Living By The Spirit

Trying to enjoy as many of these sunsets as possible before it gets cold (and by cold I mean below 70 degrees). I don't know what sunsets have to do with living by the Spirit, but look at that sky!

This semester, I would like to grow in living by the Spirit. 

Which, for me at least, is one of those facets of Christianity that has been more about word than deed. 

And I don't mean my speech is perfectly spirit-filled, so now I just need to focus on my actions. No, that's definitely not what I mean. Maybe I'll get there when I'm eighty or never. 

I mean I talk about living by the Spirit, or being "out of the Spirit" a lot, but actually don't have a great tangible hold on what this looks like in day-to-day life. 

Like when my two year old starts rough housing and kicks me right in the chest while I'm putting him to bed, 

or when Kyle is cranky because he hasn't eaten in 12 hours and I'm like, "All we have are cheese sticks and peanut butter crackers because I subsist on toddler food while you're at work," and then we get in a low-blood sugar fight, 

or, in ministry, when I see people heading for a brick wall and because there's this pesky thing called "free will" I can't stop them, and they won't listen to me (since, duh, I'm always right). 

I've definitely experienced living by the Spirit before. When life feels a little bit like fingernails scraping across a chalkboard, and I'm unnaturally (supernaturally?) at peace, rested, able to love those around me in a way that is beyond my own ability. I have compassion for people, I have grace, I notice people, instead of brushing humanity under the rug of my own life and agenda. 

Those are the moments I think, "THIS. This is what Paul goes on about." 

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

But for the most part these moments are few and far between. I want to develop the discipline of living by the Spirit. I wish it was like plugging into an outlet or flipping some secret "Spirit-filled" switch, but it's not. I think it's like working out, which, you know, I'm so good at. 

To be fair, Paul did try to warn us, right? All that talk about, "running a race," wasn't for nothing. 

To cease living in my own strength and begin to live by the power of the Spirit is a discipline. One that, as I take steps further into marriage, motherhood, and ministry I realize I cannot do without. 

Could Kyle and I have a decent marriage in our own strength? Sure, maybe. I don't know because I really don't want to try. I do know that I hope to understand my husband to a degree that requires us to love each other by the Spirit. To build our marriage into a place where both of us feel safe will require a level of forgiveness, and trust, and hope that I believe must be born and fed by the Spirit. I have felt what it is to be loved by the Spirit of God, and it is sweeter than anything or anyone. I think the Spirit can teach me to love Kyle better than any other person could. 

Could I be a good mom in my own strength? Sure, maybe. But I also know my tendencies. My bent toward perfection, my drive for achievement and self-glory. How unnatural it is for me to stop in the middle of a busy work day and hug my children. I desperately want my children to feel loved because they are here. Because they exist. Not because of anything they did or did not do. The one place I have felt this in my own life is in the presence of the Holy Spirit. I think the Spirit can teach me to be a better mother than any other person could.  

Could I do ministry in my own strength? Sure, maybe... for awhile. To be honest, I don't know if I will make it unless I learn how to access the infinite, available, in-Him-all-things-are-possible power of the great I Am. I can't tell you this for sure, but I believe laying among the ashes of many a burnt-out ministry is the tendency to try and be the hands and feet of Christ without the power of Christ. I know the Spirit can teach me how to be a better minister of His Gospel than any other person could... It is His, after all. 

In the end, it's just not worth the risk to try this life on my own. Even at the ripe, young age of 27 I see the collateral damage of a Spirit-less life. It is not something of which I want any part. 

So these are my verses for the semester, may my life become a reflection of them. 

"But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives." - Gal 5. 22-25 NLT

On Discipleship

My living room walls are this awkward tan-stucco pink color.

I hate you, pink-tan. 

It was picked in a hurry and there was no turning back once my husband rolled the first coat. Z was due in mere weeks and our new place still had unpainted walls and no baseboards and no kitchen appliances and a giant hole in our master bedroom wall. 

So the paint stayed up. 

Now we have random patches of sample greens and browns on our walls as we consider a new color. Our remodeling emotions are scarred and we dare not make the same mistake twice. 

I've had to explain the patches many times as college students have traveled in and out of our front door. Heaving their backpacks onto a living room rug scattered with blocks and board books and collapsing onto a couch covered in spit-up stains and avocado smears.

And they could care less, because my living room is not a class room or a library or a computer lab or the counter at their part-time job.

It's just that, a living room.

Whose main occupant is a rambunctious toddler with a voice modulation problem and an admirable talent for making messes; but our family tries to fill the space between the ugly tan-pink walls with as much peace and grace and truth and love as our humanity will allow. We hope to keep filling it with the same, so when these students enter and sit at our kitchen table and talk about their lives they might see Christ and come to know and love Him. 

Discipleship is messy work, and I doubt it's supposed to be anything but. On the bad days I've had accusations flung at me and on the worst days some of those have been more true than is easy for me to admit.  

The good days though, which there are more of, thankfully, I've seen forgiveness heal broken places and I've seen grace crumble walls.

I've seen a student meet Jesus, the real Jesus, for the first time after years of searching and whisper a first prayer out loud to the God that she had loved for some time, but could now understand exactly how much He had long loved her.

I've seen a student shed tears for a whole nation of people who are broken; and neither of us knew that those tears were the first step to her getting on an airplane and moving to that country and living among those people, so that they might know Him who can heal.

Yes, there are definitely good days.

It is a humbling gift to give and receive. Because all discipleship really is, when you get down to it, is allowing another human help you figure out what it means to follow Jesus.

Yes, I'll listen. 
Yes, I'll speak with grace and truth. 
Yes, I'll risk letting you into the shakier places and step into yours. 
Yes, I'll take a chance that you care more about my heart than you do about my behavior. 
Yes, I'll forgive if (and when?) we fail each other.  

No, there's nothing pristine and orderly about that.

But there is the goodness of God and the love of Christ. And the Spirit weaving through conversation and tears and laughter, bringing counsel and comfort.

When I sit down with someone for the first time, whether it's just to get to know them or they asked to meet for a specific purpose, I try to remember that all I have worth giving is Christ.

That this world has had enough of the blind leading the blind.

That discipleship looks a lot more like the people in the Bible who brought their sick loved ones to Jesus and left the rest up to Him, rather than trying to do the healing themselves.

That really, what people want is life, they want to breathe without the weight of shame or regret, they want to act in security, they want to love wholly.

And the only reason I have any life to give at all is because I know the One who is the unending source of it.

Hands & Feet

Z has played in the dirt a lot this summer.

Since we are without a bathtub until we return home, this has translated into sponge-bathing a wiggly just-turned-toddler. 

Last night, locked in my lap, Z rested his head against my chest while I began cleaning off a day of hard playing with a damp cloth. I got to his feet, streaked brown and toenails full of Colorado dirt, and began to wash them. 

Then the Spirit moved and another conflicted piece of this momma's heart clicked into place. I could see, a little more, how motherhood & ministry can flow from the same place and what a shame it would be to not understand that.

Jesus bent and washed the feet of the men who had walked beside Him for three years and last night I bent and washed the feet of a little man who has yet to claim three years of life.

And the similarity whipped through me like a mountain-wind and I felt the Holy Spirit say, "You do this in My place."

I am no Jesus, but I am a picture of Him to my son. And the thought that Christ would stoop to wash my one-year-old's feet just breaks me, because you know, I really think He would.

And I don't think that Jesus would care that my son couldn't thank Him yet, or that no one would notice how sacrificial He was being, or that there wasn't a parade thrown in His honor for washing a dirty toddler's feet.

I think His eyes would be bright and He would make Z laugh and He would find joy in showing my son just how much He is loved by the Creator of the universe. So that one day, when Z is old enough, he would turn to Him and say, "I am Yours."

That's when motherhood shakes loose from the trappings of the world and it becomes something sacred. It becomes the business I must be about: being the hands and feet of Jesus to my child and any others that come.

And this fire that was lit thirteen months ago when my Z came small and vulnerable into this world grows a little brighter and burns a little hotter, and Christ graciously refines my glory-hungry heart.

I look down at Z's feet, clean and ready to be slipped into pajamas, and I am so grateful.

i'm back and so are the students

For something I enjoy so much, you would think it would be easier to discipline myself to write more.

I'm crossing my fingers in hopes that what the Lord has been teaching me about emotional intelligence will rub off in the arena of writing. For now, writing remains mostly cathartic.

Which means when I don't "feel like" writing, then I don't. 

I've wondered if I should keep it that way, leave it at an occasional vent, a sporadic effusion. 

But writing has been an unfriendly catharsis to me. This may not be the case for most, but when I keep writing as nothing more than an outlet, it doesn't actually let out things all that well. Instead it serves only to stir-up what's settled at the bottom, rather than straining it out. 

I have a suspicion that has much to do with my inconsistency. 

So at our church's staff retreat a few weeks ago I, for the first time, actually made a goal for my writing. Now I have a certain number of words per day to put to paper ... I'll keep you updated on how things go.

On a personal note, my husband and I are now back home from our summer in the Rockies. While I enjoyed the ministry we did up there, I desperately love my home. Every sun-scorched, seared, square-foot of it. 

The campus is flooded with students now and grocery shopping is a pain, but I'm asking the Lord to give me fresh eyes for these collegiate souls. 

Yesterday evening I was thinking about the beginning of the fall semester on a college campus. How much excitement & energy pulses through everything, and how in light of this, it can hard for me to remember that though these students have their lives ahead of them, they need Jesus. 

As a freshmen, I remember my heart & mind so busy with the possibilities of tomorrow that it was frighteningly easy to pass over the brokenness of today; and therefore, my need for God. 

How do you communicate humanity's only shot at truth, to an underclassmen brimming with excitement of the unknown?

Someone once told me, "My heart is so for you." That sentence struck me as the most appropriate way to express how I feel about college students. There have been times I'm sitting across a banged up, wooden, coffee-shop table and my soul is overwhelmed with the desire for them to know Jesus.

Please understand. Before you leave here. Please don't go out there and not know what truth really is, what love really looks like.

Sidenote: I can assure you that choking back tears when a student is talking about their last exam is pretty awkward. 

I don't desire to dwell in negativity or feed a pessimistic attitude. The last thing I want to do is rain down statistics of failure on a hopeful freshman. 

But I can't settle for watching them settle for drinking water that will leave them thirsty again. So my prayer for the start of this semester is that the Lord will provide me with urgency tempered with wisdom in my interactions with these students. After all, I want to communicate the love their Savior has for them, not creep them out. 

Do you have any hopes, desires, convictions about this next season? If so I'd love to hear them. 

I am Woman, Hear me Seek Him

The concept of Biblical femininity frightens and fascinates me.

I've read books about women's roles & identity. I've heard teachings about gender differences & gender similarities. I've run to gender stereotypes for their familiar safety & simultaneously resented them for their limitations. 

This past year I have vacillated between whether or not this topic is really worth the Church's mental, emotional, & spiritual efforts; and being sure that the concepts of femininity (& masculinity) must be discussed and pressed into within the bounds of the Bible and the Body, because the world certainly isn't hesitating to define the strengths and weaknesses of both, and at precious cost to many, many souls. 

I choose to focus on femininity not because I think men don't matter OR because women have suffered from lack of attention, but rather because I am a woman; and, the journey the Lord has taken me on to become the creation He intended has caused me to ask what the loaded word, "female," really means. 

What does it mean in a world where fallen humanity's thirst for power and control has caused men and women to abuse each other, to leave each other in the dust, to wash our hands of the other half of the population and write them off as "weak," "insensitive," "neanderthals," "illogical," etc. 

What does it mean in a world where the level of sexual exploitation is horrific, from nine-year-old girls being forced into sexual slavery to seeing advertisements & media that I resent as a woman and a wife. 

I look to the character of God, and am left knowing that somewhere (the Garden?), something (the fall?) went deeply wrong in the souls of men & women, because what I see in the world cannot be what He intended. 

And if I, as a Christian, believe that we are experiencing a partial fulfillment of His Kingdom; that one of my key roles is to be a witness that living in this Kingdom brings freedom; that God created both male and female to simultaneously celebrate their differences and find rest in their similarities; and I realize that this vital aspect of His creation is under attack, than why wouldn't I care to do something about it? To be moved to protect and be a faithful steward of femininity and masculinity in the ways the Lord has called & gifted me to? 

One reason for this passion is that I've experienced a community where respect & honor of both genders are thriving and active. A community that doesn't claim perfection, but approaches this topic with humility and seeks the grace of God as they try to figure it out. The Lord has brought much healing to this woman's wearied heart through them. I have this passion because I've experienced the hope of what men & women living under Christ really looks like. 

And in all this, my heart arrives at a place of humility, where I go before the One Creator of both male & female, and ask what He intended for His daughters. 

That, as His daughter, I may continue to press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me, and ask to be allowed the grace to help others do the same. 

Loose Cannon

Do you ever feel yourself throwing advice at people with cannon-like force? Hurtling words at a million miles an hour; words that, though born of good intentions, are aimed to fix rather than love?

In the world of spiritual giftedness, I know there are some who are able to discern what is wise and communicate it well, but like any strength, it is bound by it's weakness. 

I wonder if arrogance fetters my passion for truth & healing more than I realize. 

It is a constant lesson for me to learn. To bathe truth in grace, or remove my own fears & paradigms from someone else's problem before telling them, "Well, here's what I would do...."

A word has been growing in my soul lately. Something that comes out in my prayers and thoughts and writing. Lift.

For some reason this word has cooled the fire of pride before I blast someone with unnecessary, "pearls of wisdom." The Spirit tells me to lift them up. To lift their hearts up toward Christ, being willing to hold my arms extended with a strength not my own. 

Lifting does not involve shredding the soul of dignity with assumptions & maxims. 

So, this is my prayer:

That He will teach me to lift up others before Him, allowing His words to divide the soul & spirit, rather than trying to do it myself. 

Truth: How Refreshing it is to be Small

Every once in awhile it's good for people to see themselves in a big picture, rather than cropping their world until they are the only one that fits into it:

Last week Husband & I sat with over a hundred men and women who do almost exactly the same thing we do in campus ministry, but at different universities around the nation. 

I was washed over with humility & grace as they shared stories of pain and glory. Stories that appeared as epics next to my, "See Skip run," tidbits. 

Wisdom runs deep when people have had to walk painful paths, and choose to still follow Christ. My perception of "me" was significantly decreased when sitting across the table from those who had been following longer than I have been breathing. 

Following. Trusting. Believing. 

It is so easy to get caught in the daily push and pull, zooming in on my life until every movement and shift seems disastrous, blurring the picture and jarring it into chaos.

All the while, there are thousands, millions rushing around me, begging someone take notice. I'm too busy, though. Too busy serving. Too busy counting up how many times I was sacrificial this week. Focusing in on my own accomplishments until nothing is left but a distorted image of half a person. 

To look up, to increase what my heart is seeing, to realize my smallness - is so refreshing. To serve a God more ancient than eternity, deeper than the soul, and bigger than the night sky breathes freedom into my small, cramped world. 

To be small is to be safe, for you realize your need for protection. 

To be small is to be known, for you realize your need for others. 

To be small is to be less weary, for you realize your need for help. 

Last week I was unburdened by realizing how small, and yet how loved, I was. May the Lord decrease me, only to increase Him all the more. 

And Away We Go

My husband and I will be married for six months on Friday. We will also be celebrating our launch into full-time ministry this weekend.

With two semi-big milestones coming up I decided to (finally) get around to creating a blog.

Why? Because I think that there's a lot to write down when you're experiencing a new marriage and a new career; and if I'm ever going to get any better at writing I might as well begin practicing it and see what people think.

My husband doesn't believe in blogs.

I tried to politely explain to him that, unlike his preconceived notions, not all blogs were random entries of poorly written emotional vomit that people have no business displaying to the public - especially the internet.

"There's a high culture to the blog world," I said. "A lot of well-known and well-respected authors keep blogs."

His response:

"Well just because a super-model goes to the bathroom every once in awhile doesn't mean people want to see it."

Touche.

Now - my husband doesn't really pay attention to American culture. (I spent most of high school reading People and Us while he was reading the desert fathers.) So it surprised me that he used super-models as an example.

He was a philosophy major in college, though, and I couldn't really deny his logic.

As different as my husband and I are in many areas, we are very similar in others. The biggest being our passion for truth.

It is because of this that we will be working in college ministry over the next several years.

I can think of no other environment where truth is called into question and redefined more than on college campuses, by professors and students alike.

Our hearts are to point people toward what is true - toward the Truth, specifically; and to do so in love. Because with truth there is freedom & vision, which yields life.

We also know that wielding truth without grace does no good.

Hence the blog title.

So this will be a place where I write about the truth I learn in marriage, in ministry, and in life. Hope you enjoy!

p.s. There will also be many pictures because certain parts of me haven't matured past elementary - mainly the one that finds things easier to read with pictures. I find it easier to write if I use pictures as well.