Burning Ones

So Timmy won’t be able to blog today because he’ll be at a Java convention (aka nerd convention, haha) with a coworker until late tonight. So due to that, and the fact that I didn’t really give a general update on Sunday, I’m stealing his day.

Sunday was Timmy’s birthday (he’s 22, but still doesn’t feel any older) so we celebrated and bought him nice clip-ins pedals and shoes for his bike with a gift certificate from my parents (thanks, mom and dad!).

On Saturday we saw Bella, which is definitely a movie worth seeing and supporting. You can see the trailer here. It reminded me of my passion for adopting an to-be aborted child.. and thus I spent a good two or three days after seeing it fantasizing about meeting people in malls, whilst telling their best friends they’re going to get “it” taken care of, and hero-me, stepping in. Haha. Whatever.

I don’t know if “foggy” is a valid feeling, but for awhile I’ve been feeling foggy. Like, stuck almost, like an on-going tiredness that I can’t seem to shake. I couldn’t really set my mind to do anything and I felt all-around sluggish, but like more spiritual than physical. Like a mini-curse, haha. So I’ve been scattered brained.

Although these past two days have been wonderful and God must have lifted the fog off. So I don’t really know what’s going on right now. I had a dream awhile ago where Tim and I were in Hawaii and there was this huge wave coming and we were hedged in all around (with actual hedges). And the waves kept pounding us and overtaking us and I’d fall and stuff, but get back up. I wasn’t really sure what the dream meant but then I was having an awesome worship time today and I was worshipping with Hosea 6:1-3, which I am so in love with right now. And I just felt like God was saying that He was the raging ocean and He put the hedges up.. like in Psalms 139 where it says “You hedge me in, behind and before, You lay your hand upon me.”

I just love the imagery of God tripping me in order to hold me… except Hosea uses a little more “hardcore” imagery and instead of tripping its tearing (ouch) but I still love it. It MUST happen in order that “we may live before Him.” And then the immediate verse is, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord!” Ugh, it’s just wonderful.

I’ve been consumed lately with trying to figure out how to love. I seem do to an absolutely, horrible job every time I try. So, if any of y’all have any pointers just let me know :-). I thought that maybe my “fogginess” could be connected with this anger that I’ve been struggling with. It’s like, sometimes in my dreams I get really mad at someone, and I start swinging at them, trying to hit them, and I keep falling asleep as I’m trying to get a good whack in and I end up tripping over myself and falling into the ground. I think that’s God saying that when I get angry, I turn blind, which would explain the cloudiness… but who knows :-).

Crazy week! It’s been like a roller coaster and I’m loving every minute of it (although we’ll see what I say when it’s a ‘down’ moment, hehe).

I’ve been feeling for awhile that the thing that what God wants me doing right now is simply “doing everything for Him.” So I have no idea what that means.

Like a week ago I was really, really mad at myself because I had screwed up (again) so I was going to punish myself by watching TV until sunrise. So after I was all TV’ed out and even more upset (and really hungry) I said ‘hell with it’ and decided I was going to go to the kitchen, in the dark, and eat a banana. For God.

So with every step on the cold, dark floor towards the kitchen I kept saying to myself, “I’m doing this for You. I will walk excellently for You.” And as I peeled the banana and began to eat it I tried to really absorb the taste and texture. And sometimes I like splitting the banana into three (because it naturally does this, which I think is kinda cool) so I thought about the trinity a bit. And I wasn’t perfect at it at all, in fact I think I scoffed the remaining half of the banana down because this whole process was very awkward and I just wanted to be done with it :-).

I felt God just being like “alright, Jess, time for bed” so I went to sleep at the point (I think it was like 6:15 or something). And it wasn’t like I immediately felt the Shekina glory of God, or fell over because I was so moved by the spirit. I still felt awful, my face still sore from crying, I could still taste the tears in my throat, and I could still feel my face cracking from the dried salt deposits, but in some strange way I felt at peace. And I felt loved.

So I’ve been trying to do that more. Mainly its small things like eating breakfast or making the bed but it’s weird, even awesome, because now every time I think of my bed or pancakes I think of God. And I think of that experience with God and I almost (not quite, haha) look forward to making the bed in a small way, or especially making pancakes (opposed to something like cereal) because I never make pancakes… but since I kind of first did that with God it’s like a me-and-God-thing. Pancakes, hehe.

And, oh my gosh, I cannot tell you how crazy wonderful my life has been these past couple of days. And even though everything seems to be getting worse (I’m assuming they’re attacks) like Tim and I were up until 1 fighting or my pride has somehow enormously exploded because of all this, it’s wonderful. It’s all wonderful. I feel as though I can find God wherever I want to look for Him.

And since then I can like, feel Him… like, that sense of that ever-present feeling of God has become SO much stronger. I mean like mind-blowing stronger. I can feel Him next to me, and inside of me, all at the same time. And He talks to me. A lot. Like all the time. All I have to do is talk and He talks back. And He’s funny!

And, gosh, I used to worry that this was all me and it was me talking (‘cause it is my voice saying the stuff in my head) but I know it’s like Other. This is absolutely everything I’ve ever wanted and I hope it’s only going to get better… and at the same time I’m terrified that God will remove Himself and I’ll have a Song of Solomon 5 experience and I REALLY don’t want that. And then the pride comes because only really ‘holy’ people have Song of Solomon 5 experiences, and I know that’s not true.

So everything is super crazy right now and I don’t know what’s going on. But I am in absolute love with it.

So it’s Sunday night and I haven’t posted! And now it’s time for bed :-( I totally remembered this morning but sadly left it for the last minute. So I will give a quick update:

This weekend we did a major clean-out after being convicted about certain movies we own and, in efforts to live more simply, got rid of 80+ books that we either have read and never want to read again, or have never read with no interest of reading in the future. So we’re 20 DVDs cleaner and the Abington Library will now be the proud owner of our books :-) (except for the ones that Jaclyn wanted, hehe).

I’ve been feeling pointless again. But I generally feel like God is happy with what I’m doing. I have no idea why… I’m not really doing anything. But I will continue.. hopefully with some God-given contentment :-)

On a lighter note I finished Timmy’s scarf that I have been knitting for months. His mom started it before she passed away and so I wanted to finish it for him.

Ok, well, it’s night, and Timmy’s bothering the be-gibbers out of me!

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in my daily life since heading back to school that I’d love to get out into the public. I have begun to have a lot of trouble admitting that I don’t know something. I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog so far that I really don’t want to come off to anyone as better than I am. I identify that desire to look better than you are with the Spirit of Phariseeism. I desire to be the tax collector pounding my chest asking God for mercy, never once blinding myself and thinking that I’m better than another, because I’m not.

This leads me to a particular pitfall that I believe I have been particularly susceptible to in my life. This pitfall is the allure of knowledge, a sad siren singing it’s baleful song on campuses and in business centers and at our local cafés all throughout our post-modern, enlightened world. I believe that the call connects with me so deeply because I believe that any self-respecting person is always learning. This translates into me having a lack of respect for myself when I don’t know something already. It’s a form of power. “No one but me can teach me anything new. I am my own instructor, learning for myself while disseminating information of my own to you plebians.” I cannot tell you how many times I have found myself saying, “Umm… Yeah, I can’t quite remember right now, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard of that before.” or “Oh yeah, of course I know [what that means]—[who that is]—[how to do that]” while thinking to myself, “What are they talking about?” The thing is, I believe that knowledge gives me power.

But that’s just the thing… Knowledge does not give us power. The fact is that elitism (where all knowledge seems to inevitably lead) provides what could most accurately be described as a false sense of security. The Bible says that the Foolishness of God is greater than the Wisdom of man (I don’t know the reference). Translating that negatively, The Wisdom of man is less than the foolishness of God. Job says to God amidst God’s questioning of him, “I put my hand over my mouth, I cannot contend with you. I questioned you once, but now I will sit down in the dust and accept that you are God and I am not.” The fact is, humanism and enlightened thinking are fatally flawed paths. Mankind cannot solve their own issues if given enough time. If anything, we can and will only destroy ourselves, because at our root we are desperately blind fools.

However, their is an alternate path that many of us don’t know about that I want to travel. That path is the humility. You see, Job was not ashamed because he had finally been confronted with the reality that he would forever be a child in the infancy of cognizance before almighty God. Instead, Job realized what a humble person truly has; joy in the revelation that we are in the hands of a wise God. We do not need to be wise, because God has filled that Gap. There is a freedom that I hate to acknowledge in dependence. “Beggars can’t be chooser’s” after all, can they? But why would I want to be a chooser? I would want to be a chooser because, for whatever reason, I believe I can make a good choice. That I have it in me to look at the options and, with wisdom, choose the best option. But I can’t. I know someone who can.

So, I want to begin to practice a joyful admission of my lack of knowledge. I want to happily say to someone, truly with joy in my heart, “I don’t know. Tell me about it?” One of my favorite movies is Pi by Darren Aronofsky, which is a movie about man’s trust in knowledge, as far as I’m concerned. My favorite scene in the movie is after Max’s breakdown when he lost his faith in knowledge and accepted his human status. The whole movie, Max never smiles, and he’s always on top of things because he’s just that smart. You know what? Max looks a lot better when he smiles.

Enjoy the clip…

I don’t really know how to put into words what I’m thinking. I’m trying to get a good handle on what Christianity is all about without slipping into the hippy/liberalism that it keeps pointing me to. Up until know I was sure that Christianity was all about getting closer to God. You know: you set up morning times, evening times, church times, fast times, reading times, prayer times, with the ultimate goal of knowing God more. But I can’t deny the fact that since I’ve stopped reading my Bible frequently and spent more time with my hands in the earth I’ve felt closer to God.

And I’m kind of confused because this isn’t what I was taught. Since I’ve been reading books by people like Henri Nouwen and Brennan Manning, who teach that life is just about the love (of God), simple spiritual disciplines (that a child could do), and pouring your life into people. That for the most part Jesus spent his time eating and drinking (party-ing) with the people who are into drugs again after their 100th swear that they were clean. I mean, his first miracle was turning water into wine. Why would the son of God come to earth to give drunk people more drink? That was not a very pious move in my opinion.

To be honest I’ve always wanted to live in a commune with tens of other people, making my own clothes, growing my own food, letting strange people who don’t have homes come in my house and eat their full. And my society has always written that off as a hippie movement that already happened. But, I dunno. Maybe that’s how you experience God. Maybe it’s not necessarily doing all these awesome religious works but just living life to the fullest of what it was meant to be.

On a much lighter note we’re leaving for Kansas City next Sunday at 6 AM- YAY! So the next time I blog we’ll be in the mid-west. I’m (and I’m sure Timmy is to) so excited to take a vay-cay.

I’m taking a class called Models and Mentors in the Christian Tradition. One of the things that this class has begun to highlight to me through some of the models and mentors (especially Henri Nouwen, who I’m growing to adore) is the need to be fully present in what we do. I don’t know about you, but I grew up just like most people in a frame of mind where everything that I did was about how fast I could get through it and how many other things I could do while getting it done. If you’d ask my wife, she’d tell you that I’m embarrassingly obsessed with attempting to do many things at once. Obsessed to the point where I’ll make us late to an important event because I just want to kick off one more task on my computer, or I’ll stuff my bag full of things to do because I think there might be a chance to do some of it during whatever we’re going to. Everything I do I try to do with only enough attention to get it done quickly and efficiently.

That’s stupid.

Ghandi said, There’s more to life than seeing how fast you can get through it. I’ve been meditating upon that for a few days now. Many of you might know that I’ve been riding my bike lately as much as I can. I’m beginning to really enjoy it. There’s something about powering your own vehicle and being so close with what you’re moving with that is very attractive to me. I love getting up in the morning and putting on my biking stuff and then pushing off the steps in the front of our house and feeling the cool air on my face. But to be honest with you, I’ve been in a race to see how fast I could be. I wanted to get my time down to the absolute minimum that I could. I found that I was simply pedaling along as hard as I could for as long as I could with my eyes fixed blankly on the road ahead of me, blindly looking for spots that might trip me up and bumps I could avoid.

I encountered that quote from Ghandi in my Models and Mentors class and it got me thinking. I would be pedaling along and that line would come into my head. There’s more to life than seeing how fast you can get through it. And I would realize that I don’t need to see how fast I can get some place. It’s better to be a few minutes later to something and have been fully present along the way than it is to have been focussed on the future while the present was passing you by unnoticed and unthought of. You see, I really, desperately want to wonder at God. I want to be awestruck by him. I want to encounter what he has done in Creation and in my life and be thrown down upon my face in worship. And there’s a simple fact; I cannot do this while I’m in a rush.

A quote that I love from Stephen Charnock is this (paraphrased), It is not by thought that we loose our wonder, but by a lack of thought. I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to be fully present to what I am doing. I want to be fully engaged with the person at church who comes up to me while I’m doing sound and talks to me. I want to be able to identify what’s important in life and not be distracted. An interesting post that got me thinking about how to do this in my own life was put up on Haiku Productivity. What Leo proposed, basically, was that in order to do anything well, we have to commit ourselves to only doing a few a things at 100% involvement. We will get less done! But it will be done better and we will experience it more.

So, I’m trying to commit to not multi-task anymore. I’m fine with committing some of my time to kicking off tasks that can be done without my attention. But no longer will I be reading my e-mail and talking online and doing my homework and listening for my phone and and and… I’m going to do one thing at a time. And I’m going to be fully present to it. I’m going to attempt to slow down on my bike in the morning and look at the sun drenched trees that God made and the sparkling creeks and the people in their cars and wonder, how have I become so blessed as to see this? I’d love to invite you to think about it as well, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Love you guys!

So I’ve had an o.k. week, but a particularly good weekend, which leaves me with the feeling that the whole week was wonderful.

God has been über good to me this week and has given me some revelations that I definitely should not be getting. One of them has been that God is a god of process and He certainly enjoys the process more than the finished product. So therefore I can find more joy in the race than at the finished line because I am made in the image of God.

I’ve discovered that the goal is not to find out what God wants you to do, but to do everything for God. THAT JUST SOUNDED LIKE A BROTHER LAWRENCE QUOTE! ::pride… rising…::

And, don’t get me wrong, this week wasn’t the best. For some odd reason Tim and I have been fighting at the end of almost every night. This results in either one of the following:

1. We stay up for hours fighting, me crying, and then talking it out together (which Tim really shouldn’t do because he has work or school in the morning).
2. Tim goes to bed and I stay up for a couple of hours into the night watching various episodes of Sex in the City (which I hate), Family Guy (which I hate that I find funny because it’s such an awful show) and Friends. And then I crawl back into bed sobbing, wake up Tim, and tell him I’m sorry.

This week all the fights were 100% my fault and I really don’t have anything else to say.

But the weekend was fantastic. I feel like I’ve been overwhelmed by the fact that I only see Tim (note I said “see” not “spend time with”) three hours a night during the week and I thought the weekend would be the same but we spent all of it together and we had a really good time.

I’ve been listening to a series of sermons called “God is Green” (which can be found here). And I just think it’s stupid and arrogant that if everyone in the world would live like me, we would need FOUR earths to sustain everyone (this is called your ecological footprint and you can find yours here). So with that being said I (and Tim) am making it my goal to live as simply as possible and to reorder my life to take care of my surroundings… even if I merely changed our light-bulbs to florescents or eat a meal without meat… I understand that the whole thing is a gradual process but that still doesn’t keep me from wanting to dive right into it and spend the week picking up trash from the side of the road. A lot of things I can’t do (like turn the backyard into a garden) because we’re still living with my parents. So throwing out all the paper towels and demanding that my mom use cloth for clean-up wouldn’t be very good, even though I think it’d be cool. So I encourage everyone who reads this to go the extra mile to pick up trash in the parking-lot or buy food at your local farmer’s market.

So to those of you who have been praying for me I feel SO much happier with life in general and it’s awesome because I can feel God so much more in my life than ever before. And I find that odd because I really haven’t been fasting or reading my Bible. Maybe God doesn’t care so much about those things as I thought. I could always be wrong though :-)

But thank you!!!!

Love,

Jessie V.

OK, we’re going to be doing an experiment tonight called brevity. We’ll see how I do.

God has been highlighting an extremely simple thing to me lately.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

I’ve been gripped with an understanding that I am a sinner, and that I always will be. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather be a tax collector beating on my chest saying, “God, HAVE MERCY ON ME!” than to have all the pomp and glitter and self-assuredness that comes along with being one who is righteous. I don’t ever want to look at another human being like there anything less than I am. This shouldn’t be hard, because as far as I’m concerned, I am the worst of all sinners.

God is relentlessly kind to me. Unceasingly kind! He will not stop giving me grace. And every time I tell him that I’m not worth the price he paid for me and that I’ll forget him in the next five minutes, he sits with me as I weep and puts his arm around me. And then I go and forget him. And I don’t publish his glory to my friends and I don’t tell of his mercy and forgiveness to everyone I see. The fact is, I am the worst of sinners because despite God’s relentless kindness towards me, I still find it in me to snub him at every turn.

Part of my journey right now is allowing that to have it’s perfect effect in me. If I realize this, that God himself will never stop loving me, despite my failures and my out and out spitting and vomiting all over him in my sin and destitution, then it drives me to say, I don’t have to be ashamed. I’m not disqualified by my sin today. I’m not disqualified because I have a terrible capacity for lust or because I loose my temper with my wife or because I become prideful around other Christians or because, secretly, I really think there will come a time when I don’t need God anymore to be worthy. God remembers that we’re dust! Our sin is always before him. We don’t shock him, we shock ourselves! This allows me to run to God when I snubbed him a moment ago. And I don’t need to understand why he let’s me do this! I don’t have to chide him and tell him he’s giving me better than I deserve and that really, if he would take another look at me, he’d send me to hell like I deserve and remove his grace from my head and allow my sin to be revealed to the world where I would be mocked and ridiculed and crucified like I should be. I can’t just rest, easy in the fact that he’s chosen to love me, and I can’t do a thing about it.

I love him. I’m weak, and I’ll forget him in 5 minutes and trade his glory for the works of my hands or some even more worthless thing. But right now, I love him. With everything that I am.

Well, I almost had a perfect blogging record save for last Sunday :-).

This week I learned how to knit and use my sewing machine- so I’m knitting (or rather finishing) a scarf that Tim’s mom had started for him before she died, and will shortly be hemming Timmy’s pants.

We went to Texas Roadhouse last night with my family and I’d probably give it a 7/10. My brother, who didn’t know that you were supposed to throw your peanut shells on the ground, turns to me and says, “Jess, this place is really dirty, hehe. The poor girl who was bringing us our food had just given my dad his plate and the whole tray of food fell and smashed to the ground. Beans, steaks and broken plate pieces everywhere! She looked really upset but we were all trying to assure her it was ok, haha.

So it’s all decided- we’re going to Kansas City in October! From the 7th to the 14th- YAY! We’ll be staying with Alex and Jaclyn for most of the trip- it’ll be good to be right across the street from the prayer room and seeing them.

For a deeper update I still have no idea what’s going on with me or what’s wrong, or what I am doing wrong. I still feel like I don’t understand the core of Christianity or God or what He’s doing. And sadly, I think I’m still offended at Him for not giving me what I wanted. I always sing that Misty Edwards song “Baptize My Heart” with the lyrics “I don’t want to be offended, no, I don’t want to be offended, when it’s all coming down” with such a determination that I would never deliberately be offended at God. Well, here am I, deliberately offended, and the moon hasn’t even turned red.

We’ll be going to the leadership summit while we’re at Kansas City, and I’ve never been, but Tim says there’s a time where their prophetic team prophesies over you… and I’m secretly hoping that some random holy man will be able to tell me everything and I’ll be all fixed and ready to go :-) Haha, my theology is horrrrrible!

So if any of you want to pray for me I would be most grateful :-)