\\ Beautiful Broken August \\

I shut my tractor off for the day and wiped the dust from my windows, breathing in the sticky wind that darkened my face and filled my lungs, even from inside the air-conditioned comfort of my cab. The days had been hot, Mike said when he came to fill up my tractor with diesel. I wouldn't really know, for I was in the cab from the time the sun came up until it was well on its way down. The days had been long. I was tired. My body ached for sleep, for the comfort of the glance of human eyes or the touch of a human hand, but the times were of aloneness, something I once cherished but now had grown to dread.

The Lord had told me in July that August would be a month of being laid bare. I was ecstatic (really, I'm not sure how), because I knew I would be gaining something precious by being stretched past the things I depend on. Now I felt... 

Broken. Laid low. Desperate. All those words seemed glamorous and Christian before-the-fact but now that they're here, make me want to wither up like my neglected back-porch oregano plant and die.

I started up Steve (my Ford Tempo) and began the long drive home, stretching my fingers out at the sweet wind as if trying to catch it. The sunset made my heart ache. I didn't even reach for my camera. It was too sacred and full of awe to try and explain second-hand. It soon faded to a deep pink above the purple hills, and the ache in my heart grew stronger, as if grieving that it would soon fade. 

I am so full of knowledge. Knowing, knowing, knowing, talking, preaching, telling, showing, reaching, grasping at more, more, why can't I have more, God, when I am so hungry, but somehow, there is still an ache here in my chest, and I cannot tell why. You know my heart and what I ask of You and You give all good things to Your children. I feel pressed like a grape, like my guts are spilled out for all the angels to watch and see. How do I love as You do? Love those who speak evil of me, those who I want to judge with words that are Yours and not mine, love though my heart longs to hate, love like You tell me to love. I do not know my own self, it seems, for the ways of my own heart are full of pride and deceit. I am weak, Father, and I can't do this, cannot be righteous, cannot have a pure heart like You, cannot love...

The song pounds in my head, the one that I listened to last night through my one functional earphone, as present as the stale-coffee smell in my nose and the Orange-tinged dust in the air all around me.

I will remove the names of your Lovers

Even the memory of their face fades away

I will write on you My name forever

I will be known by you as Faithful and True

See, I am drawing you to Me.

I weep as the walls of pride come crashing down, the walls I had erected as a tribute to the lover I had worshipped, the lover of Independence and Rebellion, The Love of self I so desperately clung to as it passed away. It was dying. I was dying. And still, the eyes of my True Lover burned for me.

You cannot come alive unless you die.

And again, I cry out for the release of what I tightly hold. The humble cry of a child at the end of her own strength. "Daddy, take my heart!" The little seed cries as it sheds its outer shell in the darkness of the earth. Not inches away lies light and clear air and the Sun, Oh! The sun! 

Truly, I want to grow. I've only scratched the surface of You. But I feel helpless to start, helpless to help anything. I need You. I need Your glorious Presence. I know nothing else. That is all. That is all.

\\ Good Days \\

"You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Becoming anything is really hard.

Sometimes my mind runs circles until I work myself into a mental frenzy. This past week has been one of learning how to rest in love and not be so intense. In my waiting on the Lord to make me what He promised, sometimes I take myself too seriously. I am not where I should be. I am not where I want to be. I should have my life more together. I should be praying right now, not wasting my life away on Instagram. Lord, I can't feel you right now as I wallow in thoughts about myself. Will I ever be able to really minister to people if I still feel these mundane days that make me feel... blah? These thoughts run circles in my head as I sit in my tractor and think of all the ways that I fall short.

And then the Lord comes to me in His gentle way, and a few tears escape my eyes when I realize that the Accuser is the one who has been speaking into my mind, telling me that I am not enough, that I do not have the ability to carry the weight of living that I want to walk in. And my Jesus, He looks at me with such love in His eyes, always speaking life over my heart and never judgement, even when I judge myself. No negative thought has ever come from Him. He has never had one negative thought about you.

Beloved, when those voices speak at you and impart guilt, don't heed them... They are from the Father of Lies, and He is speaking His native tongue. Jesus is for you, and not against you. He reminded me this week that He promised us that He would always be with us, even to the end. I believe Him, and that belief is what sustains my joy as I live life with Him, whether it's experiencing His beautiful glorious Presence really thickly, or just sitting next to him at a coffee shop and not really feeling a thing.

Have a good day today. A day full of joy, of the knowledge that you are loved and you are enough. A day of quieting your mind and hearing with your heart. A day of resting in the promise that He will finish the good work that He began in you, that His word does not return to Him void.

And know that becoming is not accomplished by doing, but just by being with Him.

All my love,


B

Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Rom. 6:4)

E V E R Y D A Y L I F E

Where do I start?

Can you believe it's been seven months since I stepped off a plane in Portland? Seven months. I can hardly believe it. It feels a little strange to try and summarize even a small portion of all that has happened in my little life, for the weight of life has been so rich, so sweet, and so full of beauty and love that I could not convey it even if I had a library full of books. How sweet that feeling is, to be brimming, overflowing...

I stepped off the plane grieving the loss of the family I had left behind in Sydney, my heart deeply sorrowful at what seemed to me, being pushed into the next season before I was ready.  Almost immediately, blessing was poured out on me from the moment I returned home. God brought me out of the isolation of wandering and into a family, a group of women and men I could not have asked for in my wildest dreams to do life with. They are crazily, passionately, completely sold out for my Jesus, and they challenge me and sharpen me to life a life worthy of Jesus! I thought I would come back to a lonely pioneer life, to doing life with just me and God, and to fighting stagnancy. Er... that's not exactly what happened. We've been led into some crazy situations in the past season, including praying for people at a rugby party, divine appointments at the bank and in the grocery store, and beautiful times of worship late into the night in our living room. The Lord has swept me up in the arms of family, and I have never been more full of hope.

I received a call in February that I a spot had opened up in the Linfield School of Nursing for me, and if I was to accept it, classes would start in two weeks. Needless to say, it has been my dream for as long as I can remember, and I took it. In the past 5 months, have fallen totally in love not only with the work I'll be doing, but the students I am learning with and the sick and weary, who  have moved my heart so incredibly that I feel it will be one of my callings in life to minister the heart and healing of God to those who are physically and mentally ill. It has been a challenge to submit myself to the discipline of learning, the processes of schoolwork and the humility of doing challenging things for the first time, but I have grown immensely in the process of it all, and more than just scholastically.

Other happenings include my brother joining the navy and moving to South Carolina and two of my best friends getting engaged!!!

In all of the changes that have happened this past few years, God has steadied my heart in a way I never thought possible. I have learned to love people, even my family, when it's hard, instead of running away. I have learned to rest and be still with the Lord, to surrender myself to His purposes and His promises for my life. Most of all, I have learned how to be loved by Him, which is the single most wonderful thing in all the universe, something I cannot live without. He has become what sustains me, not any good thing that I possess. I am amazed at the way His love changes people, and changes my heart to be like Him, more loving and patient and good and kind.

My heart for the mission field has only grown larger since returning. The Lord has put it on my heart to return to the foreign mission field, though right now I do not know how or when. I have been shown that wherever I go, I am sent by Him. I am learning to be a radical follower of Jesus in the dry and hungry places of the world. This time of life has been one of waiting, but when I become anxious about what lies ahead for us, the children of God, James 1 comes to mind. It has brought a lot of peace to me.

...But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

I pray wherever you are, beloved, that you are full of the love of our Savior. He has become everything to me, and I pray He is everything to you as well, your peace and joy and daily bread.

All my love,

Beth

Easter picture

Visiting JJ at Great Lakes, Illinois for boot camp graduation.

Monmouth crew

4th of July Parade

L I M B O

It's a strange feeling, being up in the air. There is no time, no structure. Even day and night are warped, time-lapsed mutations of normalcy. Limbo Land, it should be called. I imagine the writer of Inception got his idea from being on a plane and waking up to a makeup plastered hostess asking him if he wanted champagne or peanuts or whatever they serve on first class.

I used to feel like I had no place up here. I felt lost, like my mind was drifting somewhere in the fifth dimension like a price of lint floating in the dusty living room Saturday morning. I don't feel like that now. Not so lost in limbo land... Or at least not so uncomfortable with it. I used to be unable to sit in my seat without thinking of my destination. "If only I would get there already," I'd think moronically.

Really, limbo land removes your consciousness temporarily of where you are in the span of your life, or maybe the part of your brain responsible for the awareness of time and space just starts to short circuit when you get up closer to the Moon. I sleep for two hours and wake up to find the sun rising, or conversely, sleep for nine and wake to find night. I imagine that when we land, anything could have changed. It could be 2010 and maybe we time warped accidentally and I'm actually 17 and I have never even heard of Australia besides Finding Nemo. Maybe everything will become the inverse of itself and I will be going home to Sydney instead of Oregon. Maybe I'm never going to land, stuck up here in a brilliant, fluffy orange and pink dream (minus the leg cramps). It could be I forget, somehow, in short bursts, where it is I am going and where it is that I have been. How long has it been since we've left Earth? I don't know, for it all seems to turn into this dastardly, never-ending flight that spans your whole life but breaks itself up to appear in bursts of transition. It's like time simply had its own way with matter up here, manipulating it as it wants.

I cried when we lifted off the ground and I saw the earth that I loved slipping away from my sight. I never thought it was possible to love a land so much. She's beautiful, you see. She changes people, the Great Southland of the Holy Spirit. God uses her bright beaches and her stormy skies and her red lands to remind us that life is not to be planned, it's to be lived. To be savoured. She helped me love again. He used her to help me feel again. I never wish to be apart from her...

I cannot fear the coming seasons or the things I must face, for even in the warp of time and space, the land between lands, the air where no man really dwells and yet seems to dwell perpetually, He lives, and He does not change as our fickle hearts do, but is faithful to the end of days. He is here, but He is also in You, as He promised from the very beginning. He is closer than the hand on your face, closer to you than your own mind and your own heart. He will stand with you if you will ask Him, He will help you to stand to your feet and fight darkness with love and the light that you hold inside. He will help you to sing the songs that tear down strongholds and make new life spring up from what once was dead.

...Even if you're in Limbo Land.

F A M I L Y

It was a Friday, the day I came home to Sydney. I left Bangkok, two days after I had said goodbye to Emma and watched her get on a plane to Oregon, where I had planned to go not a few months before. I wondered what I was doing, exactly. Following a whisper... it seemed a little silly now. I had no money left, no plan, nothing to fall back on. All I had was what I had in my backpack, and quite literally, a few dollars in my pocket.

The plane dipped below the clouds and I caught my breath, the same way I do every time I see her skyline. "She's beautiful," I thought. It was rainy that day, and gray, smack dab in the middle of the June winter. I didn't care. I had had quite enough of equatorial thunderstorms and humidity, drinking only bottled water and sleeping in a different bed every night.

I wandered hopelessly around the Queen Victoria Building trying to find an ATM so I could buy a bus ticket to Lane Cove. I imagine people felt quite sorry for me, a frumpy looking backpacker, obviously fresh off the plane and extremely immune to fashion sense. I got home to Jaimee and Gavin's house, greeted a squealing and wriggling Tyson (the cutest and most human like Staffie I've ever met). I took a shower. And I wrote.

I spent most of my time with Jay in those days, my first friend in Sydney and the door God had opened for me to come here. I had met him through Instagram about six months before, and Emma and I ended up staying at his house when we first came through Sydney on our way up the East Coast. Turns out He loved Jesus. A lot. He became my greatest asset in adjusting to life in the city, and a voice of wisdom in the season of change my heart was in. We went to the Vivid Light Show in the Quay that weekend. We stayed up singing to Jesus until all hours of the night and watched the entire final season of How I Met Your Mother. He's the one who introduced me to Jubilee Church.

Jubilee proved to be the church that changed the course of my life. Not by the amazing teaching or the worship that tore the roof off, but by the family that embraced me for who I was and called me one of their own. I had been running around for quite some time, thinking that it was my responsibility to figure out life on my own, that I had to be this independent travel chick who had it all figured out. That proved to not work for me very well, and I soon came to the end of my rope and the fear that I was on my own crept into my heart.

But my Jubs family did not leave me to "sort it out on my own." They didn't watch me sink into isolation and do nothing. Sophie called me one night. She asked me why she hadn't seen me in a while. I didn't tell her at first... and then it just spilled out. She loved me, even when I didn't know how to receive real love. She called me out of my isolation and into family again. Carla invited me over and let me stay the night when it was too late to go home. She made me Rooibos tea and we talked life and the land and our futures. Paula spoke life and truth over me, and told me the things she saw in me, the things that God had put there. Jaimee and Gavan let me into their lives and their home and shared everything they had with me when I had nothing to give them.

It's always been about family. The universe was created by a family (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) so that family would cover the earth. If the Enemy can keep you out of family, then He will do everything in his power to do so, for family is where gifts grow in love, where you can truly start to see God in people, where you can come alive and be yourself.

I used to have a homeless, wandering spirit. Every time that people started to know who I really was, I would run. I came to church to take, to see what God had for me, but I would never just come to hang out, to be with people.  I wanted to be effective in the nations and carry something powerful, something that was from God, but my gifts lacked the family structure to rest and grow, so they faltered. In reality, I couldn't trust, couldn't let down my walls enough for people to see all of me because I was afraid that I wouldn't be what they were looking for. I was afraid they wouldn't care.

Here's the truth: you don't have to walk out this journey alone.

The Enemy tells us so many lies about the church and tells us we should run the other way, but here's the truth: God loves His Church. We may be imperfect at times, we may sometimes be stuck in a box of routine and some people in the Church may be extremely misled. But we are family, and no matter where we run or what we do, we cannot change that identity. Good church family is hard to find, but you're never going to find the perfect one. God gave me people that saw the gold in me and called it to the surface, and He will do the same for you. I've always said you have to go after Jesus with everything you have for yourself, but you know the second step? Surround yourself with people that will see the dreams He's given you through to the end,

I had to come halfway across the world to realize that, but you don't have to. I gave up everything and left my home to find Jesus. I told Him I would go anywhere for Him and do anything. I walked many miles and saw amazing things, beautiful things, but in the end, they were all empty without the love of family, just endless miles that reminded me I was alone. You know where He put me? In family. You know what I ended up doing? Learning how to love people.

And now I wish I could stay in this moment forever.

F A M I L Y

It's the song that moves God's heart

it's the song that lets you know that

you're ok just as you are

It's the song that will endure to the end of day

It's the song that melts the darkness

and drives away all hint of sadness

Oh, I will sing this song forever.

 

All my love,

 

B

Watermelons

Sydney is the smallest big city I've ever experienced, you often see people you know in the most unlikely of places. Why, just today I saw Sam. He was in the train station, walking the opposite direction. I hadn't seen him in three months, not since I abruptly quit my job at the chicken shop and started working at Fratelli.

We stopped and exchanged pleasantries, as the kind people of Sydney are in the habit of doing. He walked with me into Woolworths and we chatted while I selected the best avocado from the lot. I saw the watermelons and commented that they were delicious. So he bought me one. A watermelon. And I carried it home with me on the bus like a baby.

I often fall asleep on the bus. It's an awful, intermittent  sleep, interrupted by frantic panic whenever the bus comes to a lurching halt, jerking me awake in fear to check my surroundings to ensure that I have not, indeed, missed my stop. I can't seem to help sleeping, especially when the temperature is so perfectly temperate and the rumble of the engine simmers along... Never mind that my cranium is being banged against the glass window at a speed fast enough to make my eyeballs rattle... Sleeping has always been one of my skills, even if it be lesser known.

Being on a bus really doesn't bother me, though from what I've seen, it should bother any normal person. The bus driver is usually so unobservant that someone could be stabbing a small goat in the backseat and he wouldn't even flinch. Forget trains, if a scientist wanted to look at society through it's respective petri dish, he would look at the concentration of humanity that resides on a bus. If society were a pond, buses are where the little slimy floaties on top of the water hang out. People kiss passionately and grossly, cry, talk extremely loudly on and to all types of technological devices, hold staring contests with their reflection in the window, and try to pretend they're far away from people by listening to music. One time I was overcome by hysterical fits of laughter in a crowded bus, and while people started to look at me weird, I don't think anyone could hear me over their own music.

But back to watermelons... despite their enormity of inconvenience on public transport, is there anything more refreshing to eat? I don't mean the water content of the melon, I'm talking the drooling, slavering, "I-think-the-melon-ate-my-face," "Am-I-five-years-old?" kind of a feeling. I chopped the first quarter into nice, bite sized pieces, like a responsible adult. Then I was still impatiently hungry, so I upgraded to just the melon and a spoon, you know, to speed things up a bit. That didn't hold my attention for very long. and I soon lost my propriety entirely and ate the entire quarter of the melon using only my hands and face. I ended up covered in watermelon juice, sticky but so... happy.

There is a point to this story... albeit on a little trail for jackrabbits.

I'm not saying one should be an absolute slovenly slob, however, I started to think just how much stuff that we do for other people to like us, or at least maintain a respectable version of us in their heads. It's actually crazy. Beloved, we just need to let loose sometimes. It's an orphan mentality driven by fear that dictates what you do because of people's possible negative reactions (or even positive). I take myself way too seriously. The church does. It's because we think our value lies in the gifts we carry or the things we've accomplished or our intellect that we just can't be ourselves sometimes, because that would be too... well, it wouldn't be important enough. We have to be grandiose and spiritual and proper.

Tell you what... Go eat a watermelon with your face. Go sing a song that sounds less-than worship leader quality. Laugh hysterically on a bus because something was funny. Leave your phone at home and go run around in the woods for a day. We have to be comfortable being us, and being alone being us, and living life outside of rigid rules and expectations. We are children, after all, children of the Kingdom. Let go any expectations that you think God has of you (which are law-based) or that you have of yourself and just... live with Him. Like His kid.

This blog post might leave some people scratching their heads and saying, "Well, that didn't make any sense." I don't really care. I wrote it as a reminder for me...and to remind everyone how delicious watermelons are.

All my love,

B

S P A C E

I walk into the driveway, the gravel crunching softly under my shoes. It's a cold night, the cold bites at the edges of my thick flannel jacket and nibbles at my feet. The stars are up above, though the fog has started to roll in thick. The silence is so dense I can almost see it, it's weight hanging over the ground lovingly.

I walk toward the house. The light that streamed from the old windows isn't bright, but mellow, golden, steady. I think that if it were to have a taste, it would be delicious light.

The silhouette of a window outlines a woman over a stove, cooking stew. I can taste the mushrooms and the venison and the broth, Little curls of steam twirl up, and as the woman smiles in joy, I recognize her: Mother.

This is my house. I'm in a dream, a long lost memory of what was once.

I run over to the next window, where I see what I know in my heart I would find: Father, playing his old Ibanez by the roaring fire, singing in that rough, wild voice of his:

All I am is music,
I've been that way from the start.
Just a whisper on the wind,
an easy twilight song.
Just a wandering spirit
and an open, open heart.
Sing with me,
All I ever wanted
was for you to sing with me
Throw away your fears and realize
That when you sing the mountains move,
the stones break down and cry
and the stars shine brighter in the sky.

"Daddy!"

I remember the first time the Holy Spirit came to Me, when He showed me His love in such a beautiful, tangible way. It was about one year ago now, and I was walking down my beloved railroad tracks. I was overcome by love from such a King, but the main feeling I remember even now was the feeling of...

S P A C E.

I could think with my own thoughts and feel with my own emotion, something I had always wanted but was afraid of being manipulated. My walls were finally down after years of being taught to put them up, and I could see for miles, stretch my soul again, and just sit back and... rest.

It's become one of the things I look for to know He's near. All the problems weighing on my mind suddenly don't seem very important anymore, in fact, not important at all. I loved and still love that place with Him... no obligation, just passion. No agenda, just love. No time, just this moment that is the most important moment of all... the moment of Now. That simple call of "Daddy!" And the sweet response, always faithful and always true.

In those moments of space I realize that nothing I could ever be or learn or accomplish could ever compare with finding Him, with spending my entire existence pouring out on the dusty earth, just to know Him more. Not all of my life is spent in these moments, there is always something pulling my attention away from Him, away from those moments, away from that place that changes my very mind to be more like Him...

...But I contend for the moments that I can see past my walls. I pray, I weep, I fight tooth and nail against everything that stands against me being closer. I give up seemingly harmless things that others enjoy without fault. I draw away to be alone for no logical reason. I lift up the things in my heart to Him even when my mind is clouded and there are fears and doubts running wild, knowing that as I give them up, He takes them away and I can see Him clearer. And I know that little by little, our space together will grow and we will be endless together.

I love the space I have with Him. It's my secret place. I will spend time there, make my home there. I will build a roaring fire and make bread, start to craft melodies and sing the words that He teaches me. I will plant a garden and grow flowers. I will run as fast as I want and dance like I am a child and dare to do the very thing that terrifies me. And best of all, I will love Him. And He will love me too.

May you feel space in your soul today.

All my love,

B