Asking For More

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

-C.S. Lewis

Well, the day is finally here. I have successfully procrastinated writing anything at all for the past three months until finally, I am forced to write, for if I wait any longer, you will be completely lost as to what has happened to my life, and that would not be at all productive for the linear thinking of a blog. I address this because I think that the next time I write, I will not be quite the same. But before I make any scary assertions, let me explain.

Somehow, being 20 isn't exactly how I pictured it would be. Looking forward to the "decade of adulthood," I imagined myself drinking Ethiopian coffee and travelling the world. I imagined myself discussing philosophy with passion and drinking fine wine (never mind I am still not 21).  I imagined that I would be knowledgeable about things like investing, relationships, temptation, the shades of gray that make up the bigger portion of the world in which I live. I imagined the woman I would be: beautiful, mature, discerning, and happily living in the plan of the Father for her life, which I somehow imagined I would be knowledgeable of.

I will save you from unnecessary details, but being an adult is not what I expected. I have been pulled, stretched, and other uncomfortable verbs associated with growth. I feel like my soul is a 14-year-old teenage boy going through puberty; it's an awkward and sometimes humiliating experience. Cynicism aside, the reality of 20-year-old life is that coffee makes me irritable, wine makes me sleepy, travelling costs a lot of money, and relationships are hard work, no matter which way you throw the chips. I still really wish I knew what the Lord had planned for the next few years of my life. I often act like I am a child simply because I am tired of being a grown-up. Instead of the patience that I seek so avidly, I find myself at my wit's end more often than I'd like to admit. Reality is this: I still don't have it figured out. 

But let me get to the point. Today a new chapter of my life begins. Today I am embarking on a journey. For two weeks, my dear friend Mackenzie and I will travel to Redding, California and learn to worship in Spirit and in Truth from church leaders at Bethel Church. Though it is only for the next two weeks, I feel in my Spirit that when I return, I shall never again be the same. To quote a dear friend, "it is the feeling that you know you are going to go through a process that remains unclear and undefined, because God is a mysterious God and He loves giving surprises." 

Anticipating what will happen in my heart these next few weeks, something in me comes alive. I feel the Lord preparing me, calling me, slowly pulling me toward him. I laugh more, not just aloud, but in my heart. I feel as if I am slowly waking up, as if I had been in a dream. His Presence has been steady, there when I wake up in the morning and remaining when I go to bed at night. I want to stretch every moment of each day and savor each detail, pick it up, hold it in my hands and make it last just a little bit longer. Life is beautiful. And worship school hasn't even started yet. 

My conclusion is this: I think that in the past, I have asked for too little from the Lord. It is as if He is my bank account, which can only clear so many checks before it runs out of funds. But to our Father, we are sons, sharing in the endless inheritance of the Father. I have unlimited resources available to me as a daughter of God; I am spiritually a billionaire! I have a feeling that he is wanting me to ask for more knowledge and more of His Spirit, just so He can shower it upon me! I embark upon this journey knowing that there is room for so much more of His Spirit in my life, and I welcome Him. I want all of God and all that comes with Him.
Here goes nothing...

To You,

Lord Jesus Christ

Who in grace and mercy have,

by the Holy Spirit

and

through the eternal Word

taught my souls to sing,

my heart to obey

and my spirit to soar,

as songs, strength and power

have been found

in worship

before You

at the right hand of 

the Father's throne.

-Jack Hayford

The Springtime Metaphor

I hate metaphors. I really do. This isn't, as you might suppose, because I am a creative scrooge, it is simply because writers often recycle the creativity of others, thereby cheapening the most profound and convicting of examples, and are sometimes even heralded for doing so afterward.

The metaphor of spring is one that I am particularly fond of, for I am becoming more and more acutely aware of the fact that winter erodes one's reservoirs of cheerfulness, even despite one's best efforts. My Great-aunt Winifred described March as "one of the most tiresome months of the year." Winter hasn't loosened its grip yet, and even though most of the snow is gone, there are still new storms, and cold.

Most of my ancestors were settlers, cowboys and mountain men, in the times of the Old West. Winter, for them, brought bitter cold and hunger, of which I am proud to say they thrived in. Murat Blevans, my great-great grandfather, was said to have given the shirt off his back to anyone in need, and did indeed once give his wool mittens to an old man driving a team in the middle of a snow storm. He'd go out onto the road and practically force passersby to come in and eat, even if he had barely enough for himself. I hope that will be said of me someday. The winters were marked with hardship, and spring brought life and the hope that they thought had long fled away.

And this simplest of things, spring, is synonymous with rebirth. Yesterday I walked back from class, and instead of holding my head down to keep the rain from hitting my face, I turned my face toward heaven and sang with all the angels. I rode my bike out toward Parker Road, and was reminded of just how nice it is to see the moon. The stars seemed to grab me by the throat and threaten me that I ought to tell the world of God's power and mighty love, as though I had forgotten in the long months of being under a cloud. The smell of the river pulsed through me, the dark branches of the trees overhead flew by. And I knew then that the winter was not going to last forever, and that spring was coming. 

I profess to love rain and the cold, and I do. There is something intoxicating about snow-covered mountains and oversized jackets. It makes you appreciate warmth. But spring... you don't have to hide anymore. It's glorious and wonderful and freeing. Your soul is reborn under the warmth of the Sun.

So as much as I hate overused metaphors, here goes: Springtime is like the Gospel. You see the Son face to face, and wonder what in heavens name you were doing before, being content to live in a shadow. New things are planted in your heart, and they now are free to grow. Your heart can't be cold anymore, it warms and is ready to accept new teaching and ready to be molded further by God. You can see farther, much farther into reality than you ever new existed before, because the fog is gone and the darkness has fled away.

It's always like springtime with You, making all things new,

Your light is breaking through the dark.

Your love it is sweeter than wine,

Bringing joy, bringing life.

Your hope it is rising like the dawn...

Only One Thing

I think there comes a time in a woman's life when she realizes she must give herself fully to something. I have no doubt men come to the same conclusion as well, but there is some especially dreadful feeling that fills a woman's heart when she realizes that despite all her efforts to love everything and everyone, she can only let one thing fully into that complex, beautiful heart of hers, and that one thing, whatever it may be, will slowly consume everything she has.

The more I ponder about what true love and passion are, the more I feel a deadly lack of that true emotion. We want adventure, we want wonder, we want to leave a mark after we are gone and yet, somehow, the courage and emotion and confidence required to accomplish such things we cannot find in ourselves. It's really a dreadful, empty feeling. And we realize then that whatever we decide to give ourselves to, we have to embrace it until it makes its home in our body and soul and can never leave, or the change we want will never occur.

I turn 20 in the month of May this year, and I am more than curious as to how the person I am will change over the course of the next few years, let alone the next decade. Will I remain a free spirit, wandering the lesser-travelled paths of the world, learning the nuances of the human condition? Or will I, as my grandmother puts it, "get a stable job" and live not unlike everyone else in middle class America, singing in church every Sunday but always wondering what radical things are happening in Mozambique, or Ukraine, and wonder why I am not there to witness them? I hope it is not the latter. The latter, at least, does not run in my family.

But here now, I have neglected to tell you the one thing that has started to irreversibly consume me. For some, it happens like a lightening strike, frying their bones and making them unfit for anything else. For me, it's a slow awakening, like someone who's been in a coma in a hospital bed for a long time. I only remember uselessness from my dreams, a shadow. I have learned to blink and breathe air into my lungs again. I am learning to talk. Soon I will walk, slowly, stiffly, but surely. Then I will run, jump, laugh.

Eventually, you must give yourself to something. For me, it is as much given as it is compelled from me, the only plausible option. For when you know of the only Way to love, you take it. You darn well live it. And eventually, nothing else fits in your heart, but you really don't care in the end. That is the beauty of the Divine Love of God.

I guess I started this blog to tell you about my adventures I've had and will have. I started it this way to establish that Jesus is through and in everything in my life, so naturally he's a prerequisite for all strange but lovely things that occur.

Love through me, Love of God;
Make me like thy clear air
Through which, unhindered, colors pass
As though it were not there.

Powers of the love of God
Depths of the heart Divine,
O love that faileth not, break forth,
And flood this world of Thine.

-Amy Carmichael, "If."