Wait'? A 'Yes, but you need to be willing and ready to leave your home to do this.'  I was not ready to leave my home to do this.  I wanted to be willing, but the truth is that I was not.  "Home" is a very special thing to me--it takes so much energy for me to emotionally invest in a place where I finally feel *safe* that the prospect of leaving my first true church family at Zion, and a job I love, and a chapter I love, and an environment I love for a part-time ministry position was distressing.  And I wasn't getting a clear answer from God.  I risked going to Russia, because God was very clear about it.  I would pray, and God would hardly let the words of the question finish leaving my lips--he would silence the question with his invitation to follow.  But here, God remained silent.  So frustrating!  And so stressful and scary!

November through late/early February was hard.  I didn't know where to go.  I didn't know what to do.  I would pray and get silence in return.  I stopped praying because I was afraid of the silence.  The voices of anxiety crowded my head and my heart and gave me no peace.

But then, the fog lifted.  The voices shut up.  With prayer from others, I'm sure, and helpful conversations with others--an IV staff worker and a professor friend.  I came to understand that my calling was to students.  Period.  My calling wasn't limited to a job.  My calling has always been, and will always be (I think) to students.  To the (older) teens and the young adults, who are trying to make sense of the world.  To encourage them and to challenge them.  How that plays out in my life will be variable, and God will guide me in that.  So for now, I'm doing the right things.  I'm teaching and I'm volunteering.  I'm planning on going back to school for further education so I can teach chemistry, hopefully to college students.  Maybe I'll go on staff with IV later.  Maybe I won't.  Maybe I'll volunteer with the youth ministry at my church.  Maybe I'll hop across the world (back to Russia??) and do something there with students.  Who knows??  God will work it out.

So I have peace again, finally.

For you shall go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall break forth into singing....-Isaiah 55:12 (ESV)

For Vanderbilt (and others)

At Vanderbilt University, and many other institutions, the ability of faith-based groups to select leaders using faith-based criteria is being challenged.  Discussions are, of course, in full-swing.  It is a discussion I find my heart engaged in in a way that doesn't normally happen to me.  I generally resist taking sides, but here, my heart is sure where it stands.  And the fact that there is opposition to it, instead of instilling fear in me, only breaks my heart more.  And so I offer this prayer.  I sometimes find my fingers useful in aiding my prayers, and it is a prayer I invite others to join and to hear.

Father, my heart is moved for these students.  They are your beloved children.  They are your sons and your daughters.  They have gone to college, to Vanderbilt, for a myriad of reasons.  But I know, Lord, that college can be such a unique experience, to learn, and to grow.  And with this decision, the opportunity to grow in knowledge of you is hindered.  My heart aches for the student who is desperately seeking, and the opportunity to encounter you is shrouded by the bushes of “tolerance.”  I pray against the messages that satan would use this situation for.  I pray their ears would be deafened to them, and instead that they may hear your Truth ringing clearer than before.

I pray for our hearts as we engage with this issue.  I pray for patience and wisdom and understanding for all involved in this discourse, that we would be quick to listen and slow to anger.  Forgive us the sins we have committed.  Forgive my sins of judgement, for I know I have spoken harshly of the administration, in my heart and out loud.  Instead, turn my heart to this prayer, that you would give his heart wisdom as they seeks to do the right things for their school.  

Help us to love one another, even when we disagree.  Teach us how to love.  Because somehow we’ve lost track of what it means, and replaced it with an idyllic version, where love is easy, uncomplicated, and always happy.  So when we hit points like this, where emotions can run high, where pain and judgement begin to become stones to throw and justification to throw more, it is hard to see how love can enter the picture.  Teach us how to love one another, even when we disagree.  

For those enmeshed in the situation, at Vanderbilt, and at other universities, I pray for endurance.  I pray for strength in their hearts and souls to continue in righteousness.  That while being patient and loving seemed easier at first, I pray for the days to come when it will seem easier to react in violence and hate.  Give them grace to continue in patience and love.  Jesus, draw them back to you then, that they may find comfort in knowing you, in knowing that you’ve been there.

In all our struggles, and in all our dismay, Lord, be glorified.  Be glorified.  Even when we don’t see how, we know that you work all things together for the good of those who love you, and we know that you will glorify Yourself.  So we pray Lord, be glorified.

In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Reflections

I believe a series of some reflections are in order, as we have just added 1 to our year.

Lessons learned from being volunteer staff:
1.  I can't do everything.
Now, that doesn't mean I don't try.  Oh, how I try.  I am the type of person that tends to believe that all that's worth doing is worth doing to the highest degree.  Hence, my stint in a PhD program, exhibit A.  Exhibit B: My struggle to figure skate recreationaly.  It is an off/on relationship.  When it's on, I tend to leap into it, with some new reason to validate the expenditure of my time and money on ice time, tights, blade sharpenings, lessons, etc.  And then that reason fails to come to pass, and I feel guilty and it's off again.  Now, though, I'm tentatively stepping back on the ice.  Because it's...it's skating.  It's where my heart feels at home.  Nothing cures a heart bound in string quite like the smell of the rink, the rip of your edges, the aching numbness from spent muscles and a few too many hard spills.  ANYWAY, I'm getting off-track.  SO, staffing and otherwise being a J personality.  I felt that if I was going to give my time to college students, to love them, and guide them, and teach them, and train them, I needed to do it *right* not all wishy-washy.  I needed to prove to them, to my superiors, to the people around me, to myself, that I wasn't in this because "it was a good thing to do," or "I had the time to give," or "it's what Christians do" or whatever.  I had to do it ALL OUT.  Which leaves me struggling with saying no to my students, with guilt at the way my work schedule conflicts with opportunities to be praying with, studying with, and otherwise hanging out with Hope students.  With stress that says I can't possibly think I'm staff material, because I'm not doing this perfectly.

But I'm learning, slowly, that living faithfully and obediently is not a matter of doing everything correctly.  Living faithfully and obediently is doing what God has asked me to do. It's going where he leads me, it's speaking when he gives me words, it's using the gifts he has given me in ways that bring him glory.  God has not asked me, in this time, to give 40, or even 20, hours a week to Hope's campus.  He has asked me to step out, to be present to the lives of college students, to encourage them, and to spur them to greater faithfulness.  The other part of that is doing it in ways that are consistent with who I am in Christ.  I need not fret that I am not staff material because I am not extroverted, or because I'm not a brilliant cook, or because I wasn't a religion major, or whatever.  God has gifted me in other ways.  And it is because of THOSE gifts that I have been called, because the gifts I have are needed, too.

2.  Leading is not a matter of holding all the keys in your hand and making sure that everyone knows it.
Operating with a picture of leadership like this disconnects me in two ways.  First, it disconnects me from my students.  Because this picture of leadership demands that I am focused on having the keys.  I am focused more on gaining what's missing than on giving what I have.  I'm also focused on making sure that everyone can hear them jangling.  I'm focused more on maintaining presentation than I am on doing the work of leading.  I'm focused more of being heard than on listening (which hurts me, because I desire, above all else, to listen.  To listen, to make space for another to speak).  Secondly, it disconnects me from Jesus.  If I am to have all the keys in order to be a leader, there is no room for me to come to his feet and say, Jesus, I need you.  If I am to make sure that my keys are making enough noise, I'm too busy shaking the key ring to pay attention to anything other than the keys.  I can't listen to anything else, such as the gentle voice that would lead me to know what to do in front of a large room of people.

I was working in a track called Transformation at Compelling this year.  It's an entry-level track, if you will, a basics course.  Like second semester general chemistry.  All throughout that weekend, I struggled to be present, to my students, to Jesus.  I would mentally check out from teaching sessions, and then I would have to reengage when it came time to work in small groups.  I wouldn't listen to the teachings because I already "had that key on my key ring."  I had a hard time listening to my students because I was too focused on leading right.  I was operating under this dichotomy, where to lead meant to be put together, at the top, and to be led meant to be in need, at the bottom.  So all throughout that weekend, I was flip flopping.  Sometime mid-conference, I realized that I wasn't doing it right.  To lead well means to lead out of being led.  The learning and the teaching coexist.  I cannot teach when I am not learning.  I've seen this in my job as an instructor too--I teach the best when I am actively learning.  I can explain molecular orbital theory to my intro class the best when I'm really thinking about what molecular orbital theory *really* is and what it tells us.  Likewise, as a spiritual mentor, I'm leading the best when I'm leaning the hardest on Jesus.  Because when I'm leaning on Jesus, I have everything I need: strength, peace, words, wisdom, the Holy Spirit.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Christmas Ponderings

In two weeks, I will celebrate my 23rd Christmas.  It will be the tenth one since I became a Christian.  But I have grown in my understanding of "the reason for the season" perhaps the most in the past three years.  Christmas is more than a baby in a manger, and it's certainly more than Christmas shopping.  It's about the incarnation: GOD BECOMING FLESH.  And not in the way you would think, either.  That little baby in the manger, where the pigs and donkeys lived? That was God.  The Creator of the Universe did not come in earth shaking rumbles of thunder, flashing lights, loud music, large processions.  Instead, he came humbly, to a little town of Bethlehem, barely a dot on the map.  And he did not spend his years on earth demanding service, but instead offering of himself to touch all the squalor of this earth, and then dieing to rescue our souls.

In 2009, this story challenged how I lived.  "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)  This man entered the lives of hundreds of outcasts of all backgrounds, to touch them, to know them.  This man met and spoke to a woman of a different culture at a well who had had 5 husbands, and presently was living with a man not her husband, eventually leaving her speechless.  Recovering from her shock, she abandoned her water jar and inquired of her town if this could possibly be the One they've all been waiting for--the Messiah? 

Jesus did not spend his time pursuing the perfect, contented, comfortable life.  He spent his life touching the lives of others in the most unheard of places.  He has touched my life in that way, and he continues to do so across the world through his people by His Spirit.  That is the motion of his life, which is lived in me.  He is writing his story through us.  How am I going to let him do that?

In 2010, this story challenged my cynicism.  Being the only Christian in my immediate family can make celebrating Christmas difficult for me.  I feel alone in the Celebration.  I feel pressured to mimic the fake celebration instead of glorying in the True Celebration, leaving me feeling bitter and cynical during a time when I certainly shouldn't be.  I realized that Christmas that this story, this incarnation story, isn't about me.  It's not about me.  It's never been about me.  It's about God, from the very first Christmas.  "The Christmas season about God's story, and we celebrate that he has chosen to involve us in his story, his beautiful story of redemption. We don't celebrate how perfect he's made our lives (which he hasn't), but that he is faithful and is making all things new." (--me, December 23rd, 2010)

And just today, December 8th, 2011, it challenged how I view the world.  I was sitting in my car, finishing my lunch, just staring at the woods and apartment complex in front of me.  Random trees, random buildings, out on a country road, where hundreds of college students sleep and eat and work.  And then I realized: these trees?  These stressed college students?  They are the earth and the people that Jesus walked among.  Jesus spent quiet times on mountaintops, in gardens, spent quality time with some sinners and tax collectors.  Jesus LIVED *here*.  We aren't spending our lives toiling on some piece of garbage floating around in space.  God came *here.*  Deity touched this earth.  He found it worthy of his touching, encountering, knowing, loving.  So what am I doing, ignoring it, regarding it as nothing to be sneezed at?

What a gift this Christmas season is.  Every year, we get to hear the story of the Incarnation and celebrate it.  Every year, we get to know this a little better.

Compelling 2011: Luke 10:1-24

-Find the text here-

This was our text for one of our quiet times this weekend.  I pulled it out of my folder and groaned: How many times have I done this passage? Just in the past calendar year alone, even, I feel like I've done it at least twice.  But then I said, Okay God. I'll give this a shot... (Which, would have been harder to do had one of my students not earlier shared a similar experience with us. :p)

Ten minutes later, I was frantically scribbling all over my paper in pink, purple, orange...running out of time, torn between dismay that I had to leave and anxiousness to go tell people!

Behold my (addended) scribbles:

Verse 16 is usually noted when your witness is rejected, and is used to say that it's not you they are rejecting, but Christ.  So don't take it personally.  But we do.  We do, and even if we know that, it can still hurt.  But the verbs here are all applied to *both* Jesus and me.  "Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me."  Jesus is WITH US in our experience of rejection.  Is that not what Jesus came to earth for?  To know our experiences?  To live our life as we live it, to become identified with humanity so as to redeem it?  He is WITH US in our experiences of rejection.  He experiences that feeling with us.


I love verse 18: In English: "It was awesome guys, seriously."


Verse 19: "I have given you authority to trample on snakes...and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you." I have authority.  Why do I ignore it?  Why don't I use it?  Why do I live and lead as though I have none?  And it was GIVEN. It was his to give.  And he gives it to me.  (Why, escapes me...) And there's nothing to suggest it was earned, either.  


I was pretty sold back on verse 16.  I have it boxed in several times over on my sheet.  But here is where my mind/heart gets really blown:


Verse 23and 24: Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

First, there's a quiet awe: It's intimate.  He's sharing a secret with his disciples.  He's marveling at his sons' growth.  (And let me tell you, as a leader, it's such a warm, unique experience.  To see "my" freshman, now a senior, taking charge of chapter time is one thing.  But today I got to pick up my students' commitment cards.  I haven't read them all yet, but glancing at them, I am so...tickled for them.  Anyway, back to Luke)  It's that kind of thing that just..bonds them.  At least for me, as someone whose love language is words of affirmation, that speaks volumes of quiet love to me. And I ask, Intimacy?  From going out and working in towns and getting down and dirty with it's people for the sake of the message?  Intimacy from that?  Yea. Yea. (Shared experience-->intimacy)


And then, the smallest thing that just, to me, sent echoes through all the other things I've scribbled about, and really made everything just click for me.  THE VERB TENSES, PEOPLE.  Three. little. letters.  The verb is see.  The verb is not saw.  "Blessed are the eyes that _see_ what you _see_."  You see it now.  You didn't just see it then.  But you continue to see it.  You are seeing it now.  Something changed during that experience. Something fundamental happened then, whose effects are lasting.  Ongoing revelation.

Yea, as a staffworker, I'm going to be rejected.  I'm going to get looks like, 'You do what?'  I'm going to get doors shut in my faces, and I'm going to try really hard to do awesome things on campus that are just gonna fail.  But Jesus is going to be there with me.  And he's going to rejoice with me, saying, yea, that was awesome.  And he's going to change me, even as he changes my campus.  And it's going to be beautiful.

Treasure Hunts and Body Parts

So tonight at our leaders' meeting, we did a treasure hunt.  No, we didn't find buried treasure.  It's a kind of prayer walk where before hand you intentionally ask God to show you clues about who you should talk to--words, phrases, pictures, places, whatever.  Now, I have only done this once before, about 2 summers ago.  So I was kind of scared.  Excited, but scared.

So in our listening time, I got pictures of things like wood.  Specifically rugged wood, probably in association with the seminary building that shares Hope's campus.  And benches.  And orange juice.  (Yes, orange juice.)  We grouped off and headed out.  I headed out with Sandy and Carl.

We come to our first intersection.  Sandy asks, 'Left, right, or straight?'  None of us answers.  Sandy answers her own question with, 'Diagonal?' Carl and I go, 'I was just thinking that!'  And so diagonal across the intersection we go.  Love it.  Wasn't even an option and all three of us got the same message...

And we tromp off diagonally towards the heart of campus.  My attention is captured by a dude about a block away, carrying something.  He takes a drink of whatever he's carrying.  I go, if that's orange juice...!  But I never found out--he was too far away and I was too chicken to chase after him.

But we continue our way to the seminary building, pausing, listening, praying, etc.  I ask if there are benches along the road by the seminary.  Sandy says that there are on the other side.  So we circle back around to the other side.  Sandy points me to the benches, and I know before I see them which ones she's talking about and I run off across the lawn because THOSE ARE THE BENCHES.  The wood is old and rugged, and there are trees, specifically pine (which Sandy had gotten as one of her clues), next to them.  Leaves overhead was something else that had come up in my listening time but wasn't clear enough or seem to be the focus of the image.  So I knew that was the place.  So we sat down.  And we wait.  And I'm like, Great.  Here we are, sitting, in a corner, in the dark.  We're going to regroup and we're going to have nothing to say about who we talked to.  But I was so sure this was the place.  So I waited.  We waited.  A few minutes pass, and a pair of people walks by and catches my eye.  Sandy says, that guy's wearing a black coat (one of her clues).  I ask if she wants to go after him.  She says, Yes.  So we sprint across the lawn, chasing these guys down.  And as we do, my face just breaks out into this huge grin.  I have a peace and a confidence and an excitement that this is what we're supposed to be doing.  We talk to him, and we pray for him and his bad hip.  He seemed a little...suprised at what we were doing, but not freaked out.  Kind of curious.  If he had more time, and if we had more time, I would have liked to ask him if he was involved in a bible study/how his spiritual life was.  Alas, I didn't.  But Sandy has his name and maybe I'll track down his email address and see how he is later on. *shrug*

We all regroup and swap stories and it's all really cool to see how the really random clues like 'flowers' manifested themselves in stories of prayer and talking and risk-taking.  I had fun.  But I think the coolest thing was that in our group, we each got pieces of the puzzle.  We needed each other to confirm what may or may not be nudges of the Holy Spirit, and we needed all of us to figure out who to talk to.  It was really cool.  Looking foward to doing it again. =)