Five-Minute Friday: Grateful

GO:

I’m grateful for American life.

There’s a good chance that I’ll spend a large percentage of my lifetime somewhere else. Where I’ll live instead depends on what exactly my ministry call turns out to be (I’m studying for Bible translation as well as ESL teaching). But no matter what, it’ll probably be a different culture.

So in case I end up in a jungle, I’m grateful today for the four seasons of northwest Indiana, for the varied food and the benign bugs, for the sturdy house and air conditioning and readily available medical care.

In case I end up in a non-English speaking country, I’m grateful today for the time I have in a place where everyone communicates in my heart language.

In case I end up in a place with very few Christians, I’m grateful today for the enormous network of believers who love and support me from the same campus or town.

In case I end up halfway ‘round the world, I’m grateful today for my mother’s hugs and the chance to watch a movie with my sisters late at night and the frequency of sleepovers with good friends.

I’m grateful for all the things I have right now that I might someday miss. But mostly I’m grateful that I can trust in God’s sovereignty, rest in His plan for my life, and live with joy and“strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow”.

STOP.

Five-Minute Friday: Welcome

It's been a while. I've been too busy living life to write about it- but there are plenty of ideas floating around in my mind. Give me a bit, they'll show up here eventually. Meanwhile, I've decided to join in on The Gypsy Mama's Five Minute Fridays, which I was first exposed to on Gretchen's "Little Pink House" blog (there's a link on the side of mine to hers). Each week she gives a prompt, and you write for five minutes and post it. So here goes!



I’ve always been welcomed to new places, but this year I’ve been learning about the special joys of being welcomed home.

Sometimes it’s a good, home-cooked meal from my mom, who knows that dining hall fare is never as good as something from our kitchen. A happy dance in the kitchen with my sister. A hug from my dad. Those are the intentional welcomes.

Then there are the things that just are—things that scream, “You’re home!” The way my house smells (you know how every house has a unique scent?). The familiar feel of my bed. The sound of my dad making bad jokes, my dog skittering across the hardwood floor, the train whistle blowing at night.

But my favorite welcome? When it’s late at night, and my parents have gone to bed, and I’m in my room. Maybe reading, or skyping someone, or journaling. At some point there’s a soft knock on my door, and one of my sisters creeps in and sits on the bed with me. She tells a story about something that’s happened, plopping her legs across mine. Soon the other one has joined us, bringing her laptop or her homework. And we spend the evening that way, all doing our own thing, but together and there’s usually a lot of laugher. Because we’ve grown up, we’re not the little squabbling girls we used to be. The youngest is about to turn sixteen. We’re (mostly) friends now. And they’re glad I’m home.

I love college. I’ve started to refer to it as “home”, too, but there’s just nothing like returning to my family and the place where I grew up.

Thoughts on 1 Samuel 8

When my Government teacher in high school was explaining the existence of government, he used an interesting example: the Israelites in Canaan.

People have two inherent conflicting desires, desires that are so strong they are almost needs. One is the desire for independence. The other is the desire for community.

As I said before, those two desires are intrinsically at odds—but God had a plan for Israel that would allow for both. He outlined exactly how to live so that they could exist as free, independent people in a well-functioning community. He gave them the Law.

If Israel had been capable of following the Law to the letter, it would have worked perfectly. Even as sinful people, with the institution of the judges it worked pretty well.

But they weren’t content. They asked for a king, so that they would be like all of the other nations. To protect them, to bring them together to fight battles, to make them prosper. And check out Samuel’s response:

“This is what the king who reigns over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve… He will take your daughters to be performers and cooks and bakers…He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.”

He knows that the price of the benefits that a king provides is a great loss of independence and freedom. God’s balance will be upset. But the people don’t care, of course. So they get a king, and many more kings after that, and out of a good fifty kings in Israel and Judah only nine or ten turn out to be considered “good”.

I just thought all of this was really interesting. God knows the desires of our hearts, and he knows how to respond to them. He knows us and our tendencies and natures better than we ever could know ourselves.

Moments and Sensations

Some days, my senses seem to play a larger role in life than usual. Things feel fragmented and instead of people and events, what stands out in my mind are emotions, scents, temperatures, color schemes.

Glasses fogged with raindrops blur the world and make everything insubstantial. Somehow they make me feel as though I look blurred and insubstantial to the rest of the world, too, until I wipe them off.

Juggling a McDonald’s caramel latte (better than Starbucks’, I’ve decided), a FedEx package, an ID and door key, a Walgreens bag, and a purse while holding open the Houghton door with my foot for a dad with a dolly loaded with his daughter’s things. It’s move-out day. Chaos.

Chill air, misty raindrops- wind and water are the elements of the day. Contrast: in three-ish days I will be under the Israeli sun.

Hugs. Hard ones. Prolonged. These are goodbye hugs— some for a few weeks, some for three months, some much longer. These are emotion-filled and bittersweet. And yet it hasn’t quite sunk in that I won’t be seeing all of them tomorrow.

Grey and white and greenish and black. Clouds, empty dorm room walls, my rain jacket, graduation gowns. Those are the colors of today.

Echoes. Calls of “Goodbye!” echo through the halls. The echo of the microphone through the large Moody Church sanctuary as the speaker gave the commencement address. The echo of my voice when I sing (as I incessently do) in my nearly-empty dorm room.

A musty smell. A rainy smell. Nail polish remover. Cleaning spray. The fast food everyone’s brought back for lunch since the dining hall is closed.

These are some of today’s moments and sensations.

100 Days

You know that pattern of conversation where you say, “I just can’t wait for ____!!!!” and someone decides to insert wisdom into your life by saying something along the lines of, “Well, don’t wish away the time till it gets here. You’ll end up wishing away your whole life if you’re not careful. The journey is sometimes the best part” ?

Well, it’s gotten to the point in the year where everything is about “next year”. The ways our floors will change. The things we’ll do differently. The classes. The many different sorts of relationships that have to be put on pause for now but will be resumed in the fall.

There are exactly 100 days until the day I have to be back on campus for choir. 100 days until that much-anticipated “next year”.

What will I do with that 100 days?

I won’t wish them away. In the next 100 days, I will learn some things. I will grow a bit. I will accomplish some tasks, and have some fun, and go through some bad days. I’ll earn some money, and deepen friendships, and move on from some things. I’ll live.

And on August 19th I will still be me, but a little different.

As I was reminded last August by a very wise lady, “Don’t spend your life waiting to live it”.

Going Home

I think I’ve always tended to subconsciously think of going to heaven as going any other new place—it may be wonderful and I may come to love it in time, but it will be an adjustment. It’ll take a while to become home, sort of how Moody did.

Then this morning in chapel, we sang “How Great Thou Art”. As I sang, “When He shall come with shouts of acclamation and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!” I thought about it. We are not of this world, but that’s not an easy mindset to get into. Will I really, truly be able to be full of nothing but joy when I’m on my way to heaven? After all, my coming to Moody was joyful, but I still had some sadness at leaving home, and that was a natural and good thing, wasn’t it?

Then I was reminded of two things.

First, a line in the movie Sleepless in Seattle, which I watched last night. It’s really cheesy, but it works. Tom Hanks’s character is describing what was special about his late wife, and he says, “I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home… only to no home I’d ever been before. I was just taking her hand to help her out of the car and I knew.”

Second, a scene from Anne of the Island, the third book in the Anne of Green Gables series. Anne and her friend Ruby are discussing death and heaven, and Ruby says, “I think… and I get so homesick… and frightened. Heaven must be very beautiful, of course, the Bible says so—but Anne, it won’t be what I’m used to.”

Here is Anne’s resolve as she thinks it over later that night:
“When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different -- something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth. “

So there, I think, is my answer. Seeking to begin the life of heaven while here on the earth, and trusting God to manage the rest.

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”
--The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle

Blog it. But live it first.

‎"…the real meat of life, the stuff that really matters, the part that makes it beautiful to be human–well, none of that stuff has a USB port. You can’t really Twitter the music of a child’s laugh, and no Facebook page will replace the beauty of taking a casserole to a sick friend.

So blog life, Twitter it, IM it, podcast it…and do it well.

But first?

Live it."

-A blogger named Shannon

I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

Real life is beautiful. There's nothing wrong with capturing and sharing what you can. I think that's beautiful, too, and I want to do more of it. But let's not forget to place LIVING life at higher value than creating an online representation of it.