I'm realizing more and more, how much of my life, even walking with God, I have relied on approval and attention of others...

I'm ready to be done with it.

He.

Getting ready to spend a weekend of laughter and love and being together with some of the coolest people I know...

It's starting to hit that this is it...two more weeks and I'm done being a junior in college forever.

I've already accepted that I'll be a puddle on the floor more than once before then.

It's hard to say how I'll remember this year. Sure there were a few defining moments. But mostly, it was a lot of not-so-defining moments. And yet, those were the defining moments. The ones where I had to choose if I was going to live life for myself or for my King. It was a lot of learning to love and embrace the journey that is life. More than that, learning to love and trust my Father, whatever that journey brought.

And ya know what? He kept loving. He never ever let go. He chased me down. He put His arm around my shoulder. He let me cry. He brought me laughter. He sustained me. He whispered truth into my ear.

Friends, He's good. Life is not going to get easier, but I am convinced knowing Him is only going to become sweeter.

Restless

Some days are just blah. I feel so little motivation to do anything. To be anything. I'm probably a total drag to be around on these days. Everything seems futile. Just empty.

This deep longing within points to the fact that life isn't what it was meant to be. My heart knows where it wants to be but wastes life on worthless things. It's this tension between life as it is and life as it should be.

Tomorrow's Easter. How I so desperately want to be alive. How desperately Jesus wants to give life. What else, besides love, would bring him to spill his blood for me. And Who else could rise again, winning over sin and death forever, but Jesus. So with him I will walk out of the tomb into new life. The tomb that could not keep him in. It's empty.

Stuff I like...

-sunshine
-sweating
-flip-flops
-Nick Drake
-Esperanza Spaulding
-Tim Myers
-good conversation with friends
-showing up to church on 3 hours of sleep because of said conversation
-rollerblading
-flowers
-bird songs
-Passover
-Kim Nazarian and the NY Voices
-awkward moments with Sarah Acker
-little kiddos
-how inadequate I feel trying to understand the cross
-the bloody reality of the cross
-that Jesus gave all of Himself for all of me
-the life that poured out of Him in death
-the freedom in knowing I owe nothing to myself because Jesus paid it all
-that the disciples were not a lot different than I can be
-that Jesus holds his life so loosely because he knows Who truly holds it
-that Jesus has felt the weight of all I have ever experienced
-that the cross exposes how pitifully broken I am and yet how beloved
-the love of God of which I have just scratched the surface

A Love Story

Child of weakness, watch and pray, find in Me thine all in all.

If you've heard my story before, you might recall a certain encounter with God at Indy CC a little over a year ago that radically redefined my life. In that moment, while singing Jesus Paid it All, I found myself truly drowning in grace for the first time. I found real life. Since then, I've been journeying through different seasons and finding that God is faithful through it all. The last few months have been a true test of walking by faith, not emotion, not intellect...just plain faith. It's hard to seek His face, and not His hand. Sometimes I've felt like a screaming baby, so wanting God to just shove a pacifier in my mouth and give me something tangible to grab onto. The problem is, He's never been holding out on me.

The problem is me. I'm so often spiritually unaware. I'd rather focus on myself and fail to see God's hand in everything. But He is a gracious Father and one thing He will never hold from us is His love. His answers to prayer may not be the ones I want, but they are what I need. So when I asked to clearly know His love, He showed me in the sweetest ways. The unconditional love of a dear friend who after I had confessed my struggles to her, only held me closer because of it; puffy, white clouds against a brilliant blue sky; Him waking me up at 6:30 am before an exam so I could be with Him, truths from a wise friend via Skype, the pure, childlike love of a certain five year old boy, and Oasis.

I went to Oasis not really expecting any emotional high. But I did want God. For most of the night, I was at peace just sitting in the back, listening, soaking up the beautiful sound of God's people making much of Him, with little Danny sleeping on my lap, but at the end of the night, God decided to yank me out of it. He took me back to the place He had grabbed me fifteen months before, weeping in the truths of Jesus Paid it All. "Child of weakness, watch and pray..." I tried to sing the first verse, but I knew it wasn't going to happen. I tried to stifle the sobs, but they were the kind that come from your deep within that aren't worth even trying to stop. But there was so much joy in the letting go. So much freedom. So much assurance that the good work God began is still going on. So much relief that God is still near.

God is good. He is faithful when I am faithless. He is timeless. He has a plan. He is love. That is what I will take into whatever comes at me next.

O praise the One who paid my debt, and raised this life up from the dead.

World Water Day

On a day we are complaining about the rain, take a few minutes and think about the people around the world who do not have access to clean water, the children that die of diarrhea and other preventable causes. How crazy it is that all we have to do is turn on a faucet? Not walk five miles and carry the bucket on our heads...

Water is a necessity for life. Today is a great day to give it to someone who needs it. Check out blood:water mission, an organization started by Jars of Clay that's doing some sweet things.

Pieces of a Big Blue Sky

Faith is jumping into the unknown. Life is so full of unknown. I think a lot, maybe too much...about life, God, myself, just about why ________ is the way it is. This week so many things have come into question, which is a funny thing, because I hate the unknown and love it all at the same time.

My bearded friend Teddy Brown used the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle so I'm going to go with it. The only difference is, when you do a jigsaw puzzle, you start from the edges. Life doesn't work like that. It's more like finding random pieces that belong somewhere but you don't really know where. Like pieces of a big blue sky. Sometimes you try to push a piece in and it doesn't work so you keep turning it around, hoping to force it in somewhere. When I find two that fit, the satisfaction lasts for a little while. Until I realize that there are more pieces missing than put together. My mind runs in circles looking for something, anything to grab onto to fill the space, the unknown...

Two conclusions I can draw.

The cognitive dissonance, the tension, is good. I am more afraid of complacency than anything else. If you or I never questioned the status quo, never questioned the lenses with which we saw the world, we would stay very flat people. Flat like a warm can of coke. Gross.

Jesus calls himself the Light of the world. The psalmist writes, "in your light we see light." Light is truth. Seeing the world through Christ, we see things as they are. As I draw nearer to Him, things come into clearer focus. But until our hearts and minds are completely freed from the selfishness that cloud them, a lot of things won't make sense. God won't make sense. He's not supposed to. The trite answers are not satisfactory. Sometimes, even the most advanced theological, philosophical ones aren't either. And being okay with that is hard.

"For I can promise you none of this...no land of inquiry, for I bring you not to the land of questions, but of answers, and you will see the face of God." -C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce