Tuesday, August 27, 2013

A Pile of Stones

Today marks the official end of summer vacation, and the beginning of my senior year of college. The last first day of school. This summer has been absolutely chock full of life lessons, and it's going to be strange transitioning into learning from a textbook again. I am crossing over from one stage of life into another. When the Israelites crossed over the Jordan river, Joshua commanded twelve men to each take a stone from the river bed...
      And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal. And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.” ~ Joshua 4:20-24

In a similar way, I want to take a few moments to highlight some of the many amazing things that God has done for me over this amazing summer. 

- I had the opportunity to grow closer to a dear friend of mine, to the point where she has become one of the three people in my life who know me best, and I have in turn become one of her best friends. This makes for an amazing support system, which I am sure we will both have cause to rely on as the school year progresses.

- Through the friend above, I met another wonderful girl who has quickly become dear to me as we share a lot of the same struggles in life and are able to encourage one another in fighting them.

- The two girls above and I have become "Accountabilibuddies" and begun a Bible study through the book of Romans together, allowing all of us to grow spiritually and help each other figure out more about God. 

- Over the course of a couple of crazy all-nighters, conversations with those two and my "big brother" completely reworked my view of myself and my relationship with others (including God).

- A really fantastic, godly guy whom I've been friends with for three years has taken a romantic interest in me. At my request, we are currently pursuing a deeper friendship with one another rather than advancing our relationship at this point in time; however, we are both open to a more official relationship in the future if God continues to lead us in the direction he has these past few months. 

- I volunteered with the Jr. High group run by the church that my college shares a campus with. I intended to help out only for the summer, but God is calling me to continue during the school year. This means that I will become the co-leader of a small group: helping with or leading games, lessons, discussions, etc. and connecting with the kids in my group on Wednesday nights, at events, and occasionally throughout the week. All of those things require the development of skills which will be extremely useful in the pursuit of the calling God has placed upon my life for after college.

- I joined a church college group which meets on Sunday nights, so now I am getting more of the Word, more fellowship, more support, etc.

- I got to teach the college group pastor's wife how to crochet, which is something I want to be able to do with kids in the future; doing it with an adult first made for excellent teaching practice. 

- Due to changes in the college housing arrangement, I will not have a roommate this semester, but I am still living in a double room. This provides an excellent ministry base for me; I can now host our AccountaBible Studies, let commuter friends crash occasionally, possibly hold events here for my small group girls, etc. with plenty of space and no roommate to clear it with first. 

- My "big brother" got engaged!!! Okay, so that's not really a change that happened in MY life exactly... but I'm still so blessed that God provided my best and closest friend with such an incredible life companion. :)

Praise God for all that He has done and is continuing to do in my life! What kind of things has He done in your life over the summer? Consider making a list of your own; your personal "pile of stones", if you will. You may or may not have posterity to share the grace of God with (I sure don't, haha), but you can use your experiences to encourage other believers or to simply remind yourself in later years or whenever times get hard about His incredible provision. To God be the glory, great things He has done!

"For we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."
~ Romans 8:28

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Dandelions and Walmart Bags

For those of you who don't know me in real life, crochet is a huge part of my existence. It started out as a hobby two years ago and has since become sort of a small business. My greatest customer base comes from friends at school, so I wasn't too surprised when a friend of mine came up and asked me to crochet an unusual gift for his fiance a few months ago. Apparently they have some sort of inside joke about a bearded pirate teddy bear, so that's what he asked me to create. Interesting! Anyhow, I did so, and waived his offer of pay in order to make this their wedding gift. I had already been invited to attend the wedding, so I planned to take the bear with me and just get it to him that way. Unfortunately, it was not until the morning of the wedding that I remembered a crucial element of gift giving... wrapping paper. Oops. I live in a dorm and have no car, so naturally since I forgot to wrap the gift until the morning of, I had no way of acquiring gift wrap before the wedding. I hastily (and guiltily) wrapped the bear in the only covering I could find - Walmart bags. Classy. Needless to say, I was ashamed of my unsightly gift, regardless of my pride in its contents. I was relieved when the multitude of gifts already on the table when we arrived at the reception hall allowed for it to be buried in pretty packages and hidden from view. At the end of the reception, the groom came up to me and furtively asked which gift the bear was in. I hesitantly described the packaging amid apology for its appearance, and though he did give me sort of an odd look, he laughed it off and headed toward the gift table with enthusiasm. With the help of some staff and groomsmen, he pulled aside beautiful boxes and tasteful gift bags and dug through the pile to reach an ugly grey plastic-wrapped lump. As they left the reception hall, my unsightly gift was tucked under his arm and he was grinning with the anticipation of presenting this special gift to his new wife. Even though mine was undoubtedly the most ugly present on that table, he sought it out specifically and chose it from among all the others to take with them when they left the wedding. Despite its shabby appearance, mine was given the honor of being the first gift opened by the new bride and groom. 

Sometimes I feel as though my gifts to God are like that. I look at all of the beautiful, useful, important talents that my friends and those I admire present to Him, and am awed by their beauty and purpose. My own shabby talents I would rather hide under a pile and forget. I think to myself, "Wow! Her gift of discernment is so amazing! It's great how she uses that to show people where God is already leading them! Oh, what an awesome talent he has! It's great that he can correct people in love with such accuracy and help them get back on God's path! But as for me... the gift of exhortation... what's that supposed to do? I cheer up people who are already awesome. What good is that?" For the longest time, I thought my gift was useless. Pointless. Unsightly. While others rejoiced in their spiritual gifts of discernment or teaching or evangelizing, I wandered around encouraging people quietly, assuming that it had no real bearing on their spiritual life and wishing I had a better gift to offer up. A couple of weeks ago though, a friend I had lived and worked with at camp last summer came to visit me, and we ended up hanging out with one of my best friends here. When my guest asked for funny stories about me, my dear friend thought about it for a while then replied that she couldn't really think of any. The only stories she could think of that involved me were ones in which I had influenced her life by uplifting her in a time when she really needed it. This absolutely floored me... the gift which I thought was nice, but kind of pointless had actually impacted the life of someone I love to the point that those times were the first ones she thought of when asked for stories of me. What an honor! I am constantly amazed by the way that God takes the things we would rather hide and brings them into the light and shines His glory upon them. 

A song that another dear friend introduced me to recently explains the same concept a little differently. A boy picks some beautiful yellow flowers to give to his mother, and she joyously receives them and sets them in a place of honor, when in reality the "flowers" he was so thrilled to offer her were dandelion weeds. In the same way, God takes our loving efforts to please Him, as ragged and unsightly as they may be, and makes them into something beautiful and honored. The chorus exclaims,

"Lord, search my heart
Create in me something clean!
Dandelions -
You see flowers in these weeds."

May we offer up our gifts and talents to God with enthusiasm. Let us not hold back or be ashamed because we compared ourselves to others, but rather may we be be secure in His joy at our efforts and do our best for Him.

Dandelions by Five Iron Frenzy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLwvtEUiQXw

Thursday, August 15, 2013

The Scary Vacuum

If you read my last post, you know that I work with small children on a fairly regular basis, and you got to learn all about Jack and his love for puzzles. (By the way, as of yesterday morning, he has officially grasped the concept of the edge piece and can almost flawlessly identify which pieces do or do not have flat sides! Way to go Jack!) Today I'm going to highlight another one of our children... funny how the kids tend to teach me more than I teach them. :)

On Wednesday mornings our group contains a little girl named Olivia. She's probably about two years old - completely independent as far as walking, eating, etc., but still trying to get a grasp on the whole talking thing. She is a little chatterbox, but most of her conversations to us are a bit like "Anum furglum plluh ball anformen pu felum yay!!!" She has only mastered a few actual English words (as opposed to baby gibberish), but one of the words which she is VERY clear about is "scary". I discovered this a couple of weeks ago, when I was cleaning up graham cracker crumbs with the ever-intimidating... dun dun dun... VACUUM. And I'm not talking about the kind you plug into the wall that makes crazy "vroom" sounds and lights up and could potentially eat a small child. I'm talking about this bad boy right here:
This has no electric capacity whatsoever. It is operated completely on push power, and at the most, it makes a light scraping or rumbling sound as its brushes roll over the carpet. Not particularly terrifying in my estimation... but to Olivia, this may quite possibly be the world's scariest object. The moment we take this monster out of the closet, Olivia screams and runs up to the closest teacher, babbling a mile a minute in gibberish with the word SCARY stuck in there every few seconds in all caps. She won't stop freaking out until one of us picks her up, but the instant she is in someone's arms she goes dead quiet and is completely chill, though she still keeps a wary eye on the vacuum. It's the strangest thing; pull the vacuum out when she's on the ground by herself, and she immediately runs as far away as possible and panics until she considers herself to be at a safe distance. Once she's being held though, we can walk right up to the vacuum with her in our arms, and she doesn't even flinch. This really surprised me the first time I tried it; I figured that the closer I got to the vacuum with her in my arms, the tighter she would grip and the more she would freak out. I was amazed to find that she was just as comfortable next to the vacuum as she was across the room from it, as long I kept holding her. Try to set her down before the vacuum goes away though, and she latches on with a death grip and frantically babbles about the "scary".

The one thing I keep thinking about this experience is, this is how we should be with God. Whenever I am freaked out about something (and usually, the things I freak out about end up being about as insignificant as a "scary" push vacuum in the long run), there will come a moment when I run to God, and I will feel safe in His arms. When the scary situation approaches again or draws closer though, I instantly freak out again, forgetting that God is holding me through it. I want to reach that place where, like Olivia, I can relax no matter how close I am to my fears, knowing that God is holding me the entire time. It reminds me of a few lines of an old song...

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit; oh, what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

What peace we often forfeit... what needless pain we bear... simply because we refuse to trust that everything is under the control of the almighty, all knowing, all loving God. All because we do not run to Him, or stay in His arms, when frightening situations approach. In Isaiah 41:10, God exhorts us:

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

We should never have to fear, because we are being upheld, helped, and strengthened by the God of the universe. How often and how quickly we forget this truth! Speaking from personal experience though, I know that sometimes the reason that I don't run to God in scary situations is because I've strayed, or backslid, or just been distant from Him in the recent past. It's not like I think that He'll reject me, but (once again, projecting flawed human traits onto a perfect God), I always have this idea in the back of my mind that He'll pick me up, but be super grudging about it; or that He'll reluctantly help me only because He has to as my God. I hate feeling like I'm an obligation. I realized how silly that idea is this past week... Olivia was being a bit of a brat that morning, as all children do at some point or another. She wasn't listening to instructions, she kept running away when we told her to stay put, she would freak out and wriggle out of our grasp whenever we tried to pick her up to redirect her behavior. After snack time though, out came the vacuum, and up came a terrified Olivia, babbling for help and reaching out to us desperately. As I swung her up into my arms, I felt no grumpy obligation or contempt toward her; just a desire to calm and protect this frightened little girl - and perhaps just a hint of amusement that the big "scary" was only a harmless push vacuum. :) It made no difference that I had been incredibly frustrated with her behavior five minutes ago. She was scared, and I had an instinctive desire to soothe her fears. God is the same way with us. It doesn't matter how much we've messed up or how "bad" of people we are... regardless of our behavior, He is God, and His instinct and desire is to care for and protect and love us when we come to Him. 

Moral of the story: Psalm 55:22. "Give your burdens to the Lord, and He will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall." Go to God with your fears, insecurities, and worries, regardless of how you feel. He will pick you up into His arms, maybe chuckle at you a little bit (but in a nice way), and hold you close, protecting you completely. Relax, because He's got this. Even if there's a vacuum in the room. 

Friday, August 9, 2013

A Puzzling Comparison

I bet you thought that this post would be something about the enigmas or paradoxes of life, the universe, and everything, didn't you? Sorry to disappoint - in this case, puzzling refers to the action of uniting pieces of a deliberately fractured whole to create a single image called a puzzle. Actually, I just made that up... but it sounded good, right? ;) Anyhow, I work with lots of kids ages 2-6 several times a week, and on Wednesday mornings and Thursday nights we set up "stations" for the kids to work at during free play time. These are areas where they can do things like build train tracks, play with legos, color, etc. - but my absolute favorite station is the puzzle area. Especially when my buddy Jack shows up. He LOVES puzzles, so every time I pull one out and shake all the pieces out of the bag, he's right there to help me put them together! The only problem is, Jack is only four (almost five, according to him), so he hasn't quite figured out how to find pieces that match all the time. So, every time we start a puzzle, I give him the job of turning all the pieces right-side up while I quickly and stealthily search for matches. First we sort all of the edge pieces into a pile ("Is this one?" "Nope, good try Jack, but this one doesn't have any flat sides. See, this is what a flat edge looks like - find more of these!"), then we build the perimeter of the puzzle out of that pile and fill the middle with the remaining pieces until we get the whole thing solved. The process usually looks a little something like this:

Me: *sorts pieces quickly*
Jack: What can I do to help? :D
Me: Here buddy, this piece has an eagle wing on it... see if you can find a piece with the eagle's body!
Jack: *looks everywhere but at the piece right next to his left foot, which is the one he needs* I can't find it!
Me: What about the one by your foot?
Jack: *Searches through the pile by his right foot*
Me: Other side, buddy! Try the one by your other foot!
Jack: *sees it* Okay! *promptly turns the piece upside down and tries to stick it in the wrong side of the other piece* It doesn't work! *sets the piece aside and resumes searching for the "right one"*
Me: *picks up the discarded piece and hands it to him* I think this one is gonna work. Try it again!
Jack: It doesn't work! *tries it again anyhow (what a great kid!), but it "doesn't work" again, and he sets it down*
Me: What if you turn it around?
Jack: *picks it up, turns it the right way after a few false starts, and finally gets the pieces to match*
Me: There you go!
Jack: I did it!!! I fixed it, look!!! :D
Me: Wow, you sure did! Great job!!!

Thankfully, that's not how it goes with EVERY puzzle piece, haha! He's gotten really good at puzzles over the past few weeks, so most of the time I can just subtly toss matching pieces next to each other and he'll figure them out... always with a joyous exclamation that he found the right one and fixed it! Whoo! He's even gotten to the point where he can figure out small bits of the puzzle without any prompting or arranging by me - although the mysterious physiognomy of the "edge piece" still eludes him. :)

Doing puzzles with Jack makes me think about how God must do life with us. I work these puzzles all the time with various kids, so I'm familiar with how most of them go together. And even if I put together a puzzle I've never seen before, I can easily find pieces that match and see what way they need to go together to fit properly. I have a greater sense of how puzzles work, what whole images look like - basically, I know the big picture. Jack, on the other hand, isn't as familiar with the puzzles as I am; and even if he has done a certain puzzle before, he still can't always find matching pieces. And when he does, he can't always get them to fit right. But when I place a couple of matches right next to each other or suggest he turn a piece around, he quickly finds the match and is thrilled with what "he" just did. "Look, I found it!" he'll proclaim, even though I was the one who put the pieces in order; all he had to do was connect what was already in place. And he never says it in an arrogant way or anything like that; he's just really excited that he accomplished his goal, and he can't wait to show me what a great job he did! I wonder how many times that happens with God and us? How many times does God line up the perfect opportunities, people, events, etc. in our life to create His beautiful plan, and wait for us to put two and two together and run back to Him with a thrilled "Look what's happening! Didn't I do a good job?"

When I first thought of that, I felt a little embarrassed and guilty... I mean, here I have been excited about stuff in my life that's "just falling into place", or things that "I accomplished", when really God set the whole thing up... but then I realized, it's okay. When Jack calls to me and points out the fantastic way he connected the pieces I lined up for him a couple minutes ago, I never scold him for taking credit for "finding" what I already found, or disapprove of the pleasure he gets from "fixing" something that I had to fix for him. I take one look at those sparkling eyes and his huge grin (complete with missing front teeth), and I am just as thrilled for him as he is for himself! "Way to go, buddy! Awesome!" I love Jack, and seeing him so overjoyed at his "accomplishments" gives me great joy as well. And this is a kid I only see a couple times a week, and had never met until a couple months ago! How much more must God take pleasure in the joy of His children whom He knew before the creation of the world, whom He knit together in their mothers' wombs? My favorite Bible verse says it all:

"The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty warrior who will save you. He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will exult over you with loud singing!"
~Zephaniah 3:17

Glad rejoicing, quiet loving, loud singing that exults over us! WOW! As you recognize that though, also keep in mind that God is lining things up for us - let's remember to give credit to Him as we encounter "matches" in our lives. :)

"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path."
~Proverbs 3:5-6

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
~Ephesians 2:10

And when you're hearing His voice or His word directing you to take action in a way that doesn't seem to "fit" in your life, keep listening to Him. Keep trying if He directs you to. Because if you put down the piece that He showed you and start trying to put other pieces into the gap, chances are you're gonna be trying to fill that hole for a long time before you finally come back to the one He intended to go there.

Remember, God is the only one who can make something like this:


Turn into THIS! (This is my favorite puzzle to do with Jack - see the eagles?)



Anyway, those are my "puzzling" thoughts. :) Have a beautiful day!