InterVarsity/International Students

*sigh*  Life has been moving at a break-neck pace over the past three weeks...I'm stealing little moments where I can to process things, and in those small moments when I stop to pray, God has been faithful to meet me, in new places.

One of the things on my mind lately has been the way that InterVarsity has shaped my life.  I remember showing up to a weekend conference called Genesis and having no clue who this guy named Curt Wilson was and why he was clearly trying to make an effort to engage me in conversation.  I remember showing up late to my first Chapter Focus Week because my car broke down in Gaylord on the way up, and being new to the camp and anticipating what was in store for the week.  Never would I have imagined having Curt's Christmas family photo on my fridge, nor staffing Chapter Focus Week.  But what has been one of the most important things that InterVarsity did in my life was to show me the value in community.  InterVarsity began to walk me into the riches of living in community in the Body of Christ.  It continues into my life today.  I have found a wonderful group of ladies at my church, which is wonderful in its own right.  This is my home, my family.  Something I never imagined could be mine.

I'm thinking about these things as I watch new generations of InterVarsity students come and go.  I watch them consider going to Compelling, to Chapter Focus Weeks.  I watch them consider what they are risking in making choices to follow Jesus from wherever they are.  And I watch their hearts change in response to that.  What an incomparable pleasure that is.  It is this that had me considering staff.  But that's not quite where I fit.  Instead, I get to participate in that as a teacher.  I'm seeing sparks of that...I'm waiting for it to catch.

I'm also thinking about these things as yet another chapter of InterVarsity faces de-recognition--this time, the Asian chapter at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where I am friends with the staff member.  I pray for her, the leaders, the chapter's students, the study body, the council.  That Christ would shine steadily in all that goes down.

Anyway.  What I really opened this post for was this:
Urbana 96 - Across the Hall from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

Twenty-one-hundred, you make great videos.  I love the power in the moment in the middle, when he knocks on the door.

Intercession

In the past eight hours, I have driven to Lansing, met up with several dozen people I haven't seen in months, if not longer, prayed, prayed some more, prayed, and driven back home to West Michigan.  I made the decision to do this about 30 hours ago.  Ha. Yep.

This is after an afternoon of chemistry education thought bubbling, including a seminar, article reading, and expected phone calls from graduate schools (which didn't happen).

You would think my brain would be complete mush.  It is rather squishy, but it is not complete mush.  I believe that is an answer to prayer in itself.  Thank you to Kristen and Kerrie and others who prayed for me tonight.  I don't think I could have done this evening without your prayer support.

This evening was an experience.  In so many ways.  Somehow, I always seem to forget how completely OVERWHELMING it is walk in from the parking garage after spending 2 hours alone in the car...to see 500+people crawling the halls of the conference center.  An extrovert might be like a little kid in a candy shop.  I wouldn't know, because I'm an introvert.  This jams my system for a little bit, and I end up seeking out a corner to hide in until I can make small steps out from it (or in tonight's case, a row between racks of college apparel).

But I discovered a new component to the hazards of my callings:  Overfilled people index.  I spotted dozens of familiar faces within a few minutes--and I found my mind blank of their names.  The further I walked, the more faces I recognized, and the more overwhelmed I became that I could not think of their names, or know from which setting I knew them.  After being involved with InterVarsity for 5 years now, I should expect this.  But this happens in the hallways at school, too, and my people index is filling fast. Now that I have taught for 4 semesters, I have over 400 students' faces tucked away in my memory.  They walk by me and the recognition sparks...but most of the time it doesn't catch.

Or, one of my students that I taught last night walks by me in the Kellogg center. She sees me and asks in surprise what I was doing there, and I say hi, and apologize--I recognize you, but I recognize so many people here, and I can't place you.  And she tells me that she's one my lab students in my section I taught last night!  1) Oh man, name recall fail.  2) Wait, that's so cool!  I'm really excited that one of my students is in InterVarsity, and I'm excited that she knows her professor shares her faith, shares an organizational experience, and knows that her professor is willing to come pray for her and her fellow students.

It isn't until the drive home that I actually remember her name.  And she's one of my best students, and sits in front of me.

So that was the first half hour of my evening, after spending the drive thinking I was insane for driving 1.5 hours each way to spend 4 hours in Lansing.  The next 3 hours, I prayed.  I prayed in groups, with various people, in various places, in various ways, for various things, ranging from restful nights for all, to breaking off evil spirits.  I love to pray, and I love to intercede for people.  But tonight I was stretched to live as an intercessor for 3 hours.  Oh, how it was a stretch.  I left and once my car was in sight in the parking garage, I started to feel myself collapse into tears.

I drove home, fighting this battle of feeling like I had failed (that and just exhaustion).  Between not knowing people's names and not knowing how to proceed throughout the evening, I felt inadequate.  But Jesus won that victory.  Though those thoughts came, they didn't stick around for long.  It felt a little like the way silly putty is sticky but not really.  The thoughts would come, but they wouldn't stick.  And so I am grateful.  I am grateful that I got to intercede for this weekend, to learn a little more of what that means.  To grow as an intercessor.  To grow in my understanding of walking well on this journey--though I am an experienced traveler, there are many more miles still to go.  I am grateful for the miles walked, and I am grateful to share in the travels of others less experienced than I, but covering new territory myself, and experiencing all that goes with that.

And now, I must go.  The brain has said, You've processed.  Now can you go to bed, please?

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!

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. =)

=D

Praise God for conversations with students!

Over the past several months as I've been volunteering with InterVarsity at Hope, I have felt privileged to be included in my students lives. One girl has insisted that I come over to have tea, another wants to make sure she keeps up-to-date with what goes on in my life with Russia and things, and I've been able to build a handful of other good relationships with students through random encounters at the Kletz (student restaurant/coffe bar) and on the sidewalks. And apparently they missed me at Chapter Focus Week!

But I am amazed at how God has been able to use anything and everything to do this. Tonight, I needed some help with an errand relating to my trip to Russia, and one of my students had offered to help me with it. It felt really weird to invite a student along for an errand. But we went to get shakes afterward, and we had a really, really good discussion. God took an errand and turned into a meaningful, witnessing conversation. I feel so honored to have been able to have that discussion with her!

God is moving!